‘No, sir.’

‘Look here, Bligh, I’ve got eight letters to write. Eight families to inform of these deaths. And I want to know whether I’m talking about troublemakers or decent men. Now, are you going to help me or not?’

Forty-three

Bernard

No doubt Maxi’s sons will cherish the letter from Flight Lieutenant Moon. It would almost certainly say that their father died on active service. A corporal in the RAF. A boy in blue. For ever remembered that way. A framed photograph on the mantelpiece. A Burma Star in a case. Their father died fighting for his country on active service in India. What better words could there be for a son to cherish? They could be proud of their dad.

There were times I wished I’d died alongside him in that basha.

I was the only Englishman left in the prison. Most of the others had gone home or were moved somewhere more secure. The two-week sentence would soon be up, the sergeant had said. Take the punishment, then forget about it. You’ll be going home soon, just think about that. Two weeks, that was all.

Then the RAF shut me in a cell with four Indians. Coolies. This leading aircraftman – this Englishman – locked up with the loose wallahs, the thieves, the scoundrels the RAF took such pains to guard against. Every one of my cellmates was a common criminal, caught with his little brown fingers in something. Could even have been the men who murdered Maxi. But I had the same kind of mattress as them, rolled on to a stone floor hard as a biscuit ration. Same tin mug and plate. Same single spoon. Prison wasn’t a hardship for coolies. Regular meals. No work. They slept all day. Brushed aside the bugs that crawled over them. Jabbered away in their tongues. The withering heat in the small cell didn’t trouble these natives. Or the dust that circled the foetid air like a sandstorm. Used to it. But for an Englishman . . . The gritty sweat rolled down me night and day. Stinging into my eyes. Dripping salty into my mouth. Itching me senseless. Seeping into my mattress until it was as soggy as a biscuit dunked in tea.

Had to stay alert around these larcenists. Couldn’t shut my eyes to sleep, not even for the briefest doze. Had a pen and an air-letter, you see. The guard, a Tommy, hearing I’d lost all my kit in the fire, had brought them for me. Kept these two possessions on the floor under my mattress. Away from those eight filching hands and envious black eyes that ceaselessly watched me. Thought to write this air-letter home to Queenie. Nothing for it – I’d have to make up what was happening. Moved to a nicer spot, hoped to be home by Christmas, that sort of thing. No need to mention the court-martial or Flight Lieutenant Moon making an example of me. Or the officer who was sent to speak up for me who could find nothing to say about my service record that would change the court’s mind, and avoid the shameful sentence – two weeks in prison among the most heinous cellmates a civilised man could imagine.

Had to rest the air-letter on the floor to write it. Turned my back to the coolies but could still feel them straining to know what the Englishman was doing. Began, as always, ‘Dear Queenie’. Then stopped. Think before you write, the paper urged me – printed at the top with two exclamation marks. Think!!

* * *

My father had been in the army in the last lot. The Great War, they call it. He was in France. A young lad, barely nineteen, with a wife and small son back at home. In letters he’d told Agnes, his wife, my mother, that he was having a good time. She imagined him sipping wine with the locals and sampling loaves of bread as long as his arm. And fighting the Hun, of course – a pot-shot here, a loud bang over there. ‘He’s in the Somme,’ she’d say on the doorstep, like he’d popped down the road for a swift half. She had no idea he’d been living on mud in a battered gash in the ground for three years. That is, until they returned him. He didn’t come on his own, he was dropped off by a truck. Quite a spectacle in the street (everyone out to stare). A parcel being delivered to number twenty-one. Two men, one on either side, marched him up the steps and knocked at the door. Ma answered. Untying her apron, smiling at her hero’s return.

They had to give him a little shove to get him inside.

She got his body back – in one piece, whole, hardly touched. A body that defecated every time a door closed too loudly. At night he rocked, sitting on his bed in striped pyjamas done up to the neck. When he slept he screamed as if someone was pulling out his teeth – the buttons on his pyjamas pinging across the room like shrapnel. Ma had to coax him out from under the bed every time a dog barked. ‘Your father’s lost his mind,’ she told me. And I, aged eight, hoped if someone found it they’d bring it home for him.

He got gradually better (a little), coaxed on by Ma. He was fed his food with a bib tied at his neck. Excrement was cleared up from the floor. Trousers changed. He was gently persuaded out. Ma dressed him in a hat and gaberdine coat and took him with us to the shops. A young girl, barely a woman, handed him a white feather. He played with it like a toy, wiping its softness over his cheek. Until Ma saw it. She spat at the girl and would have done her serious harm if a constable had not been called. ‘He’s done his bit,’ she shouted at everyone come to stare.

She made me hold his hand all the way home.

He dug a trench in the garden. I watched him dig it (a straight line). It was his first (he dug another four). Ma gave him geraniums to plant in them. Showed him how to shovel the earth back over the trenches again. He watched them grow, sometimes sitting for hours, his head in his hands, waiting for the shoots to push up into the light. When the first dazzling red flower appeared, he cried. Openly.

But he was never my pa again. Every time he looked at me was for the first time. It didn’t matter if I’d only just left the room, when I came back I was a stranger. He used to carry me on his shoulders before. Taught me to throw a ball, overarm, like a cricketer. ‘Nice shot, Bernie. You’re learning, my son, you’re learning.’ Brought me Boy’s Own Annuals even before I could read them without help. When he came home from work (the bank) I’d climb on his lap and ask him to read me a story of derring-do (Saber & Spurs or The Sheik’s White Slave). When he left for the war I wanted to know where he was going. The last thing he ever said to me was, ‘Derring-do, Bernard. Your pa’s off for derring-do.’

Ma aged sixty years in ten. She sagged and shrank. She would have liked a big family, more than just me. But her husband couldn’t do it any more. At least, not when she was there. All she saw were the crusty white stains on the sheets, on his pants. She’d turn away. Call me to clear up that mess.

She had a big house and a small pension. The handed-down silver cruet that sat on the parlour table disappeared, one piece at a time. So did the rings on her fingers. Except her wedding band, which she twirled every time she watched my father in his garden. She let rooms in the house. Spent her time chasing rent and morals up and down the staircase. Listening at the parlour door in case evil came into her home. When I left school she put on her hat and best coat (saved twice from the pawnbroker) and visited the bank where my father used to work as a clerk. She came back with a job for me, starting the next day. ‘They owe him that much,’ was all she said.

She died aged forty-two. Cancer, they whispered. A lump in her breast that feasted on her from the inside. Before she died she managed to ask, ‘Who’s going to look after him?’ I didn’t say a thing. What was there to say? Who’d look after him?

I would.

Pa was quiet when Queenie moved in. Tending his garden, sitting in his chair (no trouble). He knew she was something different. Followed her round with his eyes. She cleaned the place. Said she was adding a woman’s touch. Flowers, embroidered runners on the sideboard. Pa started smiling, tapping his foot to the wind-up gramophone. Humming to ‘Show Me The Way To Go Home’. She danced with him, one foot at a time, in front of the hearth. Then the war came and the bombs. His excreta flowed freely again. Out came the bib at mealtimes. We couldn’t get him into the shelter. He always stayed under the bed, quaking like a girl.