Pat Barker - Noonday

“You will ring when you get there?” she asked.

“If I can get through.”

A few minutes later, Rachel came down with a small battered suitcase, the same one Kenny had arrived with a year ago, though the clothes inside were all new. She’d given him a few Boy’s Own annuals and the toy soldiers. Kenny’s eyes widened when he opened the paper bag and saw them.

“What do you say?” Elinor asked.

“Thank you.”

He was hugging them to his chest as if they might be taken back at any moment.

“Come on, then,” Paul said.

Kenny went round the circle, shaking hands. “Thank you for having me.”

It was an oddly stilted performance, heartbreaking in a way. It brought tears to Paul’s eyes. Perhaps Kenny had, after all, grown fond of this family who’d taken him in so reluctantly?

But he didn’t look back or wave as they drove away.

As they were leaving the village, Paul glanced sideways at Kenny. “I’d try to get some sleep if I were you. It’s a long way.”

But Kenny was wide awake, both hands resting on the seat, surreptitiously stroking the leather. Of course, he wouldn’t have been in a car very often, if at all. Even in these circumstances it was a treat to be savored. He leaned against the glass, peering at passing trees and fields. Once or twice, Paul thought he might have nodded off, but no. Kenny’s eyes were strained wide with excitement. No hope of sleep there.

He didn’t seem to want to talk, which was probably just as well: Paul needed to concentrate on the road. So far, he’d managed to avoid blackout driving altogether. In London, if he had to be out late, he took a taxi or walked. Now, he drove slowly, his headlights casting narrow beams of bluish light in which moths and insects constantly danced. On either side of the lane, hedges and ditches shelved steeply into darkness. He crouched over the wheel, straining his eyes to see into the gloom. So far the blackout had killed more people than the raids; and no wonder: you couldn’t see people until you were right on top of them. But the trouble with staring into darkness, if you do it long enough, is that you start seeing things. Like looking into no-man’s-land in the last war: in the end, you could imagine anything lurking out there. Don’t look straight at it, he used to tell sentries, the young, inexperienced ones who were almost too terrified to blink. You’ll see more if you look slightly to one side. Unfortunately, looking slightly to one side of the road wasn’t an option. Though there was this to be said for it: the need to concentrate stopped him thinking about the possible idiocy of what he was doing. Possible? Elinor might have asked. And he had to admit it: this did feel like driving into a trap.

He looked at Kenny. Ha, eyelids drooping, and about time too. He went on driving as smoothly as he could until, at the next bend, the boy slid sideways and slumped against his arm. Asleep, at last.

—

CENTRAL LONDON WAS reassuring. The streets, though quiet, seemed almost normal, or what passed for normal these days. The few cars he saw had little, piggy, red eyes; they puttered cautiously along, while taxis careered past, as if they owned the entire city — as indeed they did. Petrol rationed for private cars, buses scarce. This was what you saw everywhere. The change was in the sky: beyond the black ridges of the rooftops, a red, sullen glare was growing and spreading, lit at intervals by the orange flashes of exploding bombs. Searchlights everywhere, but no fighter planes that he could see; and no guns.

He parked the car and persuaded Kenny to get out. At first the boy was groggy with sleep, but Paul knew he’d need to keep an eye on him. Kenny was wound up to such a pitch of excitement he was quite capable of slipping away and trying to reach home tonight. He’d have no trouble finding the docks; all he’d have to do was walk straight towards that red glow. But into what kind of hell?

Paul tried several times to turn the front-door key, but it no longer quite fitted. Perhaps the wood had warped, something like that; you couldn’t get a locksmith for love nor money. He sucked the key, pursing his lips against the sourness of the metal, but when he tried again, it turned. A breath of cool, stale air. The house had been empty only a few days and yet already it had started to forget them. Letters and newspapers littered the mat. Stooping, he picked them up and put them, unopened, on the hall table. Kenny stepped over the threshold as cautiously as a cat. Now the drive was behind him, Paul felt suddenly very tired.

Closing the door on the merciless moonlight, he went round the drawing room checking the blackout curtains were in position and switching on the lamps. Then he turned to look at Kenny, who was staring blankly around the strange room. Now what? What on earth am I supposed to do with him? The sirens were sounding for the second time that night. They ought, really, to go to one of the public shelters, but he couldn’t face going out again and he didn’t think Kenny could either.

“We’ll sleep in the hall,” he said. “We’ll be safe enough there.” A few weeks ago, when the nuisance raids started, he and Elinor had dragged a double mattress downstairs. They’d lined the walls with other mattresses and cushions from the sofa and he’d made sure all the windows were taped against blast. Of course, none of this would protect them from a direct hit, but then neither would most of the shelters. “Why don’t you settle yourself down? I’ll see if I can find us something to eat.” And drink.

In the kitchen, he opened and shut cupboards, found half a loaf of bread (stale, but it would have to do), a couple of wizened apples, a slab of Cheddar just beginning to sweat and a bottle of orange juice. Then he poured himself a large whisky and carried the tray into the hall.

Kenny had tipped the toy soldiers out of the bag and was arranging them on a strip of wooden floor between the mattress and the drawing-room door. He looked up, white-faced, on the verge of tears again but blinking them back hard. “Why can’t we go tonight?”

“Because it’ll be absolute chaos and we’ll only get in the way.”

“We could help.”

“I don’t think so. Anyway, I doubt they’d let us anywhere near.” Thumps and bangs in the distance. “Look, I’ll take you first thing in the morning, soon as it’s light. Sorry, Kenny, best I can do.” A nearer thud shook the door. “Come on, have something to eat, it’ll make you feel better.”

Kenny was tearing off a chunk of bread with his teeth. “We could play.”

“Play?”

Kenny nodded towards the soldiers. Well, why not? It would take his mind off it. So they munched apples, cheese and bread, drank whisky and orange juice, moved cohorts of little figures here and there until, eventually, even Paul became absorbed in the game. The background clumps and thuds blended in really rather well. Kenny was the officer, of course. Paul was a not-very-bright NCO. Now and then, an explosion rattled the window frames — and, yes, he was afraid. Nothing like the fear he’d experienced in the trenches; though, in one way, it was worse: he was experiencing this fear in the safety of his own home, and that meant nowhere was safe. More than once, he was tempted to go out and try to see what was happening, but he didn’t want to interrupt the game — it was so obviously helping take Kenny’s mind off the bombs — and so they played on, metal armies advancing across strips of parquet floor, rather more quickly than they’d done in life; Passchendaele and the Somme played out on the floor of a house in Bloomsbury. “Yes, sir!” Drifting clouds of smoke obscured the salient. “Right you are, sir!” A shell landing in a flooded crater sent sheets of muddy water thirty feet into the air. “Going out to take a look, now, sir!”