Not Just a Soldier’s War Read online

  He grins happily. ‘T’ be honest, I wondered if we might just find a bit of quiet beach.’

  She punches his arm playfully. ‘I reckon you knew about this place all along.’ His legs are beautiful. She never saw David’s legs bare. He too had long legs, were they as firm? Was David’s behind as tightly moulded as Ozz’s? Were the hairs on David’s limbs thick and golden? Did his chest have that silky sheen? She withdraws her eyes from Ozz’s splendid body as he joins her in the umbrella’s shade. She smiles to herself, recalling what her old teacher had said about lust being as dangerous as the first Mrs Rochester. Is it so terrible to have erotic thoughts? Why shouldn’t she feel like this about Ozz, or any man? It was only nature at work.

  She sits up and drinks some more of the warm, sweet lemonade, which satisfies her thirst. But the greater need won’t be so simply satisfied. What would happen if she and Ozz did it together? So far theirs has been a platonic friendship, uncomplicated by sex. How easy it would be to demolish this quite extraordinary relationship. What is it that makes it so special? It wasn’t as if they had known one another for very long. It was special for him too, she was sure of that. If he made an attempt to make love to her, and if she let it happen, they might still have a relationship worth having, but it would not be the same thing that they had now. Was it worth the risk? She doubts that she would stop him.

  Ozz says, ‘I shall try to promote the idea of siesta when I get back home. Great idea. I’m going to take a dip. Coming?’

  ‘I was just thinking.’

  ‘You’d be more comfortable if you’d unbutton or peel something off. There’s nobody here but us chickens.’

  She would like that. She remembers herself and Bar Barney as young girls, marvellously naked, dangling their feet in the chickweed-covered water, their bare hot skin catching the slightest movement of cool air. But to be naked so close to such a desirable man would be more complicated.

  ‘I burn easily.’

  He raises his eyebrows in amusement. ‘Hey, you’re not shy. And I know you’re not a prude.’

  ‘Of course I’m not shy.’

  ‘That’s OK then.’

  ‘Really, I’m not. I’m cooling off nicely.’

  ‘I shouldn’t try to nuzzle you or anything like that.’

  ‘Of course. I know that.’

  ‘That’s OK then.’

  Sitting up and looking out at the blue water is relaxing, helps her resist more speculation about what would happen if he touched her breast or her Venus’ mound. The sea is inviting.

  ‘Andy?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m…’

  ‘What?’

  He looks at her, smiles and pauses. ‘Ah, noth’n’, noth’n’ at all that won’t keep. Except that, it seems a bit of a waste if you’re going to keep your knickers on and your tits covered when we could have a nice bit of a dip. I’m not the enemy, sweetheart, and I don’t reckon you and me need to make a big thing about this John Thomas and pussy stuff.’ He laughs. ‘I could’a put that a lot bloody better.’

  At that moment, all that she needs to do to change the nature of their relationship is to put out a hand and say something about Lady Jane, make an allusion to Lawrence perhaps. He was allowing her to make the decision.

  ‘Them knicks ain’t going to make much difference, but keep’m on if you feel better. But I don’t intend keeping my bum covered when I swim.’

  ‘Ozz Lavender!’ It takes her only seconds to bare her body. The ultimate freedom. It is wonderful.

  Ozz looks at her appreciatively, she thinks, objectively. ‘That is one hell of a body, Andy.’

  He slips easily out of his running shorts, then stands up, holding out his hand to help her to her feet. ‘C’mon, let’s play the scene for the big production – Adam and Eve in Eden before the Fall.’

  For a brief second she doesn’t move but looks directly at his flat belly, narrow hips and then to his hairy groin where his penis hangs its head. He is as masculine as could be and isn’t lusting for her.

  The first Mrs Rochester stops rattling her bars. Eve takes his proffered hand and stands up. They run into the sea like children, splashing and kicking up the water.

  The sea is soothing and wonderfully relaxing. As she might have guessed, Ozz swims gracefully, with an athlete’s powerful over-arm action, his face turning sideways in the water only every six or eight strokes, always the same side, flicking his mouth clear of the water to take in air. The sea at home had not often been warm, so that much of her swimming had been in the woodland pool, thirteen strokes in one direction and twenty in the other, in fresh, green and glassy water shared on good terms with the abundant pond life.

  Here the sea is warm as bathwater, and she plunges herself like a spear towards the sandy bottom which is further than it appears from the surface. As she touches the floor of the bay, Ozz, in a stream of bubbles, touches her hand and points to a shoal of tiny fishes. She shows him a creature that has burrowed in the sand but kept a single open eye on watch.

  They surface together. She has never seen him look so happy. Like recognizing like, she has suspected that his cheerfulness is a bit of a put-up job, and now she sees that it is. This is the real Ozz. She likes him more than ever. ‘If I take the chauffeuring job, do you think I get to keep the golfing umbrella?’

  ‘Make it a condition when you see Alex.’

  ‘I shall still keep pushing for my big truck or ambulance.’

  ‘I never doubted that.’

  Treading water, he holds out his hands. She takes them and they float facing one another, the hot sun on their backs, the cool bright water beneath them, gently letting the little wings of waves move them about as they might have moved seaweed or jelly-fish.

  Soothed and happy, she at last gets out and sits patting herself dry with her skirt while Ozz takes another leisurely swim along the line of the shore. When he too comes out of the water, his normally unruly hair slicked to his head, she sees that he has a partial erection which is gone by the time he reaches the shade of the umbrella.

  ‘Did y’ ever feel this good?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘I’m not as fit as I should be, I should stop smoking.’

  ‘So stop.’

  ‘What the hell, I enjoy the hunt for the weed.’ He passes her the bottle of wine and then drinks from it himself. ‘Y’know what I reckon, sweetheart? One day, when it’s all over, we’ll come back, shall we?’

  She hugs her knees and joins him in his fantasy. ‘You bring the umbrella and some of the famous Lavender wine. Choose a good year.’

  ‘Vintage 1930, my old man’s proud of that, didn’t want to let it go. He’s still got some put down.’

  ‘And I’ll bring a big basket of strawberries of my own picking. Red Gauntlets. I’ll select the ones that reached their peak overnight and gather them just as the dew has dried and the sun has had time to warm them, and a little bowl of sugar and some heavy cream which I shall have skimmed myself.’

  He rolls in her direction, his long body moving so beautifully. It does not arouse her sexually, nor does their closeness appear to do anything to stimulate him. Join me in Eden, he had said. For long moments they look into one another’s eyes. ‘Eve, sweetheart, I wish I could give you anything in the world you ever wanted.’

  There is something so poignant about the moment that she feels lost in it. It is as though they have found a kind of love that is so extraordinary that it is more profound than anything they might have had if they had given themselves up to sex. It would have been so easy, the temptation to put out a hand and caress him had been there until she had plunged to the sandy bottom of the bay. Putting her arms around his neck, she kisses him gently on the cheek. ‘I think you have, Ozz.’

  He makes no attempt to hide the fact that his eyes are brimming with tears. He just continues to search her face as though it is important to fix every eyelash and pore in his memory.

  They settled propped up, back to back, drinkin
g warm fruity wine directly from the bottle. When the sun grew too hot for them they retreated to the pine wood and the car.

  ‘What’s with the strawberries, then?’

  ‘Some people whom I love own strawberry fields. It was Elysium and I was a child invited to stay. You can’t imagine.’

  ‘Do you think we could have my little Welsh mam visit our umbrella? She’d bring figs and pomegranates.’

  Eve laughed. ‘Seedy fruit gets her in, I adore figs.’

  He kissed her lightly on the cheek as she got into the driver’s seat. ‘Thanks for telling me about the strawberries, sweetheart.’

  ‘Dear Ozz, you’re a bright light in a naughty world.’

  He gave her a brief smile before he turned to the matter of maps and routes. ‘You ever meet my old man – you tell him that.’

  Six

  Ken Wilmott took his exercise, as he had done several times recently, by visiting Las Cibeles, statues that in peacetime foreign tourists to Madrid would make a point of visiting, though now they were hidden within a wall of sandbags.

  ‘I say, Wilmott? Ken? It is you, isn’t it? Remember me?’ A tall, fair man holding a camera joined him.

  ‘Dave Hatton, as I live and breathe. Good to see you again. How did the film go?’

  ‘I’m told that it went down a treat in the provinces. Helped raise a hell of a lot of money, helped to raise awareness too. What are you doing in Madrid? Oh, I see. Winged. Bad one?’

  ‘No, just one in the arm, but it’s OK. I’m ready to get back, but I wanted to have one last look at the women coming back from the front. Amazing, aren’t they?’ He indicated the first of the young Madrileño women making their way back along the Gran Via from a spell of duty defending the Madrid front line, which was now close to University City. The road was so frequently under artillery attack that it was impossible for vehicles to use it, but it was a matter of pride for the young militia women to come back home that way.

  ‘They’re why I’m here. I hope Picture Post is going to do something on the militia, the Madrileño women. I want to get pictures.’

  ‘That’s just how my sister and her friends used to come home from the factory, arm-in-arm, looking as though they hadn’t got a care in the world. You’d never think that these girls were quite likely toting rifles an hour ago.’

  They came in little groups, chattering and laughing, cautious, but not cringing from the shelling. Their uniform consisted of khaki dungarees, a red pañuelo knotted about the neck, a tasselled militia cap and zapatos on their feet.

  Hatton focused his camera on a group of chattering and laughing women who saluted with raised fists when they saw him. He said, ‘An army of girls returning from the front shod in canvas and grass.’ He ran across to one group, then beckoned Wilmott to join them. ‘Do me a favour, Ken, I want you at the centre of the group.’ Ken, with his arm in a sling and surrounded by laughing and dishevelled young women, would, the photographer felt sure, be a perfect icon for Aid to Spain people to sell at fund-raising events. ‘Would you like some copies to send to your people?’

  ‘I would. They won’t recognize me, I haven’t had a photo taken since I’ve been here.’

  ‘Where will you be?’

  ‘I’m going back to my unit in the morning.’

  ‘With your arm in a sling?’

  Ken Wilmott took his arm out of the sling and flexed his fingers. ‘Just show. My trigger-finger works now, that’s all I need. If I give you the address, do you think that you could send the photo to my brother?’

  ‘Of course.’

  * * *

  The following day, Lieutenant Wilmott, his wounded arm dressed and bound, went back to his battalion. The battle ground was now at Brunete.

  ‘Ken, owd man. Thank God you’re back. I thought I was destined to pop off with bloody Greek and Polish in my ears. Hardly seems to be a bugger left who speaks English.’

  Ken, having been away sufficiently long to forget how haggard they had all become, thought that Harry Pope looked sick with fatigue. ‘You don’t look too good, Harry.’

  ‘I’m not the only one. Everybody’s got something wrong with their guts. Bloody flies everywhere, filthy bloody things picking up our own shit and bringing it back to us. It’s a vicious bloody circle. You get the runs till you feel your veins are pumping sand.’

  ‘Still short of water?’

  ‘Worse than ever. Same with the food trucks, they try to get in after dark, but ammunition gets priority. What water there is goes right through you.’

  That night a food lorry did get through. The tailboard of the cookhouse truck was let down and was at once surrounded by men of all nationalities. ‘See what I mean, owd man? Talk about the Tower of Babel. I don’t know where they all come from, must have got cut off from their own lot or their own lot is all dead.’

  Over the days that followed, Ken Wilmott spent his time choking on dust and firing at the enemy as the battalion fought on under the beating sun, and flies bred remorselessly on the filth and fragments of human carrion. When the battle ended, the battalion was sent for a few days to San Lorenzo de El Escorial to gather its strength.

  Lieutenant Ken Wilmott and Captain Harry Pope were now the two senior officers. They sat and deloused the seams of their clothing, thankful not only to be alive, but to be out of the relentlessly beating sun, away from the stink of human corruption and decomposition, away from filthy, biting, contaminating flies and the acrid smoke of burning stubble. Water was still not easy to find, but at San Lorenzo there was at least a little for drinking.

  The two men were withdrawn and silent, for there had been a roll-call of the battahon. Out of the six hundred who had gone into the attack, only forty-two paraded.

  ‘What d’you reckon, Harry, were you and me saved so as we can pick fleas off each other like a couple of monkeys?’

  ‘You and me were saved, me lad, for no other reason than we must have been better at ducking than the other five hundred poor bastards.’ He inspected his nails and started on them with a sharp pocket knife. ‘Did you ever see yourself as an officer?’

  ‘Did I hell as like. My old oppos back home would give us a good rollicking if they knew. Captain of the footie team is all I ever aimed to be. What did you do before you came out here?’

  ‘I were a preacher.’

  Ken Wilmott halted in his close inspection of trouser seams. ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘No, it’s true. In owd days they used to call us hedge-bottom vicars, no church, just God’s good air for a church and a stile for a pulpit. Only difference these days is we has a factory for a parish and the works gate is where we preach.’

  ‘But I never heard you say anything about religion, nor Jesus or God.’

  ‘No, I preached socialism – fair shares and justice – equal pay for equal work – land belongs to everybody, nobody can own it – a better life here and now because there’s nowt else to come after. D’you think we should shave our heads? It’d make a lot of sense, and you should get that beard off you and all. Ha’ you still got that fancy self-stropping razor? Come on, let’s do it.’

  Ken Wilmott’s thick, brown curls, hacked off with borrowed scissors, blew away on the hot wind, after which he sat wincing as the dry razor rasped over his scalp. Then they swapped places and Harry Pope lost his nit-packed hair. ‘How about you? Did you have a job?’

  ‘I had an apprenticeship.’

  ‘Bie! They say it’s better to be born lucky than rich. What’s your trade?’

  ‘Undertaker.’

  The young captain laughed. ‘You’re having me on! I’d’a said you’d be a chap that spent most of his life in the open.’

  ‘So I have the last couple of years, but that’s what I am. Served all my time at the Co-op Funeral Parlour.’ They sat side by side again, each from time to time running his hand over the strange head of pale skin. ‘I thought about that several times back there.’ He indicated with his head, meaning back at Brunete where the rest of the b
attalion had ended up dead. ‘If any of those chaps had popped off in their home towns they’d have had all that stuff we used to do – combing them, sprinkling them with lavender oil and stuff – instead of which, because they stopped a bullet somewhere else, their bits and pieces are shovelled into a pit all together. I thought to myself, well, Ken Wilmott, that makes your job look pretty shittin’.’

  ‘No, no, I’ll not have that. Treating your dead with respect due is civilized, same as providing for your mental cases and owd folks decent-like. To me, that’s what being a socialist is. Shovelling our own lads – and some of the others and all – into a pit is the best we can do under the circumstances.’ He placed a handkerchief knotted at the corners on his bare head and with the knife started on his toenails. ‘Did you wear a top hat for it?’

  ‘No, pall-bearers go bare-headed, you couldn’t do it in a top hat.’

  ‘No, I suppose you couldn’t. Bie heck, this place is an education, not a day goes by without you pick up something useful.’

  ‘And you pick up a lot that’s not.’

  A quiet moment in a noisy war. Two young idealists did what would have been unthinkable in most other circumstances, they shaved one another of their pubic hair without embarrassment.

  Seven

  Nothing moved. The only sounds were small ones coming from the expanding metal of the Mercedes.

  Although summer was running down, the weather was still very hot. It was quiet on the road.

  Eve sat on the running-board of her car, her body still trembling from a violent vomiting attack, her face running with sweat, her hands cold and clammy. It would pass.

  Nothing moved.

  Drinking from a bottle of warm water laced with bicarbonate of soda, she shuddered as her stand-by medication touched her taste-buds. She hated the stuff, but it was the best antidote to these bilious attacks, the only antidote for most of the time. Bouts of sickness were as nothing in the greater orgy of disease, injury and death. Many of the foreign volunteers Eve met experienced the same day-to-day problems with their food. Although she kept in mind Sophie Wineapple’s advice ‘stick to the beans’, meat of any sort was tempting. Other Americans she had met put all stomach disorders down to flies, and poor hygiene in the kitchens.