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The boy with the pierced eyebrow slaps the palm of one hand with the back of the other and makes a loud noise in the back of his throat. He says, for fucksake, didn’t our parents used to make stuff for a living?
On the front step of number twenty-two, the girl with the short blonde hair and the small square glasses is watching the boy from number twenty-four cleaning his trainers. He is sitting on his front step, his hands wrestling in a bowl of hot soapy water, thrashing around as though the shoe were trying to escape, she wonders why he’s so keen to get them clean, she watches the soap bubbles sparkling in the air like a flung handful of crushed glass.
Across the road, outside number twenty-three, the boy with the big hair and the grazes is watching the other boy put together another careful pyramid of paper and sticks and charcoal, shielding it with his hands as he lights it. He says what’s with the yellow glasses anyway, where’d you get them from? and the other boy takes them off and looks at them, help the aged or something he says, try them on. He puts them on, the boy with the big hair and the grazes, and the other boy says the woman in the shop said they used to give them to mental patients, like to cheer them up or something. The boy with the big hair looks around at the street, grinning, everything gone a strange saturated yellow. He takes them off and hands them back, he says well mad and he rubs his eyes as if to get rid of any leftover tint. They both turn back to the barbecue just as the pyramid of paper and sticks stops smouldering again, and the boy with the big hair and the grazes says fuck this I’m going down the shop to get some fire-lighters or something. The other boy says no hold on hold on, but when he turns round the big-haired boy has already picked up his skateboard and stepped it onto the pavement. He watches as he kicks up some speed, bending his knees as the wheels knock over the uneven slabs, holding his hands out slightly and, as he passes number seventeen, leaning the board towards the road, shifting his weight suddenly, pushing down with his back foot.
And they all watch, the people outside number seventeen, the two girls at number twenty-two, the man with the burnt hands, the twins in the road, the boy in the yellow sunglasses, they watch as he lifts off the pavement and the board swings up beneath him, his body crouching suddenly and his hand grabbing at the illustrated underside of the board before the wheels hit ground again and the momentum carries him forward towards the shop.
The boy on the tricycle stops pedalling, he drifts to a halt as he turns and watches the skateboard pass, his mouth is open and he doesn’t understand what he has just seen, when he tries to tell his mother later he won’t know what words to use, and she won’t understand what he is trying to say, so she will stroke his hair and fetch him a drink of juice.
The boy with the skateboard jumps off and disappears into the shop, and the boy outside number twenty-four goes back to cleaning his trainers and the girl next door looks at him again.
She says excuse me sorry and he looks up, his hands stop moving, she says sorry but what are you doing, it’s way too nice a day to bother with that isn’t it, and he holds up a dripping shoe with his hand inside, like a glove puppet coming out of a bath, he points to a dark brown stain curled like a foetus across the white toe. He says I’m trying to get rid of that, these trainers are new and I’m not having that staying on there.
The girl says what is it, curry sauce or something, and he smiles and says no, he says no I was out last night and the bloke I was with got into an argument with someone. He puts the wet shoe down and turns to face her, he leans towards her slightly so she can hear him better. He says I knew it was trouble but I couldn’t split because he’d given me his drink to hold and I couldn’t see anywhere to put it down.
He wipes sweat and soap from his forehead with the bottom of his t-shirt, he says next thing I knew was he was biting a chunk out of this bloke’s nose, I couldn’t believe it, there was like blood and shit all over the place he says, and now I can’t get my trainers clean he says.
The girl with the glasses says what’s that noise? and they turn and they listen and they look at each other.
They listen, and there’s a rumbling from somewhere, becoming a rattle, a rattle like the window-frames of a drum and bass club, they can’t tell what it is but it sounds like it’s coming from further up the main road, they stand and they look, it sounds like a car without tyres rolling down the hill, the twins stop playing cricket and run to the end of the street, even the man with the burnt hands stands and looks and the noise is now so loud that none of them can speak, the rumble rattle hudderjudder, and they hear shrieks and whoops and yes alrights and
And a dozen chairs roll past the end of the street, office chairs with swivel bases and ergonomically adjusted backrests, racing down the steep main road, eleven riders clinging onto them, trying to steer by stabbing their feet onto the tarmac, hollering encouragement to each other, bracing themselves for the inevitable fall, an empty chair following behind them like a riderless horse at the Grand National, and then they are gone, the noise fading quickly, and the people in the street turn to look at one another, blinking, saying what the and then carrying on with what they were doing, talking, drinking tea, eating doughnuts, getting ready to go to work, playing cricket.
A bus stops at the end of the street, the doors open and the old couple from number twenty step awkwardly down. The old man says thankyou driver, turning to touch his hat as the doors flop closed. As the bus pulls away, a young boy squeezes his face through a window on the top deck, spitting out a spray of phlegm which falls towards them accompanied by the high-pitched wail of children’s laughter.
She looks at him, she feels his body stiffen like a stretched rope, she squeezes his arm and they turn and walk away.
She doesn’t say anything as they walk down the street, she doesn’t need to and she knows he doesn’t want her to.
He takes a handkerchief from his breast pocket, wiping at the thick string of spit on his sleeve, carefully folding the red silk and holding it out to one side.
The boy with the tricycle rattles towards them, head down, and they step neatly around him.
He walks calmly, his back as straight as ever, his breathing a little loud but his face still impassive.
They cross the street to their front door, he says which one of you two is Ian Botham then, but he says it quietly and the twins don’t know who he’s talking about.
And it’s only when they have closed the front door behind them that he says what did I do? I didn’t even look at them. I know love she says, I know, and she takes him by the arm and they walk up the stairs.
And as he stands by the coat-hooks and takes off his hat, he sees a spade and a fork through the open cupboard door, he thinks of the things he’s never talked to her about, he thinks of the medal propped on the windowsill, he thinks about her walking back from the allotments on her own.
He turns and watches her moving
through to the kitchen, he remembers those first few months and years after he’d come back, when she’d asked him, pleaded gently with him to tell her something, to not hide it all but to share it with her.
He takes the handkerchief through to the bathroom and rinses it under the hot tap, squeezing and soaking it until the steam rises.
He didn’t tell her anything, because there was nothing to tell. There was no answer to the question of what did you do in the war, because he had done nothing. After years of training and preparation, after days of tension and a terrified journey across the channel, after all that he had done nothing and he had nothing to tell. He had travelled halfway across Europe, and when it was over he had travelled back, but somehow the war had passed him by, as if he’d been asleep when the others had started and he’d spent the whole time trying to catch up.
At the beaches of Normandy he had leapt into the cold sea and waded onto the desecrated sand with no more need for caution than on a daytrip to Blackpool. Across northern France and Belgium he had marched in time along cratered tarmac roads, past flattened woodlands where single bare trees stuck uselessly out of the desolate soil like dead men’s stiffened arms jabbed accusingly at the sky. He had passed through towns captured for the fourth time, crossed rivers bridged by floating pontoons and planks, seen farmhouses broken open and smoking from battles which had only just moved on, eaten meals with bandaged men heading in the other direction.
He wrings the hot water from the handkerchief and hangs it from the line strung over the bath. He looks at his hands, wide flat hands with uncalloused skin and neat fingernails, and he scrubs them clean with a nailbrush.
He’d dug graves. Right the way across the new map of Allied Europe he’d dug graves, following in the costly trail of liberation, his shovel cutting into the bloody soil and carving holes just deep enough for the uniformed bodies of young men. They had a chaplain assigned to their unit, an older man who would run short of breath as he scurried from hole to hole to offer blessing and sanctification to each fresh mound of soil. Between them all, himself and the rest of the men in his unit, they could dig hundreds of graves in a day, spread out across a field like farmworkers, their shovels rising and falling in unison, the chaplain standing beside each one in turn, naming each body if he could, commending each blank face to the company of saints as the soil shushed and fell back into the ground.
And they did this all the way to Berlin, the crack and thump of battle always off to the east, a fresh supply of bodies rolling back to them on flatbed trucks driven by men with faces as undisturbed as their own, handing over halfphrases of information with the bodies and the marker-sticks. Pushing through steady they’d say, or bit of a tight one, or got the bridge last night. And a few days later they’d be there, where it had been steady, or tight, or at the bridge. Sinking shovels into soil, beckoning over the redfaced chaplain, painting a name and rank onto a marker-stick ready for the stonemasons. Or, if there wasn’t a name, writing Unknown beneath the date.
Sometimes, when he was sure nobody was looking, he would make up a name, look at a man’s young face and decide a name on the spot, like a fresh baptism, trying to disguise the brutal anonymity of what they were doing.
