Mark Dunn - We Five

Ruth’s brow furrowed. “How can you make light of such a serious matter?”

“Because I ain’t yet seen the serious part of it. These are, no doubt, five lads what spend their dismal days delivering coal to housewives and housemaids and grumpy old men in cardigan sweaters, and then spend half their nights freezing their bums off on draughty rooftops watching for incendiaries, and where and when, I ask you, are they ever to meet interesting girls — that is, girls what haven’t had all the life crushed out of them by falling walls and timbers? You must admit, myself excepted, that the five of us are quite dishy to look at — and very much alive —and who wouldn’t want to take us out for a whirl on the dance floor some night?”

“First, Jane, I so tire of hearing you denigrate yourself. You are pretty in your own way and let’s have done with that ! Second, these boys don’t know a thing about us except for what we look like.”

“But isn’t that what the male species considers first? How a woman looks. Later a bloke will have himself the chance to discover if the girl who attracts him’s got a charming personality or a sharp mind or find out if she be C of E or Presbyterian, or — or casts her vote for Labour or Tory, but not until later. I should be rather pleased if they’re looking at us and talking about us and scheming over some way to meet us. There’s only one chap in my life in the bloody here and now, and he is, according to all those who meet him, a worthless invertebrate. I will confess to you, Ruth, that sometimes I come to the parsonage pretending to drop in and visit with you, when it’s really Mr. Mobry I most fancy seeing — not that I find him especially attractive or got himself any more personality than a goat, but what he does have to commend him is this: he’s a man— and not a man what also happens to be my brother, and I should like to have the privilege, at this stage in my young life, to simply sit and exchange a fine how-do-you-do with any man who just happens to be halfway male. I’ve even given thought to darkening the door of that Fatted Pig myself, but I hesitate to do so, as I know the sort of woman who most often mooches into London pubs alone, and I’m not keen on being put in her league. Nevertheless, I hunger for the companionship. You do not. I know it. I’ve always known it. I don’t judge you for it. But you shouldn’t judge me for craving it.”

Ruth sat quietly for a moment, digesting what her friend Jane had just said. “And does it not bother you,” she finally said, “that these men, who’ve taken such a curious interest in us — that they’re conscientious objectors? That they refuse to risk their lives for their country as so many other young men are doing these days?”

Jane shook her head. “There are those who don’t think that war should be the cure for all the evils of the world. They believe God created man for a much higher purpose than slaughtering other members of his species.”

Ruth nodded. “There are those conscientious objectors who believe exactly as you say. They have my respect, they do. But there are also conchies who are conchies for one reason only: cowardice. They won’t take up arms because they’re frightened witless by the possibility of getting themselves killed. They think they have a better chance of surviving this war if they can keep themselves off the battlefield and out of the Navy and R.A.F. altogether. These men I do not respect.”

Jane tried not to laugh, but she simply couldn’t help herself. “Of course, Ruth, any one of these conchie cowards could get hisself gassed to death or blown to bits in his very own bed by the Luftwaffe on any night of the week. They’re dropping the most insidious bombs now. Some are timed not to go off until after the firemen and rescuers arrive! You can be just as dead here on the home front as you are in the trenches fighting for a cause. And then there’s this, lovie: the fact of what it is that you and I and Maggie and Carrie and Molly do sixty hours a week: we help make the instruments of war. In the end, any of these five conchies might woo — and who knows? — perhaps even win the hand of a girl what helps Britain do that very thing he’s supposed to be against!”

“Life is full of ironies,” Ruth sighed. “ And delusions. We could all be dead tomorrow, you know. And yet we go to bed each night expecting that fate will be kind to us for one night more — that we’ll rise the next morning to gather ourselves together to take the six-thirty to the Filling Factory. Your brother passes out after his binges, assuming that he too will rise to drink another day. Life goes on — life beautiful, life ugly and unseemly, and most people can only follow the pattern of life most familiar to them and act upon the instincts that go along with it. But I am not ‘most people.’ I am not the instinctive creature you are, Jane. I fancy something different from my life, something that has nothing to do with the men I’ve told you about — something which I cannot put into words. There is something missing inside me, but I don’t know how to fill the void.”

“Friendship with the four of us ain’t enough for you, Ruth — at least for now?”

Ruth patted the top of Jane’s hand — sweetly, not condescendingly. “For the present, you’re all more than enough, but it can’t be that way forever.”

“I understand. I do, Ruth. I understand because sometimes I feel the same way — about the five of us, that is. That we’re all just circling and circling and waiting to land. But whilst I’m circling I can’t help wondering if there just might be some fine-looking bloke inside the Fatted Pig Tavern what might like to get to know me a little better, seeing’s how we’re all just passing the time.”

Ruth frowned. “Oh, I’m sure there is. I’m sure those five have already divided us all up like Christmas crackers.”

“Don’t talk about Christmas. It’s just going to make me hungry. I scrambled some powdered eggs this morning, but I couldn’t eat a bite. I detest powdered eggs, Ruth, I do.” Jane sighed. She looked out the show window past the items Lyle had hung there, which seemed to make sense only to him: a small (and broken) Wilkinson Sword lawn mower, several rusty tools and other largely unidentifiable metallic oddments, and a broken pushchair without tyres. “It would be just our luck if we all ended up missing the six-thirty by only a minute or two. Then We Five would have to wait a full hour until the straggler bus comes along. Of course, I know a good place to spend that hour.” Jane raised an eyebrow impishly.

“Jane Higgins, sometimes I think you’re no better than your ne’er-do-well brother.”

“That is absolutely the worst thing you’ve ever said about me!”

At that moment said brother rose, with a stretch and a groan, from his royal couch. He stumbled toward the front of the shop, blinking his eyes against the bright sunshine flooding in through the window and combing his fingers through his matted hair. Glancing at a clock on the wall — an antique Victorian clock diminished in value by its cracked glass cover — he declared, “It’s getting on for six thirty and you’re still here.”

“That’s right, Lyle, we’re still here,” replied Jane in a dull voice.

“Then you’ve missed your bus by my guess, and should have plenty of time to put on a pot of coffee.”

“There’s no coffee, Lyle,” said Jane, still without any show of exasperation. “There was none at the market. We are apparently in the middle of a coffee shortage.”

“Tea, then.”

Ruth eyed her friend, wondering how she would respond.