Mark Dunn - We Five

“I still think the bleeder should be made to pay for what he did to my sister.”

Carrie got quiet for a moment. Then she said, “You’ve changed, Lyle. You didn’t used to be this way.”

“You’re right. I didn’t used to be this way. I didn’t used to care. Well, about Jane at any rate. Seeing her like that— that way —it, it changes things. You fancy my eggs? Poached on toast. You’ll like the way Jane makes ’em.”

There was great tenderness in Carrie’s smile. “Eat your poached, Lyle. We both want you to have them.”

Earlier that day, Vivien Colthurst had stood next to the table in the factory canteen where Maggie and Ruth sat sipping from their smoking cups of tea and not speaking. “I knew I shouldn’t have brought the two of you in for the rest of the day shift. Your minds clearly aren’t on your work.”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Maggie answered reflexively. Then she added, “Work helps. It keeps me from thinking too much about my missing mother, who went from being amusingly barmy to certifiably mental all in one week.”

Vivien grabbed a chair and sat down in it back-forward the way men sometimes do. “First, Maggie — your mother isn’t mentally insane. She’s romantically insane, like one of those Thomas Hardy heroines — like, like Tess of the Dubers. ”

Ruth rolled her eyes. “For love of heaven, Vivien! Mrs. Barton isn’t at all like a Thomas Hardy heroine. I wish for once you’d read a whole book and not just the jacket description. What was the second thing you were going to say?”

“That if Maggie can’t concentrate on her work — that goes for you too, Ruth — there’s going to be an accident. She might die. You might die. This being a munitions factory, dearies, we could all die. I wish I’d left the two of you back at the cemetery.” Ruth and Vivien rose together. “If you’d like to use my Riley to go back to the city, my three ride-alongs and I can manage with the seven-thirty bus.”

“You’re very kind, as always,” said Ruth. “Perhaps we will. You’re right. Maggie and I do have a lot on our minds right now.”

Vivien touched Ruth on the shoulder. “I know you’ll make the right decision, love. About whether to join the A.T.S. And it will be your decision.”

“Yes, I know,” said Ruth, trying to smile. Through brimming eyes she added, “We — Cain and I — we were good friends, but we were just friends.”

The colour in Maggie’s face had suddenly changed. It had nothing to do with the factory’s mercury vapour lighting, which tended to make everyone look a little like the witch in The Wizard of Oz . There was a lighter cast to it. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she announced. “I think my bloody mother has turned my entire digestive tract into a warzone.”

“I’ll fetch you a bromide, love,” said Vivien.

After Vivien Colthurst dashed off, Ruth sat down next to Maggie, who was staring with an empty gaze. “She said she hated me,” said Maggie.

“Who?”

“Molly. I remember her exact words: ‘I hate you so much right now, Maggie, I can’t even see straight.’”

“She didn’t mean it. I know she didn’t.”

“What if something happens to her in Worcester and I don’t get to tell her how sorry I am for provoking her?”

Ruth touched Maggie comfortingly. “Nothing will happen to her. She’ll come back and you two will patch this thing up in no time. Good God, Maggie, you’ve had tizzes with every one of us at one time or another. They always blow over.”

Maggie nodded and tried to smile. “I don’t enjoy being a bitch.”

“Of course you don’t, pussy. Of course you don’t.”

Mr. Matthews wasted no time in sacking all three men. He told them he had been fully informed about what they had been up to and he had no doubt that all this business had contributed to the ghastly deaths of the other two young men who’d been in his employ. “I don’t want to see the bloody lot of you ever again. I thought you was all good lads. I find out instead that you’re a bunch of sodding buggery reprobates who stick your bleeding pecker spanners in the works of everything you do. And I never held with your cack-handed way of delivering my coal neither — skimming and overcharging and keeping the difference for yourselves. Don’t look at me that way. I’ve been on to you blighters for some time. I’ve been against this war since both my boys was killed, but I’d like to say something you’ll never hear me say to another soul: Go and bloody enlist. Now get out of my sight.”

Holborne and Castle and Katz got out of Matthews’ sight. First they went to Funland, which wasn’t far from Matthews’ warehouse, where they played the noisy pin-tables and a couple of games of Radio Billiards. Hardly a word was exchanged in the hour they were there, as if each needed some private time to recover from the shock of what had just happened. Even after Holborne lost half a bob trying to scoop up a cigarette case he fancied with the electric crane, and gave up, muttering to himself that the game was rigged, not a word was said in either agreement or commiseration.

However, they more than made up for their reticence once they reached the Fatted Pig.

Though its publican, Mr. Andrews, looked at them suspiciously when they showed up at a time when they should have been busy making deliveries for Matthews, he served them beer nonetheless and took their money.

“I wager it was Pardlow,” said Will. “He told Ruth and then she told Matthews.”

“Blooming pity we can’t ask him,” said Tom. “The poofter’s gone and made that just a little difficult.”

“Or it could have been Ruth it came from,” suggested Will. “She told somebody else and they told Matthews.”

“All I know is that someone’s going to pay,” grumbled Tom.

“Cor!” cried Jerry Castle, tipping backward on two legs of his chair. “Will you give a listen to yourselves? Cain and Pat are dead— dead. We just had our jobs terminated by that human tin of stinking pilchards, who only hired us in the first place because we were happy to sit the war out on our arses — this whole escapade one bloody disaster — and then the two of you still refusing to surrender the football and exeunt the bloody field. I’m exeunting the field, lads. I’m joining the army and kill me some sons-of-Huns. But first I’m going to the one I wronged and set things to rights, so I don’t have that on my conscience.”

“You have a conscience, Castle?” laughed Katz. “What’d you do? Dig one out of the shilling bin at Woolworths?”

“You’re right. I’ve got no conscience. I never had a conscience. My kind is expendable, gentlemen. But here’s the difference between me and the two of you: I know I’m a worthless placeholder in this world gone crackers. The two of you — you’re both too daft or just too full-blooming deranged to see it in yourselves.”

Will made as if to push Jerry backward, toppling him to the floor, but Jerry quickly righted himself. “So they win,” said Will with a sardonic smile.

“The girls? Okay, they win. Ask me if I care a rap one way or another.”

“Pat is dead,” pressed Tom. “And that girl’s father killed him.”

“I’m not like Cain,” said Jerry. “I never fancied putting a wig on the lad and taking him for a twirl round the dance floor at the Palais. In fact, if you want the truth, I always found Pat to be a bloody nuisance and Cain a sexual miscreant, and I know you won’t deny it, Holborne, because you once saw the man in action. Why else did he always turn pansy yellow every time you went at him? I don’t care to avenge anyone’s death. I just want to break up this miserable little society of ours and let each of us go our bloody way.”