Blasted Things Read online

  ‘A sight for sore eyes,’ says some chancer, and as she fills his glass Doll raises her eyebrows at Vince. He likes it when she gives him a special look like that, conspiratorial, like they’re in it together. Ridiculous, but he more or less would marry her if it meant he could spend his life right here, like this, leaning on the bar, watching her serve other men, knowing she was his, whetting his appetite for all those later-ons.

  Is it so ridiculous?

  Ten to two, last orders, but most have gone by then. Only Amos left; he has a seat in the corner where he catches punters unaware and winds them into his endless yarns. No takers today, so he mutters to himself, clacking dominos in some form of solitaire. Too old for service this time, but served his time at Mafeking, won that war single-handed if you credit a word he comes out with. Doll knows how to handle him, kind but stern, and he’s like a lamb, trots off home without a murmur.

  Once Doll’s locked the door, Vince straightens up and drains his glass. The leg’s got its old shudder again, but she’ll soon soothe that out of him.

  ‘And you,’ she says. ‘Come on, dearie, shift yourself.’

  ‘Doll,’ he says, opening his arms to her.

  ‘No, Vince, you can’t go expecting that,’ she says. ‘Anyhow, I’ve other fish to fry. Help me with the glasses if you can’t tear yourself away.’

  He keeps up a piteous expression but she isn’t falling for it.

  ‘What fish?’ he says. ‘I’ll harpoon that bloody fish.’

  ‘Stop your nonsense!’

  The sun dims and the colours fall away; scummy glasses on the bar that needs a wipe. In fact she’s already got her cloth, mopping the splashes off the tables, straightening beermats, emptying ashtrays.

  He goes up behind her, hands full of her glorious chest, nuzzles into her hair, but she pulls away.

  ‘Now, now,’ she says, and her voice has taken on the strict, patient tone she uses with Amos and the other barflies. He could go up to his camp bed in the loft and sleep till opening. But he’s needled, so he says toodle-oo, and goes out, surprised at how he bangs against the table on his way. Not as if he’s had that much.

  Outside is bright, cold. As he knots his scarf he notices the window boxes, her pride and joy. She’s put tiny mauve blooms in with the greenery, really artistic. ‘What I long for is a garden,’ she told him once. ‘Somewhere for Kenny to play. Trees and that, a garden pond. Goldfish.’

  On his Norton he roars down the lanes towards Seckford. He might have a pint at the Crown, or maybe call at the teashop see what that little Dora’s up to. Though it’s Doll he’s committed to, committed to – yes, like an asylum! He snorts. Drinking helps keep his mind away from all the hell. No, don’t think it: feeble sun on mud, caked in mud, rifle like a muddy branch, the stench. No! Two years since and here he is, and, Vincey, you’ve landed on your bloody feet. Stop thinking. But those plank roads at Passchendaele, mud knee-deep, poor bloody mules and horses, hooves sliding, screaming, frothing at their mouths, whites of their eyes.

  He swerves his mind away, hits a bend, grips the throttle tighter. Speed helps. Drive through the memory out the other side. Narrow bridge – oh Christ, someone in the road, a woman – pulls the wheel sharp right and

  10

  HE’S ALL RIGHT. Knocked out for a bit, mild concussion. But what about the Norton? What’s the damage? She’s the only thing he owns. Can’t imagine life without her now. His hand goes to his tin plate, scraped on the road; specs are smashed and some of the electroplated lashes snapped off. Doll’s never seen him with it off – no one has since it was fitted – and nor does he look himself in the mirror without it. The wires from the specs can his cut ears like buggery, specially when he’s tired.

  Visiting time, and if she comes it will go to show. Go to show she cares. A caring type she is, motherly. No better than she ought to be, but he can put a stop to that. Get a ring on that finger. Look after her like every woman needs, whatever they might say. She’s not a suffragette type – not his Doll, no such rot.

  And she comes, she actually bloody well comes, bustling down between the beds, bless her heart, in her best coat and vile black straw hat, more fit for a funeral than anything. He’ll get her another, whatever she wants, the best money can buy. He’s so pleased to see her he could nearly bloody cry.

  ‘You poor sausage,’ is what she says and gives him a peck on the cheek. He grabs her, tries to keep her close a moment; she’s got her Parma Violet scent on and her cheeks are powdered. ‘That’s what you get for riding off with a drink inside you,’ she scolds, like any wife would. ‘You’ll have to get them specs fixed.’

  ‘It’s the bike I’m worried about,’ he says as she pulls away.

  ‘You and your never-ending motorcycle! Now, I’m only here for a tick. Pub won’t open itself.’ She brings a tiny bunch of grapes out of her bag. ‘I could have done without this to-do.’

  ‘Sorry, Dolly.’

  ‘I’ll sorry Dolly you!’ she says.

  ‘Where’s Kenny?’

  ‘I’ve had to get Mum to pick him up and you know what a carry-on that’ll be, what with her feet. Oh, she send her regards.’

  ‘Like hell she does!’

  He pops a grape in his mouth, bites the skin, and the sour juice puckers his cheeks. Doll’s ma, Edie, doesn’t have much time for him. She hasn’t cottoned on yet that he isn’t just any old barfly. He’s here for the duration. But give her time; he’ll win her over. He spits pips into his palm.

  ‘Bet you’re giving the nurses a right old run around.’ Doll raises her eyebrows as a pretty one walks past and he grins, but truth be told he’s had enough of nurses, enough of hospitals, to last him a lifetime. More than a year of it he had. Not just the face and the headaches, but the nerves. Truth is, when he came round on the road this afternoon he thought he was back at the Front. Lay there petrified, expecting mud and shells and torn-off bits of his mates to meet his eyes when all there was was quiet, the sound of a bird, a woman’s thin ankles, the cutting into his cheek of the tin. Shook his nerves up good and proper. They warned him that could happen, that a shock could set him back. But he won’t bloody let it. He won’t.

  ‘What about your family?’ she’s saying. ‘Want me to telephone someone for you?’

  ‘No one to speak of.’

  ‘You never do speak of anyone,’ she agrees, frowning. ‘But there must be someone, dear?’

  He thinks of his ex-wife Ethel; she’s not family any more and good riddance to the frigid bitch. His folks were old when they had him and long gone now. There’s a fleeting sadness as he remembers Mum’s hand in his; he’d kept a hold of it when she passed over. Dad had gone years before.

  ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes anyway,’ he says, aware of the lameness. There can’t be a day goes by when someone doesn’t say that to her.

  ‘Well, dear, I’ll have to love you and leave you.’ She tucks a stray curl under the brim of her hat.

  ‘Home tomorrow, all being well,’ he says. Does she flinch at the word ‘home’? It is his home for now at least, that’s all he means.

  ‘Thanks for coming in, Dolly,’ he says.

  ‘Don’t mention it.’ She blows a kiss as she walks off. He watches her go, along with all the other men in the ward, then shuffles himself down and stares at the ceiling. It’s painted thick shiny cream with cracks like roads; he follows them with his eyes as if he’s riding along them: junctions, choices. Poor sausage, he likes that! He’ll give her poor sausage! He’d give it to her now if she’d come back and they could draw the curtain round. He told the cops he couldn’t remember a thing and it’s more or less the truth. Unless someone else presses charges, that’s the end of the matter. He got ticked off for having a drink, of course, but he hasn’t broken any law. It was only one for the road, or thereabouts. What’s the world coming to if a bloke can’t have one for the road?

  He’ll have to have the Norton fixed – that’s the worry. Can’t do without her, not living out in the
sticks, not any way. My better half, he thinks, my better, shinier half. All his savings went into her – couldn’t resist when she came up for sale, sitting there in the sun like a queen. He’ll have her fetched to the garage near Ipswich where his mate works, find out the damage. And he’ll have to have his face fixed up again.

  His fingers travel over the tin plate; you can feel the scrape, the stubs of the bust lashes. It’s cash that’s the problem; there’s a bit of a war pension but not enough. Not disabled enough, it seems. They can turn you into a gargoyle but as long as you’ve got four working limbs . . . He can’t expect Doll to pay him for his help in the pub, what with the free board and lodgings, but he does need cash. He finds his empty fingers rubbing.

  Not expecting another visit, he ignores the footsteps that stop at his bed. He’s in a dream, why not? No harm in it. Christmas morning, and there’s himself and Doll behind the bar, which they’ve got all decked out with holly and tinsel, the locals coming in for a beer, wives for a sherry. He could mix festive punch, don a paper crown – the very spirit of Christmas. All morning, warm and flushed, Doll’d be popping in and out between bar and kitchen, smell of a roasting goose drifting through. Then they’d shut up shop, shouting, ‘Merry Christmas’. Maybe mistletoe kisses for anyone eligible – yes, hang a bunch above the door. After he’d locked it, the day would be theirs, a slap-up dinner of goose and pudding and . . .

  There’s a tall woman standing at the end of the bed: smart, pale, a curling feather in her hat.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ she says.

  He stares at her, rifling his memory, but she’s not there. Not his type anyway – thin, insipid, tense. Looks like she’d shatter if you touched her. Silvery flakes float in his vision; one of his heads coming on, hardly a surprise.

  ‘This afternoon,’ she says, in a colourless voice, ‘it was myself you swerved to avoid.’

  Interest snagged, he begins to sit up, dizzy with the movement, and she’s there plumping the pillow for him to lean back on. He sees the recoil as she clocks the tin plate with its scratch and bust lens. You get used to it. Everyone does it, even Doll did at first. You steel yourself – ha, a joke there – steel yourself to get it out of the way.

  He pretends recognition. ‘I see it now, the hat.’ His voice takes on the chill of hers, the intonation of her class. Ethel used to call him a chameleon, the way he changed when he met a person. Comes naturally, can’t hardly help it. It’s not a hat you’d forget, the feather curling over from the back as if craning to see. ‘Concussion,’ he says. ‘Out tomorrow. I’ve had worse.’ He taps a fingernail on his plate, and her pale face gets paler still.

  She apologises for wandering into the road. The flakes drift like glitter in a kiddies’ snow globe as he struggles to remember. It wasn’t her that caused it. He’s about to say as much, but she looks like someone with a bob or two and he does need to get his Norton fixed. The way she’s studying him, a little frown on her face.

  ‘Feel free to stare,’ he says, and she looks away, blushing.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Oh, good heavens, I haven’t even introduced myself.’ She holds out a creamy glove. ‘Clementine Everett,’ she says, ‘Mrs. That is, I’m married.’

  He squeezes shut his eyes to try to clear the interference before he looks at her again. She’s younger than he’d thought – too young for that hat – fair, smooth-skinned, a certain sort of perfect. He takes her hand and squeezes it a mite too hard. When the bell for the end of the visiting hour goes she starts, jumpy as a sack of frogs.

  ‘Look,’ she says, ‘might I offer to pay for repairs to your motorcycle? It’s the least I can do.’

  Ha! A perfect catch, just needs to reel it in. Must not seem too eager though. Softly, softly, catchee monkey.

  ‘In fact I insist!’ she says. ‘I shall chain myself to your bed if you refuse!’

  He gapes at this unexpectedness; there’s even a bit of a twitch below the blanket. ‘Well, now, that sounds rather tempting,’ he says.

  She’s gone scarlet now. Of course she was thinking of the suffragette lot, nothing more spicy than that. Priceless, though, the expression on her face! From her bag she pulls a notebook and pencil and jots down her details.

  A nurse comes over to shoo her out – she’s the last visitor on the ward – then she’s gone and he lies down flat again, the bloody flecks swarming in his vision. He sees them even in the eye that isn’t there. The eye he left in France. Gone by now, rotted away. Or been eaten by a rat, a fat French rat.

  But Mrs Married Clementine Everett now! Doll will split her sides when he tells her the tale; she’ll say he has the luck of the devil. He’ll stand Sid, the mechanic, a few pints, get him to add a bit on the bill, all between friends. Mrs Married won’t know the difference.

  But his head is throbbing. He’ll ask Nurse for something when she comes round again. A gin’d do it; he’d like to see her face if he ordered one of those.

  Christmas day, then: after lunch, a lovely drowsy boozy crawl between the sheets. Would they open up in the evening? A few quiet drinkers dropping by, all full of festive cheer – they might have carol singers in the bar to round things off – him the landlord in his paper crown. Sergeant Fortune as was – still worthy of respect.

  11

  NO LETTER FOR days, and then at breakfast an envelope beside her plate, carelessly upside down. Mrs Hale talking, talking, asking something – the pork chops looking a little off, might she substitute lamb?

  ‘Splendid,’ Clem said distractedly. ‘Whatever you think best.’

  The new kitchen maid, Linda, a great-niece and protégé of Mrs Hale, trotted in with the toast. The smell from Dennis’s kipper hung in the air. His place had already been cleared. One could hear the murmur of voices in the surgery below, a woman’s high-pitched complaint and the deeper rumble of his professional reassurance.

  ‘Thank you, Linda,’ Mrs Hale said, adding, ‘She’s a treasure this one – you want to appreciate her, Mrs Everett.’

  ‘I do.’

  Linda, a pillow-shaped girl with a constellation of gingery freckles, turned an unbecoming shade of crimson as her aunt boasted on. ‘A useful girl all round. Lays a good fire and quiet as a mouse, seen and not heard, just as she should be.’

  Clem’s fingers inched towards the envelope.

  ‘And a nice apple charlotte, I thought?’

  ‘Yes,’ Clem said. ‘That’ll be all now. Thank you.’

  As soon as the door had clicked shut she picked up the letter – and sagged with disappointment. It was only Harriet’s wild scrawl. She buttered a slice of toast and spread it with comb honey, squashing with the side of her knife the intricate wax cells. She took a bite before slitting the envelope with a paperknife, fashioned like the weapon of a savage.

  Dearest Clem,

  What a pleasure to see you on Tuesday, and looking so much better too, despite the unfortunate mishap in the afternoon. Hope the shock of it hasn’t set you back?

  The girls loved playing with their little cousin and Mildred really took to him –how could one not? Such a divine little manikin never crawled this earth.

  Do come again. Without Dennis! I mean – goodness, how disagreeable is it possible for one person to be? How do you stick him? I’ll come and see you in good time but still feel uncomfortable chez vous, even now poor Daddy’s gone.

  I suspect Dennis has a scheme to ‘bring me back into the fold’, probably marry me off to one of his stuffed-shirt doctor pals. No, thank you. So you see why I stay away, but now that you’re so recovered I do hope we can become closer friends?

  Indeed sisters!

  Do come soon.

  Love and fondest regards,

  Harriet.

  Clem licked honey off her fingers; a smudge of butter was rendering a corner of the paper transparent. Why had Mr Fortune not sent the bill? I’m bored, she thought. There’s not enough – though enough of what she was not clear. Perhaps she might take Edgar for a walk. She really ought
to have more to do with him – sometimes he seemed more Dinah’s child than her own.

  Upstairs in the dim green bathroom she stared at her reflection: so pale, the skin glassy, the hair and eyes without colour; it reminded her of the faces she’d sketched at the Front. The one sketchbook she’d brought back, Dennis had asked her to burn, and she meant to one day, but for now it remained concealed. Morbid to dwell on the past, best foot forward, darling, skeletons in the closet and all that.

  She unearthed the sketchbook. Oh, the times Sister Fitch had scolded her for drawing, but she’d never done it on duty, only in quieter times when she was free to sit with one of the men, try to provide the comfort she hoped someone had given Ralph in his last hours. No spare time in those last few months though, hardly a gap between shifts, and . . . Oh, don’t think, don’t. Dennis so right, don’t look.

  But still, she carried the book to the morning room and sat under the window leafing through, breath gripped as she turned the pages. Here, the sweet expression of a boy just dead; here the shattered face of one who couldn’t die, would live on as a monstrosity. Worse, far worse than Mr Fortune: nose gone, half the jaw. Here, a German boy she could not understand though he spoke to her earnestly as he faded. She’d put her pencil down to hold his hand. Only his last word did she understand: Mutter. Here, a French boy who had flirted with her even as he died, a fingerprint of blood smudging the edge of that page. The stink of gangrene, Lysol and all the worst that the human body can produce seemed to rise from between the grimy pages. Filthy thing. Really should be burned.

  The last few pages she could not bear to open. Not yet. And now her mind strayed to Mr Fortune, Sergeant, as he’d made rather pathetically plain. But he was only Mr now. Fortune – rather an unfortunate name in the circumstances. How familiar he’d seemed, like Powell, yes. Her fingers itched to turn the pages, but no. Perhaps the familiarity might mean something more than a chance likeness? Perhaps Fortune had been amongst the hundreds, thousands perhaps, of boys and men – and occasional females – she’d helped to treat. With such wounds he would have been deemed a bad case; he might well have passed through the Clearing Station, the wound swiftly cleaned and dressed before he was sent down the line. Perhaps her own hasty, inexpert care had resulted in the untidy scar on his neck, and who knows what under the prosthesis? Or perhaps she’d never seen him at all.