John Lawton - Riptide

‘I’m more of a Bach man than a Bing man,’ he said, straining for joviality.

‘And then there’s Maurice, our Reen’s husband. Pilot Officer Micklewhite.’

A big man, as big as Stilton-all women marry their fathers? Cal had already forgotten which was Reen and which was Rose-a pale blue RAF battledress draped across the chair behind him, black braces and a blue shirt on which he’d popped the collar stud.

‘Based at Hornchurch,’ he said by way of explanation. He might just as well have said Timbuctoo. Only when he added, ‘So close, it might as well be home,’ did Cal draw the conclusion that Hornchurch must be somewhere near London.

‘Our Miss Greenlees. Our Joanie.’

The woman blushed scarlet behind spectacles as thick as milk bottles.

‘First floor back. Clerk to the Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths, Finsbury Town Hall. So if you ever want to get married in a hurry, Mr Cormack, you know where to go.’

Stilton hooted at his own joke. If it were possible the poor woman blushed the more-a female Mr Bell, spinsterly, spidery and forty. They were what some families might have called ‘paying guests’-though he could not conceive that his would need or use such a term-but to Stilton they were ‘the lodgers’.

‘The twins. Kevin and Trevor.’

Cal shook hands with two young ratings in naval uniform. Short hair, ruddy skin, firm grips. On the back of the door above their heads, two flat-top blue Navy caps bearing the simple inscription ‘HMS Hood’.

‘Our Vera.’

A big, bold, blonde young woman of twenty or so. No maidenly blushes, no flirtatious, fluttering eyelashes. A manly handshake, and a terse ‘take me as you find me’ tone of voice.

‘And last and least, our youngest-Terence.’

A spotty seventeen-year-old.

‘Tel,’ the boy said. ‘And I’ll be enlisting next year.’

From the far end of the room his mother spoke.

‘Over my dead body. I got four kids in uniform. That’s quite enough for one family.’

Cal looked around the room. Mrs Stilton set a large pie in the centre of the table, and seated herself opposite her husband. Cal counted up. They were thirteen at table. Two lodgers, two sons-in-law, the Stiltons themselves, six children and only three of them in uniform. Surely she knew how many kids she had in uniform? But there was a fourteenth, unoccupied place. On the far side of Cal between young Tel and his father.

‘I’m not waiting,’ Stilton’s wife said. ‘She’ll be late for her own funeral, that one.’

And no further explanation of ‘she’ was offered.

Dishes circulated. A mess of hot cabbage. A bowl of butterbeans doused in oily margarine. A slice of pie.

One of the boys in uniform reached for the dish.

“Ands orf! Manners! We got guests. I don’t want you showing me up! Mr Cormack, do help yourself.’

Mrs Stilton beamed at him, glared at Kev or Trev. Cal helped himself to a small portion of the as yet unnamed pie. Whatever it was, it smelled great.

Kev and Trev duly served, one of them began to tear his piece of pie apart with knife and fork.

‘What’s up, son?’ his father asked.

‘What’s up? What’s up? I ain’t got no meat in my bit! That’s what’s up!’

He and his twin looked accusingly at their mother.

‘No, you ain’t,’ she said.

‘Wot?’

‘You ain’t go no meat. And neither’s nobody else. It ain’t a pie with meat. It’s a pie without meat.’

The bonhomie of paterfamilias that had threatened to set like rictus on Stilton’s face vanished as he prised up the crust of his portion and confirmed the bad news.

‘It’s called Woolton pie. There’s carrots and parsnips and a nice white sauce and lots of goodness.’

‘Goodness. Wot the bleedin’ ‘ell’s goodness? I want meat. What’s a bleedin’ pie without meat?’

Mrs Stilton moved quickly for a big woman. She leaned across her daughter and son-in-law and whacked each of the twins across the backs of both hands with her wooden spoon. Fast as a tommy-gun.

‘Wossatfor?’

‘That’s for language-‘ow many times I have to tell you? We got guests. Mr Cormack don’t come here to hear you swear. Now eat up or put it back. ‘Cos it’s all you’re gettin’! And if you wanted meat you should have handed over your ration books like I asked you the day you both come ‘orne on leave. I spent half the afternoon down the butcher’s. Queuin’ in the Mile End Road. You know what I got? Quart o’ pound o’ bacon. That’s what I got.’

The other twin, nursing a bruised knuckle and a grievance, spoke for the first time.

‘Woss wrong with bacon pie then?’

‘Bacon pie. Without eggs? I never ‘card of such a thing. No. Bacon’s for your dad’s breakfasts. He gets up every day at the crack o’ dawn and goes out to earn the money to keep this family together. You expect me to send ‘im orf without a good cooked breakfast inside ‘im? Course not. You eat your pie. Like I said. It’s full of goodness.’

The repetition of ‘goodness’-a word in which none but Mrs Stilton seemed to believe-reduced the table to a silence. Pilot Officer Micklewhite broke it.

‘Will you be joining us, Captain Cormack?’

‘Joining you?’

‘The war,’ said Micklewhite. ‘Will the States be getting stuck in with us? Shoulder to shoulder?’

‘Nah. They’ll be late just like the last time,’ muttered one of the twins. A look from his father shut him up.

‘Manners, Maurice. Captain Cormack can’t be expected to answer questions like that.’

Cal looked quickly around the table. Every man in the room, Vera too, was looking back at him. It didn’t look as though he could duck the question except by hiding behind Stilton’s intervention-but then he’d no wish to duck it, he’d heard it too often, it was time to take it at the flood.

‘It’s OK, Walter,’ he said. ‘I’m happy to answer. I can’t speak for America, I can only speak for myself. In the last week I’ve been asked the same question by complete strangers. A guy in the street, standing on Westminster Bridge. The tailor who made the suit I’m wearing. I said nothing. I rather wish now I’d spoken. England seems to need to know. I can’t say I blame England. But-I’m here. I’m in the war. I’m with you. Maybe not shoulder to shoulder. And right now not in uniform. But I’m here. As far as I’m concerned I’ve been fighting this war since I was posted to Europe in 1939. If you want mo to answer for my country-well, I guess I began by resenting the question-I was wrong and I don’t any more-but all the same, all you’ll get is my personal opinion.’

‘Which is?’

‘We’ll be in this war by Christmas.’

Cal could scarcely believe it. They cheered and stomped. Everyone but the Stiltons themselves, who seemed baffled and bemused by the behaviour of their children, not quite sure if it was ‘manners’ or not. And as the hubbub died, one pair of hands clapping, and a figure in the doorway he had not seen before. A tall redhead with deep green eyes, clapping him fiercely and smiling ear to ear.

‘Well said,’ she said. ‘Whoever you are.’

Cal rose, the only man in the room on his feet, while Edna Stilton scuttled back to the stove for a warm plate.

‘I already said. Be late for your own funeral, you will.’

‘My eldest,’ Stilton resumed his list. ‘Katherine.’

The young woman advanced on Cal-a blueish-black uniform he couldn’t quite place. Sergeant’s stripes on the sleeve.

‘Kitty,’ she said. ‘Kitty Stilton.’

After the motley array of Stilton daughters, nothing had prepared him for the woman he now met. She put her sisters in the shade.

‘Calvin Cormack,’ he said softly.