Where Have All the Bullets Gone? (23 page)

“What are you talking about, my son, has the war done this to you?” Of course, he’s at work, I forgot.

I hang up my clothes in the cupboard. In one corner is my poor brother’s pre-war suit — you can see the coat hanger through it. There’s his shirts, his Marks and Spencer’s flannels and his sports jacket which must have been dead a year.

Would I like some tea and fruit cake? She’s made the fruit cake special, because ‘You’ve always liked it.” Wrong, fruit cake gives me the shits. We have it on a tray in the front room. “It gets the sun in the afternoon.” Mum is looking well, she is fifty, she’s survived three crowned heads, seven crowned bodies and eighteen cats. Brother Desmond? He’s fine, he’s in the Ox and Bucks. How thrilling. He’s stationed in Hamburg, and has piles. He writes regularly, boringly, but regularly. His letters say, “Can you please not send me any more fruit cake?” I asked her why Dad left the army. “His old firm Associated Press and Slavery wanted him back as soon as possible to work him like a nigger” at 7 pounds a week. In doing so he had lost thousands of pounds. He would have had to do one more week in the army to qualify for an officer’s pension, but then he was Irish: a nation of people given to leaving the army one week early. Mum has to go and get dinner ready. I’m left to the wireless and those books from my boyhood, now on foreign shelves. Music While You Work is fighting to escape from our one-valve wireless. I put my feet up and blow the Players cigarette smoke into the air, helping to foul the room, darken the ceiling and prepare my parents for lung cancer. Though I can’t see the hole, I’m bored, I need action! I leap to my feet and walk briskly to the fireplace. No, it isn’t enough, I still need action, so I walk briskly back again to the couch. Outside it has been, as father said, a ‘Golden Autumn day’.

By the time he returns it is a dark rainy night and he’s been working like a nigger. I welcome him home dripping wet and shagged out. My dear dad, home from the office, home from the wars, home one week too soon for his officer’s pension. He was something special, both clown and romantic, kind and gentle. He smiles that smile which twists halfway up the side of his face, showing his huge teeth with the gold filling.

“Ah my son, my son,” he says. So he remembers me too. “Well, well, son, home at last eh?” Yes, I’m home at last eh. It’s amazing that after two years away we don’t have anything to communicate. After “how are you keeping”, I ask him how
he
is keeping. He says “Fine, fine,” and I say “Fine, fine.” Well, well, home from the wars eh, son? Well, well, yes, and I’m fine, well, well, my son home from the war. When mother comes into the room it becomes “
our
son home from the war.” I save the presents until after dinner. “Thanks son,” says Dad, lighting up an Edward the 7
th
cigar, while my mother clutches rosary-blessed-by-the-Pope-number-sixty-seven. My Father: “Must hear the nine o’clock news.” He’s just come from bloody
Fleet Street
and he wants to hear the news! Would I like a sherry? We all make a little toast, they to my home-coming, and me to the man who assassinates the vintner that markets the sherry. It’s like rat’s piss. So, sipping my rat’s piss, we talk about the empty years between. “The Associated Press are working me to death,” he says. If that is true they should pay him more. “The Americans work the British like niggers. And that is the end of the nine o’clock news.” Dad and Mum retire. He has to get up early to be worked to death like a nigger.

It’s too early for me. There’s nothing wrong with Reigate, there’s always the streets. “There’s a nice pub over the Green,” says Mum. OK. The key is on a string in the letterbox. Don’t be late and ruin your health. Yes, The Bell, I’ll go there for a drink. You never know. It’s full of stockbrokers, and what appears to be a Morticians’ Convention. I alone am in uniform. The medals do it. Was I in the Invasion, son? Yes, I was killed the first day. What will I have? A whisky and a blindfold. They won’t let me buy a round. I am really quite a nice young man. What’s that decoration? That’s Mentioned in Despatches. Why? I don’t know, someone just mentioned me in despatches. Sometimes they mentioned me in the canteen, sometimes in passing, sometimes in the Naafi, on this occasion in despatches. Time gentlemen please!

I walk out and smell that damp autumn musk. It’s misty and cool. I make my fun-loving way across the Green to 40 Meadow Way.

“Is that you son?” Yes Mum. “Have you ruined your health?” No mum. “If you’re hungry there’s plenty of bread and cheese in Sainsbury’s in the High Street.” I hear my father snoring, plaster falls from the ceiling. 40 Meadow Way, Woodhatch, is not for the faint of heart. I sleep soundly, and in great purity.

Father working at A.P
.

Dawn Over Reigate and 40 Meadow Way

F
ather has left at some unearthly hour to work like a nigger. Mother tells me he had a good breakfast. “Porridge, it gives a good lining to your stomach,” eat it all up son, it will do you good. I bet you missed your mother’s cooking, didn’t you son. Now, have I any dirty washing? She’s doing a boil today. Yes. I proudly show her my collection of post-war underwear. “What are they son — floor cloths?” She boils them. Several disintegrate and float to the surface as froth, some survive but die later that night.

A lazy day, endless cups of tea, smoking. “You’ll ruin your health, son.” Fruit cake, the shits, and Primo Scala and his Accordion Band on Workers’ Playtime. How can people work with that noise? Twenty accordions playing those digital dysentery numbers with thousands of notes spewing out to show off their technique. Monte Ray sings in a strangled nasal castrati voice. The afternoon turns into evening.

I nip out to telephone Betty Cranley and her body. She’s booked a room at the Admiral Owen Inn in Sandwich as Mr and Mrs Cranley. Can she buy a cheap ring to make it look official? Why not? Would she like me to wear a top hat and hurl confetti in the receptionist’s face? Don’t be a silly sod. She says we can go for long walks. What
is
she talking about? I replace the melted phone and get dressed again.

“Is that you son?” Yes, it’s that me son. “Wipe your feet, it’s very muddy outside.” More tea, fruit cake and the shits. It’s dark now. My mother is saving electricity; she’s cooking in braille in a blacked-out kitchen. Footsteps on the path and Red Indian war dance stamping. It’s my father’s shaking-the-mud-off ritual.

“Is that you kid?” says Mother. She thinks he’s a goat. Dad comes in shagged out from working like a nigger. We’ll have to move nearer into London, the journey is killing him. How terrible, first his firm now the journey. When am I going back? He takes his shoes off his Fleet Street weary feet. His shoes are going home, this hole is letting the rain in, and this one lets it out again. He can’t understand it, they cost twelve shillings and they’re only thirty years old. I cheer him up, I have brought him a nice bottle of Tokay. He likes Tokay: it speaks of gypsies and caravans in the woods with leaping bonfires and bare-shouldered girls. Supper is boiled hake. He sips the Tokay appreciatively.

“Ah, a fine wine, made by bare-shouldered gypsy girls leaping over bonfires.”

When am I going back? I must leave them on the morrow, I’m to be married in Sandwich. What am I talking about? You be careful in Sandwich, they warn, it’ll ruin your health. Father must hear the nine o’clock noise. We all sit facing the fretwork front of the battery set. We twiddle (yes twiddle) the knobs and home in on Alvar Liddell. Coal production is up! Quick, open the champagne. Ernie Bevin has piles and is going in for the operation. There’s trouble in Palestine, there’s trouble in Indo China, there’s trouble in 40 Meadow Way, Reigate, the lights have fused. My father is in the broom cupboard. Who made these bloody silly fuses? Ah, he’s done it. He screams as 240 volts flow through him, through the house and onto his quarterly bill, and that is the end of the news.

I spend a few more days with them. Every night my Father returns from the Associated Press, looking more and more like a nigger. In the evenings we talk about the future. I say I don’t think there is one, this is really life after death. How can a nice Catholic boy say that? No, I must return to the Woolwich Arsenal dockyard and work hard and wait for promotion or death. I tell them that my workshop at Woolwich Arsenal is now a giant bomb crater. Quick, the nine o’clock news, hurry. Coal production is now going sideways. Ernie Bevin has had his operation and I’m going to sleep. “There’s a po by the bed, son.”

Saucy Sandwich

T
he train to Sandwich takes me through the Kent countryside. All is russet with pale gold sunshine glistening on autumn-damp trees; through the Kent orchards, the trees heavy with the red green and yellow fruit. 1930s men are up splayed apple-ladders taking in the harvest. The curving line loops round Sandwich bay to the little station. There, not waiting for me, is Betty Cranley. The little cow!

I fiddle my way into town and get to the RAF depot. Like Simon Legree I burst into the kitchen and catch her. She’s rolling dough for a pudding. So this is how you treat me. While I’m on the platform being lovely, you’re rolling dough for puddens. She’s sorry, she was put on duty owing to one of the staff being taken suddenly something or other. Would I like a cup of tea and some fruit cake? How nice. Does she know ‘Lae thar piss tub darn bab’? I hang around until she comes off duty. It wasn’t easy in an RAF kitchen full of WAAFS, all in the prime of cooking puddens.

She’s gone to tart up, and reappears radiant in her skyblue uniform, buttons blazing, all smart and ready to be married in the Admiral Owen. What a dirty little devil I was. I am about to be led astray by this naughty girl. What’s this, two Sergeants sleeping together? What does KRs say about this. We don’t care. We sign the register before a cow of a landlady with that ‘we know what you’re going to do’ look. What time would we like calling. I say December.

It was hell, folks. Betty threw me on to the bed and had her way with me. She used cold compresses, it was no good, I was getting weaker and weaker. I tell her I’ve got a headache. She can cure it she says, jumping up and down in a fever of sweat and pudding. In the morning she is bubbling with life, as I lay like a geriatric on my death bed, white and feeble. I must get to some Eggs and Chips soon, or a monastery. By day I lay in bed dreading the nights. She returns, strips off, and standing on the bed head, dives on me. When the woman comes to make the bed, she doesn’t notice I’m in it. Twice she puts me in the laundry basket. Oh thank God, it’s time to go back to Italy, dear. This is our last night, she says, we must make it last. She makes it last, I don’t. I slept through the last bit.

The Admiral Owen — where I aged 30 years in a night. The room of naughtiness is marked with an X
.

Morning has broken, and so have I. It’s goodbye! She helps me dress. I am on the platform, a cold wind blowing through the seams of my trousers. Will I write to her. Yes. Soon? Yes, I’ll start right away. She can hear the train coming, have we time for a quickie? No. The guard helps me on the train. Am I her Grandfather? The train pulls out. I wave, and she is soon lost to view. I must rest and get my strength back so that I can get off the train unaided. It’s eighteen miles to Frisky Folkestone, the sun is setting, and so am I. I’m ruining my health.

Folkestone

I
report to a huge requisitioned transit hotel on the sea front, stripped of everything except the floor. I report to the Orderly Sergeant, check documents, yes the boat leaves at 0900. Bunk beds to infinity, one dull light bulb illuminates the gloom. The room gradually fills with leave-spent soldiers. Here is the historic handwritten record of those exciting days in Funny Folkestone:

A day in Folkestone