always apply â never mind any more that service dress should be worn in the sergeantsâ mess during working hours, no flying clothes, and never mind any more that your chaplain should be regarded by all ranks as their friend and adviser â only this is still the truth: Alfred Francis Day will be nothing but wrong.
You will always be wrong.
Alfred abandoned the Conan Doyle, shut it up and put it on the ground: carefully, because you should be kind to books.
He sighed. Then he sighed again. Because he could.
Lucky Iâve got a nice nature. Lucky Iâm not easily annoyed.
Heâd sat in a school where he wasnât intended to learn for eight senseless years. Heâd said prayers which served no purpose and must have taken days from him: weeks, if you added them together. Heâd read about Physical Culture and the Great Sandow and Charles Atlas and the Mighty Young Apollon who kept an eye out for weak fellows who were discouraged and then gave them muscles and tendons of tempered steel. Alfred had saved and sent away for a chest expander, propelled himself through more days and weeks of repetitions with it and he maybe had gained a little weight, but then heâd been growing anyway, heâd been young. And heâd worked in his fatherâs fish shop at cold, foul, stupid jobs.
Lucky altogether, really, arenât you? Canât think why you donât back horses and be done with it â lose the last of yourself: both your suitcases, get rid of all your excess weight. A regular Jonah, you are.
But only to yourself.
You never have to jinx anyone else, thatâs not allowed. Better to keep away if you thought you might.
Oh, and the waiting, you couldnât underestimate the practice heâd got in at waiting, he could win cups for doing that: waiting to get something, or leave something, or sign for something, or to grab hold of his ration of something, or waiting to go and do much the same, but somewhere else. Now, if anyone kept him hanging about for more than a minute or so, heâd find himself laughing out loud, howling sometimes, as if he was having the finest fun possible, because otherwise he knew heâd do some kind of damage: violence would be unavoidable. Safer to laugh and have them think youâre cracked.
Twenty-five years old and laughing in queues. Twenty-five years old and already heâd done too much, or else too long, more than you should. Twenty-five years old and heâd never decided anything for himself.
No. That wasnât true: heâd made, he thought, four decisions. Four in a lifetime; and you could wonder about them, you could raise doubts with regard to their merits. At least they were his, though, all his own â the four moments when heâd acted like a man of vitality, health and endurance, the sort of chap Physical Culture should produce.
Alfred had decided to join up before he was called up.
Alfred had decided to be a tail gunner and nothing else.
Alfred had decided to kill his father.
Alfred had decided heâd come back to Germany and the fake camp.
At least you couldnât call me half-hearted â not once I make up my mind.
Heâd only prayed before the first one, being then at an age when he did still talk to God. And there were special circumstances that might have made anyone call down extra help, because he was only fifteen when the war broke out and it might have been over too soon, he might have missed it. There could have been another agreement like Munich, or it could have stayed phoney and fizzled out, he hadnât been able to tell at the beginning. So heâd prayed for the war to be serious: good and long.
And donât think I havenât thanked myself since. And God.
That Sunday morning in September, the weather so good, looking set for an Indian summer, and the church bells sounding and a conscious stillness up beyond them, a sweet ache of a day â he wouldnât forget
You will always be wrong.
Alfred abandoned the Conan Doyle, shut it up and put it on the ground: carefully, because you should be kind to books.
He sighed. Then he sighed again. Because he could.
Lucky Iâve got a nice nature. Lucky Iâm not easily annoyed.
Heâd sat in a school where he wasnât intended to learn for eight senseless years. Heâd said prayers which served no purpose and must have taken days from him: weeks, if you added them together. Heâd read about Physical Culture and the Great Sandow and Charles Atlas and the Mighty Young Apollon who kept an eye out for weak fellows who were discouraged and then gave them muscles and tendons of tempered steel. Alfred had saved and sent away for a chest expander, propelled himself through more days and weeks of repetitions with it and he maybe had gained a little weight, but then heâd been growing anyway, heâd been young. And heâd worked in his fatherâs fish shop at cold, foul, stupid jobs.
Lucky altogether, really, arenât you? Canât think why you donât back horses and be done with it â lose the last of yourself: both your suitcases, get rid of all your excess weight. A regular Jonah, you are.
But only to yourself.
You never have to jinx anyone else, thatâs not allowed. Better to keep away if you thought you might.
Oh, and the waiting, you couldnât underestimate the practice heâd got in at waiting, he could win cups for doing that: waiting to get something, or leave something, or sign for something, or to grab hold of his ration of something, or waiting to go and do much the same, but somewhere else. Now, if anyone kept him hanging about for more than a minute or so, heâd find himself laughing out loud, howling sometimes, as if he was having the finest fun possible, because otherwise he knew heâd do some kind of damage: violence would be unavoidable. Safer to laugh and have them think youâre cracked.
Twenty-five years old and laughing in queues. Twenty-five years old and already heâd done too much, or else too long, more than you should. Twenty-five years old and heâd never decided anything for himself.
No. That wasnât true: heâd made, he thought, four decisions. Four in a lifetime; and you could wonder about them, you could raise doubts with regard to their merits. At least they were his, though, all his own â the four moments when heâd acted like a man of vitality, health and endurance, the sort of chap Physical Culture should produce.
Alfred had decided to join up before he was called up.
Alfred had decided to be a tail gunner and nothing else.
Alfred had decided to kill his father.
Alfred had decided heâd come back to Germany and the fake camp.
At least you couldnât call me half-hearted â not once I make up my mind.
Heâd only prayed before the first one, being then at an age when he did still talk to God. And there were special circumstances that might have made anyone call down extra help, because he was only fifteen when the war broke out and it might have been over too soon, he might have missed it. There could have been another agreement like Munich, or it could have stayed phoney and fizzled out, he hadnât been able to tell at the beginning. So heâd prayed for the war to be serious: good and long.
And donât think I havenât thanked myself since. And God.
That Sunday morning in September, the weather so good, looking set for an Indian summer, and the church bells sounding and a conscious stillness up beyond them, a sweet ache of a day â he wouldnât forget
Similar Books
