‘Would you want to be like that?’
‘One can’t help feeling a little envious.’
‘But would you, really?’
‘I don’t know, sweet. I thought I’d grown out of it. But I sometimes wish – oh, that you and I could be in love with each other in normal times, without the separation and the heartache. Or even that I wasn’t so much in love with you. It’s a bad war for wives, dearest.’
‘I know, I know. But you’re not at all that sort of girl, are you?’
‘What sort?’
‘Oh – trivial and decorative and impermanent.’
‘I am decorative.’
I lifted our bottle from its silver ice bucket. ‘Have some more champagne – it’ll give you self-confidence … You’re not decorative as a career,’ I went on. ‘Your career is different. There are two roles for women to play, not only in war but all the way through: they can be an aid and comfort and an ally for someone, or they can be the opposite – the destroyer of peace, the itch in the blood. You could be the second: you have that disturbing element in you – I don’t know what it is, but it is potent, something I must have.’
‘I give it you.’
‘Yes – and all the rest besides. For me you are the first kind of woman, the person I have to have in the background, to make any sense out of this war. But giving it to me is no blessing for you; it only means that you have taken on a continual doubt and anxiety. Women like you might have been especially invented, just to suffer in wartime. The other sort always have the best time, and are free to make the most of it. War brings them to full flower.’
‘To full flower,’ you repeated. ‘Darling, that’s true of some men, isn’t it? Not just the natural adventurers, but lots of ordinary people too. Particularly the ones that had rotten jobs, or no jobs at all, in peacetime.’
I nodded. ‘That’s the hell of it. Millions of young men – kids, most of them – are getting their first real taste of real living in this war: before it happened they were either in a job they loathed, or else propping up a street corner in some dirty derelict mining town in South Wales. It’s a pretty poor advertisement for the twentieth century, but it’s true; and how they’ll feel when it’s all over and they have to go back to the old life, I don’t really know.’
‘That’s going to be true for everyone.’
‘To a certain extent. It depends what you were doing before the war. It’s all right for me: I didn’t need the war to rescue me from poverty or dull surroundings. I didn’t need the war to give me a good life. I had the hell of a good life – not much money, but plenty of work and plenty of travel – before all this started. I think I’ll be able to go back to it again, unless they invent something to take the place of roads and bridges and tunnels. But these kids – war has given them, for the first time, a bit of colour and movement and lots of new friends. The change has been a godsend to them. The change back will be extraordinarily tricky. It might be very dangerous, if all there is to offer them is a duplicate of their pre-war misery. That kind of discontent is the perfect breeding ground for Fascism.’
‘But surely that is so discredited–’
‘Oh, it’ll have another name – the United Freedom Party, probably. But it will be the same dreary brand of politics – regimentation, toe the line or lose your job, join the party or else, stick your head out and we’ll split it open for you, no individuals need apply. There are going to be thousands of young men who will welcome that sort of thing, simply as a refuge from thinking, a relief from boredom.’
‘What’s the alternative?’
‘I don’t know, sweet. That’s the awful part. I feel it, but I don’t know. And while people like me are hanging about and guessing at a solution, the first silver-tongued bastard who comes along is going to sweep the field – and leave it a hundred times dirtier than it ever was before. I can see the whole thing happening, almost over the weekend.’
You smiled directly into my eyes. ‘How about some more champagne for you?’
For a moment I was irritated by the flippancy of the remark, then I realized why you had made it and I relaxed. You were right, of course – not only was this the wrong evening to peer into the dubious mist ahead, but it was also the wrong mood to do it in. If one lost hope now, when the strength and the weapons were still untried, what prospect was there of making sense out of the future? None but the brave would be able to fashion that future: none but the brave would deserve it.
‘It’s all right, sweet,’ I answered. ‘When that weekend does come round, you and I will have something to say about it, too.’
We danced. I am not a good dancer, thank God, but it was pleasant to have an arm round you as we circled the room, and to supply the solid anchor for your own undeniable grace. They played an old tune of ours, ‘It Could Happen to You’; and holding you close, feeling your hair brushing my cheek, your hand in mine, and your body moving in frank unison with my own, it seemed that there was nothing that hadn’t happened to us, in the realm of love and happiness. We were married, we were one: we had to part within a few hours, but we would carry with us something of this closeness, some glow of instinct which would be a reminder, deep down in that inner core of belief and feeling, and no other person would do for either of us. It was beyond sex, though sex was one of its strong fibres; it was the reason for living, translated into a language so personal and idiomatic, so exclusively and secretly ours, that it could be neither learnt by anyone else, nor ever forgotten by us.
Back at our table again, there came an odd interruption in the pattern of our evening.
We had noticed earlier on a man sitting by himself at the nearest table to ours, a morose-looking naval officer, who had attracted our attention by his solitude, his ferocious concentration on his own company, and the nervous tension which made him fidget, play with the cutlery, ruin a handsome poulet en casserole – do anything, in fact, but enjoy himself as he might have done. He was also rather drunk, in an unspectacular way; a state which he now advertised by gesturing at nothing with his arm, knocking over his glass, and sprinkling the hem of your dress with some hard-won brandy.
You were angelic – almost too angelic, I thought – when he apologized: this may or may not have been what prompted him to turn in his chair and introduce himself formally. But perhaps it was only boredom ...
‘Monsarrat.’ He slurred over the name, and tried again. ‘Monsarrat … It’s a difficult name, and I’m a bit pickled, anyway. Monsarrat – got it?’
‘Yes, I’ve got it,’ I reassured him. ‘Don’t you write books about the Navy?’
He looked pleased, and didn’t try to disguise it, which I rather liked.
‘Yes. You ought to read them.’ He nodded solemnly. ‘They’re very, very good. Have you read them?’
‘Good God, no!’
‘Spoken like a man ...’ He looked at his watch. ‘Have a brandy before I go?’
I glanced across at you, and you nodded. ‘Thanks – we’d like to. What are you celebrating – the end of leave, or the beginning?’
‘The end. God! It’s always the end of leave – nothing but saying goodbye and running for bloody trains.’ He caught a passing waiter’s eye. ‘Waiter! Nine brandies, please … The service is very slow here,’ he explained. ‘You have to take precautions … Nothing but saying goodbye, and catching bloody trains … Sorry,’ he said to you. ‘Just a rough sailor. Sad, also.’
I was beginning to decide that he was rather a bore after all, but you gave him another chance.
‘Who do you have to say goodbye to?’ you asked him.
‘Wife, child. This is where I produce my photograph.’ He brought out a snapshot of a pretty girl and a rather gangsterish-looking infant, sitting out-of-doors in the sun. ‘The kid was angry about something when that was taken. I forget what, but it rather hits you in the eye, doesn’t it?’
‘He looks sweet,’ you said.
‘Takes after father,’ said the naval officer.
&n
bsp; ‘Is he talking yet?’
‘Just a few simple phrases – “Religion is the opium of the people” – “You have nothing to lose but your chains” – oddments like that … I don’t see much of him,’ he went on: ‘not half enough, in fact – I seem to be missing the most interesting part, and saying goodbye is always a bit trying. But it’s quite a routine, by now. I have to leave the house about seven in the evening, so we bath him and put him to bed, and then I catch my train. Happens at the end of every leave: bath, train journey, dinner by myself in London, another train down to the ship. Sad. Here’s the brandy. God bless you both, and thanks for listening. Depressing, isn’t it?’
‘Very,’ I answered. ‘Let’s all be depressed together.’
‘I thought you looked pretty cheerful. Married?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good thing to be,’ he said with authority, as if he had been originally responsible for the whole idea. ‘On balance, that is: the partings are hell, but it’s the only thing to have in the background, these days. But of course it’s worse for the girl – different and worse.’
‘How different?’ we asked.
‘Well … ’ He considered, frowning at his brandy as if it had suddenly started arguing. ‘Take my own case. I have an interesting job, a perfect job – command of an escort ship that does a lot of hard work, one way and another. As soon as I leave home I have that to concentrate on: and it has everything, it takes the place of everything. It gives me enough excitement, danger, interest, variety, and hard work, to fill every hour of every day. I simply haven’t got time to sit around and mope. But what has she got, when I leave? A complete let-down: a house that is not her own, work that is only drudgery, business with rations and coupons and queues that is enough to drive her right round the bend. There’s no glamour or significance to it, nothing to persuade her that it is really worthwhile.’
‘But it is worthwhile, isn’t it?’ you asked.
‘Hell, yes, a hundred times. This country – any country – would come to a dead stop tomorrow, if the women who make and run homes threw their hands in. Their job is half of England, half the world. But it must be impossible to see that, when the results are so negative.’
‘Doesn’t the child make a difference?’
‘So she says. A vital difference, in fact – although it increases the drudgery about a hundred per cent, I reckon. But I’ve always felt that women have the worst of war. I dare say they have the worst of peace, too,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘but that’s part of a larger question.’
‘You smiled. ‘Much larger.’
‘Are you on leave too?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Off tomorrow.’
‘This is our honeymoon,’ you said suddenly.
‘Now why did you tell him that?’ I asked, surprised.
‘I thought it would cheer him up.’
‘Oh, it does, it does,’ said the naval officer. He looked at his wristwatch. ‘Shouldn’t you be in – I mean, have another brandy!’
‘Your very good health,’ you said composedly.
‘Likewise.’ He drank and set down his glass – one of an imposing clump of empties. ‘I couldn’t be a soldier to save my life,’ he said, going off at a tangent. ‘Sticking bayonets into total strangers, storming the beaches under shot and shell … Not for me.’
‘I think you have a rather romantic conception of soldiering,’ I said.
‘Not for me,’ he repeated. ‘And as for flying … If I couldn’t be in the Navy I think I’d rather do nothing at all, even if it meant some bloody-minded old faggot dishing me out with a white feather every hour of the day.’
‘It’s not so bad as all that,’ I insisted.
‘Well, anyone who can stand it has all my admiration.’
‘What’s your own job like, anyway? That’s probably something I couldn’t do to save my life. I should be seasick anyway, apart from not liking rum and torpedoes and surprises like that.’
‘Oh, my job’s fine, particularly now that I’ve got my own command. All in all, I suppose it’s been more boring than dangerous: nothing but convoy after convoy, for month after month – I’ve been in escort ships ever since I joined the Navy. But it’s had its moments, certainly: we’ve all dodged a lot of funny things in our time – torpedoes, bullets, blitzes. The Atlantic and the East Coast were pretty bad in the old days. It used to give me the creeps sometimes – it still does, now and then. Ships blowing up and burning, night after night, or sinking without a trace, almost before you could turn round. I remember–’ he paused, and then shook his head.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘It was just a chance thought. I don’t know why it came back. But I once had to go on board a merchant ship that had just been bombed, to see if they could get her going again – otherwise we were going to sink her with gunfire. She’d had one smack on the bridge. Stopped everything. I tell you, when I got on deck and began to walk forrard towards the mess, the horrible mess I knew was there, I felt like turning round and diving overboard again.’
He took a drink of brandy. ‘And it was a mess, all right. There was only one of them left alive – half alive – the rest of them were smeared all round the bulkhead in glorious Technicolour.’ Suddenly he gestured, in a fashion at once affected and compelling. ‘That’s why I don’t want to die. I have a kind of aesthetic objection to looking like that – or like one of the exhibits we sometimes pull out of the water, bedraggled, swollen, half eaten by fish, or pecked over by seagulls. There’s something about a skull bleached by sun and seawater–’ he stopped dead again, and then looked towards you. ‘Sorry,’ he said gently. ‘Damned sorry. And you on your honeymoon.’
‘That’s all right,’ you answered. ‘Doesn’t it do you good to talk about it? I expect you wrote those books for much the same reason.’
He smiled at me. ‘She’s clever,’ he said. ‘Hang on to her.’
‘Until tomorrow, I will.’
‘Of course – you’re pulling out, too. That’s not much of a honeymoon, is it? What went wrong?’
I explained about the cancelled leave and the disappointment generally, and added: ‘There’s a story there for you, if you want to write one. A goodbye story. Nothing special to it, but it must have happened to so many people. They might like to read about it.’
‘Wish I could,’ he answered. ‘But I’ve no time for anything but scribbles. Wait till after the war.’
‘Are you going on writing then?’
‘I hope so. Actually I want to write for the theatre, if I can break into it. I’ve got one grand idea for a play that I was working on just before the war began: the heroine starts as a patient in a lunatic asylum, falls in love with one of the doctors, and gropes her way to sanity by way of sex. Not a dry eye in the house!’
‘No audience, by the sound of it … What about films?’
He shook his head. ‘Don’t like them. Don’t like the people in them – narcissistic young men and glorified harlots. They seem to be the stock types nowadays – they, and what they call the character type, who’s always some old snide Irishman with a face like a shrivelled walnut and a brain to match. Still, I prefer him any day to the young female eyeful with a nine-inch smile and her hips swinging from ear to ear. Or Errol Flynn impersonating a hero and brandishing his weapon all over the place. They give me the horrors.’
I laughed. ‘You seem to be subject to the horrors … Well, I hope it’s going to be the sort of world where you can write plays, in reasonable peace.’
‘I shall make it so!’ He banged the table with his fist, and added, unnecessarily: ‘This brandy is really very good indeed … That’s what we’re put here for,’ he went on, ‘not to see what sort of a world it turns out to be, but to mould the things ourselves. All these indications of a servile state to come–’ He gestured. ‘There’s plenty of talk about the post-war world, but from what an angle! It’s all of what “they” are going to do to us: how many jobs, how big a pension or a dole “they” are go
ing to allow us to have. Preposterous! People who sit about like mice, waiting for things to happen to them, deserve nothing and will probably get just that. The world is ours, not “theirs”: ours to make, ours to take hold of, ours to fashion. Listen, chum,’ he said, nearly falling out of his chair, ‘I’m not going to hang about while somebody else decides what sort of a life I’m going to live. By God – !’
‘Commander – the neighbours!’ you said.
He looked round. ‘Oh – sorry …’ He waited until some of the surrounding interest and, indeed, indignation had subsided, and then continued: ‘But you see the point, don’t you? If you don’t make a success of your own life, if you don’t make an individual effort, “they” won’t do it for you. In fact, just the opposite: they’ll simply spit on their hands, take one good grip, and have your guts for garters.’
‘It sounds like the jungle.’
‘Ain’t it so?’
‘But do you really want to be a success, on those terms?’
He smiled. ‘I can’t make up my mind. But on the whole … Success is disappointing, failure is seedy; on the whole it is better to be successful.’
‘Why “disappointing”?’
‘Don’t you think it’s true? Whenever I get something, I always want the next thing ahead. When I first joined the Navy, my greatest ambition was to be First Lieutenant of a corvette. When I got the job, the Captain was on my neck all the time, and I wanted a command so that I’d be free of pinpricks. Now I have a command, and of course there’s the operational staff to cope with, and it’s like being pecked to death by a flock of birds with brass beaks.’
‘Aren’t you rather beyond the reach of that sort of thing?’
He laughed out loud. ‘Good heavens, no! In fact I’m standing right in the line of fire all the time. By God, I remember when my ship gave the wrong recognition signals and the Admiral had me up about it. “Monsarrat,” he said, “I’m afraid you’re in the rattle.” “What, again, sir?” I said. “Yes, my boy,” he said, “again …” You’ll understand that I’m glamorizing the interview a bit, because actually as soon as I got inside the room, blood, hair, and toenails began to fly, and I nearly lost my half-stripe. But that’s another story.’ He looked at his watch suddenly, in a swift, nervous movement. ‘Hell! Time’s up! I must go and plough the ocean. What’s happening to you tomorrow? Are you going – um – abroad?’