HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour (1947) (24 page)

But among them all, as they waited for the time to pass, there was an obvious tension, revealed here and there in an ear cocked to catch a sound from outside the building, or in those who kept strolling to the open doorway and peering up at the night sky: and this tension, receding into the shadows, seemed to affect the other, darkened end of the room. Here the men who would not be on duty until later were trying to get some sleep. There were no beds, that first night, and very few blankets: the men lay uncomfortably on their backs or slouched against an angle of the wall, staring round them at the unfamiliar room or up at the shadows of the lofty roof; pulling at cigarettes, which glowed suddenly in the darkness, muttering and tossing in an effort to find a comfortable position on the bare planked floor. Their kit lay ready to hand beside them – steel helmets, rubber boots and overalls, torches, first aid bags, all the grim, workmanlike gear they might be needing within the next few minutes; they were waiting for it to happen, as the ready squads under the lamplight were waiting: there was no relaxation in this muttering, twitching throng of men, who coughed in the close, frowsty air sealed up by the blackout, or mumbled to those lying beside them, or cursed the noise at the other end of the room.

This was not like any other night, it was not given for sleep and rest; nor were they simply men lying there sleepless – they were guardians, selected to bridge the darkness and the first dubious span between peace and war.

Godden had tried to sleep for the last hour before he was due to stand his sentry duty, but sleep would not come. From the roomful of men, alert or uneasily dozing, he had caught the prevailing tension, and he recognized it, his memories of the other war crowding in to prompt him, as the restlessness of men on the eve of action. There was no cure for that … After a time he abandoned the attempt to settle down, and joined a small group among those at the other end of the room. They were listening to one of the stretcher-bearers, a gaunt young man in corduroy trousers, an open-necked khaki shirt, and a heavy green overcoat, who was propounding what was clearly an unpopular argument.

‘If we were all pacifist,’ said the young man, ‘there’d be no war.’ He was addressing himself especially to a tough-looking rescue man with a white scarf knotted tightly round his throat. ‘That must be true, surely.’

‘Someone would always start it,’ said the rescue worker. ‘Stands to reason, you’d be attacked.’

‘But if we were all pacifists,’ insisted the young man, ‘all over the world, I mean.’

‘But we’re not,’ said several voices at once.

‘I said
if
we
were
. We’ve got to persuade people, that’s all, so that everyone refuses to fight, all over the world. Then there’d be no war, would there?’

‘How are you going to persuade them?’

‘By setting an example. By not fighting. By not resisting anything they do.’

The rescue man laughed scornfully. ‘Bloody fine chance we’d have if we tried that.’

‘It’s worth trying.’

‘What are you doing here, then? You ought to be at home, letting them drop bombs anywhere they like, if that’s the way you feel about it.’

‘I want to help if there’s a raid,’ said the young man sulkily.

‘Setting a bad example, that’s what you are. Fighting the naughty bombs. That’s resisting, isn’t it? You’ll get the sack if you don’t look out.’

Godden, unaware that he was listening to one of the most crucial of the current dilemmas, was somehow drawn to the young man, in spite of the stand he was taking. He must be a conchie, of course, but that wasn’t always the disgrace that the papers made out.

Godden still didn’t know, after all these years, quite what to think about conchies. There’d been some good ones in the last war – Red Cross chaps and stretcher-bearers – as well as some proper bastards, who were just out to dodge the column. It depended what it was that turned them away.

He was interrupted now – they were all interrupted – by the officer in charge, who bounced out of the Control Room, blew a whistle, and shouted: ‘First four stretcher-bearer squads! Get in the cars and stand by!’

The whole room woke up with a jerk. Stretcher-bearers started to fling on their equipment, tripping over each other as they made for the door, arguing hotly about the helmets and satchels they had snatched up in the rush. The men in the darkened part of the room stood up to watch them, and began scrambling into their own equipment, so as to be ready in case their call came. Squad leaders were shouting to their squads, to hurry them up: the storekeeper dropped a pile of steel helmets with a reverberating crash: there was a volley of curses as five men, racing for the doorway, arrived at the same moment and jammed in the entrance; and from outside, topping everything, came the roar of engines as the cars were started up.

‘It’s a test,’ said the officer in charge rather lamely, taken aback by the uproar he had let loose.

‘Christ, why didn’t you say so?’ exclaimed the rescue man with the knotted scarf. He took a deep breath, and expelled it abruptly. ‘Good as a dose of salts, that was! I thought the bastards were overhead already.’

Godden, who had followed the last of the stretcher-bearers out, had stood on the pavement edge and watched the cars roar away on their time-test, the tail lights streaming up the road and out of sight, like sparks before the wind. The quick alarm had excited him, he wanted to miss nothing of its savour.

When the cars were finally out of sight he walked back to the line of lorries parked in the mews courtyard at the back of the building: as he came into the circle of light shed by the hurricane lamp, Platt, who had the first sentry duty, stepped forward to meet him.

‘How’s the time?’ asked Platt. The old boiler-suit he was wearing gave him a scarecrow air, and the shadow he cast against the opposite building was as tall and thin as a piece of scaffolding.

‘About half past twelve,’ Godden answered. ‘I’ll take over now, if you like. Anything doing?’

‘No. Only those crazy bastards in the stretcher-cars. You’d think they were going to a fire.’

‘Good practice for them.’

‘Good practice for the undertaker, if they hit something.’ Platt sounded cold, and rather depressed. ‘Any tea going inside?’

‘Canteen’s still open. I should wake Cuthbert up and ask him.’

‘Probably get a damn silly answer.’

Godden laughed. ‘Shouldn’t wonder.’ He looked up at the sky, framed between the buildings on either side. It was clear and peaceful. ‘Do you think they’ll come tonight?’

‘Sure to,’ said Platt. ‘Knock out blow, that’s what they’ll try, if they’ve any sense. Same as Poland. Look at the mess they made there.’

‘We’ll be better prepared, though.’

‘We’ll need to be.’ He stretched and yawned: under one of his armpits a ragged seam gaped for a moment, like an echoing mouth. ‘Well, I’m going to get some sleep before the fun starts.’

‘You’ll be lucky if you do,’ said Godden. ‘It’s a proper circus in there.’

‘They’ll have to get it organized. Beds or something. Like that chap said.’

‘It’s only the first night. You’ve got to remember that.’ Left to himself, Godden walked down the line of lorries, and back again to the lamp. Sentry duty again – after all these years … He felt a strange mixture of feelings inside him: excitement after the rush of the cars going out, pride in this small job, the first bit of responsibility he had been given for many years, doubt of what the rest of the night might hold for them. If the bombs started coming down, as it seemed they must, how would it turn out: how would he and the rest of them inside deal with it? How would Edie and Edna face it – they must be back home by now, maybe sleeping, maybe wakeful and waiting for the sirens to go. It was odd to be on guard like this, watching over the lorries, and this corner of London, and Edie and everybody else. It made him feel like a man again: in fact he was a man again, and this job was as good as anything in the old days, and maybe he hadn’t changed so much after all … Walking up and down in the darkness, Godden shed the dreary past, feeling deep inside every part of him the return of a forgotten confidence.

A scream of brakes from the main road brought him back to the immediate present. It was the stretcher-cars returning, or rather the first of them, far outstripping the others and rounding the final corner in a wicked side-slip that made the tyres squeal. When it drew up at the door the stretcher squad tumbled out, exclaiming loudly about the trip in tones which blended relief, blasphemy, and admiration in nice proportions. They were followed by the driver, slamming the car door behind him with a triumphant crash. It was the young man who, a little earlier, had been seeking converts to pacifism.

‘Have you broken the record?’ asked Godden.

‘Just about.’ The young man had an air of exultation which had been missing earlier: indeed, he somehow gave the impression that this was the first time he had been really excited and pleased about anything since he left school … ‘Three and a half minutes from Paddington Hospital to here. It shook up some of the squad a bit. One of them tried riding on the running board, at the start, but he changed his mind halfway.’

‘Don’t blame him,’ said Godden. He liked the young man better in this present mood – sure of himself, intent on a swift and finished job. ‘Anything doing up at the hospital?’

‘No – it was just a speed test.’ He grinned. ‘And we won … Well, I must get some sleep, before the real fun starts.’

He disappeared into the depot. Presently the three other cars made their appearance, more cautiously, and the helmeted stretcher-bearers inside got out and went down into the main hall again, lugging their haversacks and blankets. Silence returned to the mews, and Godden resumed his slow pacing. He was due to be relieved very soon, but he was wide-awake and in no mood to settle down for the night. This job had already given him the liveliest time (except for the war) that he could remember: in the past few hours he had seen more new faces, spoken to more people, and had more variety and excitement than had come his way for years. Impossible to settle down or relax now that the climax and the point of it might be close at hand. Like the young pacifist, like many of the others – perhaps even the majority – he felt, for the first time, that he wasn’t just wasting his efforts, playing out his existence, or making futile gestures against the deadening tide of history. What he was doing had some sense in it at last.

As he came to the end of his beat and turned, the sirens sounded.

Listening to the rise and fall of that eerie wail, Godden could hardly believe that this was it … From inside the depot came unmistakable sounds of activity – trampling feet, the blast of a whistle, confused voices, a man shouting above the noise: ‘Switch the light on!’ Gleams and shafts of lights appeared here and there in the street, as people, forgetting their undrawn curtains, switched on bedroom lamps or opened front doors to peer out: a small knot of householders, gathering at the street corner, glanced up at the sky and then looked towards the depot, as if expecting some immediate counteraction.

Then suddenly, everything seemed quiet: the sirens slid down the scale to silence, noise receded from the main hall, the voices died within, leaving only a waiting tension. Godden, cocking his head on one side and listening for the sound of planes, became one with all the rest of the city, alert and attentive.

After a few minutes, Isaacs, the squad driver, appeared, slightly out of breath, buttoning up his coat as he ran: he was followed by seven or eight other men, some of whom climbed into the stretcher-cars while others made for the rescue lorries. Isaacs stopped when he saw Godden.

‘We’ve got to start up the engines,’ he said. In the dim light his beaky face looked almost parrot-like, and the helmet perched on top of it gave him a foolish and repellent air, like the traditional bulldog-in-the-sailor’s-cap of the Sunday papers. ‘Give us a hand with this choke, will you?’

‘What’s happened?’ asked Godden, puzzled. ‘Where’s the rest of the squad?’

‘They’ve changed the plans,’ answered Isaacs, and snorted derisively. ‘Trust them … ! No one’s to come outside until the squads are called for. We’re all sitting down in the shelter. Here, hold on to this while I swing her, and drop it if I give a shout.’

‘What about me?’ asked Godden.

‘You stay here, I suppose. They will want a sentry – that is, if anyone in this racket knows what he does want, instead of chopping and changing every half-minute.’

‘It’s the first night. You can’t expect much.’

‘Sounds like a honeymoon,’ said Isaacs sneeringly. ‘I know what I expected my first night – and got it!’

The lorry next to them started up with a roar, as did their own a moment later. The noise filled the whole mews, echoing from side to side, and during the short time that the engines were left running, the tension seemed to be superseded by a purposeful activity. This uproar, these acrid exhaust fumes, had the feeling and the direct quality of war. Then, when the engines were switched off and the drivers returned one by one to the depot, the silence and the waiting began again.

Godden filled it by talking: to remain silently in the dark mews was to be too much alone. He talked to the stretcher-bearer sentry on the main doorway, he talked to an old couple who came out on their front doorstep and asked him what the sirens meant, he talked to Horrocks, who had arrived to relieve him on sentry-go. What he said – what they all said – had no significance at all: they were none of them attending to the answers they received, or even to the sound of their own voices: they were waiting for something quite different, and thinking solely and privately of that.