The Captain and the Enemy

  ‘Aren’t you safe here?’ I asked.

  He didn’t answer my question – at least not directly.

  ‘God bless the something islands,’ he said,

  ‘Where never warrants come,

  God bless the just Republics,

  That give a man a home.’

  ‘That’s poetry?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s poetry, real poetry, Jim. It speaks to you. They can stuff your brave Horatius. Do you know what I dream of?’

  I don’t know why but I answered, ‘Tortoises?’

  ‘Tortoises! I don’t dream of tortoises. Why on earth should I dream of tortoises? When I dream it’s when I’m awake, not when I’m asleep. I dream of all that gold which Drake took from the mules in Panama. I dream that we are rich all three of us, rich and safe, and I dream that Liza is able to buy anything that takes her fancy.’

  ‘Does she dream it too?’

  ‘I know very well she doesn’t, and I don’t think she likes me to dream it either.’

  I am doing my best to describe a typical lesson which I received from the Captain, but I realize only too well that my description cannot be factually accurate. It has passed through the memory and the memory rejects and alters, much as the Captain may have changed a lot of facts when he recounted his wartime experiences. Sometimes Liza sat with us during a lesson, and I noticed then that her favourite story – of his escape to Spain – which even found a place in his language lessons as well as his geography ones (on one occasion at least he even attempted a bit of modern history) – became more detailed when she was with us, and the details did not always tally; it was as though with Liza in his audience he wanted to make the story a bit more interesting. Perhaps, I sometimes thought, he may deliberately lie a little. For example when he described to me his escape with his companions across the Pyrenees he told me – that I’m sure – how they lay in the dark listening to the noise of the boots made by the German patrol, but later when Liza was sitting with us he added a dramatic detail, telling how a stone was dislodged and fell from above and struck his ankle and to this day in damp weather the pain came back and he would find himself limping, something which I had never seen him do.

  (2)

  The beard did not last more than a week or two. One morning when I came down to breakfast I found the Captain was busy shaving it off. Perhaps because he was whistling at the same time he cut himself twice. ‘I never feel at home in this thing,’ he told me. ‘It always reminds me of those fuliginous days in the Pyrenees. No chance of shaving there. Anyway Liza doesn’t like it. She says she gets prickled.’

  He turned around, razor in hand, to where Liza was making the tea and exhibited himself. ‘That’s the way you like it, Liza?’

  ‘I don’t like to see you bleeding.’

  ‘A little blood-letting does no one any harm.’ That was a phrase that I’m quite sure he used, for it remained in my head for years, though I have no idea why. They were also the last words I can remember him saying for some weeks, for he didn’t come in that day for supper, and the next morning he wasn’t there for breakfast.

  ‘Where’s the Captain?’ I asked.

  ‘How would I know?’ Liza said in a tone which, when I think of it now, comes back to me as almost a cry of despair.

  ‘But he said we were going to have another history lesson,’ I complained with the egotistic disappointment of my age, and, just as I feared, it was a religious lesson from Liza which took its place.

  The religious lessons had been much less of a success with me. Of course at school with the Amalekites I had attended what my fellows called ‘Divvers’, but I was a bit vague about the events in the New Testament except for the birth at the inn (not the sort of inn I felt sure which served gin and tonics), the crucifixion and the resurrection. All these had impressed me like a fairy story with an unlikely happy ending. (I never really believed that Cinderella would marry the Prince.)

  Liza had obeyed the Captain’s instruction and bought me a Bible at a second-hand bookshop, and I dipped into it now and then, but I found the old-fashioned language very difficult and the business of the Virgin birth confused me. One evening before she turned off the light over my sofa I asked Liza to explain it. ‘I always thought a virgin meant …’ But she interrupted me quickly and left me in darkness. I thought that perhaps she didn’t like talking about babies because she hadn’t succeeded in having one of her own and the word ‘virgin’ obviously embarrassed her too.

  All the same – to please the Captain – she would ask me every Sunday to read a bit of the Bible out loud to her, but I soon discovered a way of escaping this routine by twice choosing passages which she couldn’t possibly explain. For this I dived into that part which was called the Old Testament and this except for the history of the Amalekites had played a very small part in Divvers.

  I asked her first if the Bible was a holy book, and she said, ‘Of course it is.’ So I read her this: ‘And thou, Son of Man, take thee a sharp knife, take thee a barber’s razor, and cause it to pass upon thy head and upon thy beard: then take the balances to weigh and divide the hair. Thou shalt burn with fire a third part in the midst of the city, and thou shalt take a third part and smite about it with a knife, and a third part thou shalt scatter in the wind. Thou shalt also take thereof a few in number and bind them in their skirts.’

  I asked, ‘Do you think the Captain was doing all that when he cut himself shaving? Whose skirts …?’ But Liza was gone before I could finish my sentence.

  The second time of reading aloud I had come on a really good passage. I said, ‘This is difficult. There are words I don’t understand. Will you help me?’ And I began to read.

  ‘And the Babylonians came to her in the bed of love, and they defiled her with their whoredom, and she was polluted with some. So she discovered her whoredoms and discovered her nakedness. Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt.’ I probably mispronounced ‘whoredoms’, but anyway Liza left without explaining the words and she never asked me to read aloud again.

  (3)

  This time the Captain when he returned was again wearing a moustache, though in a different style and colour to the one I had known. It was in the late dusk when the code rang and we hardly had enough time to greet him before the bell began to ring again – imperiously. I had grown accustomed to think of any bell which rang as a form of code, and this one had a kind of familiarity, but one thing was certain: it couldn’t be the Captain for there he stood in the kitchen holding his breath as he listened. I had a good memory and at the third ring I felt pretty sure that its imperious sound indicated that my father stood outside.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said, ‘but I think it’s the Devil.’

  ‘Don’t open the door,’ Liza said.

  ‘No, let the bastard in,’ the Captain said. ‘We are not afraid of him.’

  I was right. It was my father, and he was not alone. What was far worse, my aunt was with him.

  ‘So there you are,’ my aunt rapped out, ‘Victor,’ and I suppose I must have flinched at the hated and almost forgotten name.

  I think my father noticed my fear. ‘I’m sorry, Jim,’ he said, and I gave him credit for remembering this time my change of name, ‘I had to bring her, for she’d have come anyway without me.’

  ‘Who’s this woman?’ my aunt demanded.

  I had gained a little courage from my father. ‘Liza’s my mother,’ I said with defiance.

  ‘You are insulting the dear dead and departed.’ My aunt had always the strange habit on certain occasions of talking like the Book of Common Prayer. I suppose that it came from all her church going.

  ‘I do think,’ the Devil said, ‘that we should all sit down and discuss matters in a quiet and civilized way.’

  ‘Who’s that man and what’s he doing here?’

  ‘Haven’t you eyes?’ Liza spoke up at last. ‘He’s having a cup of tea. Is there
anything wrong in that?’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘The Captain,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not a name.’

  ‘It would really be much better, Muriel, if you sat down,’ my father said, and the Captain pulled up a chair and my aunt sat on the edge of it as though she feared her bottom might be infected by whichever of us had sat in it last.

  ‘She’s been employing a private detective,’ my father told us. ‘I don’t know how he got on the track. They are damned clever some of those fellows, and of course your neighbours probably talk.’

  ‘I know which one,’ Liza said.

  ‘She asked me to come with her. She said she was afraid of violence.’

  ‘Afraid?’ the Captain asked. ‘That one afraid?’

  ‘Kidnappers,’ my aunt spat out.

  ‘Now, now,’ the Devil said, ‘you are not at all just, Muriel. I told you it was a fair game and that he won.’

  ‘You told me he cheated.’

  ‘Of course he cheated, Muriel. So did I. Women,’ he appealed to the Captain, ‘don’t understand the point of a game like chess. Anyway I’ve explained to her that legally I have custody of the boy and that I’ve given my permission to Liza …’

  ‘My sister asked me on her deathbed to look after …’

  ‘Oh yes, and I consented at the time, but that’s a long while ago. You said yourself last year that you were tired of the responsibility.’

  ‘I was not too tired to do my duty. It’s time you did your duty too.’ She turned on Liza. ‘The boy’s not receiving any education. There are laws about that.’

  ‘You certainly have a good detective, Miriam,’ the Devil said.

  ‘Muriel! You ought to know my name after all these years.’

  ‘Sorry, Muriel. Muriel and Miriam always sound so much alike to me.’

  ‘I don’t see the likeness.’

  ‘Jim’s having lessons at home,’ Liza said.

  ‘You’ll have to satisfy the local education authority.’

  ‘What would he know about it?’

  ‘He’ll know all there is to know after I’ve seen him. Who’s teaching Victor?’

  ‘I am,’ the Captain said. ‘I’m teaching him geography and history. I leave religion to Liza. He’s already learned to add, subtract and multiply. It’s all anyone needs. I don’t suppose you know much algebra yourself.’

  ‘What are your qualifications, Mr … Mr …?’

  ‘Call me Captain, ma’am. Everyone else does.’

  ‘What’s the capital of Italy, Victor?’

  ‘Modern geography doesn’t deal with names, ma’am. All that’s old hat. Geography deals with landscapes. Geography teaches you how to travel about the world. You tell her, Jim, how to get from Germany to Spain.’

  ‘I go to Belgium first, then Liège. I take a train there to Paris, and from Paris I take another train to Tarbes.’

  ‘Where on earth is Tarbes?’

  ‘There, you see, ma’am. You don’t know names either, but Jim, he knows how to go from Tarbes. Go on, Jim.’

  ‘After Tarbes I’d walk across the Pyrenees. By night.’

  ‘It’s a lot of nonsense. What do you mean “walk across by night”?’

  ‘Listening for the sound of German boots squish-squashing in the snow.’

  That sentence, I suspect, was the end of my private education. A few weeks later I found myself at a local school. I wasn’t unhappy there, for I wasn’t an Amalekite. I felt a sense of freedom as I walked through the London streets alone, as though, like the men who passed by me, I was on my way to an office and a job. The lessons were not as interesting as the Captain’s had been, but I had already learnt that I could not trust the Captain for any regular lessons even in geography.

  6

  I THINK IT was two years or more after I started school that the longest separation we had known came about. It was a Saturday afternoon and I was free from school. Liza was out buying bread and for once she had left me alone with my lesson books. Then the bell rang. It wasn’t the Captain’s code, nor was it my father’s. This was a ring, quiet, reassuring, even friendly. The ringer waited what seemed to be a polite time before he rang again, and the ring still remained unurgent, undemanding. I knew that Liza would never have opened the door willingly to any ring but the Captain’s, but I was in charge now.

  I called through the door, ‘Who’s there?’ And a voice answered, ‘Please open the door. I’m a police officer.’ I felt excited and proud at my first social contact with a force which I had sometimes dreamed of one day joining, so I let him in.

  He didn’t look like a police officer; he wasn’t in uniform and I was a little disappointed at that. Indeed in an odd way he reminded me of the Captain. Both wore ordinary clothes like a disguise, and I wondered if perhaps this might not be an unknown brother turning up. He said, ‘I wanted to speak to your father.’

  ‘He doesn’t live here,’ I told him without lying, because of course I thought that he meant the Devil.

  ‘Where’s your mother?’

  ‘She’s out buying bread.’

  ‘I think I had better stay until she returns.’

  He sat down in the one easy chair and looked more than ever like a relative on a visit. ‘You a truthful boy?’ he asked.

  I thought it best to be accurate as I was speaking to one of the police. ‘Sometimes,’ I said.

  ‘Where does your father live when he’s not here?’

  ‘He’s never here,’ I said.

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Oh, he’s been here once or twice.’

  ‘Once or twice? When was that?’

  ‘The last about two years ago.’

  ‘Not much of a father then?’

  ‘Liza and I don’t like having him around.’

  ‘Who’s Liza?’

  ‘My mother.’ I remembered again that I was expected to be truthful. ‘Well, sort of,’ I added.

  ‘What do you mean – sort of?’

  ‘My mother’s dead.’

  He gave a sigh. ‘Do you mean Liza’s dead?’

  ‘No, of course she isn’t. I told you. She’s at the baker’s.’

  ‘My God, you’re a difficult child to understand. I wish your “sort of mother” would come back. I’ve got questions I want to ask her. If your father doesn’t live here where does he live?’

  ‘I think my aunt told me once it was a place called Newcastle, but my aunt – she lives in Richmond,’ (I went on talking and giving him all the information I could in order to show my goodwill) ‘and they don’t get on all that well together. She calls him the Devil.’

  ‘Perhaps about that,’ he said, ‘judging from what you say, she may not be far wrong,’ and at the same moment the door above opened and I heard Liza’s footsteps on the stairs.

  Something made me call out, ‘Liza, there’s a policeman here.’

  ‘I could have told her that myself,’ he said.

  Liza came belligerently in, holding a loaf of bread like a brick that she was prepared to launch. ‘A policeman?’

  He tried to reassure her. ‘I just wanted to ask you a few questions, ma’am. It won’t take a moment. I think you may be able to give us a little help.’

  ‘I won’t help a policeman and that’s that.’

  ‘We are trying to trace a gentleman who goes by the name of Colonel Claridge.’

  ‘I don’t know any Colonel Claridge. I don’t mix with Colonels. I’ve never known a Colonel. Can you see a Colonel coming into a kitchen like this? Just look at the stove there. A Colonel wouldn’t be seen dead with a stove like that.’

  ‘Sometimes, ma’am, he goes by other names. Victor for instance.’

  ‘I tell you I don’t know any Colonels or any Victors. You’ll get nothing out of me.’

  I have always wondered what might have happened after that visit and what it was that had happened before to cause it. Several years were to pass before I saw the Captain again. His visits then were short and I wa
s not always there. Sometimes when I returned from school I would notice only a half-empty teacup.

  Did I miss him? I have no memory of any emotion unless it was the occasional wild desire for something interesting to happen. Had I grown to love the Captain, this putative father who was now as distant from me as my real parent? Did I love Liza who looked after me, gave me the right food, dispatched me at the correct hour to school and welcomed me back with an impatient kiss? Did I love anyone? Did I know what love was? Do I know it now years later or is love something which I have read about in books? The Captain returned of course, he always seemed eventually to return.

  Now that I have left Liza and abandoned what I had learned to call home, I only know of his absences at second-hand when I visit Liza. Sometimes a year has gone by, sometimes two. I have never heard her complain. I always use the same code on the bell, for otherwise I am sure that she would never let me in. I think she hopes always that it is he and not I who rings. Only three times have my visits coincided with one of his and I was well aware that he thought I was still living in the house. ‘Been out shopping?’ he asked on one occasion in a friendly and uninterested way, and another time he inquired perfunctorily about my work as a journalist. ‘Doesn’t keep you out too late?’ he asked. ‘You know how Liza hates the dark.’ Liza appealed to me on that occasion when he happened to be the first to leave. ‘Don’t you ever say you aren’t living here now. I don’t want him to worry about me. He has enough worries.’

  Why had I gone off and left her? Perhaps I had become too impatient at the comedy which Liza played more and more frequently during the long absences of the Captain. I felt that she played it to protect him from reproach, and I only bore it as long as he seemed likely to return one day and settle with us. I wasn’t used to motherhood. What I had known before was aunthood which I hated, and perhaps I had begun to regard Liza as a substitute aunt more than as a substitute mother. I could put up with her as long as the Captain was around. The Captain never attempted to play the father. He was an adventurer, he belonged to that world of Valparaiso which I had dreamt about as a child, and like most boys I responded, I suppose, to the attraction of mystery, uncertainty, the absence of monotony, the worst feature of family life.