Читать книгу This Above All - Eric Knight - Страница 7

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Clive woke feeling a hot pulsating in his head. Somewhere a band seemed to be playing. He saw small starched curtains. Then he remembered someone had wakened him by speaking.

He looked up. From his angle the young man in the room looked heroic in size, his head far up under the plastered gables of the room. There was a slight cut and discoloration beside his right eye. His wavy chestnut hair was still wet from the combing. He was smiling and holding out a mug of tea. Clive sat up and drank. Then he grimaced, handed the cup back, and laid his head on his drawn-up knees.

“Got a bad one, hey?”

He felt too ill to speak. He opened and shut his hand as a signal that he’d heard. The young man laughed happily and sat on the bed. The movement sent violet lights dancing.

“You shouldn’t begrudge yourself a fat head after the binge you had last night.”

“Perhaps so. Where am I?”

“My home. Told the old lady you were a sick friend. You were sick all right.”

“Sick?”

“Don’t you remember? Oh, my, what a do. One of the best the old Ram’s Head’s had in a long time.”

“I’m sorry. I only remember being in an argument. I don’t remember you.”

“You don’t! Why, we discussed everything last night—women, the world, and the war. Then Mouthy got into it and you smacked him. He got up and smacked you. Then you would ha’ died laughing. Somebody gets between you to make peace and you hits him by mistake. He hits you, and then school was out for fair. It wasn’t a private fight any more. Rare time we had, you, me, them, and a militiaman with his belt off smacking anyone impartial he could reach. Then the bobbies come, and we come out the alley door and over the back fences into High Street.”

“It was good of you to help me. I should have had more sense.”

“That’s all right. It was anybody’s fight.”

“It was good of you to side with me.”

“That’s nothing. I’d do anything to upset Old Carlishaw—you know, the publican. The bastard—he opened his mouth about my mother.”

“Your mother!”

“Yes. Oh, it was several years back. My mother used to make eel pies. You know, threepence each. I used to hawk ’em in a basket. Eel pies—get ’em while they’re hot—who wants eel pies! You know, shouting ’em round at night. Well, I hear someone’s giving it out that my mother’s putting gelatin in ’em. And I trace it down, and it’s Old Carlishaw. So I went down, and walked right in and took out this knife ...”

Clive saw the young man whipping out a huge sailor’s knife which flicked open, showing a half-foot blade.

“Oh, God, put it away,” he said.

He passed his hand over his eyes. The young man clicked it shut.

“I waved it right under his nose and says: ‘Mr. Carlishaw, you bugger you, I hear you’ve been sounding off about me and mine. If you open that dirty mouth of yours again about us, I’ll take this knife and enlarge your mouth from ear to ear and give you a permanent smile that you’ll wear the rest of your life.’

“So help me, I did. And me just a kid. Then the bugger has me summonsed for threatening his life—and I bloody near went to reform school over it. Only I had good characters, so we got fined five pounds and costs.”

“Why on earth do you go to his pub, then?”

The young man arched his chest. The grin spread over his cheerful face.

“Oh, just to help out. Anything starts—like last night—I do my best to keep it lively. Break a few of his windows and smash the place up a bit. It’ll help get the Ram a bad name, and soon the good custom will go down the Chime instead.”

Clive laughed despite the aches that the spasm produced.

“So you didn’t help me, especially?”

“Oh, no,” the young man said, with vehement eagerness. “Now don’t look at it that way. Old Mouthy needed a smacking. He’s a mouthy bastard. Going to fight this war to the last bloody soldier and the last bloody sailor. Warlike bleeder, he was. He wouldn’t talk that way if he’d seen it like I did. Poor bastards wading out to us and bloody Stukas bombing the guts out of ’em. It’d ha’ made your heart bleed, chum.”

Clive studied the quilt, and then looked up.

“Are you in the navy?”

“Oh, no. I’ve been working around on packets—summers, like, we’d take out the Island Queen. Down Little Bourneton. You know, winkles and round the buoy for a bob a head, nippers under twelve, sixpence. We lay her up winters. Well, there was no summer business this year, so I was helping out down the garage, and the skipper sends up in a hurry that we’re going over to help get ’em out of Dunkirk.

“You should have seen that bloody old Island Queen, chum, eight knots and she’s racing—ten and she’d bust a gut. But she was good—you know, shallow draft. So we could get in close.

“And it was go in and load ’em up, and get out and land ’em, and go in again. What a time—everything afloat—a bloody pawnshop regatta it was. Tugs, trawlers, destroyers, motorboats—any bloody thing. And us with a shallow draft getting right in. They was on the shore—they come wading and swimming out to us.

“Ah, chum, it would ha’ made you cry bloody salt tears, it would. The poor bastards. Poor bleeding bastards. Hadn’t slept for ten days—and lying there on the shore on their backs firing rifles at the Stukas—and the bloody planes playing clay pigeon with ’em. Make your heart bleed.

“And pick ’em up and get out, loaded to the gunnels. And land ’em, and go back in again. Then, third day, the fog clears, and plonk! He drops one right down into the engine room, and good-by Island Queen. We swim around and a destroyer comes up and picks us up—and that’s all for us. Now I’m back—and I dunno—you don’t feel like going back to a garage, do you?”

“No,” Clive said. “I don’t think you could.”

He swung his feet from the bed.

“I suppose I ought to get dressed,” he said.

“Yes, you’ll feel better if you get up. What do you do, chum? Don’t mind me being personal.”

“Oh, that’s all right. I’m—just on a holiday.”

“I see. What’s your name?”

He hesitated only an instant.

“Briggs,” he said. “Clive Briggs.”

“Glad to know you. I’m Joe Telson. I’ll take the cup down. You’ll have to wash in the sink downstairs. Nobody’s home—it’s almost midafternoon.”

Clive watched him go through the door. He held his head a moment. Then he began dressing.

In the dusk they leaned over the old stone bridge, looking down at the stream.

“Funny, you know,” Joe said. “Looking down on the river. Always makes you feel you’re going somewhere. Moving, like. Used to look down for hours when I was a kid and feel I was going the other way from the water. Of course, the water’s moving and you ain’t, but it feels the other way round.”

“It’s quite feasible that you are moving and the water’s still,” Clive said.

“Ah, science. Yes, that way. Well, how about a pint?”

“No, thanks.”

“It’ll do you good. Cheer you up—make you clap your hands and sing.”

“I couldn’t go it. And—anyhow I ought to be getting along.”

Joe looked up.

“Where to? Where you going, chum?”

“Oh—just moving along.”

“I know, but it’s late to start today. Stay over another night. We could put you up.”

Clive studied the water. He remembered the small room with the sloping gabled ceiling, the kitchen, the tiny quiet woman with bright bronze hair, the smell of the warm coal fire and baking bread and soapsuds. It was a familiar smell.

“Well, if I could make it all right—you know, with your mother. I’d be paying anywhere else.”

“Oh, that’s all right.”

“I couldn’t do it otherwise.”

“Well, then. What you think. Since you can pay—the old lady could use it all right. Every bit helps out, you know.”

“Of course.”

“Well, what about a pint?”

“No, I’ve reformed.”

“Oh—well, I tell you what. How about running up the Waffs Camp for the concert?”

“The what?”

“W.A.A.F. The Waffs. Didn’t you hear ’em go past with their band this afternoon—when I woke you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, they have a concert every Saturday night.”

“I’ve heard concerts.”

“I know—but I know a nice little number up there. And she could get a friend. Come on—do your duty to the girls in uniform.”

Clive shook his head.

“Ah, come on. You’re not a bad-looking chap, you know. You shouldn’t begrudge spreading a little joy around. Don’t be selfish. Share the blessing of nature with others.”

Clive looked at the water, flowing darkly, steel-smooth.

“It’s just what you need,” Joe encouraged. “A nice girl to cheer you up.”

Clive looked up at the cheerful countenance, and smiled.

“I doubt it. But one thing or another—what does it matter?”

“That’s the way to take it,” Joe said. “Come easy, go easy. Live, love, and leave when your welcome’s up.”

In the dark they met, not seeing each other. In the faint light of the clouded three-quarter moon they saw only a blur that was the whitened stones set beside the road at the camp gate. They heard voices around them and knew the untouching movement of people, yet they felt isolated, chained together against their own wills in the close prison of blackness.

But the thought of appearing together in the light seemed to each an offense now against himself.

He said: “Should we go to the concert, or—would you rather walk?”

Without answering, she started away, and they walked, untouching, down the dark road.

He thought: Let’s get it over with.

They went far along the lane until walking had no sense.

He stopped by a low roadside wall where an overhanging beech made total blackness.

“Let’s sit here,” he said.

They each sat on the wall, waiting.

They felt the nearness of each other, and were ill at ease. Each had a feeling that there was a routine to go through, and the fact that it was a routine repelled them.

But Clive only knew that the girl beside him was silent, and that meant that she was waiting. He wondered what she looked like.

He drew his breath.

“How do you like it in the camp?” he said.

One could always talk and fight away routines.

“It isn’t normal,” the girl said slowly. “You can’t have a purely feminine world. It builds slowly, day after day, into a sort of hysteria. Men—you’ve got to have them round, don’t you think?”

Clive was thinking: The intellectual type. My God, this is worse. Why did I have to get stuck with one of the intellectual type?

He said:

“Did it take a war to make you find that out?”

“No, seriously. It’s like a clock winding up, hour after hour, the spring getting tighter and tighter. You feel that if you are going to see any more women, or talk about women’s things, or hear any more women, you’ll break out screaming. That’s why I came out with you.”

“But usually, of course, you don’t do this sort of thing?”

“You needn’t be sarcastic.”

“Touché. You’re a bright girl. But I’m interested in the way you’re trying to explain to me—or to yourself—why you’re here.”

“I’ve told you. You just want to talk to a man for ten minutes and get sane. Any man. Anything with a pair of pants on.”

“I’m anything with a pair of pants on?”

“You mustn’t,” she said. “I’m trying to cover up my awkwardness at being here. Or don’t you understand?”

Clive felt the genuine sound in her voice.

“All right, then,” he said. “Just go on talking.”

“Don’t be angry. I was talking abstractly, and you are thinking personally. It’s been a shock. I thought women were self-sufficient. I wanted to think so. I thought they could get along—but we don’t. It gets like a bunch of hysterical schoolgirls. Of course, we bottle it up, but I suppose that’s worse, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes. Very bad for the system.”

“No, I don’t mean that. But I never thought of it before. I never thought how it would be for men in the army—living in a purely male life. Do they get sick of men—of seeing men, of hearing men, of talking male talk?”

“No, a male world’s a good world.”

“How do you know? Have you been in the army?”

“It’s true, all right. It’s so in schools. And then soldiers in the army have another outlet.”

“What? Oh—I see what you mean. I suppose there is that to it.”

“Don’t be superior. It’s just that men are more honest in their relations with themselves, that’s all.”

“I don’t know. That’s a generalization. It’s pretty rotten on women. This is a man’s world—even in wartime when we put on uniforms and try to pretend that it isn’t. I wonder why women don’t fit in on organized life—because they don’t.”

“Most of them do, I suppose.”

“Which means that I don’t. That’s it—I wonder, then, why I don’t.”

He thought: Oh, God. Now she wants us to talk about her.

“I don’t know,” he said. “From the sound of your voice I’d say that you’re from a better background than most. Most of them are tough little devils.”

“They’re fine girls.”

“Esprit de corps stuff, girl. They’re just ordinary human beings with the same percentage of grubby, scatterbrained, insensate females as in ordinary life. And putting them in uniform doesn’t suddenly make ’em all Maids of Orleans any more than soldiers are plaster saints.”

“Kipling,” she said. “Just the same they’re fine girls.”

“Of course they are,” he said.

He slipped from the wall and found her with his hands. He wanted to have it done—to go through the motions and send her into acquiescence or revolt.

He pulled her toward him, half distastefully. Her forehead rested by his cheek. He smelled the odor of her hair. She smelled clean. Half instinctively he had prepared himself for the dry sweaty smell and slight, sickly powder overlay of none-too-clean females. Thinking this, he stood with her head touching his. She did not respond, nor did she move to repulse him in the coy routine of boy and girl situations.

He let her go. She leaned back and he could feel and hear her brushing her uniform with her hands.

“Well,” she said.

“Well, what?”

“It was fairly disgusting, wasn’t it?”

“What was so particularly disgusting?”

“I don’t mean us—I mean, going through the motions—because we felt we had to. I came out here ...”

“Under the impression that you thought I was different. If you tell me the one about being different I’ll—I’ll ...”

They were silent. Then she said:

“You might have been nice about it.”

“Shall we go back?”

He heard her starting. They went along the lane, under the arching trees that made the blacked-out night even blacker.

It was not until they halted that she spoke.

“This is far enough—and thank you.”

“You don’t want me to take you back to the entrance because someone might see you and ...”

“That’s true,” she said. “Then I would be like the others. You have to get used to things little by little. You don’t think so until the time comes.”

“Like the others?” he said. “I thought you said they were nice girls.”

“They are nice girls—in many ways.”

“I see ... well ...”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “About saying it was disgusting. I didn’t mean you. I meant—both of us—starting something that neither of us had our hearts in—not really wanting to do it but only making the motions.”

He stood silently a moment.

“That’s true,” he said. “I’m sorry I was ratty. What’s your name?”

“Prudence. Prudence Cathaway.”

“Prudence?”

He stood back and laughed. For the first time the tension of observing themselves left them.

“They should have called you Imprudence.”

“That’s what my father says. I’m always getting into so many scrapes.”

They stood in indecision.

“Look, may I see you again tomorrow night?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Probably I’ll be busy.”

“And possibly not.”

“I couldn’t be sure.”

“I’ll come anyhow. I’ll restore all your feminine ego. I’ll wait for you—up on the wall.”

“I can’t promise. What if I can’t come?”

“If you can’t come ...”

He considered a moment.

“If you can’t ... it won’t make any difference.”

“At least you tell the truth,” she said. “That’s a kind of torture to oneself—telling the truth when it’s so easy not to. Good night.”

“Good night,” he said.

He felt disjointedly ill at ease—as if he’d been hearing a tune that was interesting, and someone had turned off the wireless in the middle of it.

He listened for her going down the black road, but there was no sound.