Silent War Read online

  ‘You never looked like one.’

  ‘Have you ever been to Shepherd’s Bush, Charlie?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then we can have this conversation again once you have. Did you want me or Mr Halton?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘Good – because he’s away. He took the Auster up to Birmingham this morning. Something to do with meeting a car manufacturer, I think.’

  ‘I just phoned to say that it was dumb of me to expect you to drop everything and come down to my place the weekend before Christmas. I’m sorry, I forgot.’

  ‘It’s fine. I’ve fixed up my Christmas already. Mum and Dad don’t expect me until Christmas Eve.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. It’s absolutely OK. How old are your boys by the way?’

  ‘Thirteen, I think . . . and seven. Why?’

  ‘Never you mind. You can meet me off the train at Chichester on Friday evening.’

  Ah . . . an organizer. When I thought about it, I realized that an organizer was exactly what I needed. I wondered if she would stick though, or get tired of me like the rest of them.

  ‘That was the new girl in the boss’s office, wasn’t it?’ Elaine asked. ‘I’ve spoken to her a couple of times this week. She seems to be pretty level-headed.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me something?’

  ‘Me? No, I wouldn’t dare.’ A month ago she was in my bed; now I was pretty sure she was trying to fix me up with someone else. ‘Fancy a cuppa?’

  ‘Oh, all right.’

  I don’t know what I was so bad-tempered about. Maybe it was just the fact of change. Maybe I’ve never been so good when things change around me.

  I phoned James’s pub; the boys were just back from school. After a few minutes of this and that with Mrs Maggs, who actually ran my life and his without telling us, I got to speak with Dieter.

  After a few more minutes of this and that – he always insisted on giving me progress reports for both of them – I said, ‘Can you give Carlo a message for me?’

  ‘You can speak to him yourself, if you like, Dad.’ I think the fact that he and Carly both called me Dad now, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, may have swung it with the adoption people.

  ‘In a minute, but I think you’ll want to give him this message yourself. Tell him his dad’s coming home for Christmas.’ You never can tell with kids. I knew he was pleased, but Dieter had been a self-controlled type since I’d picked him up on a battlefield in Germany.

  After a pause he asked, ‘Can we still go to Mrs Maggs’s party?’

  ‘If I can come with you.’

  ‘Of course you can, Dad. You know she loves you.’

  That’s another thing. Talking about love is something that’s difficult for me. It took me a few seconds before I could answer, and a few more before the conversation returned to an even keel.

  ‘Remember that girl I told you about?’

  ‘The one who might have a bit of a temper?’

  ‘That’s right. She’s coming down for a few days before Christmas. That OK?’

  I stopped off at Hastings the next day, bought enough presents to fill a kitbag, and arrived at Chichester in time to pick the boys up from school again. It was a routine they quite liked. If we went into a shop afterwards, Carly would always make a point of holding my hand at some time. I didn’t mind: it was his way of showing his classmates that he had a father too. He still wouldn’t talk about his mother, Grace – a woman I’d known for about three years – or agree to see his grandparents. That was a pity because they were as rich as Crœsus, and his mother, although not much of a mother, was, in my eyes, a genuine heroine. He’d have to come to terms with both eventually. The next day was a Friday, and I drove back into Chichester again to meet the late London train. June tottered out of a Third Class carriage on big heels, and with a plain old trench coat thrown over her red office suit. She looked exotic, but cold.

  The first thing she said after she kissed me was, ‘Sorry, I didn’t have time to change. I almost missed the train.’

  ‘Don’t be. You look fabulous.’ I got another kiss for that. The next thing she said was, ‘I have a suitcase and a box in the carriage. Can you help me?’ I kissed her again. The train was waiting to go, and her compartment door was still open. The station master was bearing down on us looking station-masterful. I decided to keep the third kiss for later, and nodded to him. Thinking about it, my usual drive to get a woman’s clothes off had been wholly superseded by the simple urge to just kiss her again, and carry on kissing her. That was interesting.

  June took her suitcase. It was a small well-travelled leather affair with a bracing strap around it. I’ve always liked women who can make do with a small travelling case.

  I almost buckled at the knees when I lifted the box down. It was about a yard cubed, and made of very heavy-duty cardboard – the like of which no one had seen since before the war started – and weighed a hundredweight. The name Frank Hornby was overprinted in a huge flowing signature on one side.

  I know that a hundredweight as a measure of weight will be difficult for some of you – but don’t go blaming me for your lack of a decent education. If you look in the front of your pocket diary, you’ll find its equivalent set out in kilograms. My generation still doesn’t like kilos, because they were the weight descriptors the Jerries used to grade the bombs they dropped on us. We still prefer the old Imperial measures we used for ours. The phrase ten-thousand-pounder still sounds like music to my ears, although I accept that a resident of Hamburg might have an entirely different opinion. Anyway, June’s cardboard box was heavy enough for me to wave in a porter, and his trolley. It was the only way we could get it to the car without a crane.

  ‘Strewth! What’s in here?’

  ‘Wait and see.’

  I got number three then. Things were definitely looking up. The last woman to be this pleased to see me had been my mother, the time I came home on my first leave.

  The barber’s shop in East Street was still open as we drove past. June said, ‘Stop a min. There’s a love.’

  I was, and I did. I can cope with quick decision making,

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Go over there, and buy something for the weekend, will you?’

  She was looking down, but smiling broadly at the same time.

  ‘You mean . . . ?’

  ‘I mean that being unprepared the first time was all very well, but one of the things I’m not going to do on Sunday is go back pregnant. Understand?’

  I probably gaped, and I know I asked a stupid question. ‘How many?’

  She looked up at me, still smiling. ‘I rather thought I’d leave that up to you.’

  Sometimes you fall completely on your feet. The boys, Maggs and the Major liked her right off the shelf. On Saturday my friend Les drove down from Banstead to give her the once-over. It was beginning to look like a conspiracy to me. At the fag end of the war, Les, the Major and I had driven from an airfield in the North of France, through Belgium and Holland and into Germany. That’s where I found Dieter, and where Carly was dumped on me after his mother ran off. To be honest, Les did most of the driving, but he and James – the Major – and Maggs the Major’s woman had been a club of three at the core of my life ever since. I suspect that the Major had phoned him and said enough about June to pique his interest. For one reason or another, my little gang was gathering around me.

  You will want to know what was in June’s cardboard box, of course, but if you’re over fifty you won’t have missed the clue I left you. The box contained the biggest O-gauge clockwork train set I had ever seen in my life. Three locomotives, with carriages, a dozen goods and guards wagons, a station and a signal box, and enough rails and scenery to fill the boys’ bedroom several times over.

  ‘My father’s,’ she explained. ‘He was going to give them to a charity, I think, but when I told him about you and your boys, he insisted that I brought them down for Christmas.�
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  ‘They’re wonderful.’ We hadn’t seen Carly or Dieter since they began to unpack them. ‘I’m not going to be able to get them into bed before midnight at this rate. Your dad’s family must have been very wealthy to have bought him a train set that size.’

  ‘Not really. Grandfather was a country doctor. Dad’s the same, but there’s not as much money in it as before the war. If we’re still going out, after you come back from wherever they’re going to send you . . .’

  ‘Cyprus to begin with . . .’

  ‘If we’re still going out, then Dad will want to meet you. We’re still that kind of family I’m afraid.’

  ‘Don’t worry. So are mine, only I didn’t realize it until today.’

  This level of quick intimacy was all very odd. The strangest thing about it was how natural it all seemed. I felt as if I had known her all my life, not just for an evening and a night. June went to bed soon after the boys had agreed to retire. I wasn’t too shy about where, because I’ve never hidden anything from them. After I joined her we lay for hours whispering before we made love.

  Before we slept she told me, ‘You have to take care of yourself this time, Charlie: you have to come back.’

  ‘I always have before.’

  ‘This is different. This time I am relying on you.’ That was a thought, and I sensed a shadow in the background. She continued, ‘I had someone before who didn’t come back.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘We say that so often about dead men that we don’t mean it any longer.’

  I showed her my back, because that either angered or hurt me; I couldn’t make up my mind which.

  She spoke again a few minutes later. I was dozing off, and was startled by the sound of her voice.

  ‘He was out in Korea – in the Gloucesters.’ The Gloucesters had covered themselves in glory, but maybe too many of them had been lost to have made it worthwhile. It’s hard to explain, but in the 1950s I still didn’t like talking about my war, and I wasn’t all that interested in other people’s. I knew, however, that I’d have to listen to this, or it would always lie between us.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I rolled back towards her, and let her lift her head on to my shoulder.

  ‘Killed or captured?’

  ‘He was wounded, but afterwards some of the others saw the Chinese going around the trenches killing the badly wounded. Nobody actually saw him killed, but nobody saw him at all after that. I’ve spoken to people who knew him, and who got away. They say he’s dead.’ After a pause she asked, ‘Did you lose people you were close to?’ When I didn’t answer immediately, she sniffed, and said, ‘Sorry: stupid question.’

  ‘No, it’s all right. I lost a few. Most people did, didn’t they?’

  ‘Will you tell me one day?’

  ‘Can we make do with a maybe for the time being?’

  ‘OK. Do you want to . . . you know . . . again? I’ve quite woken up now.’

  I had never wanted to kiss a woman more. So I did. What happened next seemed to do the trick because we slept soon after.

  I’ve told you before that my prefab was built alongside James and Maggs’s pub – and that the boys lived there with them when I was away. That morning Dieter slipped across to the pub, and came back with two plates of Maggs’s ‘death by fried breakfasts’ – he served them to us in bed, then went into the kitchen to brew some tea.

  June looked fabulous in the mornings – it was something I hadn’t noticed the first time. She yawned, stretched. ‘Is that a good sign? Do you think he likes me?’

  ‘He’s thirteen years old,’ I told her. ‘He wanted to see your tits.’

  She pouted, but she was smiling. ‘Sometimes, Charlie, you can be perfectly foul.’

  ‘Best you learn that now, before you get stuck on me. Can I have your fried bread if you don’t want it? It’s no good once it gets cold.’

  Had I said the wrong thing again already? I was only joking of course, but the upside-down smile slipped across her face, almost as if I had slapped her.

  When I told her that I was falling in love with her, as I put her on the train on Sunday afternoon, it was as if I’d mentioned that I liked fish for supper on Fridays.

  She just nodded, and said, ‘Mmm.’ And after a pause, ‘I’ll remember that.’

  I suppose that I had asked for it. Both the boys had come to say goodbye to her. We left them in the car, and I walked her to the train. When I returned to the car Dieter piped up from the back seat.

  ‘I don’t know what you said to her yesterday, Dad, but this time you definitely blew it.’

  ‘Where did you learn to talk like that?’

  ‘From the Americans. Superman on the Saturday-morning pictures.’

  This was a bit of a trial of strength so I tried embarrassment. ‘Did you like her tits then?’

  Dieter didn’t buy embarrassment: he was thirteen going on thirty. I should have remembered that. ‘Not as nice as Marilyn’s.’

  ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘Marilyn Monroe. She’s another American. Martin’s selling pictures of her at school. Hers are wonderful.’

  I chanced glancing round to see his face before delivering some sort of rebuke . . . but was arrested by Carlo’s instead. Carly hadn’t said much as usual, but was looking out of the side screen with tears streaming down his face. I could see that I had some work to do.

  I coped with Christmas; that’s the best that can be said for it. I’ve never felt comfortable at Christmas time – old-fashioned guilt about an excess of pleasure, I expect.

  I was best taking the boys for walks, flying kites and gliders with them on the strand, and serving in James’s bar after they had gone to bed for the night. I’ve always felt strangely out of place sitting at a table groaning with food, with a paper crown on my head. At least we weren’t going to run short of booze, and that got me by, although I should be ashamed to admit it.

  I played with the boys and their new trains – the rails circled and crossed their room several times – but that only made me miserable. I was aware that I hadn’t parted from June on the best of terms, and definitely hadn’t appreciated the efforts she made to get to know the boys. Carlo understood that even better than Dieter, which is why he had cried. We made plans for our first holiday together after I returned, and then it was time to get into my Singer and face life’s next great adventure.

  ‘I loved the idea of the British Empire when I was a kid,’ I had told Maggs one night before I left. ‘In Sunday school they used to give us magic lantern shows of happy piccaninnies climbing palm trees, and throwing down coconuts to benevolent white masters in exchange for Christianity and a school uniform – barefoot, mind you. Now I know that all we did was steal other people’s countries.’

  ‘So did all the other Imperials. Spain, France, Germany, the Dutch . . . you name it. The Yanks and Reds are at it now, aren’t they?’

  ‘That’s no excuse. What did we need an Empire for?’

  Maggs blinked, and looked at me as if I was a bit thick. ‘Money, of course, and soldiers to fight all those bleedin’ wars against the other Empires.’

  ‘My old man thinks that we’ve done enough wars, and set out to stop them last month. I thought he was crazy, but he’s probably right as usual. I’ll have to tell him so before I go.’

  ‘Whatever you do, Charlie, don’t talk like this once you get overseas. They’ll think you’re a Conchie an’ lock you up.’

  ‘I promise to take care, Maggs.’ That’s not the same thing, is it?

  Three more days at Lympne. Elaine was more than capable by now – she probably had been from the very start – so I took the opportunity to give her a few days off: she’d get precious little leave once I was away. Then I overnighted with Les and his family in Banstead, on the way to Abingdon. I loved spending time with Les and Kate and their boys – and there always seemed to be another one each time I visited. I liked the way their family seemed to interlock with each other, and doubted that I’d eve
r be as good, no matter how hard I worked at it. We went down to Les’s local after supper, and talked about it.

  ‘Being a dad is like swimming,’ Les told me. ‘All the time you worry about it, you can’t do it properly. Then you wake up one morning, and the first thing you think about is yer wife an’ kids . . . an’ all of a sudden you’re good at it. It’s suddenly like you’ve been doing it all yer life.’

  ‘How does it work?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s a mystery.’

  ‘I say the wrong things all the time: to the boys, to my girlfriends – even to friends like you.’

  ‘You’re much better than you were.’

  ‘Thanks. You think so?’

  ‘Yeah; you’re more than halfway there. All you need is a decent woman to complete the picture. Was that June any good?’ Les would have been an ace interrogator: he always slipped in the crucial question before you saw it coming.

  ‘I’m in love with her, I think. She fits me like a glove.’

  ‘Told ’er so?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What d’she say? . . . This is like drawing teeth, Charlie.’

  ‘Nothing much. I think she was already pissed off with me by then.’

  ‘See ’er before you go. After all, you got nothin’ to lose.’

  Straight for the bleeding jugular. Don’t worry about the pun.

  I took a chance and drove out to Halton Transport’s office and shed, at Heathrow’s Cargo Side. Everything was fogged in and there was no flying. The warehouse was shut down; no one was there. Except June, that is. She looked neither pleased nor displeased to see me. Unmoved.

  I asked, ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I came in to check the mail – I live nearer than anyone else – and maybe type up the delivery chits for the start of the year.’ She sounded as happy as an undertaker when the doctors announce a miracle cure, but I was determined to try.

  ‘I’m sorry I sounded less than enthusiastic about you when we were in bed that morning. I was just trying to be funny, that was all.’

  ‘I worked that out eventually.’