The Death of the Fronsac_A Novel Page 5

  ‘Eh? You fairly make me sick. Fine friend, you!’ The kitchen door banged; her cigarette stayed fuming in the ashtray.

  After this, we avoided each other for a few days. Instead, to my surprise, Mrs Melville began to speak to me. She too was different. It was not just that her face had grown older in the last few weeks, and her hair greyer. To begin with, she was different with Jackie. Now it was Mrs M who brought Jackie sugar and treacle at breakfast and hung the gas mask case carefully over her shoulder before school. One evening I saw her on the sofa where Eric had been shown the photographs, in the big sitting room. Jackie was beside her, and Mrs M was reading her a book.

  This wasn’t a room I normally went into. It was cold, but when the blackout curtains were opened its tall bay windows framed a panorama right over the Firth and the shipping. Today Mrs M had put a match to the heating contraption in the empty grate.

  I walked in and went to the windows. In the main anchorage at the Tail of the Bank lay a gigantic passenger liner with a single funnel, painted in camouflage zigzags of black, grey and white. I recognised her from photographs: a famous French liner which before the war had broken records on the Cherbourg–New York run. Further out, I identified two British battle cruisers with supply lighters crowded along their sides. Then I looked to the right, eastwards. Princes Pier jutted out into my line of vision. But beyond the pier I could see a mast sticking out of the sea at a strange angle. That was Fronsac. A divers’ barge was moored to the mast, with a red flag warning of explosives.

  I stood and wondered about all those spy-hunters and spies and security men in town. An Abwehr agent had no need to go and buy pink gins for officers at the Tontine or at the Bay Hotel in Gourock. All he needed to do, if he wanted to study Allied convoy preparations, was look out of the window.

  Eric had asked Helen about the binoculars on the sitting-room window seat. Who did they belong to? ‘Mister, every single family on this street has a pair of them. Why for? Because they have spent a hundred years in their armchairs keeking down at other folk doing a job of work on the water for them, that’s why.’

  I lifted the binoculars and focused on the warships and then on the rainy Argyll hills behind them.

  Behind me, Mrs Melville was reading aloud to Jackie. ‘For five long months, Prince Charlie wandered in the Highlands and Islands of western Scotland. He suffered hunger, and cold, and wet, but through it all he was cheerful and brave. No house was safe, for the whole country was full of soldiers searching for him.’

  She closed the book as I returned from the window. ‘Hungry and cold and wet through to his skin; just think how it must have been for him, Jackie.’

  I said: ‘In this house, I am not hungry and not wet, and I thank you for that. And now not cold, with this... hot machine.’

  ‘It’s just my gas fire, Major. You can’t get anyone to lay a coal fire these days.’

  ‘We don’t have in Poland.’

  ‘However do you keep warm, with all your wolves and snow?’

  ‘We have in every room big stoves, covered with tiles.’

  ‘Tiles?’ Mrs M shook her head and smiled. It was our first conversation. I tried to broaden my success.

  ‘Jackie, was school nice today?’

  Her spectacles glinted, and she put her thumb in her mouth. We exchanged a long look. Sometimes an only child can recognise calculations in another only child which sibling people miss. I know a fake thumb-sucker when I see one. Telepathy followed. She took her thumb away, and said: ‘We got history today from Miss Coutts. She’s got golden hair. I really like history.’

  ‘What do you like about it?’

  ‘Because it’s before.’

  ‘I see what you mean. Yes.’

  ‘In history, people escape. They put on disguise, so they look poor, and everyone thinks they’re dead but they’re no. They are escaping.’

  Mrs M gave me a warning look. But I said: ‘I escaped too.’

  ‘Was that in history?’

  ‘I think so. Not when it was happening. But now, with the big war in France, it does feel like before. You see, I still wear my funny disguise uniform.’

  ‘Do they all think you’re dead?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think perhaps it’s they are all dead.’

  ‘Enough sad thoughts for a tired wee girl,’ said Mrs M, getting to her feet. ‘I’ll make you your tea.’

  Jackie hung back, dragging on her granny’s hand. ‘Poland, where is Poland?’

  ‘Not any more on the map.’ I took her fingers, balled them into a fist and thumped it gently on my left breast pocket. ‘Poland is here.’ She laughed, the first time I had heard her laugh since the explosion.

  Helen came back late and weary after the back shift. She went into the bedroom. I heard Jackie wake up and cry. There was argument. Helen came out again, tears in her own eyes, and gestured for a cigarette.

  ‘I’m no good with that child. I say the wrong thing and then she’s greeting and wailing, and then I just panic. I just want out, that’s what I want.’

  ‘With Johnston gone, you could get leave, be here with her all the time.’

  ‘Aye, right, that’s what they tell me at the yard. You could get the compassionate exemption, be at home wi Jackie and the auld creature all day. Some of the girls say they envy me; all they want is to be “hame in the hoose with the wean”. You know? Well, I said no. I said: I’m gonnae no dae that. I’m carrying on.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m a brave widow-wifie doing ma bit against Hitler! No. I’ll tell you straight, Mike, the way I widnae tell anyone else. It’s because I love the fuckan job. I never had a proper job, just setting the shelves in Woolworths one time, temp-typing here and there. You know? But this is different. I’m with a great gang down there at the yard. Kincaid’s is paying proper wages, that’s money I save which I never ever did in my life, I’m telling you. And I’m good at the work, so it seems, and they could put me up to a night supervisor next year. I’m somebody down there, the girls all know my name, I’m happy, so I am. Husband blown to bits, wee daughter stone mad, and I’m happier than ever I was in my life.’

  ‘No, you are not happy. You cry. Look, now you do it.’

  ‘You’d be crying if you were the world’s worst mother. Sure I love her. But I cannae do anything for her, and I feel terrible. She’s like me, Jackie, do you know that? She’s out for herself. She’ll use other people and get all the cuddles she can and then, when she sees a chance, she’ll be away on her own. Ach, Mike, have you a hankie? I’m sorry for this.’

  I put out my arms, but Helen backed away.

  ‘My father was telling us: “Here’s your rule for life. Aye be using them, else they’ll be using you. And on your grave they’ll write: Here Lies a Utensil.” ’

  She gave me back the handkerchief, sighed and went upstairs to bed. I sat on for a while, the house dark except for the gaslight fizzing softly in the hall. Family problems; parental reproaches and self-reproaches. I had read about them in novels, but until now I had been careful to ignore them in real life. For the first time, I wondered if my pretty and sharp-tempered mother had longed for a quite different existence somewhere else. In a city rather than a village, with a calm, rich employer rather than an opinionated, upstaging husband.

  My parents – I didn’t even know if they were alive. Some letters were apparently getting through to German-occupied parts of Poland, the ‘General-Government’. I had written home too, but my three letters were posted into the abyss, the regions under the Red Star. From there, no words returned.

  It was so quiet now, in this stone house in this remote Scotland. I remembered a Mickiewicz sonnet, written far from his own country when – as now – it was under Russian bayonets. ‘In such a silence, if I strain my ear / A voice from Lithuania I might hear... Drive on, none calls!’

  Lighting a candle, I tugged the tiny chain that put out the gaslight and went upstairs. I could hear movement; the sound of Jackie crying soft
ly, Helen’s voice, and the flap of sheets being changed. Even on an early summer night, it was chill in that house. Back in my own room, I pulled on my woollen stockings and slept without dreams.

  *

  The next Sunday, we went for a walk along the Esplanade. Helen had tried to make Jackie come, but she wanted to stay with her granny. ‘We’ll read the book together, darling, won’t we?’ said Mrs M. She gave me a smile as she walked past into the big front room and knelt to light the gas fire. Helen she ignored.

  It was a blue day, with wind. Waves broke white across the Firth and the merchant ships gathering for convoy nodded at their moorings. Looking over the Esplanade railing, we saw barelegged boys splashing around a ruptured crate of oranges which had drifted ashore. The fruit and the sea around them were black-smeared with oil fuel. One of the smallest boys seemed uncertain what he was holding in his hand. ‘Bounce it, and if it disnae bang it’s an orange!’

  Helen laughed. We walked on. ‘Why so serious?’

  ‘Today the German army is in Paris. France is finished.’

  ‘They won’t get here though. C’mon, Mike, the navy will never let them across the Channel.’

  ‘I think they come here. Then Britain will burn like France, maybe like my country.’

  ‘Britain wouldnae get beat like Poland!’

  ‘That’s what my Commandant said about France. A month ago.’

  ‘The French was all corrupt and against the war, and the French girls will all be walking out down the boulevards with German soldiers in no time. That’s what my dad says.’

  ‘And what does Helen say when the very handsome Oberleutnant smelling nice with cologne asks: “Please do me the honour of walking with me down Rue End Street to the Pavilion to see Gone with the Wind, and here’s a big poke of sweeties”?’

  ‘Helen says: “Well, I did once know a Polish major, but he never did me the honour of asking me to the Pavilion, and all he offers me is a cigarette. Every so often.”’

  The cafés and the ice-cream parlour were all shut. When we were tired, we sat on a bench and smoked and looked up at the barrage balloon moored at the end of the Esplanade.

  ‘Mike, you’re no like all the other men. So I’ll tell you what it’s like being a young widow, six weeks into it. I was just amazed, so I was.’

  I waited for her to go on.

  ‘They think you want... well, ehm, sex. Men you wouldnae believe, they come and say: I know you’ll be lonely, and needing a man in that empty bed. You’ll be missing it, so... how about me? Nae bother, nae long-term love affair stuff, just the bit cuddle while you’re starving for it.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Well, that wee Peter from the navy. Would you ever think it? You couldnae hold him back. Whiles in the kitchen, I was skelping at him with a dish-clout – get yer dirty wee hauns offa me! – and him looking the model mamma’s boy! And in a few minutes he’d be back again: “You know you want it really...” And the French captain, of course. Jean-Marie, he was easier. I could see him coming a way off. Brought me soap and perfume from the French canteen, pushed it into my shopping bag when I went to do the messages. His English was about zero, but no mistake about what he meant. And there’s another one – a fellow at Kincaid’s I work for in the design block. All married men, of course. All Boy Scouts, aye ready to do a good deed for a girl in need.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘The trouble is: the more you say “No, I’m no lonely that way, get away with you”... the more you do so begin to feel lonely. I was okay after Johnston died. Now I’m feared of my own shadow. And you know, it’s no fair at all to poor Johnston. The way they talk, you’d think he was some kinda sex maniac.’

  I took her hand. She didn’t move it away, but she didn’t look at me. When she started to smile, she seemed to be smiling at the view. We walked back to Union Street.

  That night I came into her room and sat on her bed. In the dark, I heard her sit up.

  ‘What’s this then? Your turn to do a good deed?’

  ‘No, your turn.’

  ‘Oh. That way round? Now that does make a difference.’

  ‘Come to my room.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’

  It was terribly cold there. We clung to each other, standing by the bed. I could scarcely see her outline, but her shoulders were sharp and warm. When I had undressed her and pushed her back on the bed, I tried to light a candle. For a moment I saw her as she rolled on her side and blew the candle out.

  ‘Do it, then.’

  ‘You don’t really want this, Helen.’

  ‘It’s okay, just do it, it’s okay.’

  ‘Not okay for me.’

  I slipped in beside her. She turned over to face away from me; I pulled the blankets and the greatcoat up over our heads and held her close until we were warm. I thought she was falling asleep, until she put a hand behind her.

  ‘Whatever could this be? My, are all you Polish fellows this tall?’ I began to move.

  ‘No, don’t. Mike, no. Stay like that, and I’ll just...’

  A few moments later, she whispered: ‘Noisy beast, you’ll wake Mrs M. Kiss me, or am I doing all the work round here?’

  Next morning, I woke and found her gone. The greatcoat had slipped to the floor, and when I picked it up I found a button from her nightdress on the lino underneath.

  *

  Mabel Melville, who had lost her son and only child, seemed to be discovering new energies.

  She bought two second-hand bicycles, one for herself and a small Standard for her granddaughter. She put on a pair of large brown slacks, made sandwiches and rode off with Jackie down to the pier at Gourock, where the ferry was still running across the Firth. On the Argyll shore, they spent a windy afternoon cycling and picnicking round the Holy Loch to Kilmun and back to the boat. From then on, the weekend expeditions became a regular occasion.

  Watching her mount the cycle in Union Street, her newly grey hair blowing over her eyes, I was astonished. Perhaps she too was escaping, not only from grief but out of the matronly chrysalis in which I had learned to know her. It had never occurred to me that she could do anything more physical than pour out tea, or engage in the world by anything more than shopping. But a few weeks after the cycle trip, I came home in my uniform to find Mabel in her own uniform: the handsome navy-blue outfit of a Red Cross officer.

  New visitors appeared, young women shaking the rain off their mackintoshes as they ran up the steps with bundles of First Aid brochures and wartime recipe books. The big front room had its table cleared for demonstrations of burn-dressing and aircraft recognition.

  Jackie’s life was now being managed almost exclusively by Mrs M. It seemed to do them both good. The bed-wetting stopped, leaving Helen with even less responsibility for her. At meals, Jackie finished what was on her plate. Every evening, she went eagerly with her grandmother into the front room for more instructive reading, always followed by recapitulation.

  ‘Do you think it was wise for King James to dress up in disguise and go stravaiging about Stirling in the dark?’

  ‘Granny, it was so nobody would know who he was. Maybe in the palace they thought he was dead and gone, but he was only escaping.’

  ‘And what was the funny name he gave himself?’

  ‘The Gudeman... the Gudeman of...’

  ‘Ballangeich, Jackie, the Gudeman of Ballangeich.’

  ‘Is that a place?’

  ‘It’s in Stirling, but it’s a dirty, dark place. We wouldn’t go there now.’

  Almost every day now Mrs M would get up after the reading and say: ‘It’s high time we took your education in hand, young lady.’

  ‘She’s doing fine at Campbell Street, what’s wrong with it?’ Helen would reply.

  ‘It’s not such a good neighbourhood. See when Jackie got impetigo all over her face, from swinging on the railings of the Catholic school!’

  ‘For God’s sake, Mabel, the Catholic school is nowhere near Campbell Street.’<
br />
  ‘Nevertheless.’

  Nothing more was said. Helen and Mrs M scarcely exchanged words now. And with me she had returned to her old coolness. Perhaps Mrs M, too, had picked up a nightdress button in my room. Busy as she had become, she was still aware of what was happening in her own house. She did not care for it.

  That night in bed, I asked Helen: ‘What is impetigo, please?’

  ‘A dirty skin disease.’

  ‘You are so brave, maybe getting dirt disease from this Catholic.’

  ‘It’s different, you’re Polish.’

  ‘You Lutherans, you don’t have dirty disease?’

  ‘What Lutherans? My lot were Church of Scotland atheists. That’s clean-living, but no God and no alcohol neither.’

  ‘My lot are very much loving both.’

  ‘How’s your God, then?’

  ‘He is away at the moment. Like your Gudeman. He put on a disguise, told nobody where he was going and walked out.’

  ‘He’ll be in trouble, then. That King James who was the Gudeman, he got ambushed in the dark by a gang of Stirling keelies who set aboot him. Your God’s getting beaten up.’

  ‘We tried that two thousand years ago, but it only made him worse.’

  ‘Ach, ya wee Polish count!’ She laughed her raw laugh, but with her hand across her mouth. She had made this joke before. I understood it now, but found it so vulgar and stupid. I felt ashamed for her.

  How was it between us, in those few weeks of the first wartime spring? She came to me almost every night. Helen and I seemed to be alone in the world, when we were together. But alone as two people. In a way, my feelings remained exactly the same as they were when we first met – indefinable. She was so important to me; I was obsessed with her; there was something I desperately wanted to do with her. But what? Most men translate that something as sex. But I was always aware that I was getting the translation wrong. I found that Helen was a woman who took delight in the making of love, but didn’t take much physical pleasure from it. I was the opposite: a lonely man hungry for the fuck, but almost resentful of the time it took away from talking and laughing with her.