‘If they’re willing I’m able,’ he told his smiling face in the mirror. It was his motto and a great night for scoring. The lasses got the picture. Lads in the Yorkshire Regiment on the last night before a tour deserved a favour. It almost didn’t matter where you were off to. Northern Ireland, all right, still dangerous but he’d done as well before a trip to Cyprus. Some girls were right dim. Now it was his turn for Iraq. By midnight he would be leaving with his unit. Most of the girls even knew his name, Tommy by name and by nature, a soldier to the tip of his fingernails. At twenty-one, when he looked in the mirror and saw his bright blue eyes, he knew his was a lucky face.
His mate, Jason, was already warming the seats, giving his silver tongue all it had. Tommy was thinking about the big blonde one who was there last week, the one with the big … ‘Ah!’
He had nicked himself shaving but the red dot was soon wiped away. A clean white shirt hung on the door. His rucksack and regulation duffel bag were packed and ready. Just a clipping of his nose hairs and some aftershave and he’d be fit for anything. The bathroom ceiling was high. There was no shower but one of those big baths with solid claw feet on a black and white checked floor. It had been at one time a merchant’s house, a large family with servants and sons in the army. Now it was divided into flats. He had a bed sit on the top floor. In one of the many incarnations the house had seen, someone had nailed an ugly white bathroom cabinet on the wall, with a mirror that always steamed up, tiles behind it dripping and coming loose.
He was a handsome catch, even if he did say it himself. Some lass was in for a good time tonight. He drew a deep breath. There was that smell again. It had been there on and off for the last fortnight. He swore it wasn’t him. He’d had a proper, lingering bath but sniffed under his left arm to make sure. Now the smell was worse than before and seemed to come from behind the cabinet, within the tiles. The stink was like an old dog, sharp and sickly, a smell of decay. These old houses, everything was falling apart; loose tiles, faulty wiring, gas leaks.
Tom leant forward to the cabinet, prodding behind the tiles with the sharp end of his comb. He was good with his hands and didn’t like to leave a problem unsolved. The smell was overpowering. A section of tile and a clump of muck behind it clattered into the basin.
‘Ah, stuff it,’ he said. He was wasting valuable pulling time. Only twenty-four hours to go, then he’d be on the Hercules Transport over the River Tigris to Basra. It was already gone seven o’clock. He put on his shirt, fresh-smelling of Daz, and cleaned under his nails with the sharp end of the dirty comb. It broke the skin of his finger but he managed not to get blood on his shirt. A last look in the mirror: he ran his palm over his hair, as he often invited girls to do, so short and thick it was like suede. He was sweating. It was no time to pick up a bug on this of all nights.
On the landing before the narrow stairs he reached for the light and his hand touched cool glass, then the switch. There was a row of photographs, brown with age. He hadn’t bothered with them before. His landlord wasn’t the sort to go in for interior design, just regular visits for the rent. Now he saw some pictures showed men in uniform, posed. Some had girls with them, stiff young women, po-faced with big busts trapped in hard material and lace at the neck. In others, the lads were watched over by bearded fathers with watch chains over their bellies. Near the foot of the stairs, was a stringy-looking soldier, looking straight at the camera with dark eyes. Them days, though Tommy, it was hard to tell if they were young or old. The man was kneeling, his hand on an Alsatian dog in a big leather collar with studs. The last photo showed nurses in starched white aprons standing behind bath chairs with seated men. Some sleeves and some trouser legs were empty.
Tom rushed to get out in the open. The cold hit him sharply and he sneezed. The temperature must have dropped since this morning. He could hardly see for the snow that had come down. How long was it since the snow had fallen this thickly? He could remember light drifts but not this billowing stuff that cut visibility to less than a metre. Still, he knew his way from the pub blind drunk so had no doubt he would get there, just the one street of this old town, from his building past the brick terraces and the waste ground where there was something, an old gasometer he thought, bombed in one war or another. Metal shapes of bicycle frames and a supermarket trolley stuck up in the covering snow.
The pavement was covered but high above lamplights blazed like little fires. The snow had quietened the busy street; windows were golden slabs hanging on the night. Looking down he could see wheel tracks and a steady trail of hoof prints between them. Who would take a horse out in this? Perhaps they were caught, to be fair, as he was, not expecting this. Where road met pavement were paw prints of a large dog.
He thought about a pint of golden lager, and why not a whisky? That would help his throat and running nose. The warmth of the drink in his mind soon led to a woman, a dark one now, with long thick long hair he could put his face in. You don’t think about the tour, not Basra Camp, the weapons you carry and what they do. You think about women and your mates, Jason and Wayne and Alan, Smithy and Fred and Moon-face playing football, swimming and stuffing your face with bacon and eggs, having the crack. He kicked at a drift of snow. His cousin, a tosser if ever there was one who was going to university, had a good sneer when the Army adverts came on round at his auntie’s. They never show killing. That’s what you’ve signed up for, the jerk had said. He just didn’t realise. It is like the adverts, in your head. That’s how you do it, by just doing it, not by thinking. His cousin, he’d never been in a Friday night punch-up, felt the crunch of fist on a jaw, let alone fired bullets in a foreign street. You do understand but you push the understanding down, bury it, like the snow was covering the prints.
Now this was better. He could see people in outline, flowing into a lighted building, drawing him in. There was quite a crowd, made foggy by the weather, wearing hats and long coats against the cold. He didn’t like to queue at the bar but somehow the crowd parted for him and he was in, pushing at the door and into the warmth. The first thing his eyes lighted on was the blonde. She was behind the bar. He didn’t know she was bar-maiding here but look on the bright side, there’d be plenty of chance to ogle. She turned towards the hand-pump to pull a pint. He saw her bare shoulders in a tight bodice with small puff sleeves, low on the breasts. It took his breath away somehow. He had seen lasses out clubbing in dresses the size of belts, flashing the lot. But this bodice, its lacing, was beautiful and shocking. Was it fancy dress night or something? Going in, looking up the bar, he saw it must be. The men wore on long coats and weskits, caps on the bar. There was even an old upright piano in the corner where the games machines normally were.
Tom nodded to the bar maid.
‘Yes, Sir. What will you be having?’
He was shivering from his walk and found himself recoiling from the idea of an icy lager. The cold had gripped his chest.
‘A pint of Best and one for yourself.’
‘I’ll have a whisky if you please, sir. A bad night is it not?’
She was obviously into the spirit of her dress. As she pulled the pint, he was fascinated by the whiteness of her skin, as if tanning booths and holidays in Ibiza had never been invented. The pint looked gorgeous, almost edible, the colour of his leather belt, with dense creamy foam settling quickly to a head. She placed the glass on the bar. ‘On the house to you, on this special night.’
Good on Jason, he thought, making sure everyone knew to maximise the beer benefit. That looked like the back of Jason’s fair head with jug-ears. But it was hard to tell, the place was so crowded and misty as if the weather was getting in. As he picked up his pint, one of the clutch of men behind the piano looked up and smiled. Tom couldn’t place him but felt he knew the face, the dark intense eyes.
The man came over. ‘So sorry,’ he said, his voice soft and apologetic. ‘Seats near gone but we saved one for you, and a glass or two.’
It was amazing that the place was so smoky. All the men seemed to be rolling up and bugger the ban. The soft-voiced man held out an open packet to Tommy. His throat was sore but he noticed the brand was Lucky Strike and took one.
He relaxed and downed the short in front of him, then another. The door swung open and better still, in came three women in a flurry of snow. Good lasses, they had the dressing up spirit too, with floppy hats and feathers, red lipstick on their mouths that opened in greetings. Taking another glass, he looked them over. Older than he’d normally go for but they seemed inviting, cheeky like and tarty. That would do, and anyway he still had his eye on the blonde. Just before a tour, he wanted a woman not a fist fight, though had sometimes ended up with both.
A man in a checked cap was at the piano and struck up a chord. Most of his table stood up. So did Tom, wobbling on his feet a bit now.
'I want a girl!’ piano man called to cheers of approval, ‘Just like the girl that married dear old dad. She was a pearl and the only girl that daddy ever had. ’
Carried along by the others, Tom joined in the song. A woman in a feather hat was swaying to the music and leaning against him. She let him catch her about the waist. He was having a great night. There was no end to the drink, it seemed, and the smoking as well. The hours raced by. What with the singing, he had to sit down, coming over in a sweat. The place was so full he felt surrounded, the men and the red-lipped women crowding in on him. He had never felt so sick.
‘Sit here now,’ said the soft-voiced man and led Tom away to the snug. Tom could see now the man was in soldier’s uniform of rough brown cloth that he did not recognise.
‘The free drinks,’ asked Tom, ‘is that Jason’s tab? Where is he anyway?’
‘Don’t you worry about that. We’ve been waiting for you.’
‘Is it our leaving do or what? Someone’s twenty-first?’
‘Tonight is a celebration, is it not, yours more than most.’
Tom could hold his ale and shorts but the volume of them tonight was making him feverish. His throat was on fire. He needed the cold night, wanted to be on the train with lads like him in his unit.
‘The train has gone, Tom,’ said the soldier, ‘and your friend with it. We wanted you to stay. We will see you right. You will not be going anywhere but home. I give you this night, my friend.’
He raised his glass and Tom saw the Adam’s apple pulse as his head went back with the swallowing.
The bar maid was behind him now. She held a big cloak round her and carried a wool blanket that she wrapped round Tom’s shoulders. She and the soft-voiced solider led him into the night. Tom was burning hot despite the temperature. The soldier gave a low whistle and a large dog trotted up, studs glinting on its collar in the dark. The girl and soldier propped up Tommy on either side and the dog followed them through the freezing air.
‘Used to live up this street, I did, and my Uncle worked there,’ the bar maid said, nodding left.
Tom looked at the gap in the houses, seeing only darkness and snow.
‘I’ll bet you know nothing about the very street you live on,’ said the soldier. ‘There was a factory there once, a weaving shed, the best cloth in the district. Then a hospital in 1919, after our men in the Green Howards came home, from Verdun, Ypres and Epehy, those that were left.’
‘Here we are,’ said the women pushing open his door. ‘Up the wooden hill. ‘
They marched him up past the photographs, blanked now by the dark and seeming empty of figures, to his room where he fell onto the bed.
The girl took hold of Tom’s legs to unlace his shoes. With the cape around her shoulders she looked like a nurse. ‘Another case of influenza,’ she said. ‘ Survivors eh? There’s no sense to it. You can still feel it in the walls of these houses. Some people who lived here survived the trenches, families just starting out again, and the 1919 flu epidemic wiped out more of them.’ She bent close as if to kiss him.
The smell of animal decay was overpowering. Tom’s head was thick, in a high fever, but he tried to sit up and yell. The soldier pushed him down.
‘I’ll never understand modern warfare,’ the soldier went on as he held Tom down by the shoulders. ‘One burst of a modern bomb and even a transport plane has no chance. Fifty men can down in the desert. No chance at all.’
Tom’s head was thick but he felt a rush of joy that made him want to shout had he been able. ‘You mean fifty less one?’ He stopped struggling. His mouth and his throat, his whole body felt like shit but dear God, was there someone watching over him after all?
He began to cough again, then there was a wave of nausea, then nothing but a sweating sleep.Through the long night he saw shells of yellow gas burst over snow-filled trenches; worn-out horses dragged guns through the mud over discarded boots, led by boys in uniforms too muddy to see which side they were on; a man by some shops held onto a lamppost as his shirt filled with blood from a bullet. As the light came up, the metal sides of a Hercules plane burst into shards and fell burning into the sand.
When his family found him, he was weak but mending. The Authorities could stuff themselves if they wanted to court martial him. He was never doing another tour. He listened without surprise to what had happened to his unit in the desert. They could not see what he could. On the wall beside his bed was a brown-framed photograph of his troop with a new mascot, a large Alsatian dog.
© Barbara Comiskey 2009