Day (17 page)

‘Suppose it would.'

Jack pondered him for a breath. ‘You all right?'

‘Yes.'

‘That's all right then.' He went back to studying the broken nothing between his fingers, let Alfred be because that was what Alfred wanted. ‘The gentleman is all right.'

Or the gentleman is buggered, what's the difference either way?

Alfred pushed off, steered towards the parade ground, admitting – because he might as well – that the shadow beside him should have been Ringer, his good friend. He had been running to get away from his lack of Ringer – because digging, that couldn't go on without Ringer. Nothing could.

Mooney had been his name outside the bag – David Mooney – an amount of suspicion and bother at his arrival, because he was such an unusual bod and couldn't explain himself. There had been an idea that he was a snooper for a while. But he'd been on a British Stirling all right – only to see the sights – his first and last op ending in a cack-handed parachute drop and a broken ankle. And for what he'd been told was a milk run, he had worn a dispatch rider's helmet – swore the thing had saved his life and they must not be parted: its padding and thickness making his head seem even larger. And the Germans had let him keep it, maybe thought that he wasn't quite right in his mind and wearing the helmet would help him. He took it off to sleep, but even then he'd cuddle it. Superstitious.

And maybe he
was
unusual in his thinking, sometimes slow, and you couldn't always teach him, but he wasn't daft. Called him Ringer because in private life he'd rung bells –
campanology
, the sound of a peal inside it, tumbling. Farm worker in the fen country, bloody awful life, but on his Sundays he'd walk for miles with some other lads, go from tower to tower, ring the whole day.

‘To get a good tower. You like that. Sweet bricks, they make it sweet. For hundreds of years. Ringing sweetens the bricks sweetens the bells.' Gently spoken – because when people heard him they made fun. ‘You're something that keeps on after hundreds of years – what they put in the ringing books, that's years of raising bells and Pleasures and Superlatives and Surprises. Once we rang a peal of Treble Bob Major, that's 6,144.'

Not exactly an expert at writing, but he'd scrawl you out these long chains of numbers, patterns, had thousands of them packed in that monster skull.

‘12345 then 21345 then 23145 then 23415, d'you see?'

And him almost tearful once, Alfred thinking some bad thing had happened, but it was only that Ringer was worried the bells were quiet at home and that after the peace it might be too late, what they needed might be forgotten.

‘40,320 with a peal of eight – that's how many changes you'd get. Would take you seventeen, eighteen hours to ring that many. 40,320. You see? Eighteen hours. And I've never.'

‘Never yet.'

‘Christmas Day in '41 and when we won at Alamein – victory peals, that's not enough. That don't let them sing.'

‘It'll be fine.'

‘The lads'll forget. They'll be in the services now and the old uns'll die. It'll all be forgot.'

Alfred with no idea if this was true, but not wanting Ringer to cry, not wanting him to be publicly weak, because some bastard would always notice and take advantage. ‘They'll remember. I'm sure they will. You will. So they will.' Rubbing his hand between Ringer's shoulder blades because when his ma did that to Alfred, he'd feel calmed.

‘Accomplishing the extent. They'll paint my name up on the board if I do. Me and the boys, if we do.' Rain banging off the dirty hut windows. ‘Accomplishing the extent.' His eyes so scared they hurt you. ‘Will I, Boss?'

‘Well, there's time enough.' Alfred lying the way that he might to a child, if he ever had a child.

Not that he was like a kid, Ringer. He'd try and fight you if you said so – would lose against anyone, but he'd still fight. No sense of direction in his fists, just head down and flailing, useless length of arm. The thing was, you didn't understand him if you thought he was daft – it was just that he'd get so scared and he wouldn't hide it, not always, so you'd need to calm him. For yourself, you'd need to make him steady – then you'd be steady, too. Got him the bunk under mine. Kept him right and close.

And Ringer kept everyone right – because he never did forget. Not anything. Whatever got into him stayed and he could read and tell the pattern of the camp – the passage of guards, deliveries, times and days, alterations, substitutions – he carried everything.

Out walking, it was Ringer you missed. Long stride he had, but he'd rein it in for you, head nodding with that mad helmet and his soft eyes flickering at each movement, each new detail and always an angriness or a sadness in his face, a sense of some feeling that made him hurt.

My friend.

My crew.

My girl.

You were some kind of mug to bother with any of that.

Because where did it get you? Here. Just marching round and round inside a daydream.

He halted, crossed his arms – hugged the sum and substance of what he was meant to look after: Day, Alfred F.

As it happened, he'd reached the assembly point for the first scene of the day.

Might as well stop where I am, then.

So while the others mooched and trotted, scuffed and marched up to join him, he watched the technicians fiddling, Old Jack setting up and making good. methodical. And finally Alfred permitted himself the comfort he'd had through too many bleached-out waits, the privacy he'd built in too many crowds – he remembered her, he searched out the full, high rush of her, stepped inside it and closed his eyes.

‘Hello. Hello? This is me . . . Is that you? That's . . . I . . .'

He'd not done well the first time. He'd known the number for a while: it was printed on her headed notepaper along with her husband's name and their address: another wedding present, no doubt.

‘I'm sorry, I can't quite . . .' The line so bad that he might have been back on the Lanc, her voice only barely defined. ‘Is that . . . when you say “me” . . . Is that Alfie?'

Not that hearing even this much of her didn't make his neck sweat immediately. He couldn't tell if she was pleased, though. ‘Yes, it's –'

‘God, I'm . . . You're a surprise. I'm . . .'

‘Well, I didn't intend to be.' Or not a bad surprise, anyway – a good one, please a good one. ‘It's only me.' As if he spoke to her every day.

‘Where are you?' She did sound mainly pleased. ‘Are you here?'

Didn't want her scared – it was easy to scare people. ‘I am. Here. Or there. I mean, we're both here.'

Molloy, packed into the phone box with him – and Pluckrose also – prods him under the ribs, hisses so she surely must hear it. ‘Jesus, make sense, willya.'

‘Well, I
am
here.' This meant for the lads, not for her, so now he has to try again, ‘I'm in London, sorry . . . there's . . . things going on here.' Pointing at Pluckrose, warning, no room to point at Molloy, both of them being no help to him, in any bloody way.

But he
was
in London. Which meant this was very last minute, but his leave was his leave and couldn't be changed in any case and he'd rung her before, quite often, you could say repeatedly, and got no answer, started to think that the line was out, misdirected, or she'd moved house, or been bombed out, or hurt, or worse, and he wouldn't know – there really wouldn't be a way that he could know – or else she'd maybe guessed that he would call and was just ignoring him until he'd stop. He couldn't tell. How could you tell?

‘Alfie? You're in town?'

‘I . . . yes, I am. I'm sorry.'

‘Don't be sorry.'

‘I would have said before. There wasn't time to write. The post is so . . .' He swallowed and realised that he was smiling, that his whole head felt loose. ‘Are you busy today? I don't really have much more time than today. My crew, they're . . .' One of his crew was currently banging the back of his knee while another sniggered – the rest were in a cordon just outside, the Bastard licking the glass in the little windows and winking whenever Alfred looked his way. ‘I only have today.'

‘Well, that's . . . Shall we go to the pictures? We could do that . . . see something? I have to fire-watch later. Making myself useful – I'm a mass observer, too . . . Donald would never have allowed . . . anyway. I'm keeping busy. You're lucky. I mean, lucky that I'm not working today. I work ever such a lot now. That is, not as much as you, but –'

‘I'm glad I'm lucky.' With all his heart, unbroken and hot and big between his lungs. ‘I'll meet you . . . I don't know where, though.' Hating that he had to shout and Pluckrose grinning at him and nodding, while Molloy blows smoke in his eyes, makes him blink.

But he keeps listening, keeps on willing her voice to come in, catching it, holding.

‘Oh Lord, I'm hopeless with directions . . . what about Hinde Street? I have to be there for . . . There's a church in Hinde Street, you could get the Underground to Baker Street, could you? Then it's not far.'

‘I'll find it.' He didn't for a moment think he could.

‘At twelve?'

‘I'll be there.'

But you found it. You did. Ran all the way.

You met her at the bottom of the steps, still ruffled with the nonsense your crew yelled after you as you escaped, a solemn little handshake from the skipper before you made the dash and a kind of embarrassment still on you – as if she might see what they'd suggested, what they thought. What you thought yourself, that was another matter, that was something you should keep at bay because this was just meeting someone, a girl, a woman, a married woman, and this was just everything, but also just meeting, seeing each other after letters where she's said that she thinks of you often and so it's not a bad thing if you say you've thought often of her.

‘Oh, and I've got you this.' She pushes a flat, soft parcel into your hand – her fingers touching your knuckle, cool.

‘What?' It's something wrapped in wallpaper. ‘I mean, you needn't.' She seems to have a lot of wallpaper. ‘I don't have anything for you . . . If you smoked.'

‘I don't.'

‘No, neither do I. But I could get you cheap cigarettes – out of the NAAFI. Would you like to start?'

The rubbish you talked around her – every time you'd collapse into trails and heaps of words, be lost in them rather than realise you were beside her, rather than have only silence thin between you, transparent. And that first time probably the worst, while you watched her move, the lightness in her – even with those big, scuffed shoes – and the blue hem of her dress beneath the green coat that you know, duck-egg blue dress and her face that wonderful oval, tiny chin and the neat mouth, soft neat mouth you can hardly look at because it makes you jumbled and the eyes more than anything – eyes of some creature, something marvellous – never seen them in daylight before now, never let them ease inside you and not stop.

‘I don't want to smoke.'

‘I know. I don't want to smoke, either . . . because . . . But if we
did
smoke.'

‘Then we'd need cigarettes.'

‘Then we'd
have
cigarettes. You could note that in your mass observation.' Wanting her to note him. ‘Along with me wanting to dress you in parachute silk.' Struck shy when you say this, but it turns out all right.

‘Yes, I could.' A smile in how she says this, lovely smile, while you trip yourself up a little, because you are almost stepping backwards so you can face her, or because you have forgotten how to walk.

‘Maybe I've noted it already.' She catches your near arm softly and you almost drop the parcel. ‘Careful, Sergeant Alfie – I have to give you back to that crew of yours without anything broken.'

‘Thank you.'

‘Well, otherwise it would be sabotage, wouldn't it?'

‘No, I mean thank you. For the . . .' You wag the parcel. ‘For this.'

‘Gratitude might not be quite the thing, you know. You haven't seen it yet.'

So you unwrap the string and unfold the paper and there is this woollen thing that you don't quite understand.

‘It's a hat.'

A woollen thing which is red.

‘It isn't regulation, but then I couldn't get the regulation wool.'

You both pause and study it where it lies across your hands like a fillet of something unpromising.

‘It's –'

‘Terrible, I know. But I wanted to try and I did manful work – see, there aren't any seams – it's all on four needles and terrifically complicated and one has to keep count for the ribbing – and you can wear it under your flying gear when it's cold, that was my thought. It's rabbit wool – like they use for babies – so it won't itch.'

‘Under my –'

‘It's a
hat
, you chump. That much, at least, is obvious and I refuse to believe that it's not.'

And you are halted on the pavement – this broad street with surges of people tramping along it and this little reserve policeman in a helmet that doesn't fit and he's only really the same height as you, but seems small today, seems a bloody dwarf because you are so grown when you're with her and there are fine, high shopfronts behind you that would be impressive, might even have something to sell and there are quite possibly sights nearby and you don't care to see them, don't care in the smallest way, are only sure that you will wear this terrible rabbit-wool hat until you die and that it will be as if she is touching your head, is putting her hands over your hair.

Spent all day with her.

Strolling and sitting in Lyons Corner Houses and not letting her pay for anything and you didn't make it to the pictures.