HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour (1947) (21 page)

The man looked up at him, sharply: took in his tough, broad body, his shabby clothes, his oddly gentle face: decided he wasn’t the smart sort after all, and relaxing, said: ‘First Aid Party. Stretcher Bearer. Rescue Party … Can you drive a car?’

‘No,’ said Godden.

‘What’s your job? When were you working last?’

‘February.’ He no longer felt ashamed of that question.

The clerk pursed his lips. ‘What at?’

‘Roadwork – labouring.’

‘All right. What about Heavy Rescue then?’

Godden nodded. He liked the sound of it, though he didn’t know what it meant. ‘That’ll do fine.’

The clerk wrote something on a card, and handed it across. ‘Take this to the Paddington depot – that’s at Praed Street School. They’ll fix you up … Next!’

Clutching the card, Godden walked out into the sun again.

Praed Street School was just what one would have expected from that desolate section of London: a tall, gaunt arid building, dusty and echoing, full now of a throng of people wandering to and fro through the classrooms, or milling round the improvised canteen at one end of the hall. Already there was a painted sign over the entrance, ‘Rescue and Stretcher Party Depot No.1’ and a sentry, self-conscious in a steel helmet and greenish-yellow gasproof overalls, standing on the top step. When he saw Godden he asked: ‘Got your card, mate?’ and when he had turned it over he said, with a jerk of his thumb: ‘First on the left, inside. They’ll tell you what to do.’

Once more Godden joined a queue, and waited. This time, armed with the card, he felt more sure of himself: he already had some sort of status. In one room of the building someone had evidently found a piano and was banging out the ‘Beer Barrel Polka’. Godden found himself humming it cheerfully. This was more like it. He was one of a crowd now. More like the last war. Not on his own any more.

This time the man behind the table was a Borough Council official, precise and briskly spoken. He wanted to know a lot of things: the sort of work Godden had been doing, how long he had been unemployed, whether his cards were in order, whether he had been ill recently. To all the answers he listened with his head cocked on one side, as though to catch some undertone of falsehood; but at the end be seemed satisfied, without enthusiasm, that Godden could do the work involved, and he entered his name and address on a permanent register, and took his insurance cards.

Then he said: ‘Which is it to be – day or night work?’

‘How do you mean?’ asked Godden.

The man looked up impatiently. ‘You can work from eight till eight daytime, or eight till eight during the night. Two shifts – do you understand? The pay is the same. Which do you want?’

Godden thought. It was one of those decisions he had not had to face for over twenty years. Hitherto, there had been only one cast-iron rule – do exactly as you are told, conform to our routine, or take your cards and get out. To have a choice – any choice, however small – seemed to increase his stature a hundredfold. Day work or night work. It didn’t make much odds really: Edie would grumble and nag about it, anyway, whichever he did. But air raids came at night, didn’t they? And that was what he wanted to help in – the bombing which was going to start straight away, so the papers said; that very night, as likely as not. That was what he had been thinking about all day, since Chamberlain’s speech, and it was what everyone seemed to be certain of: this was it, this was the proper start, tonight they’d be over in clouds, same as Poland, with mustard gas probably, and hundreds of people killed straight off. That was why he was standing here. He wanted to help when it happened.

‘Make it nights,’ he said.

‘Very well.’ The man made another note against his name and sat back. ‘You’ll start tonight. I’ll put you down in one of the heavy squads: you’ll see it on the notice board later. Take a look round now, if you want to, and come back here sharp at eight o’clock.’

Godden walked out, feeling suddenly elated. ‘One of the heavy squads’ – he liked the sound of that. It meant something, something solid and comradely. It was a job at last, and a lot more than a job. Once again it was like a bit of the last war, the best bit. And the pay was good, too: three pounds a week, less insurance.

It was the most he had earned since 1929.

The time by the clock in the big main hall was two in the afternoon. Godden would have liked a cup of tea and a bit of cake, since he had missed his dinner (there’d be trouble about that from Edie, when he got home); but he hadn’t any money on him. Someone in the queue had said something about ‘meal tickets’, but he didn’t like to ask about that yet. He rummaged in his pocket and drew out the half-cigarette he’d stowed away earlier. When it was lit he started to look about him.

Already there was a lot going on, a lot of people making a start at this new job. In the main hall, empty of furniture except for the piles of children’s desks stacked at one end, and some clothes-racks along the wall, were about a hundred men; talking in groups, sorting through the kit issued to them, trying some of it on – gumboots, and steel helmets, and bulky, odd-coloured overalls. Stretchers were being brought in and piled in rows: five in a pile, for each of the ten stretcher party squads, whose kit was neatly laid out in one corner. A St John Ambulance corporal, a little wizened man with a lined, humorous face, was demonstrating a leg splint to a small circle. Godden wondered if he’d have to learn that job himself. He hoped not: it looked a bit too fancy. He walked through into another room: the mess hall, with scrubbed trestle tables, and a few men settled down to cups of tea. Nothing there for him, yet awhile … He wished he could find something to do. Even though he wasn’t due to start until eight, he didn’t want to leave. This was different from an ordinary job.

Outside, in the yard, there was a line of six rescue-party lorries, labelled ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ and piled with wooden shores, sawn planks, blocks and tackles, axes, crowbars, hurricane lamps. Men were climbing over them or looking at them from the ground, men like himself, used to this sort of gear. On an impulse he picked up an axe and swung it: caught the eye of a young chap perched on the roof of a lorry, and put it down again, feeling foolish. But it had felt good, all the same.

Suddenly, startlingly, he heard his name called, from inside. ‘Godden!’ said a strong voice. And then, again: ‘Godden! Anyone know what he looks like?’

He walked through into the main hall, feeling something he had not felt for years: a separate person, a unit of a team, wanted for some special job. No one had really
wanted
him before, for as long as he could remember. Now he was on somebody’s list, a name they were calling out, a person they were looking for.

There was a big man standing in the middle of the hall, with a piece of paper in his hand.

‘You Godden?’ he asked as Godden approached.

‘Yes.’

‘I didn’t know if you’d gone yet.’ The big man looked at him, sizing him up: he was a good head taller than Godden, tough and unsmiling, in a washed-out khaki shirt. ‘You’re in my squad – Number Three.’

‘All right,’ said Godden.

‘I thought I’d get you sorted out, those that are here. This is Isaacs.’ The Jew standing at his elbow nodded and smiled, not moving the fag-end of the cigarette from one corner of his mouth. ‘Know anything about this job?’

‘Enough, I reckon.’

‘There’s eight of us in a squad. Here’s the list.’ Godden looked at it, saw that the big man’s name was Watson, saw also, with tremendous satisfaction, his own name halfway down the list, next to Isaacs. He read it through as if it were a star football team: ‘Squad Three: Watson (Leader), Horrocks, Wilensky, Godden, Isaacs, C Peters, B Peters, Platt.’ He was right in the middle of the thing now: it was official … ‘We go out with the stretcher-bearers when there’s a raid,’ Watson went on, ‘and help them to get people out – shoring up, or breaking through a wall.’

Godden said nothing. It sounded the sort of thing he wanted to do, above all else, but he was wary of showing anything of that feeling.

‘I’m driving,’ said Isaacs suddenly.

‘Then I hope you’re good at it,’ said Watson.

‘Used to have a lorry of my own. Bust it up. Hit the kerb and overturned.’

Watson stared at him, still unsmiling. ‘Are you trying to cheer us up?’

‘No,’ said Isaacs. ‘I was telling you why I’m a driver.’

Godden said, nodding at the list: ‘Are there any more of them here?’

‘No,’ said Watson. ‘They must have signed on early, and gone home.’ He yawned and stretched. ‘All right – eight o’clock then. We’ll get sorted out when we’re all here.’

‘Think they’ll come tonight?’ asked Godden. ‘Jerry, I mean.’

‘Bloody fools if they don’t. Stands to reason. Take us by surprise, that’s what they want to do. We’ll have to watch out.’ He yawned again. ‘Well, see you later.’ He left them.

‘Big bastard,’ said Isaacs, without heat.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ asked Godden.

‘Chucking his weight about already. I know
his
sort. “You’re in my squad.” Bloody sergeant-major, that’s what he is.’

‘But he’s the squad leader.’

‘Blasted little Hitler,’ said Isaacs. ‘What a war … Well, I’m off. No overtime on this job for me.’

Godden let him start off and then left the building himself. He didn’t feel like that about Watson, or about the war or overtime or anything. But he wasn’t going to argue. He was still feeling his way.

He walked slowly home, thinking of the step he had taken and recalling what he had seen of the depot. He had liked it a lot. Of course, it was grand to be in work again, on any terms, after the months and years of mucking about, of slammed doors and barred factories: after the curt answers and the shabby tactics of the Labour Exchange. But more than that: there was something about the job itself: It was the sort of thing a chap like him ought to be doing in wartime. Twenty-five years ago he would have been along at the recruiting office by now – in fact, that was exactly where he had been, twenty-five years ago; now he was past that sort of thing, but he wasn’t past giving a hand in whatever job they could use him. And this job, rescue work in air raids, and the atmosphere down at the depot on the first day of it, seemed to be part of the same worthwhile story. It recalled the war years very strongly, and the feeling they had all had then. There was the same sort of comradeship, the same sort of team feeling: he might have been Corporal Godden again – Corporal Godden, DCM, of the East Surreys, with a Lewis gun section to take care of and a definite responsibility to discharge.

He had never spoken at all about that Distinguished Conduct Medal, except to say, the first time he was home on leave: ‘It wasn’t much: I must have been a bit mad, I reckon.’ In winning it he had charged a German machine-gun pit, shouting obscene and forgotten blasphemies: he had killed four men with the bayonet and strangled a fifth with his bare hands. He was twenty-eight at the time, lean and good-looking, and just married to Edie: now he was fifty, not much good for anything, unemployed since February and for long stretches before that: on and off the scrap heap for twenty years and more.

Something had gone wrong in between. What was it? What had changed him from Corporal Godden, lining up for his medal at Buckingham Palace with Edie, pretty and breathless, looking on in ecstasy, into ‘old Godden’ (if anyone took the trouble to call him anything), steadily getting poorer and shabbier, never in a job worth counting on from one week to another, and now not much better than a street-corner loafer. What had changed Edie herself, who had been so slim and shy and lovely, into the shrill discontented woman she now was? What had changed the pretty little baby, laughing all the time and twining minute fingers round his own, into Edna – fifteen years old, snuffly and whining, rude and slangy, slamming doors and giggling in corners, laughing at him when she dared, but for the most part going her own pert peroxide way?

Had it been his own fault? Edie for example … That had gone wrong almost from the beginning, as soon as he was demobbed, with time on his hands and a bit of money to spend. When the money was gone everything else seemed to be gone with it, and that had somehow given the tone to most of the things between the wars. He had tried to settle into jobs, but the jobs themselves seemed to melt into nothing, before he had time to look round. He had tried to make Edie happy, but that again had disappeared, as soon as he was out of work and there was no money coming in.

Of course, she nagged a bit. In fact she nagged nearly all the time now, in a high, shrill voice that he’d got into the way of not hearing at all: about the money: about clothes for Edna: about her brother, who was a clerk in the city and doing so well. ‘Why aren’t you more like Walter?’ she had said, not once, but scores of times; and when, goaded, he had once answered: ‘There’s no one like Walter – and a bloody good job too!’ she had talked and nagged and screamed of nothing else for weeks afterwards.

She talked like that in front of the child, too. Godden had objected at first; but that was a long time ago … Now, of course, Edna was taking the hint from her mother, and was as rude, silly, and uncaring as she liked. He was just beginning, after a series of flaming scenes in which Edie had joined, to shut his ears to that, too. Perhaps everyone’s kids grew up the same way. Not much he could do about it anyway, without everlasting rows, and he was sick to death of those.