She came and stood before me. Her face softening back to a girlish sweetness. I doubt she’d ever seen a Tommy cry. She put her hand out to touch my cheek. To wipe a tear. The tenderness of it stung. Shocking as a bolt from a current. ‘Terribly sorry,’ I said again, my breath coming in puffing gasps. I wiped my face as best I could. She patted my arm. Her hand no bigger than a monkey’s paw. And she said, ‘Johnny. Johnny. No cry, Johnny.’
It was the name that did it. Not the thought that Johnny Pierpoint had probably been through earlier. It was the way she said the name. It gave me the jitters. Like the Japs calling to me and Maxi, ‘Johnny, help me, Johnny.’ It soon pulled me together. ‘Don’t call me that, my name’s not Johnny,’ I told her, which sent her stepping smartly back away from me once more.
Nothing for it, I just threw the money at the wretched whore, then left.
Forty-five
Bernard
Nothing to do on the sea journey back home. Hundreds of servicemen wandered aimless on the decks. What a change from the adventure of the journey out. Frigates circling. Lifeboat drill every day. U-boat watch. Chaps up on the deck in twos, staring at the sea in case of something odd. Not a clue what we were looking for, most of us having only ever been familiar with boating ponds. But now, returning, mine was not the only dull-eyed gaze that drifted to the horizon as I thought of home. Could I go back to the bank after what I’d experienced? Silly, I know, but I thought of the Wellington bomber. Thirty-six thousand five hundred pounds of metal, Perspex and cloth. Wings that spanned eighty-six feet. Nose to tail in sixty-four. Two engines and room for six crew on board. Bolts as big as my fist on some parts. Propellers that dwarfed me. Wheels wider than an arm span. When she flew, her massive propellers spun so fast they were invisible. She would edge along the ground until thirty-six thousand five hundred pounds of metal, Perspex and cloth lifted into the air as light as a handkerchief. What could compare with that sight for me now? My old bicycle with its dicky chain that I used to fix and fuss over in the backyard? A bus? Tiny miniature creature. A tube train? You could step into a tube train with one hop. You didn’t have to climb up seventeen dizzying feet just to get into it. A car? A lorry? Now, all puny as tin toys.
I slept in a lifeboat under the stars. Not in a hammock below the water-line with hundreds of others. Shoving and pushing for space. Arguments. Shocking language. Endless talk of women – Johnny-Pierpoint-style: what they could and would do to them once they got home. I gave my cigarettes to an old sweat who worked the ship. In return he knocked on the lifeboat before the decks were swabbed. Warned me out before I was caught or washed overboard. Swarthy fellow. Came from Argentina. Didn’t speak English. Conducted the whole transaction with gestures and mime.
Just as on that ship out years before, two days in, everyone got seasick. A wretched nausea. Head like a sponge. Stomach in my boots. Constant dull tang of salt on my lips. Nowhere to fix my sight. Giddy. Praying for just one settled moment. A minute to stand firm. But nothing stayed still. Least of all the grub in my belly. The old sweat laughed. Slapped me on the back and used his tattoos to insult me. Pointed to something on his left arm – a badly drawn bird of some sort. I got the idea. Couldn’t blame him: all day vomiting over the rails of the ship I was a pitiful sight.
Thought nothing of it at first. Too sick to worry. A bite, perhaps, from some rogue mosquito. Could feel it under my fingers as I urinated. Just a small lump. But the next day it was considerably bigger. I borrowed a torch from a chap. Needed to get a clear look. But I could only get the worthless torch to blink on and off. Under this stroboscope in the gloom of the lifeboat it appeared not much smaller than a halfpenny. I convinced myself it was the flashing light that gave it that dimension. In the light of day, locked secure behind a toilet door, the enormous throbbing sore had produced a hat of pus. I felt it pop like a grape in my pants as I sat down in front of another meal of sausage and potato. It was ringed with a blue line clear as if drawn with a pencil. I vomited twice. Once when I saw its seeping pus matted into my pubic hair. And the next time as I wrapped the sore in a bandage. It was unbearably itchy and clammy inside this wrapping. And useless – a small spot of yellow brown muck had soon stained it through. When I eventually unwrapped it, the bandage clung like paper to a sticky toffee. I bit the leather of my belt to stop me yelling out. Nothing for it. I had to face it. I knew what this angry pustule on my penis was.
The medical officer, on the boat when we first came out east, had warned us RAF recruits. Ulcers, inflammations, colourful discharge, swellings. All the result of sexual relations with the wrong type. He’d given us lectures. Colourful pictures were passed round. Lurid photographs. Quite shocking. Parts of the body unrecognisable as human. Turned some of the chaps a sorry shade of grey. Had them worried. Frowning. Thinking back. Stopped their bragging for a while. One of them, I recall, fainted – blamed seasickness. ‘Always use this,’ the MO had said. Took a rubber sheath out of his breast pocket. Waved it around in the air.
Some joker had shouted, ‘Is there just the one, sir?’ Got everyone laughing.
Apoplexy, mental failure, nervous disease, blindness. And, of course, eventual death. Syphilis!
The inevitable result of my sexual relations with the wrong type. A small girl with black eyes harmless as a baby’s. The wretched whore in Calcutta – still left clinging on me. Syphilis! In the day, I felt this ulcer’s presence like a galloping pulse. And at night we both wept. Syphilis! I couldn’t imagine what Queenie would say to that. I tried to conjure her admonishment. A wagging finger. A tutting tongue. A turned back, perhaps. All useless when faced with the shame of a husband riddled with the clap.
Clinging to the rail of the ship I looked down into the sea. Only one step would be needed. A big one. Over the rail, off the side of the hull. It would be days before I was missed. No one would see my scrawny figure slip under the foaming wake of the ship. If they did they’d blink twice, thinking the ocean light was playing tricks on them. It was the only honourable thing for a man in my position to do. They would have to declare me missing. And Queenie, like Maxi’s two sons, could keep me as I was. A middle-aged bank clerk who’d thought his life was set. Who even started whistling once he was part of a team. An RAF aircraftman fighting a just war. An Englishman proud of his country, right or wrong. Sitting there at the rails of the ship the moonlight was brighter than an English February sky. All night I waited for courage or despair to overwhelm me. To slip me into the navy sea. But neither came.
Would the military now have to drop me off at home by truck? A spectacle in the street (everyone out to stare). A parcel being delivered to number twenty-one. Would two men march me up the steps and knock at the door? Queenie untying her apron, would she smile at her hero’s return? Would they tell her that syphilis had made me lose my mind? Would it now be Pa who hoped that if someone found it they’d bring it home for me? And would they have to give me a little shove to get me inside?
1948
Forty-six
Bernard
I expected Queenie to be shocked. Could hardly blame her. Husband back from the dead. But I didn’t foretell that ‘appalled’ would play for quite so long around the corners of her mouth. Sitting there clutching her stomach. Speechless. Pale. Shaking. Eyes rimmed red. She looked older. More careworn. She’d put on some weight. I’d watched her wither away during the early part of the war. Day by day. I was not the only husband who’d felt impotent about that. So a little plump looked well on her.