A Childs War (12 page)

George put on his sports jacket and helped Alex into his coat, which he had to wear although the sun was shining over the garden, while Edna produced the new green ‘box' coat, complete with its CC41 label, for which she had been saving up her clothing coupons. She decided to put it on today, despite the temperature the day before having still been in the sixties Fahrenheit (no one's anti-German feeling ever stretched to changing the name by which temperatures were still measured then). Joyce came down in her dressing gown to see them off, cheerfully commenting,

“I hope you all have a good day. Have you got everything you need?”

They had made sure that there was a bus due at ten to nine. They were astonished to see it coming over the canal bridge and had to rush across the road to beat it to the stop. George dryly commented as they made their way upstairs,

“I wonder if this old rattletrap will get us there!”

“Don't you know there's a war on?” said the bus conductor.

“Wouldn't be here if there wasn't!” said George through his clenched dentures.

Alex climbed along the lengthy seat to the window side and he sat next to Edna as the bus wound its way through the villages until it reached the hill where they were going. It took a very long time and there were many exhortations to him not to fidget and commands to him to wait when he said that he needed what his father had taught him to call a “Jimmy Widdle”.

Relief was soon given. The bus driver had made every attempt to take his vehicle up the lower contours of the steep hill with as much horsepower from the engine as he could call upon. Suddenly, after two or three agonizing minutes for the engine during which it was heard complaining, it cut out and the bus lurched violently as the brakes were applied to stop it rolling backwards downhill. After an attempt to start it up again, the driver was heard getting out and slamming his door. He came round to the conductor and told him,

“I might be able to get it to start again if the gentlemen among the passengers would be so good as to give it a push.”

Several young servicemen on weekend passes were on the bus with their girlfriends and they alighted to do what the driver asked while he went back to his cab. The upstairs passengers had heard all this and, very reasonably, the conductor asked them to get off the bus while the attempt to start it was made. They all made their way downstairs and Alex shot off to some bushes beside the road to attend to his acute need, only to find Edna when he had finished crouching behind the next bush with the box coat carefully held up by George to prevent her being seen while she did the same.

When comfort had been restored, they saw that there had been little success in bringing the bus engine back to life. A dozen or so youngish men had pushed it several yards, but there was no effective spark. George went forward to help.

“George, your hernia!” shouted Edna.

“Never mind that! We can't wait here all day for a breakdown truck that might not come,” and he went to join in, with Alex running after him.

The sound of Chatham cockney being loudly spoken captured the attention of the Oxfordshire souls who were pushing if men, and encouraging the pushing if women. One of the lads, said,

“Yeah, come on George, you can add weight at least if not muscle!”

This “got George's goat”, as he later commented, and he put his hands on the stern of the bus to give it a good shove with the others while it went uphill at an unimaginable speed. The driver put it in gear and the engine caught, bringing gratification to all concerned.

“Well done, George!” shouted one of the girls.

“Hero of the hour!” one of the better dressed ones called out.

“Let's all get back on before it stalls again,” said George to hide his embarrassment, though his red face made that difficult. Edna was the first on the bus dragging Alex with unnecessary force, he thought, up the stairs.

Once they were all back in their seats, the driver took the bus away gently with all the passengers' hearts in their mouths and made it to their destination. Edna took her coat off.

“I'm much too hot in this,” she said. “I wish you hadn't made an exhibition of yourself, George.”

“You help where you can,” he said, miserably.

As they got off the bus, the conductor said to him, “We need to carry a mechanic with us these days.”

“If it was a matter of turbines, I'd have known what to do,” said George.

“Navy?” asked the conductor.

“Used to be,” replied George.

“Good to meet you, Chief! Thanks for what you did.”

“Think nothing of it, Chief. All in a day's work.”

“I hope there'll be no ill effects,” said the conductor, looking at Edna.

“No, I don't expect so. It happened a long time ago now, on the Danae.”

Edna grew more impatient as the conductor revealed that he too had been on the World's Cruise in the engine room of another ship and before the reminiscences could begin in earnest, dragged George away. George remembered his marital and paternal responsibilities and complied, though not all that meekly.

Boar's Hill was a lovely place and they looked at the views in several directions it afforded before they sat on one of the seats provided to eat the sandwiches and rock cakes and drink the tea. They had to pass the flask to each other as they had not brought any cups and Alex burnt his mouth on the hot liquid, “Because you would be selfish and take it first,” said Edna.

They were forbidden access to the very top of the hill and could see that it was occupied by men who from time to time took long turns with large versions of what Alex had seen people using at the New Theatre. George explained to him that they were members of the Observer Corps and that the things they were looking through were powerful binoculars, which made far off things seem close.

“What are they looking out for?” asked Alex.

“Jerry,” George told him.

“Will he come this afternoon?”

“I shouldn't think so, boy,” was his welcome reassurance. “Even bomber crews like a day off now and again.”

“Another drop of tea?” asked Edna.

“I've got a better idea,” said George, looking down at a friendly roof, having observed what it covered as they walked up. A pleasant hour was spent looking at the view in the garden of the pub, with Alex allowed to wander away as long as he could still see his parents and his parents finding that their characters did have at least some compatibility, though it had been damaged by the Sunday night to Friday night parting each week.

At about three o'clock, they were asked to leave the garden and they walked round the hill again until it was time to catch the bus back to the city. It was the same one, and the same crew, and George and the conductor exchanged friendly greetings and called each other “Chief” again, once when they got on, a second time when George showed the return ticket and finally when they got off. The old inadequately maintained bus found no difficulty going downhill and by six o'clock they were going past the Majestic cinema just before they reached their final stop.

“That's where all those poor devils from Stepney had to stay -you remember Joyce telling us about them?”

“I suppose we've got a lot to be thankful for,” said George.

“Had a good day?” asked Graham. “You don't mind helping me turn over the allotment to-morrow, do you?”

“Mind your hernia,” said Edna.

George smiled, hitching up the truss he had worn for twelve years now.

“You help where you can,” he said cheerfully.

One day a couple of weeks later, Edna was in need of distraction and met Alex from school at half past three and took him to the cinema with her. Because they arrived in the middle of the programme, they saw the main film first. It was in black and white with Ruritanian princes and occasional outbursts of song, which fitted his criterion that all songs must perforce be sad, even if sung with a smile on the face. There was a newsreel. The Russians were fighting back hard against Hitler's invaders and were being helped by supplies from Britain sent with great difficulty via a place called Murmansk. A great deal of coverage was given to General Rommel, even though he was on Hitler's side and was causing much concern to our armies in the North African desert.

The lasting impression on Alex's consciousness, however, was from the other film. It was a Western in Technicolor; a story of settlers in Red Indian country. One of its takes was of little houses in which the settlers lived being set on fire, followed by a long shot of them burning away to nothing. Edna looked down to see him quietly weeping, but she was enjoying the story so hoped that he would soon get over it as he did for the time being. The destruction was later avenged when certain wigwams were set on fire by the people who had built the little houses in the first place. He did spend some time wondering why it was all right to set Indian wigwams alight whereas burning settlers' houses gave him such distress. Whatever the answer to that dilemma might have been, the image of the houses on fire stayed in his mind. During the course of the evening the distress returned and the tears began again.

“What's the matter with you?” asked Edna.

“Them little houses,” he said.

“You're not still moping about that, are you? That's the last time I take you to the pictures.”

“I am. And I don't mind if you don't if that's what they are all like.”

“Don't be so silly. It's only a story you saw.”

“But stories are about what's real, aren't they?”

“Sometimes, I suppose: but not always, and not that one!”

“Why not that one?”

“Oh, I don't know. But if you are going to go round like a dying duck in a thunderstorm after being given a treat, I haven't got much time for you!”

“Perhaps you haven't got much time for me anyway!” was his the final desperate outburst.

Joyce looked up from her book, “I'm sure that's not what Mum meant, Alex.”

Alex looked at Edna and saw no reason to change his mind. It was decided that it was his bedtime and that he'd better go and wash. He did so - very perfunctorily. The fact that Edna did not check up on him suggested that his suspicions about her were confirmed. She came to tuck him in without saying anything beyond what was necessary to fulfil the task, and then put the light out right away without asking him as she usually did, whether he wanted to look at his books for a while before he went to sleep. The little houses on fire stayed in his mind for a long time and he did not understand how doing what Edna wanted to do had turned into a treat for him.

Many of Alex's formative experiences seemed to have happened on Oxford buses and in relation to the anger he provoked in his mother against him. One of the more significant ones occurred preparatory to one of her last aimless perambulations in the city before she had to accept that her way of life had changed and that there was nothing she could do to change it back.

Christmas had come and gone again and George's days off were over. A week of Alex's school holidays was left. Edna insisted on going out on a wet day. As she dressed Alex in his outdoor clothes she muttered that she could not stay in all the time looking at these four walls. Alex glanced round him to see rather more than that: the living room door was open and he could see at least two more walls by the staircase, and there were several others within easy reach of anyone who went through the door. Before he could say anything Edna pulled his scarf about him with such ferocity that he was too winded to speak.

“It really is dreadful out there, Edna. Do you really have to go?” said Joyce.

“Yes. I want to go and collect my shoes from the menders before I wear out my best ones and I want to call on that corset-maker Mrs Wilson told me about the other day.”

“That could all keep until a better day, couldn't it? Alex will be back at school soon and you could go much easier on your own.”

“Maybe. But we are both about ready for going out now, so we might as well get on. See you later, Joyce.”

“Well, if you must go . . . Remember there's a nice stew on for dinner at one o'clock!”

By this time Edna and Alex were in the street and making for the bus stop, both within close reach of a different sort of personal stew of their own.

Because of the wet, the bus was full up. The conductor said there was no room upstairs and they had to stand as far as the station where several passengers got off. Edna sat down on the seat next to the window with Alex beside her by the downstairs gangway. When the bus stopped next, more wet people got on and came to stand in the crowded gangway, one of whom being an elderly woman with two large bags. Edna saw her and dragged Alex over to sit on her lap so that she might have his seat. He was apprehensive about this because he remembered another time that he had sat on her lap when she had not wanted him to and when the results had been unpleasant. Once he and the old woman were in position, he was clamped tight by his mother, and said,

“I don't think old people should be allowed on buses!”

Edna found great difficulty in smacking his face from where she was sitting. After trying to several times, she was reduced to hissing in his ear,

“That was very rude! Now apologise to the lady.”

“No.”

Edna began desperately to shake him up and down. This meant a measure of discomfort for the old lady as well and she turned to Edna and said,

“It really doesn't matter, dear. It's no wonder he regrets having to give up his seat on this filthy morning. He's tall for his age isn't he?”

“I've done my best to teach him some manners,” Edna muttered, now sweating with embarrassment at the way things had gone.

“Don't you worry at all. I'm getting off at Carfax and then he can have his seat back.”