Pat Barker: The Ghost Road

A friendly, lolling, dog-on-its-back sort of sea. You could swim in that and not feel cold. He started to wander along with no idea of where his feet were taking him or why. After a few minutes he rounded the headland and looked along the half-circle of South Bay at the opposite cliffs, surmounted by their white Georgian terraces. Some of his brother officers were up there now, living it up at the most expensive of the town's oyster bars. He'd been there himself two nights ago, but tonight he didn't fancy it.

Closer at hand were souvenir shops, coconut-shies, swing-boats, funny hats, the crack of rifle fire, screams of terror from the haunted house where cardboard skeletons leapt out of the cupboards with green electric light bulbs flashing in the sockets of their skulls. If they'd seen… Oh, leave it, leave it.

Behind him, along the road that led to the barracks, were prim boarding-houses with thick lace curtains that screened out the vulgarity of day-trippers. You couldn't go for a walk anywhere in Scarborough without seeing the English class system laid out before you in all its full, intricate horror.

He heard a gasp of pain beside him, and a hand clutched his sleeve. A red-haired woman, flashily dressed and alone. 'Sorry, love, it's these shoes.' She smiled brightly at him. 'I keep going over on the heel.'

She rested her arms beside his on the railings, her right elbow lightly touching his sleeve.

'No, thanks.'

'Why, you been offered summat?'

She muttered on. It had come to summat if a decent woman couldn't have a rest without being… pestered. And who did he think he was anyway? Couple of bits of gold braid, they think their shit smells of violets—

'I don't pay.'

A whoop of laughter. 'Well, you're certainly not getting it free.'

He smiled, allowing a note of pathos to creep into his voice. I'm going back to France next week.'

'Aw, piss off.'

For a moment he hoped she might take her own advice, but she didn't. They stood side by side, almost touching, but he was miles away, remembering Lizzie MacDowell and the first day of the war. 'Long Liz' they called her, for, among the girls who worked Commercial Road, most of them reared in the workhouse, Lizzie's height — a full five feet no less— made her a giant. She was his best friend's mother, a fact not at the forefront of his mind when he met her in a back alley on his way home from the pub and told her he'd enlisted.

— Good lad! she'd said.

Lizzie was a great enthusiast for the Empire. And somehow or other he'd gone home with her, stumbling up the passage and into the back bedroom, until finally, in a film of cooling sweat, they'd lain together on the sagging bed, while the bedbugs feasted and a smell of urine rose from the chamberpot underneath. She'd told him about her regulars. One man came every month, turned a chair upside-down and shoved each one of the four legs in turn up his arse. Didn't want her to do anything, she said. Just watch.

— Well, you know what a worry-guts I am. I keep thinking what'll I do if he gets stuck?

— Saw the bloody leg off

— Do you mind, that's the only decent chair I've got.

'What's so funny?'

'Just thinking about an old friend.'

Money had not changed hands on that occasion. He'd been Lizzie's patriotic gesture: one of seven.

Poor Lizzie, she'd been very disillusioned when five of the seven turned out not to have enlisted at all

'Do you fancy a bit of company, then?'

He looked at her. 'You don't give up, do you?' And then suddenly the shrieks, the rattle of rifle fire, pub doors belching smells of warm beer were intolerable. Anything not to have to go on being the oil bead on this filthy water. 'All right.'

She was telling the truth about her shoes. If she hadn't clung to his arm she'd have fallen over more than once as they climbed the steep steps to the quieter streets behind the foreshore.

'What do they call you?' she asked, breathing port into his face.

'Billy. You?'

'Elinor.'

I'll bet, he thought. 'D' y' get "Nellie"?'

'Sometimes, ' she said, her voice pinched with dignity. 'It's just round the corner here.' Perhaps she sensed he was having second thoughts for her arm tightened. "S not far.'

They went up a flight of steps to the door. As she fumbled with the key he looked round, and almost stumbled over a cluster of unwashed milk bottles, furred green.

'Mind ,' she said. 'You'll have everybody out.'

The hall dark, smelling of drains and mice. A face — no more than a slit of sallow skin and one eye — peered through a crack in the door on his left.

'You'll have to be quiet,' Nellie whispered, and then, catching sight of the face just as the door closed, yelled, 'There's some right nosy bastards round here.'

They walked up the stairs, arms round each other's waists, shoulders and hips bumping in the narrow space, catching the breath of each other's laughter, until her tipsiness communicated itself to him and all doubt and reluctance dissolved away.

She unlocked the door. A naked overhead bulb revealed a tousled bed, a chair piled high with camisoles and stays, a wash-stand and — surprisingly businesslike, this — a clean towel and a bar of yellow soap.

'You won't mind having a little wash.'

He didn't mind. He was buggered if he'd rely on it, though.

'Do you know,' she said, unbuttoning her blouse, 'I had one poor lad the other week washed his hands?'

Prior tugged at his tie, looking around for somewhere to put his clothes, and noticed a chair by the fireplace. Rather a grand fireplace, with a garland of flowers and fruit carved into the mantel, but boarded up now, of course, and a gas fire set into it. He was pulling his half-unbuttoned tunic over his head when he noticed a smell of gas. Faint but unmistakable. Tented in dark khaki, he fought back the rush of panic, sweat streaming down his sides, not the gradual sweat of exercise but a sudden drench, rank, slippery, hot, then immediately cold. He freed himself from the tunic and went to open the window, looking out over sharp-angled, moonlit roofs to the sea. He told himself there was no reason to be afraid, but he was afraid. All the usual reactions: dry mouth, wet armpits, skipping heart, the bulge in the throat that makes you cough. Tight scrotum, shrivelled cock. Jesus Christ, he was going to have to put a johnny on that, talk about a kid in its father's overcoat. He heard his own voice, awkward, sounding younger than he felt. 'I'm afraid this isn't going to work.'

'Aw, don't say that, love, it'll be al—'

Phoney warmth. She was used to pumping up limp pricks.

'No, it won't.'

He came back into the room and looked at her. Her hair had fallen across her shoulders, not in a cloudy mass but in distinct coils, precise crescents, like you see on the floor of a barber's shop. He picked up one of the coils and wound it round his fingers. Red stripes marked the places where the bones of her stays bit into the skin. Catching the direction of his glance, she rubbed ineffectually at them. He wasn't behaving as clients generally behaved, and any departure from the usual run of things made her nervous. Two people's fear in the room now. But her gaze remained steady, surprisingly steady, when you thought that only five minutes ago she'd been too tipsy to walk straight. Now … well, she'd had a few, but she certainly wasn't drunk. Perhaps she needed the mask of drunkenness more than she needed drink.

'Have I got a spot on the end of me conk or what?'

'No,' he said stupidly.

They stared at each other.

'Wouldn't hurt to lie down,' she said.

He finished undressing, reached out and tentatively took the weight of her breasts in his hands. So far, he realized, he hadn't had the shopping list, the awful litany that started whenever you met a woman's eyes in Convent Garden or the Strand.'… and five bob extra to suck me tits.'