Уильям Николсон - Motherland

Larry Cornford pulls off his helmet to reveal a tumble of golden-brown curls. His broad friendly face looks round the yard, his eyes blinking. He sees an unfamiliar jeep.

‘Thanks, Mary.’

The farmer’s wife shakes out the contents of her apron and the chickens make a rush for the scraps. Larry pulls his satchel out of the motorbike’s pannier and strides into the farmhouse kitchen, wondering who his visitor might be.

Rex Dickinson, the medic with whom he shares this billet, is sitting at the kitchen table, smoking his pipe and laughing uneasily. With his owl glasses and his long thin neck and his teetotalism Rex is always the butt of jokes, which he takes with patient good humour. Everyone likes Rex, if only because he wants so little for himself. He’s so modest in his needs that he has to be reminded to use his own rations.

Facing Rex, dark against the bright rectangle of the kitchen window, is a lean figure Larry recognises at once.

‘Eddy!’

Ed Avenell reaches out one lazy hand for Larry to grasp.

‘This housemate of yours, Larry, has been putting me in the picture about divine providence.’

‘Where in God’s name have you sprung from?’

‘Shanklin, Isle of Wight, since you ask.’

‘This calls for a celebration! Mary, put out the cider.’

‘Cider, eh?’ says Ed.

‘No, it’s good. Home-made, with a kick like a mule.’

Larry stands beaming at his friend.

‘This bastard,’ he says to Rex, ‘ruined the five best years of my life.’

‘Oh, he’s one of your lot, is he?’ says Rex, meaning Catholics. He himself is the son of a Methodist minister. ‘I should have guessed.’

‘Don’t put me in a box with him,’ says Ed. ‘Just because we went to the same school doesn’t mean a thing. The monks never got to me.’

‘Still protesting?’ says Larry fondly. ‘I swear, if Ed had been sent to a Marxist-atheist school, he’d be a monk himself by now.’

‘You’re the one who wanted to be a monk.’

This is true. Larry laughs to remember it. For a few heady months at the age of fifteen he had considered taking vows.

‘Has Mary fed you? I’m starving. What are you doing here? What outfit are you in? What kind of uniform do you call that?’

The questions tumble out as Larry settles down to eat his delayed supper.

‘I’m with 40 Royal Marine Commando,’ says Ed.

‘God, I bet you love that.’

‘It gets me out of the army. I think I hate the army even more than I hated school.’

‘It’s still the army, though.’

‘No. We do things our own way.’

‘Same old Ed.’

‘So how are you winning the war, Larry?’

‘I’m liaison officer attached to First Division, Canadian Army, from Combined Operations headquarters.’

‘Combined Ops? How did you get in with that mob?’

‘My father knows Mountbatten. But I don’t do anything interesting. I get a War Office-issue BSA M20 and a War Office-issue briefcase and I ride back and forth with top secret papers telling the Canadians to carry out more exercises because basically there’s sod all for them to do.’

‘Tough job,’ says Ed. ‘You get any time to paint?’

‘Some,’ says Larry.

‘First he wants to be a monk,’ Ed says to Rex, ‘then he wants to be an artist. He’s always been a bit touched in the head.’

‘No more than you,’ protests Larry. ‘What’s this about joining the commandos? You want to die young?’

‘Why not?’

‘You’re doing it because you want to give your life to the noblest cause you know.’ Larry speaks firmly, pointing his fork at Ed, as if instructing a wayward child. ‘And that’s what monks do, and that’s what artists do.’

‘Seriously, Larry,’ says Ed. ‘You should have stuck with bananas.’

Larry bursts into laughter again; though in fact this is no joke. His father’s firm imports bananas, with such success that it has achieved a virtual monopoly.

‘So what are you doing here, you bandit?’ he says.

‘I’ve come to see you.’

‘Is your journey really necessary?’

These days it takes real clout to wangle both a jeep and the petrol to run it.

‘I’ve got an understanding CO,’ says Ed.

‘Will you bunk here tonight?’

‘No, no. I’ll be on the road back by ten. But listen here, Larry. I was trying to track you down, so I stopped at the pub in the village. And guess what happened?’

‘He’s been struck by a thunderbolt,’ says Rex. ‘Like St Paul on the road to Damascus. He was telling me.’

This is Rex’s dry humour.

‘I met this girl,’ says Ed.

‘Oh,’ says Larry. ‘A girl.’

‘I have to see her again. If I don’t, I’ll die.’

‘You want to die anyway.’

‘I want to see her again first.’

‘So who is she?’

‘She says she’s an ATS driver from the camp.’

‘Those ATS girls get around.’

Arthur Funnell appears in the doorway, his shoulders slumped, his face wearing its habitual expression of doom.

‘Any of you gents seen a weather forecast?’ he says. ‘If it’s more rain, I don’t want to know, because I’ve had enough and that’s the truth.’

‘Sunny tomorrow, Arthur,’ says Larry. ‘Back into the seventies.’

‘For how long?’

‘That I can’t tell you.’

‘I need a week’s sunshine, you tell ’em, or the hay’ll rot.’

‘I’ll tell them,’ says Larry.

The farmer departs.

‘He wants help bringing the hay in,’ says Rex. ‘He was telling me earlier.’

‘He should get himself some Canucks,’ says Larry. ‘They’re all farm boys. They’re bored to death in the camp.’

‘Who cares about the hay?’ says Ed. ‘What am I going to do about this girl?’

Larry pulls out a pack of cigarettes and offers one to Ed.

‘Here. Canadian, but not bad.’

They’re called Sweet Caporal. Rex lights up his pipe as Larry pulls gratefully on his after-dinner cigarette.

‘I’m stuck in bloody Shanklin,’ says Ed. ‘There’s no way I can get back over here till the weekend.’

‘So see her at the weekend.’

‘She could be married by then.’

‘Hey!’ exclaims Larry. ‘She really has got to you, hasn’t she?’

‘How about you find her for me? Give her a message. You’re the liaison officer. Do some bloody liaising.’

‘I could try,’ says Larry. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Corporal Kitty. She’s a staff driver.’

‘What’s the message?’

‘Come to Sunday lunch. Here at your billet. You don’t mind, do you? And the other girl can come too. The horsey one.’

‘How’s she horsey?’

‘Looks like a horse.’

He stubs out the last of his cigarette. He’s smoked it twice as fast as Larry.

‘Quite decent,’ he says.

‘So who’s laying on the lunch?’ says Larry.

‘You are,’ says Ed. ‘You’re the one billeted on a farm. And Rex too. I’m issuing a general invitation.’

‘Very big of you,’ says Larry.

‘I’ll be out on Sunday,’ says Rex.

‘Sunday your big day, is it, Rex?’ says Ed.

‘I help out here and there,’ says Rex.

‘I’ll do my best,’ says Larry. ‘How do I reach you?’

‘You don’t. I’ll just show up here, noon Sunday. You produce Kitty. But no sticky fingers in the till. I saw her first.’

*

Next morning a pale sun rises as promised, and by eight o’clock a mist hangs over the water meadows. Larry rides his motorbike the short distance to the big house with his helmet off, wanting to enjoy the arrival of summer at last. Soldiers in the camp, stripped to the waist, are playing a raucous game of volleyball. The pale stone towers of Edenfield Place gleam in the sun.