The Broken Chariot (18 page)

‘Ar, I know yer won't. Yer'd better not. Yer was lucky, though, coming out of that. I'll tek yer for a pint of the local spew when you're out, to celebrate.'

Which, Herbert thought, would be one in the eye for the woman of Omodhos. ‘I'll keep you to it.'

Archie leaned close. ‘I met a bint the other night in town. Lovely she is, black hair and dark eyes, and very nice tits. Trying to teach me the lingo. I was doing all right, as well. I told 'er I'd come back and marry her when I got demobbed.'

‘What an awful lie.'

‘Me? A liar? Not me, our Bert. I shan't marry her, though. She's too nice for that. I'll do her a favour. She deserves a lot better than me.' He stood. ‘But I've got to 'op it. The blokes can only cover up for me a couple of hours. I'll see you in a few days, if you aren't out by then.'

‘I might be. I'm already hobbling to the lavatory.'

The MO said he would need a few weeks yet, but he willed himself to mend, to become viable by his own effort, walking up and down the ward all day and every day, and wandering the grounds in his hospital blue like a bent old man. A glance of his figure in a shining window forced him to straighten, and go at a faster rate. He drew the pieces of his body bit by bit together. In the evening he sat by his bed, aloof, unwilling to talk to the man next door who was writing poems which read like the worst of Patience Strong. Herbert read one out of politeness, and said it was good, and that he should persevere, which made the man happy. Herbert did all that his brain allowed him to, which was pull the copy of
Caged Birds
out of his small pack and comfort himself with the same old story.

Shaken from sleep at five in the morning of a day before Archie could call on him again, he was told that a signal ordered him home. ‘Blighty, that's what, lucky swine. I'll give you a hand with your clobber.'

An ambulance screamed all the way to Akrotiri, a fine fresh day beginning, though Herbert within his deadness knew he was glad to leave. Helped up steps into a capacious York transport plane the smell of pear drops, furniture polish and petrol had a touch of civilization about it. Four engines roared at the end of the runway, and soon the nearest silver wing floated by the mountains. His face burned at the memory of his passion for the unknown woman of Omodhos, who had killed Pemberton in mistake for him, the goddess-madonna who seemed to be shadowing him even as a coastline was left behind which he hoped never to see again.

A few bumps before getting to twenty thousand feet caused an RAF bloke behind to use his sickbag. Herbert supposed they were far over the sea when weird snowy continents of cloud spread below, an antarctica of topographical complexity looking cool to walk upon – with the nightmare sensation of falling through and down to annihilation on the earth. Wanting to tell Pemberton (he couldn't for some reason think of him as Ashley any more) to put his bloody book away and look at such marvellous and fantastic scenery, the pang struck that he no longer existed – except in memory. Immortality was a confidence trick of the church, because you only lived as long as anyone alive could remember you. But Ashley, an unexplainable image, was close because Herbert still lived. Maybe I'll write to his folks and tell them what a good chap he was, either to twist the knife, or make them grateful.

He pulled a copy of
Everybody's
from under the seat, and in an hour had done the puzzles and read every crass piece. The pilot announced they were overflying Crete, of which only a few ashy peaks showed through a gap in the weather. The meal finished, he leaned his head back, senses culled away by the noise of the engines.

A medical orderly going home on leave had been seconded to watch over and generally help him, but his head close to a Paul Renin book kept him silent most of the way, for which Herbert was thankful. Being talked to or at would be like having a bandage continually put on and torn off. Every wound was a low-grade ache, more than enough to make the temper surly. To be sealed into himself was the only possibility of ease; no longer interested in the cloud scenery. Nothing would fasten his senses into concentration, he was embroiled within, unanchored, disembodied, couldn't even envy those with the whisky flask in a better sort of class nearer the crew's quarters.

Malta, George Cross Island, part of the real world, recalling the thrill of its last-ditch tribulations heard about on the wireless at school, far back in history it seemed. The place looked arid, till they went grandly over the harbour, and he could peer down at greenery between the walls as the huge plane turned for the airfield.

With half a dozen others he shared a hut at Passenger and Freight Services, night-stopping before the last leg to Blighty. A meal of soup, pork chops and tinned pineapple was too much for him to finish, and he went to his bed more worn out than if he had been crawling over the hills of Cyprus for a week, knowing nothing till the orderly shook him to get dressed because it was morning.

The coast of Sicily came in sight. Two more hours and he saw the north-east shoulder of Sardinia, then Corsica. Cutting the shoreline into France, cloud assembled, and nothing was visible except murk when over the Alps. A Penguin Life of Shelley called
Ariel
kept him going until, without any reason looking from the window, he marvelled for the first time since leaving Cyprus at being eighteen thousand feet above the earth, and at the four Rolls Royce Merlins with their sturdy but invisible propellers made in Derby speeding them along at two hundred miles an hour. Bundled into the plane from the hospital, he had felt only numbness, but now he opened his map to surmise their route, as if an inner light was bringing him back to life.

Lyons, Orleans and, after five hours from taking off, the orderly elbowed him to say they were over the English Channel. Herbert woke to changing pressure as the aircraft decreased height, and saw the coast by Portsmouth. The orderly's head was between him and the window, as if he had never been to England before. Sheep spotted the pale green spurs of the Downs while making their run in. To turn his neck was painful, but worth the wrench. ‘You're not supposed to do that,' the orderly said.

A mouthful of the foulest language came easy to his lips, which caused him to smile at realizing that the factory was again close enough for him to use it, though he checked himself, saying merely: ‘Well, I've already done it, shag, haven't I?'

Down to earth, the therapy of recovery went on for more weeks than he cared to endure, until all limbs were in good trim and the MO said he was as fit as when he enlisted. He could be demobbed and returned to civvy street while still twenty. His parents wanted him to come and see them but he considered himself old enough not to bother, wouldn't call until mood or circumstances allowed him to without endless worrying about the decision. For the present he had firm control over both, though on one of his trips into town he posted a letter saying he would come as soon as was convenient.

A real man should have no parents, he thought on his way back from posting the letter, taking his way through summer woods on a back route to the hospital. You can't begin to feel a man till you have broken from them in body and spirit. A man with parents, who cannot for that reason act as he would wish, is in no way a man, that is to say independent. And yet he didn't feel at all bonded to them, so what was he going on about? Unless by thinking this way he wanted to be influenced by them, obliged to them – which he couldn't imagine to be so at all.

The further you got from their petrifying orbit of control the freer you were, was all he knew, and the freer you were the more were you at the behest of the unexpected, which force of change or fate provided the only possibility of living your own unique life, of having your life altered in unexpected ways, and of eventually advancing into a sphere so exalted that you could look down and wonder at the petty lives your parents had led, and realize how insignificant your life would have been if you hadn't fought free of them.

Finally he could only say aloud, as he paused while wading through swathes of tall bayrose willow herb blocking part of the path: ‘Nah, I just don't want to be bothered with them,' not unhappy that he had reasoned the matter through only after going to the pillar box and not before, and knowing that working in a factory would be just about as far from them as he could get.

Part Two

Ten

He stood by his case and cardboard box of demob clothes in the corridor of third class. The livid leftside scar gave him a look of surly violence. From trying to solve the crossword in a folded copy of
The Times
he glanced at patchwork fields and woods conveyed along half-open windows, scarves of engine smoke waving a welcome, he hoped, from the city he was bound for. A younger soldier stepped over the demob box, and Herbert, back from overseas and no longer feeling young – if ever he had – sensed his envy and respect.

A refugee from the land of the dead seemed his normal status, and going back to a familiar bolt-hole rubbed out any ideas of retrieving that part of himself left behind at school, or taking on the life his parents wanted for him. Maybe he had been altered by his accident, though he hoped that after a year putting himself solidly together in the factory he would know more what he wanted to do. Besides, he had no qualifications for any other work. Mrs Denman had written to say she would be happy to give him full board after his convalescence.

Going home again, he walked from the smoke of the station and inhaled the air of the streets. No other place had given such strong memories. The road was wide, and he crossed against the traffic of lorries and green double-decker buses. His case felt full of stones along the wide avenue of Queen's Walk. He'd sauntered by the taxi rank at the station as if to become Bert rather than Herbert as quickly as possible. It was a mistake, five minutes took twenty. A train drummed under the railway bridge and, stopping to change the weight to his other arm, and covering the weakness by retying a bootlace, paving stones shimmered as if he was about to faint. No you don't, not with me. He stared at them till they behaved, picked up his luggage and walked as if it weighed nothing. Low cloud held in sombre hootings from the engine sheds, at which earthy and melancholy sound it seemed as if he'd been away a very short time indeed.

‘I never thought I'd see you again.' She opened the door to the parlour and told him to sit down. On the shelf were the usual small white jugs, pots with gaudy coats of arms, a photo of her dead husband, and one of Ralph and Mary when they got married. All the old gewgaws, as well as the same furniture, polished and well kept as if it was going to last forever. ‘You look pale. I expect you've bin through the mill, though. Soldiers do. Archie sent a postcard telling me what happened. The army must have made a better man of him, anyway.'

Grey in her hair: amazing how long people lived. The light was too dim; he would like a bulb to shine two hundred watts. ‘I'd rather sit in the kitchen.'

‘You've changed, the way you talk.'

He laughed. ‘You mean I've got posh?'

‘A bit.'

‘You do, after a few years away. I'll soon get the lingo back.'

Such an intention seemed to her liking. ‘I'm sure you will.'

But he wouldn't if he didn't want to, the accent not being so necessary now. ‘Cigarette, Ma?'

‘Thanks, I will.'

He pushed his legs full out from the armchair. ‘How's Frank?'

‘Same as ever.'

No one changed, not here anyway, and why should they? Nearly three years was nothing to people who never left home. ‘I expect I'll be seeing him.'

‘He'll be thrilled to death. The Prodigal's coming back, I told him last night. That scar meks you look rough, though. But then, you allus was, especially when you went out boozing with Archie. I expect he's about to be demobbed as well, in't he?'

Such a prospect eased his gloom. He nodded at the window. ‘You've put up new curtains.'

‘You
do
notice things, then? I took the old ones down to wash 'em, and they nearly melted in the water they was so worn. Frank managed to get me some new ones, no coupons and no questions asked.' In the kitchen she took a pork pie out of the cupboard. ‘I got this specially for you. I remember how you liked 'em.'

He didn't ask where she got it. The days of austerity and hard rationing seemed to go on forever. She cut a large wedge, and poured his tea into a cup instead of the usual mug. The meat was rubbery and overspiced, not much improvement on Spam, but being so hungry it tasted delicious – knowing he must stop looking back on the variegated menus of Cyprus.

‘Now that our Ralph's married you'll have the room all to yourself.' Not only spliced, but he had two runabout sprogs and a ducky little bungalow at Bramcote. ‘You'll be the only lodger, but I don't mind. I often think I've done enough work, and I can manage all right now.'

‘What about that guest house at Skegness? Ralph told me you were very set on that.'

Her smile coated a nuance of regret, as if she had failed somewhere in life. ‘What would I do in a place like that?' she said in a tone superior to self-indulgence and disappointment. ‘I like it too much here in Nottingham.'

He followed her lovely legs upstairs to his room, thinking what a pity old people in their forties couldn't buy new faces from the Co-op. Still, Frank kept his hand in with her. ‘He papered it,' she said, ‘every wall as you can see. And I put new curtains up at the window as well. I bought the bedspread from a pawnshop.'

Garishness was never more homely than these heavily flowered walls and deep orange curtains. ‘Looks wonderful. All I'll want is a table to read and write at.'

‘There's one in the shed. A bit of elbow grease, and we'll soon mek it shine. You and Frank can get it in tomorrow.'