At the Break of Day (42 page)

‘Get away, Jack,’ Steve said, pushing the paper aside, trying to curl over. ‘Just get away. I’ve had enough. It’s never going to end.’

But Jack had known he would say this. It was what he would have felt and he also knew that if he took the paper away it would be the beginning of the end. So he dragged Steve upright.

‘Come on, Steve, I can’t get it right. It’s confused. You can help.’

Steve was pushing him away again, but Jack came back, shoving the paper in his face. Steve took it, scrunched it up, threw it across the room, and lay down. Rob, another prisoner, brought the paper back to Jack and helped to support Steve.

‘Read this, you goddamn give-upper. You bloody Yanks, you’re all the same.’ Jack wasn’t shouting, but his face was close to Steve’s. He wasn’t angry either, but Steve wasn’t going to be allowed to give up. Those who did so died and Jack wasn’t going to lose this friend who was so like Ed.

He straightened out the paper but again Steve knocked it from him, and it took an hour to force him to look at it. He stabbed at the second paragraph with a dirt-choked finger.

‘Take it out. Who wants to know that garbage? Ain’t you got no sense, Jack?’ His voice was tired, angry, but he was reading it. Jack rewrote it in the morning and again Steve turned it down and it wasn’t until the evening of the second day that he nodded, but Jack didn’t care whether it was good or not, Steve was back on side. That was what mattered.

They attended lectures as before, threw stones at markers, as before, and Steve said, ‘No more pit for either of us, eh?’

Jack nodded. ‘Yep, let’s get to the end of all this, then go out and get blind drunk, once in England, once in New York.’

They rose. It was time for afternoon lectures and the young men who filled the camp wondered how the minutes could drag so slowly, how their bones could ache with boredom, but they did. Day after day after day.

The next week they were all called into the big hut and saw a prisoner sitting alongside the Commandant. There were Chinese cigarettes on the table in front of him. The Commandant rose.

‘You not have group study this morning. You have morning to self because one has behaved with great satisfaction.’ He pointed to the prisoner who stared ahead.

‘This man has seen the truth. He will go now from the camp and he will tell the world on the radio of the crimes of the Imperialists. He will tell of the wrongness of his attitude which has given way to correctness.’

There was silence in the room.

‘You too can leave this camp. You too can see the truth. Your countries are not interested in you. You are still here. The war goes on. You are behind wire, play foolish tricks while warmongers eat in restaurants. Your wives live well without you. The years pass. Even if you do go home, we can reach you. You are never free of us. It is better to be a friend than enemy.’

He took a cigarette from the pack and gave it to the man, who put it between his lips. He was thin, drawn and his eyes still looked straight ahead. The Commandant lit the cigarette, smoke spiralled up to the wooden roof. Jack watched it disappear.

There was still silence, even when they were dismissed. The words were the same as they had been on previous occasions and there had been silence then. No one booed, no one blamed the man. It was his way of surviving.

‘Gets to you, though, doesn’t it?’ Steve said as they crouched on the ground and threw stones at the marker. Jack had won thirteen games, Steve eighteen. ‘Guess the months could become years.’

Jack nodded, looking round at the hills dusted with snow. It was so cold. He looked up at the sky, it was cloud-heavy. There might be snow tomorrow. Where could they throw their stones? It was better to think of that.

But the next week they were told it was over. The guards herded them into columns, the Commandant stood before them, the snow falling on his cap, his pressed olive green uniform, his soft golden skin, as he told them ‘All prisoners go home’.

It was too sudden. He could not believe it, but then he felt Steve’s hand on his arm. ‘We’re going to make it, Jack.’ And then the joy came, coursing through him from deep inside.

They were dismissed. For a moment they could not move, then they leaped in the air, whooping, cheering, some crying. They were going home, goddamn it, they were going home. Jack thought of Rosie, of running down the alley towards her, of her arms as she came out of Grandpa’s yard. Then he thought of the prisoner who had taken cigarettes in return for survival. Would he go home?

Joy pushed the hunger and the cold away. It brought smiles to faces which had stiffened into grim endurance. It brought hope into faces which had been without for too long. They were going home.

They were marched to a train, the snow soaking into their worn uniforms and through the split seams of their boots, but they marched in time, their few possessions slung on their backs.

The Sergeant called out the drill orders. Their shoulders were straight. They took the walking wounded, helping them, bearing their weight, and Jack felt the stones he had thrown at the marker in his pocket. They could be kept with Grandpa’s penny.

He turned and looked back at the mountains. ‘How exquisite,’ he said.

Steve nodded his goodbye to Nigel too.

They were marched to a train. There were no seats but it didn’t matter. They would be home for Christmas. They headed south in the last of the daylight, looking out across the country, seeing the ruins, the devastation, the napalm-damaged hills. The people were living in dugouts, hovels. There was nothing but poverty, but they were working, stolidly clearing the snow, cooking over open fires, ignoring the train. Jack wrote about this for as long as the daylight lasted, asking what the fighting had been about, but soon it was too dark to see the page.

There was no light then, no food, no drink. They sat on the floor, moving with the train, huddled together for warmth.

‘My mom’ll be pleased,’ Steve said, his voice a murmur like all the others.

‘I’ll write to mine but first I’ll see Rosie,’ Jack said.

Before daylight broke they eased into a tunnel and stayed there throughout the day to avoid the air strikes. So the fighting wasn’t over, the Sergeant asked the guard, looking uncertain.

‘No, you being exchanged,’ the guard said.

They had water, they had food, but they were colder now and blew on to their hands, draping old blankets over their shoulders. But did any of it matter? They were going home. They were bloody well going home.

Bob sat with them, talking of the food he would cook on his wife’s stove in their prefab.

‘I don’t know, you retreads. You’ve all gone soft,’ Steve laughed. ‘Let her do the cooking.’

Jack laughed too, wondering how reservists could bear to be called up, having already done their bit, and then he thought of Tom. He would not be going back. He thought of Suko too and hoped that she would find happiness.

Bob told them how he would cut the rind off the bacon, fry that until it was crisp, then the bacon, then the mushrooms picked the evening before from fields behind the house. He would take the sharp knife from the drawer, slice the tomatoes, grown against the wall behind the house, and fry them too. He would walk up the ash path to pick the warm eggs from the coop, the straw still on the shells. Soon the whole wagon was listening, hearing the fat spitting, tasting the bacon, the British not caring that it was the wrong season for tomatoes, not caring that bacon was still on ration. It was home, and that was where they were going, and now they cheered and laughed even when the guards swung back the door and said, ‘Quiet. You should sleep. Quiet.’

How could they sleep? They were leaving here. The big man himself had said so.

They travelled on south as darkness came. On the fifth night they were shunted into a siding near Pyongyang where they stayed for a week, asking the guards each day when they would be released.

‘When Captain come,’ they said.

The men used a bucket as a latrine, pushing it far into the corner. They squashed lice which still bit them in spite of the cold, but none of this was for long and so it didn’t matter.

On the eleventh day a Chinese Captain slid open the wagon door and they clambered to their feet, pushing towards the entrance. Other guards put up their rifles as the Captain said, ‘You go north instead. Prisoner-of-war camp. A mistake has been made.’ He smiled and slammed the door shut and there was only darkness, only silence. It had been a trick, but a darker trick than the ones they had played. It was a pitch black trick.

It broke three of the men. It nearly broke all of them. Hope had gone. Hate had come for many of them, but not for Jack. He had had enough of hate. He just wrote it down and Steve helped. They made Bob help too because he cursed and swore, beating the side of the wagon with his fists. He wasn’t the only one who came close to despair as the train swept north again. There were tears too, in the darkness of the night.

‘Funny trick, eh?’ Steve whispered to Jack, his voice full.

‘Capped our games in the camp, didn’t it? Quick learners, eh?’ The tears were dry on Jack’s cheeks now, there would be streaks in the dirt. He rubbed his skin.

‘The goddamn bastards.’

‘Maybe we could try and escape,’ Jack whispered. He couldn’t bear to think of the train taking him further and further from Rosie. He wanted to break from it, hurl the guards to one side, rush for the South. ‘Can’t be too far from the lines now, but with each day, it’s further. We’ll talk as we march.’

A guard had told them they were leaving the train the next morning. They waited, sitting with their arms around their knees, resting their heads, but not sleeping. No one was sleeping. How could they when the disappointment was so sharp, the anger so raw?

They were marched from the train, out into a road cleared of snow.

‘To another camp,’ the guards said, pointing north.

The Sergeant lined the men up before they left, ignoring the guards who gestured for them to begin. He stood before them, looking as thin as they did, but ramrod straight, his eyes sweeping the men. ‘You’ll march in step. You’ll remember who you are. You’ll not let these buggers beat you, or I shall have your heads for my breakfast and your danglies for my lunch. Is that quite clear?’

The men smiled and nodded.

The Sergeant barked, ‘About turn.’ He ignored the guard who was pulling at his clothes and shouting at his men to hurry. ‘Forward march.’

It was only then that the men moved, and they did so in perfect unison. It was only after the first mile that the pace slowed but they were still in time. They would be until they dropped now.

Before Steve and Jack could make their move, two Americans ducked out of the line as it passed between wooded slopes. They sneaked off into the undergrowth. Jack watched them snake across the snow-covered rice field to the base of the hill. They were stark against the white and their footsteps were clear.

Ten minutes later, the alarm was raised. North Korean guards found them two hours later and beat them to death.

Later Jack looked up at the condensation trails behind the shooting stars as the north-west jet streams pushed the planes home and nodded when Steve said, ‘Seems kinda pointless. Might as well get through school, buddy.’

They both nodded, still marching, still watching the men in front, blocking out the two beaten bodies which had been thrown into the ox-cart. Those men would never go home now.

They marched until January, through deep forests where all sound was deadened, dragging their legs through thick snow, pulling their balaclavas low. Snow fell from branches, whooshing through the frost-laden air.

‘It’s quite exquisite,’ Steve said and Jack nodded.

Finally, in driving snow, they reached the camp and were pushed into a large barn.

Their Sergeant was saluted by men who were already gathered in the building. One stepped forward.

‘Fellow students, we welcome you to this college of correction. I am Sergeant Howe,’ he said and bowed.

‘How exquisite,’ said Jack, bowing back, and they began to laugh, all of them, too loudly and too long, but it was a laugh.

They were given padded overcoats by the Communists which they thought was a trick, but which Sergeant Howe said was part of the ‘lenient policy’. They waited in the barn for the interrogation which they knew must come, and then there would be the lecture and the translation.

It came and Jack looked at the Chinese who asked him how much land he had. What his mother did. What his father did. Jack answered him, wanting to ask in return, ‘And what have your people just done to our hopes? Did you think it was funny?’ but he just answered the questions as they all did, then sat and listened to the lecture, and to the translation, because this was their life now until they left it on an ox-cart or the war was over.

It was eight in the evening before they were released from the barn to their clay and wattle huts which were heated by tiny wood-burning stoves. The floorboards were covered by straw mats with a narrow aisle down the middle.

They slept shoulder to shoulder. The wind swept through gaps in the clay and their breath froze on their blankets, on their lips, as the night hours passed. No one talked, but no one slept either. They had been so close to escape and now they were back at the beginning again.

Early in the morning loudspeakers blared Soviet and Chinese revolutionary music over the compound and Jack leaned up on his elbow.

‘I think I prefer Butlins, on the whole,’ he said and pushed the despair away, because it was a new morning and he must live each day, if he was to return to Rosie. And he would return.

Before roll-call at seven a.m. the new men, including Jack and Steve, were put on the wood-collecting rota.

‘I guess everything’s back to normal now,’ Steve muttered and he, like Jack, began again. They all did.

They ran across to the lean-to communal latrine in temperatures which were forty degrees below zero and ran back because it was too cold to walk. They had to stand, though, for roll-call and thought that they would die.

Then they did physical jerks as the Commandant ordered. The snow glistened at the edge of the compound and the twilight of the winter morning turned into daylight and the cold air cut into their throats and chests.