Homeland (36 page)

‘Where did you get to in the war?’

‘The Med for a while. Then the North Atlantic. Convoy duty, Newfoundland to north Norway. Two years. Two
winters
. Not so different from this, but twice as cold.’ He blinked
with embarrassment, as if the suggestion of hardship had been bad form, and said quickly, ‘What about you?’

‘Tanks. Up through France and Belgium into Germany. Got as far as Hamburg.’

‘And before that?’

‘I ran the family business.’

‘Really? My goodness! What sort of business?’

‘Willow growing. Basket production. Hurdles.’

‘Goodness,’ the commander said again, looking genuinely impressed. ‘You haven’t thought of going back?’

‘Oh, they wanted me to. Begged me to in fact. But I’m not interested.’

‘What, no future in it?’

‘Oh, there’s money to be made all right. Plenty of demand. But I’d go off my trolley in the back of beyond.’

‘Would you? God, I couldn’t think of anything better myself,’ the commander said wistfully. ‘I love the country. Everything about it – the life, the quiet, the
people. But there aren’t many jobs in the middle of the country, not for the likes of me. Not without capital or know-how.’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘And to be able to run
your own show. God, if I had an opportunity like that I’d grab it like a shot.’

Billy pushed his cup to one side. ‘Well, the grass is always greener, isn’t it?’

‘Anything would be greener for me, old chap. You see, the alternative is to go into
my
family business, and I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather shoot myself.’ He gave a
thin laugh that didn’t extend to his eyes. ‘It’s a printing works in Manchester. Oh, printing’s all right – quite interesting actually. But my father and uncle have
run it since time immemorial, and my brother and cousins are all set to take over. There isn’t really room for me. Oh, I’d be given a desk all right, but heaven only knows what
they’d find for me to do. Counting paperclips, or worse.’

‘What would you do if you could choose, then?’

The commander gave his great bellow of a laugh. ‘I’d be a farmer.’

‘You’ve had a go at it, have you?’

‘No,’ he admitted cheerfully. ‘But I wouldn’t care how long it took to learn or how many mistakes I made, so long as I could be my own boss.’ As the remoteness of
the prospect came home to him, he said dolefully, ‘The nearest I’ve got to a job so far is an interview for secretary of a bridge club.’

‘Blimey. What does that involve?’

‘Keeping ladies of a certain age topped up with gin, I think.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Speaking of which . . . I have to go and meet my aunt.’ He pushed his chair back a
little before casting Billy a diffident sideways look. ‘The car . . . Do you think your boss might accept two hundred and fifteen?’

‘Tell you something – he’ll accept two ten. But for Christ’s sake don’t tell him I said so.’

They shook on it. The commander said he would telephone the next day as soon as he’d arranged to draw the cash.

When Billy got back to the workshop, he left a message for George.
He was a bastard. Wouldn’t budge an inch over £210.

The house was boarded up, but it was number three all right, and when Billy climbed the front steps he found the door slightly ajar. The hall was dark and reeked of dust, the
grit crunched under his feet, and when he called hello all he got was an echo. Then, just when it seemed there was no one there, a distant voice from above launched into a familiar rendition of
‘Whispering Grass’.

Climbing the stairs, Billy called out, ‘You’re a bloody broken record, Brandon! Give us a rest!’

The voice laughed.

The nearest door had a splinter of light under it. Pushing it open, Billy was met by a blast of warm paraffin fumes, the glare of a hurricane lamp, and the sight of Ernie perched high on a
stepladder in front of a half-plastered wall.

‘Wotcha, mate!’ With a wide grin, Ernie stretched out both arms in greeting, before resuming the sweep, sweep of his trowel. ‘Long time no see.’

‘God help us, Ernie. What the hell’re you doing?’

‘There’s no end to my talents, Billy boy. Sky’s the limit.’ He was plastering over a ragged circle of exposed brickwork with apparent competence, smoothing the edges into
the remains of the tattered floral wallpaper with deft scoops and twists of the trowel.

Billy dumped his knapsack on the floor. ‘Since when did you learn plastering?’

‘Picked it up as I’ve gone along, haven’t I?’

‘Pull the other one.’

‘Honest to God. Watch and you will see. Ask and you will be told. I went and found a lovely old geezer and asked for a few tips. Only too glad to help, bless his dear old heart. Falling
over himself.’

‘I thought you were a chippie.’

‘That’s the day work, ain’t it? Just till I’m set. But this here is Ernie Brandon, General Building and Repairs. That’s where the bunce is, Billy boy – in
repairs. I could hire myself out ten times over and still have them beating a path to my door. Give me another week or two and I’ll be coining it in.’

‘You’re setting up on your own?’

‘Just got to get genned up on the slates and tiles, and then I’m away.’

‘You never told me.’

Ernie twisted round. ‘Didn’t know myself, did I? Not till I saw the ways things were going.’ With a clownish grin, he returned to his trowelling.

Warming his hands at the stove Billy noticed more bomb damage in the form of an ugly crack reaching down the back wall from the ceiling to the corner of the window, and how the window itself
seemed to have been knocked skew-whiff, though that might have been a trick of the broken architrave that hung at an odd angle.

‘Blimey, Ernie. Hope you know what you’re doing.’

‘Nothing to it.’

‘That wall looks a bit dodgy to me.’

‘Bloody hell. I’m not going to leave it like that, am I, you great berk. I’m going to fix a bloody great strap across it and chop in a new lintel.’ He rolled his eyes in
mock offence. ‘No bog-ups here, mate.’

It was a saying from their tank days, and Billy gave his customary scornful laugh. ‘So, this roofing business – that’s going to be a doddle as well, is it?’

‘You betcha. Most of the demand’s for patch-up work, see. After cracks and plasterwork, it’s all slipped tiles and missing slates. Bloody millions of them all over
London.’

Ernie deftly slapped more plaster onto the last of the brickwork, spread it rapidly in quick strokes and skimmed off the excess. A few more passes of the trowel and he declared the job
finished.

Sauntering up to the wall, Billy cast a critical eye over the plastering. There were no obvious bumps or blemishes. ‘Well, stone the crows,’ he said.

Ernie climbed down off the ladder and, scooping up his packet of smokes, tapped one clear and offered it to Billy. ‘I tell you, me old mate – nothing to it.’

‘So what happens when the whole bloody lot falls down?’ Billy asked facetiously. ‘You’ll do a runner, will you?’

Ernie struck a match and they lit up. ‘Nowhere to run on this one.’

‘No? They got your number, have they?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’ Ernie spread a hand like a showman. ‘You have before you the one and only E. Brandon, esquire, man of property.’

An odd chill settled on Billy’s stomach. ‘Oh yeah?’ he said lightly.

Ernie stabbed a finger towards the floor. ‘This here gaff will be mine before the year’s out.’

‘How come?’

‘Done a deal with the landlord, haven’t I? He owns the whole terrace, right? Fifteen houses. I get to do this place up, I doss down here rent-free while I get the rest of the terrace
spruced up and ready to rent out. All at a price that suits him and suits me. And the icing on the cake? I get to purchase this gaff at a knockdown price.’

‘I don’t get it.’

Cigarette jammed on his lip, Ernie began to scrape the last of the plaster out of the bucket onto some newspaper. ‘What don’t you get, you great git?’

‘How’re you going to do fifteen houses?’

‘Easy.’

‘What, on your own?’

Laughing, Ernie broke into ‘Me and My Shadow’. ‘Nah. I’m never going to do it on my tod, am I?’

‘You said you were.’

‘What I
said
was, I was going to set up on my own. Run my own show.’ Catching Billy’s expression, he explained, ‘Listen . . . we do three houses at a time, right?
I get to do the heavy work, then I call in my mates the plumbers and the sparks, and when they’re done, I call in the decorators, see? Meantime, I’m on to the next three houses, and
then the next, and on we go down the road – same taps, same sink units, same bleeding wallpaper for all I care. I reckon we’ll be out by the summer and on to the next job. I tell you,
Billy boy – pure bunce!’

‘So where’s the catch?’

‘There ain’t no catch!’

‘There’s got to be a catch or everyone’d be doing it.’

Ernie tapped a finger to his head. ‘You forget, it ain’t everybody that’s got the nous. It ain’t everybody that’s got the contacts. And it ain’t everybody
that’s prepared to put in the sodding hard labour either. No – I’m goin’ to die stinking rich or bloody perish in the attempt.’

Billy gave a bright laugh, and thought: Of course he’ll die rich. It was so obvious Billy couldn’t imagine why it had never struck him before. During the advance through Europe they
had ribbed Ernie for his relentless pursuit of comfort – the hunt for the best billet, the gathering of dry wood for a fire, the stalking of a stray chicken for the pot, the painstaking
search for the last unbroken bottle of booze in the ruins of an inn. But what had passed as enthusiasm for a good challenge was, Billy saw now, something more elemental: the determination to come
out on top, the need to win at all costs. It had been the same under fire, he realised with a second jolt of understanding. Ernie had been fearless, often to the point of lunacy, not because he
valued his own skin any less than the rest of them, but because he couldn’t stomach the thought of someone, let alone the Jerries, getting the better of him. Billy felt a squeeze of envy for
the nature and reach of Ernie’s ambition, which put his own vague aspirations into the shade.

‘Blimey,’ Billy said. ‘Best not get in your way then.’

Ernie stepped out of his overalls and bundled them into his bag. ‘If you weren’t such a bloody useless git, I’d get you to come and lend a hand. But an oily rag’s no
sodding use to me, is it?’

‘A bloody sight more use than a numero-uno bog-up merchant like you, you great pillock.’

They grinned at each other, Billy awkwardly.

Ernie fiddled with the knob on the stove and ducked down to inspect the flame. ‘Uncle George looking after you all right, is he?’

Billy shrugged. ‘Business is a bit thin.’

Ernie gave a yelp of laughter. ‘The day business gets to be good for George, that’s the day we’ll know he’s in real trouble.’

‘He’s asked me to make some deliveries for him.’

Ernie dusted off his hands. ‘Well, better than a kick in the shins, eh?’

‘Looks like petrol coupons.’

‘Oi, oi,’ Ernie said with a low chuckle. ‘The old devil. A case of ask no questions, eh?’ He tapped a waggish finger to the side of his nose. Then, with a last inspection
of the stove, he picked up his jacket and gestured towards Billy’s knapsack. ‘Needing some floor space, are you, old cock?’

‘If it’s all right with your mum.’

‘Course it’s all right, Billy boy. Course! She never minds you staying. But when I say floor space – it’s floor space. Our Vince’s come back home. Got chucked out
by his old lady. Says he’s not the same man as before the war. What the bitch means is she’s been carrying on with another geezer and hasn’t the bloody nerve to tell
him.’

‘He’s well shot of her then.’

‘Ha! Try telling him that. Stupid sod keeps getting pissed and going round to beg with her. Can’t see it. Can’t see that she’s a first-class cow, always was. One of the
tight-knees brigade. Held out for a wedding ring before she’d let him get his greens, and then started having it off with this other bloke the moment Vince’d gone to the war.’
Ernie shook his head in pity and disgust. ‘You and me – we could’ve told him where he went wrong, eh? We could have told him that if you can’t get it in one place, then you
go and get it in another. You don’t bloody
marry
them, do you?’

‘No.’

Ernie gave Billy a friendly punch on the arm. ‘Come on, mate. Let’s get a pint before the bleeding pubs run dry.’

London pubs were all the same to Billy. He would have chosen the first they came to, but Ernie wouldn’t hear of it and they tramped through the ice and snow for another ten minutes before
entering a noisy place with tiled walls and bare wooden floors. Seeing Ernie’s eyes lock onto a gaggle of girls sitting in one corner, Billy realised they hadn’t come out of their way
for a better class of beer.

‘All right,’ Billy sighed as they eased their way through the crowd to the bar. ‘Which one is it?’

Ernie grinned. ‘The redhead. Bit of all right, eh?’

Billy should have guessed. She was just Ernie’s type, pretty, self-confident, with a hint of challenge. And from the way she smoothed her hair back and tilted her head artfully and
pretended not to notice Ernie it was clear he was in business.

‘Whatever happened to what’s her name?’

‘Lizzie? Asked me home to meet the parents. Well . . .’ Ernie turned his mouth down and gave a mock shudder. ‘Couldn’t be doing with that, could I?’

They ordered pints of bitter, and lit cigarettes.

‘So, what d’you reckon on her friend?’ Ernie said, his narrow gaze sliding in the direction of the corner again. ‘The dark one on the right.’

Billy didn’t bother to look round. ‘I’m not in the mood.’

‘What?’ Ernie gave a short laugh of surprise. ‘Come on, Billy boy. What’s with you? Where’s your sense of adventure?’

‘I’m knackered. I just want to grab something to eat and get some sleep.’

‘But we’re all set up.’ Ernie indicated the two girls with a swivel of his eyes.

‘Another time.’

‘At least help a mate out, eh? Get me in there with a chance.’