Saville (6 page)

He watched the sky the next day and the next and yet, despite these changes, nothing happened. It wasn’t until the following spring that anything occurred. Then, at the station less than a mile away, soldiers disembarked from long, blacked-out trains and marched up in small groups to the village. They were tired, some were only half-dressed with overcoats thrown over their vests and shirts. Some had no rifles, others carried packs. When
they reached the village they sat down on the pavements, smoking, sitting in the coal-dust, scarcely troubling to look around.

One of them came to stay in the house. He had the only other room, next to the boy’s – a small, cupboard-like space that looked out on to the backs. He was a tall, well-built man like Colin had always imagined soldiers were, towering over his father, standing in front of the fire in his khaki shirt and his rough khaki trousers or, more usually, lying on the bed in his room, staring at the ceiling, smoking, and sometimes singing songs in a light tenor voice.

He brought his rifle with him. It stood leaning by his room door. In the narrow space between the single bed and the wall he laid out his equipment. All of it was tarnished with salt and all the clothes in his pack were damp when he unrolled it.

Most of the space in his pack was taken up by three large tins. Two were full of sugar which he gave to his mother, who put them in the cupboard by the fire to dry. The third was full of medals, metal buttons, and money.

In the evening when the soldier came back from the pub he would sit at the kitchen table and count the money out, arranging it in neat piles, silver and copper-coloured, then laughing, and leaning back and saying, ‘If I was a Jerry I’d be a rich man now.’

He often sat by the fire, gazing at the blaze, and sometimes he would take the boy on his knee and from his breast pocket, where he kept a wallet, take out a photograph of a woman and three children, pointing at each one with his finger, which was thick and nicotine-stained, and tell him their names and what they were doing when he last saw them. He came from some other part of the country and had an accent which at times Colin found hard to understand. ‘Oh, don’t worry about the way I talk, boy,’ the soldier would say, laughing, looking up at Saville. ‘I come from a place where they go about with nothing on.’

He would often go for walks with his father and sometimes his father would take him to look at the shelter, unlocking the door and letting him go inside, lighting the lamp, the soldier gazing round, trying the bunks at his father’s insistence, lying sprawled out, his head cradled in his hands.

‘It’s as safe as houses,’ his father said.

‘More,’ the soldier would say, laughing, ‘if I had a guess.’

When they went for walks the two men would go off down the street with their hands in their pockets, coming back hours later with a bunch of flowers or chewing a piece of grass. ‘Oh, don’t worry about me,’ the soldier would say if they were late and the meal spoilt. ‘By all rights I should be dead, so anything’ll do for me. Just cough it up.’

Each morning he went into the street and with the other soldiers marched up and down. Children followed them on the pavements. On Sundays the soldiers walked in groups in the fields or down the road to the station, where they would sit on a wall by the bridge, gazing at the lines and smoking.

One day the soldier called Colin into his room and from his pack brought out several bullets. There were five of them, fastened together at the base. The cartridges were copper-coloured, the bullets silver. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘You have them. I’ve a lot more here. He brought out several more, laying them on the bed. ‘You can have the gun as well,’ he said. ‘I don’t want it.’

He reached across for it by the door, pulled back the bolt and showed him how to slip in the bullets. ‘There now,’ he said. ‘You can shoot anybody you want.’

He laughed, watching Colin hold it, unaccustomed to the weight.

‘Nay, don’t point it at me,’ he said. ‘I’m your friend.’

When he went down his mother stood back across the kitchen, one hand raised to her cheek frowning.

‘You’ve never given him that?’ she said.

‘I have,’ the soldier said. ‘Why not? I don’t want it.’

‘Well,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to see when his father comes.’

And his father too, when he came, looked at it and, in much the same manner, said, ‘You can’t give it away, can you?’ the soldier laughing and nodding his head.

‘I’ve lost it,’ he said. ‘It’s yours.’

‘Well,’ his father said. ‘I’ll put it away. It’s no good for Colin.’ Yet, although he locked it in the wardrobe in their bedroom, on an evening he would take it out, after the soldier had gone, and ram the bolt to and fro, put in and take out the bullets, and sight it at various objects outside the window. In the end, however,
he gave it to the police and said that he had found it under a hedge.

‘Don’t you want to fight?’ he would ask the soldier, frowning.

‘I have been fighting,’ the soldier said.

‘But to fight again,’ his father said.

‘What for?’ the soldier asked him. He would lie back easily in a chair or stand in his stockinged feet in front of the fire, smiling down at his father and nodding his head.

‘To defend your country,’ his father said. ‘To defend freedom. To keep your wife and children from being captured.’

‘Nay, it’ll not make much difference,’ the soldier said. ‘Whoever’s here we’ll live much the same, one way or another. There’ll be the rich and the poor, and one or two lucky ones’, he went on, ‘between.’

‘Nay, I can’t make any sense of it,’ his father would say, rubbing his head, shy in the face of the soldier, suddenly uncertain. ‘Don’t you believe in anything?’

‘Not you could put your finger on,’ the soldier would say, smiling and lighting – if he hadn’t got one lit already – another cigarette.

‘He was nearly drowned. In the sea,’ his father said when the soldier had gone. ‘They picked him up in a small boat as he was going under for the third time,’ he added.

‘For the third tin, more likely,’ his mother said. ‘With all that sugar it’s a wonder he came up at all.’

‘Still, he’s given it all away,’ his father said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m not surprised. Nearly everything he’s got is stolen.’

Yet long after the soldier had gone they continued to use the sugar, to sweeten tea and finally to make some jam.

When he left, marching off to the station in a long column, his father went with him, walking along the side of the road, across the fields. When he came back he sat by the fire, looking up at the buttons and the medals the soldier had left on the shelf. Then, after a while, he went up to the soldier’s room and tidied up the bed.

One evening, a short while later, Colin woke to the sound of the sirens and lay for a moment listening for the roar of planes and
the crashing of bombs. But beyond the wailing there was no other noise at all.

Then he heard his father’s feet pounding on the stairs.

‘Come on, lad,’ his father said. ‘We’re all ready.’

‘Are they the sirens?’ he said.

‘They are.’

‘Have they started bombing?’

‘Nay, if we wait to see we’ll never get there at all,’ his father said.

His mother was already wrapped in her coat and had his own coat ready.

‘Come on. Come on.’ His father danced at the door. He’d already switched off the light and, in the silence as the sirens faded, other voices could be heard along the terrace.

‘Nay, we’ll wrap up warm,’ his mother said. ‘They’ll give us a minute, surely, before they start.’

‘A minute?’ His father had lit the lamp at the door, shielding one side with his hand. ‘They don’t give any minutes. Don’t worry. It’ll be down on our heads before we can start.’

They went out across the garden in single file, his father waiting impatiently while his mother locked the door. ‘We’d look well sitting there,’ she said, ‘and the entire house burgled.’

‘Burgled?’ his father said. ‘You think they’ll have time for that?’

‘I can’t hear any planes.’

‘You won’t hear them. Don’t worry. Not till they’re overhead.’ Grumbling, he led the way across the yard, the lamp lighting up the ground around his feet. ‘They’ll all be coming in now,’ he said. ‘Now they see what it’s all about.’

A voice had called across the backs and he’d paused, holding up the lamp.

‘What is it?’ he said.

‘Can you take our lads?’ a man had said.

‘Aye,’ his father said. ‘They’ll be safe with me.’

A small knot of figures emerged from the darkness, stumbling over the fences that separated the yards. They were four brothers, older than Colin, from a family farther down the terrace. Behind them came the figure of their father.

‘How many have you got room for, Harry?’ the man had said.

‘Oh,’ his father said. ‘We’ll squash a few in.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘We better be getting in,’ he added.

‘Can you take the missus?’ the man had said.

‘Oh, you’ll be all right with us,’ Saville said. ‘There’s room for you as well.’

They collected, then, around the steps, Saville fumbling in his pocket then stooping to the lamp and taking out his key.

Across the yard other figures had begun to converge on the shelter: Colin could make them out, vaguely, silhouetted against the sky, climbing fences, calling out in low voices towards the houses.

‘Mind the steps,’ his father said. ‘I’ll just unlock it.’

‘Which way will they come?’ someone said and the heads turned up towards the sky.

‘They could come any way,’ Saville said. He was at the bottom of the steps, below them, his figure stooped to the door, the lamp lighting up his face. The lock clicked, then the bolt was drawn back. ‘I’ll go in first,’ he added, ‘and light the other lamp.’

He opened the door, paused, then stepped inside.

‘Women and children first,’ a man had called behind.

From below them came a splash. It was followed a moment later by Saville’s shout, then the light inside the shelter was suddenly extinguished.

‘God damn and blast,’ the father said.

The splashing continued a little longer then, as someone switched on a torch, Saville re-appeared at the door below, his hair matted to his skull, his clothes clinging to his body.

‘The place is flooded,’ he said. In his hand he still held the miner’s lamp.

‘What’s that, Harry?’ someone said.

‘The shelter,’ he said.

‘You’re flooded out?’ he said.

‘It’s all that rain we’ve had,’ he said. ‘I should have watched it.’

‘Well, then,’ the mother said. ‘We better get back to the house.’

‘It’s catch us death of cold in theer, or a bomb under t’kitchen table,’ someone said and somewhere, at the back of the crowd, someone else had laughed.

Colin followed his father back to the house. ‘I can’t understand
it,’ Saville said. ‘It shouldn’t have been flooded.’ He stood shivering, his teeth chattering, as he waited for his mother to unlock the door. ‘Come on, come on,’ he said. ‘Can’t you open it any faster?’

‘I can’t see,’ she said.

‘Where’s the lamp?’ he said, then realized he was holding it, sodden, in his hand.

Across the backs other voices were calling out and in a doorway someone else had begun to laugh.

‘Well, that was a quick raid,’ the mother said. ‘Let’s hope the all-clear goes soon.’

‘That water,’ Saville said. ‘I can’t understand it.’

‘All that work,’ the mother said. ‘For nothing.’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Saville said. ‘We’ll be as safe as houses.’

‘Where? In here?’

‘No.’ He shook his head, shivering, and pointed towards the shelter. ‘When I’ve drained it.’

‘Drained it?’ she said. ‘Tonight?’

‘Not tonight,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow.’

‘It’ll be too late tomorrow.’

Saville shook his head, standing in his wet pants and vest before the fire. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘There’ll be no bombing tonight. I’ll have it drained by the time it starts.’

A few days later he brought a pump home from work. It was shaped rather like a pudding basin, and was made of heavy metal. Colin could only lift it with his father’s help. From one end ran a metal tube perhaps a yard long. It was this his father rested in the water. Then, panting, his face flushing at the exertion, he worked a little handle at the side. It was made of wood and as he jerked it to and fro there was a sucking noise inside the metal basin and out of a long rubber hose attached to the other side emerged a jet of water.

It came out in little spasms and starts, draining off across the garden.

His father worked it for an hour.

‘Is it empty, then?’ his mother said when they went in.

‘Empty?’ His father sat at the table, spreading out his arms. ‘It hasn’t shifted an inch.’

‘I told you buckets would do it faster.’

‘Buckets,’ he said and banged the table with his fist.

At the end of the week, however, Colin was helping to carry the buckets himself, his father kneeling by the door and stooping inside the shelter to fill them and he carrying them, half-spilling, across the yard to empty in the drain the other side. ‘Don’t empty them in the garden,’ his father said the first time he did so. ‘It’ll drain straight back. God damn and blast, it’ll be weeks before we’ve finished.’

The next raid, when the sirens went, they spent in a cupboard beneath the stairs. As on the previous raid they heard no sound at all. After a while his father got up to go to work. ‘No,’ he said, ‘don’t come out. You wait there until you hear the all-clear,’ shutting the door quietly and moving on tiptoe across the kitchen, breathing heavily as he wheeled his bike out into the yard. They heard the rasp of the tyres on the ashes, then the sound of his boot as he pushed himself off. Then, for a while, they sat in silence.

At last the mother got up. ‘Well, then,’ she said. ‘I’m not waiting here any longer,’ opening the cupboard door but turning back when he followed her and adding. ‘No, you stay there, Colin. I’ll tell you when to come out.’

He sat alone then with the lamp re-trimmed, heating up the tiny space, staring at the white walls of the cupboard, the odd boxes, the spare tyre from his father’s bike, the ribbed, zinc tub out of the top of which poked the week’s washing.