The Penguin Book of First World War Stories (39 page)

Most of the poets, they said, had been killed. The poetry made them dab their eyes with clean white handkerchiefs.

Next February on my first birthday, there was a birthday-cake with one candle. Lots of children and their elders. The war had been over two months and twenty-one days. ‘Why doesn't she smile?' My brother was to blow out the candle. The elders were talking about the war and the political situation. Lloyd George and Asquith. Asquith and Lloyd George. I remembered recently having switched on to Mr Asquith at a private party where he had been drinking a lot. He was playing cards and when he came to cut the cards he tried to cut a large box of matches by mistake. On another occasion I had seen him putting his arm around a lady's shoulder in a Daimler motor car,
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and generally behaving towards her in a very friendly fashion. Strangely enough she said, ‘If you don't stop this nonsense immediately I'll order the chauffeur to stop and I'll get out.' Mr Asquith replied, ‘And pray, what reason will you give?' Well anyway it was my feeding time.

The guests arrived for my birthday. It was so sad, said one of the black widows, so sad about Wilfred Owen who was killed so late in the war, and she quoted from a poem of his:

The children were squealing and toddling around. One was sick and another wet the floor and stood with his legs apart gaping at the puddle. All was mopped up. I banged my spoon on the table of my high chair.

More parents and children arrived. One stout man who was warming his behind at the fire, said, ‘I always think those words of Asquith's after the Armistice were so apt…'

They brought the cake close to my high chair for me to see, with the candle shining and flickering above the pink icing. ‘A pity she never smiles.'

‘She'll smile in time,' my mother said, obviously upset.

‘What Asquith told the House of Commons just after the war,' said that stout gentleman with his backside to the fire, ‘so apt, what Asquith said. He said that the war has cleansed and purged the world, by God! I recall his actual words: “All things have become new. In this great cleansing and purging it has been the privilege of our country to play her part…”'
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That did it. I broke into a decided smile and everyone noticed it, convinced that it was provoked by the fact that my brother had blown out the candle on the cake. ‘She smiled!' my mother exclaimed. And everyone was clucking away about how I was smiling. For good measure I crowed like a demented raven. ‘My baby's smiling!' said my mother.

‘It was the candle on her cake,' they said.

The cake be damned. Since that time I have grown to smile quite naturally, like any other healthy and house-trained person, but when I really mean a smile, deeply felt from the core, then to all intents and purposes it comes in response to the words uttered in the House of Commons after the First World War by the distinguished, the immaculately dressed and the late Mr Asquith.

It was therefore with something resembling a sense of physical pleasure that, sitting one day at the foot of the stairs gazing glumly at the worn patterns on the carpet, his attention was alerted by the bright metallic tinkling of a key in the lock. He looked up, doubting the evidence of his phantom senses. With an ill-fitting shudder the door burst open to admit a wedge of dusted sunlight and three haloed figures, almost transparent in the light.

The corpulent sales-pitching estate agent – for such he took him to be – led the prospective buyers into the hall, a handsome smiling couple in their thirties. Ignoring the agent's patter, they
surveyed the gloomy baroque interior with a sceptical eye, taking in at a single glance the high dust-dark ceiling, the peeling paintwork, antique banister, heavy oak-panelled doors. Of course it needed some work doing on it, the old woman had let it get into quite a state as you could see, but nothing a good sweep and a few coats of paint wouldn't fix.

He stood up and joined the group in the kitchen, nodding his agreement. As for the structural condition of the building, it was really first-rate – well, the surveyor's report would confirm that – and it couldn't be better situated as far as local services were concerned. He followed the trio from room to room, admiring with them the view of the fens from the upstairs windows, echoing the estate agent's paean to the housebuilders of yore, endorsing his exaggerated claims about the costs of heating and upkeep. It was surprising, they'd find the fuel bills were actually quite low, the walls retained the heat, you see, and –

Well, they'd think about it. It was a bit bigger than they'd had in mind, they only had one child, a little girl (a little girl!), but on the other hand they had to admit they did like it, it had a sort of friendly lived-in feel, didn't it, Clive?

Time passed, the surveyor did his surveying, other viewers came to view, and somewhat to his surprise the couple returned, complete with rubber plants, budgie, colour TV, modern aluminium-frame furniture and their little girl, Angela, four. He took to her instantly, as she took to the house. The bright green, improbably large eyes, the head of dark ringlets that tumbled as she ran, the dimpled cheeks, the freckles, the busy legs pounding the stairs–‘It's like a castle, Mummy!'–there was something in her so saturated with vibrancy, vitality, that one could almost have persuaded oneself that decay was an illusion. Who would dare predict that one day this hair would be white, these gums toothless, this delicate blooming skin as blotched and tough as old shoe leather? As his fondness for her grew and he began to appreciate the depths of emotional attachment of which he was still unexpectedly capable, it struck him that what he was experiencing was a kind of love; a chaste, fraternal or paternal love, as befitted his condition.

At first he was content to remain in the role of onlooker. Settling below the ceiling in the corner of the room where she played, he would gratefully observe her solitary games, eavesdrop shamelessly on her conversations with her dolls, beguiled by her guileless charms. When bedtime came he would follow her upstairs, installing himself on top of her wardrobe or like a dog at the foot of her bed, watching over her through the night. It was as if, through her, he was able to live again, to recover a vicarious existence of his own. He waited impatiently for her return each day from school, cursed the sunshine that took her out to play in the garden, dreaded the inevitable summer holidays and impromptu weekends away that deprived him of her company, leaving him alone in the vast desert empire of his solitude, murdering time till her return. He was happiest when she was sick and forced to keep to her bed; nothing too serious, a chill would do, or a mild lingering tummy upset. Sometimes, when especially lonely and bold, he would sidle in beside her, nestling his formless form against her sleeping curves, enfolding her with his fleshless arms. He managed not to waste time dwelling on the future – her future of course, he had none, or rather too much of it – on what would happen when she grew up and – well, he managed not to think of such things.

The idea took shape slowly. After all, he didn't want to frighten her. Besides, he knew how the others scorned such diversions. Accept the facts, they said or seemed to imply (they seldom spoke), the world of the living is lost to you for ever, you have no place there, let it go. Most of the others had made the transition successfully. The earthly world had faded for them, dimmed, dissolved, grown remote and insubstantial, as spectral in their eyes as their world was to the living.

But the idea would not go away, it pursued him, niggled at him, refused to let him rest. If only he could become her friend, her secret friend, no one else need know. They both needed a friend. What possible harm could there be in that?

He chose to materialize one afternoon when her mother was out shopping and her father busy mowing the lawn. Dressed in his old army uniform with his decorations prominently displayed, he looked, he thought, rather handsome, distinguished,
even a little dapper. No burglar or child-molester would affect such an elaborate disguise.

‘Hello,' he said, standing in the open doorway of the living-room – an apt location for his first appearance, he thought.

She looked up from the floor where she lay mutely mouthing the captions of a brightly coloured comic; studied him with interest and suspicion.

‘Who are you?'

‘I used to live here.' He took a step into the room, closing the door behind him. ‘Just popped in to see what the old place looks like. What's your name? Mine's William. You can call me Billy.'

‘How did you get in? My mummy and daddy told me not to speak to strange men.'

‘I'm not a strange man. I told you, I used to live here. Do you want to play a game?'

‘What sort of game?'

‘I don't know, you choose. How about hide-and-seek?'

‘My name's Angela,' she said. ‘I'm five.'

‘Hello, Angela.'

‘You look funny. Are you a soldier?'

‘Sort of, yes.'

‘Mr Green was a soldier. I know because he told me.'

‘Who's Mr Green?'

‘The man in the sweet shop.' Then, her suspicions aroused again, ‘If you used to live here you'd know that.'

‘I've been away a long time,' he said. ‘In the army. Just got back. Mr Green didn't work in the sweet shop when I lived here. There wasn't a sweet shop.'

They continued to talk. As he felt himself gaining her confidence he advanced slowly into the room, rediscovering the forgotten art of ambulation. With excessive caution he skirted those areas where the sunlight streaming through the french windows threatened to penetrate his disguise, expose him for the shadow he was. He rested against a mahogany table supporting an empty fruit bowl and a red ceramic vase. The polished surface of the table, he noted with the usual regret, disdained to return his reflection.

‘Do you have many friends, Angela?'

‘Hilary's my friend. Her daddy's a policeman.'

‘Can I be your friend, Angela?'

He could only assume she was about to answer in the affirmative because at that moment the door he had closed behind him was flung briskly open–‘I'm back, Popsie!'– and the head of Angela's mother thrust itself into the room. He evaporated instantly but with such precipitateness that the vase on the table against which he had been leaning was sent rocking on its base and crashing to the floor, fracturing into a dozen pieces. Angela's mother turned to the noise with a start. She closed the door and threw it open again, repeating the experiment without success: the fruit bowl refused to budge. Puzzled, she knelt down and began gathering the shards of pottery from the floor.

‘It was the man.'

‘What man?'

‘The man who was here. The soldier. He made himself invisible when you came in.'

‘Come and help me unpack the shopping, there's a good girl.'

The next time he visited her he was more careful. Angela was in her bedroom feeding and dressing her dolls, her father in the garage tinkering with his car, her mother in the kitchen with her arms in a sinkful of grey suds – a conventional tripartition of roles he was pleased to see had survived the disastrous changes of modern life.

‘Hello, it's me, Billy,' he said, stepping out from behind the wardrobe with a nervous smile meant to deprive his sudden entrance of menace.

She looked up from where she stood by a miniature crib in which a naked pink doll contentedly sucked air from the tiny plastic bottle nuzzled in its face. A slight furrowing of the brow and narrowing of the eyes betokened the tentative shaping of a question.

‘Are you a magician? I saw a magician on the telly once who could do that. He could make himself invisible. Pouf,' she went, mimicking with ten tremulous fingers two rising balls of smoke.

‘That's right, I'm a magician. I can do lots of tricks.'

‘Will you teach me them? I like tricks.'

‘Well, I don't know, they're secrets really. I'm not supposed to tell anyone.'

‘If you were my friend you'd tell me. Friends aren't supposed to have secrets.'

‘Well, we'll see, we'll see. Perhaps when you're a bit older.'

‘Grown-ups always say that,' she complained. ‘My mummy and daddy don't think you're real. I told them about you but they don't believe me. They think I made you up.'

‘You believe I'm real, don't you?'– the note of anxiety in his voice betraying him.

‘Of course. I can see you, can't I? And I can touch you if I want.' She took a step towards him.

‘No, don't do that!' Backing away towards the wardrobe.

‘Why not?'

‘Because, because I'm all dirty, my clothes are dirty. You don't want to get your nice clean frock all dirty, do you?'

‘Why do you wear those funny army clothes? You don't look like a proper soldier.'

She was asking too many questions, it was time to leave.

‘Look, shall I do my trick again? Do you want to see me disappear?'

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘If you want.'

‘All right, but this time you count to three, all right? Then say the magic word: Alacazam. Got it? Alacazam. Any time you want me to appear, just say the magic word.'

She counted with ponderous deliberation. ‘Alka-seltz!'

Running into the space he had vacated, she palpated the air with her fingers as if searching for a hidden crevice, then skipped back with a giggle to her dollies.

Those were the happiest days of his death. He floated freely about the house, borne up by a sense of belonging once more to the land of the living, or if not quite belonging then at least being accepted as a sort of naturalized alien, or, more appropriately perhaps, a soldier on furlough, a prisoner on parole.

His euphoria made him reckless. Sliding under the covers that night when he had assured himself she was asleep, he took it into his head to materialize. Using words like ‘materialize',
or for that matter ‘head', in connection with what was at best an ethereal act is liable to be misleading. To materialize, in this context, simply meant that, had she opened her eyes, she would have seen him there beside her, or imagined she did. Unfortunately, this was precisely what happened. He evaporated before the shrill piping scream had time to leave her lungs, scrambling to the top of the wardrobe, curling into a ball, imploring her soundlessly, invisibly, to curb her cries, be quiet, he hadn't meant any harm, he'd just wanted some company, that was all.

‘It was the man, the man,' she gave out between huge gulping sobs, burying her face in her mother's shoulder.

‘Ssh ssh, it was just a dream, darling, just a dream, Mummy's here now, it's all right, all right.'

‘He was in my bed, the man.'

It irked him that she had reacted in this way. He'd been friendly, after all, he'd been nice to her, what was she afraid of? If only he could talk to her, explain, apologize, he'd never do it again, honestly, not if she didn't want him to, cross his heart and hope to – well, never mind. But to appear before her now, he knew, would only make things worse, increase her fear, alienate her further. Especially as the so-called ‘dream' in which he'd entered her bed was succeeded by a series of real (that is to say illusory) nightmares in which he apparently repeated and elaborated on the act. Night after night she would awake in a tangle of sweat-soaked sheets, screaming she'd seen him again. He came to despise this shadowy reflection of his already shadowy self, this impostor, this double, this malevolent twin, spreading a trail of terror and laying it at his door.

There was nothing for it, he had to speak to her again. He waited till she'd been tucked in and read to and was lying awake in the yellow glow of her bedside lamp, now left on all through the night, humming quietly to herself. She halted mid-phrase and looked up at him, lips parted in preparation for the automatic scream.

‘Don't cry, Angela, please. I don't want to hurt you, just be your friend.'

‘I don't like you,' she said uncertainly. ‘You've been scaring me. You're not a nice man. I'm going to call my daddy.'

‘Don't, Angela, please. Look, I promise I won't visit you again if you don't want me to. Just say so and I'll go away, I promise.'

‘Go away!' she said. ‘I don't want to see you ever again.'

He was beginning to lose patience with her. ‘Come on now, don't be silly. Look, I told you I'm your friend, didn't I? You can't send me away, I'm your friend, for God's sake!'

‘Mummy! Daddy! Mummee-ee!'

In a fit of pique he swept a phosphorescent arm across the desktop cluttered with dolls and dolls' clothing, dolls' hairbrushes, dolls' toys, dolls' dolls, sent them clattering to the floor. ‘Play with these, don't you? Bloody dolls! Just bits of plastic, dead bloody plastic! What about me, what about me?' The momentum of his anger and frustration, suddenly finding a release after a deathtime of denial, proved impossible to contain. He charged through the room in a swirling vortical haze, upsetting the furniture, ripping the posters from the walls, lifting up a mirror and shattering it against the desk, stamping hysterically on the dolls that littered the floor at his feet, crushing their hollow unfeeling skulls, tearing them limb from limb, flinging the mutilated remains at the walls and windows, howling. He evaporated in a heap as the door flew open behind him.