War Read online

  ‘I’ve saved lots of lives. And you can drive straight across intersections because the car you would have hit has already gone by. It went by just a little earlier because you delayed yourself by counting twenty.’

  ‘Marvellous.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘But it’s like jinking,’ he said. ‘You never really know what would have happened.’

  ‘I always do it,’ I said.

  We kept right on drinking.

  ‘Look at that woman,’ I said.

  ‘The one with the bosom?’

  ‘Yes, marvellous bosom.’

  He said slowly, ‘I bet I’ve killed lots of women more beautiful than that one.’

  ‘Not lots with bosoms like that.’

  ‘I’ll bet I have. Shall we have another drink?’

  ‘Yes, one for the road.’

  ‘There aren’t any other women with bosoms like that,’ I said. ‘Not in Germany anyway.’

  ‘Oh yes there are. I’ve killed lots of them.’

  ‘All right. You’ve killed lots of women with wonderful bosoms.’

  He leaned back and waved his hand around the room. ‘See all the people in this room?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wouldn’t there be a bloody row if they were all suddenly dead; if they all suddenly fell off their chairs on to the floor dead?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Wouldn’t there be a bloody row?’

  ‘Certainly there’d be a row.’

  ‘If all the waiters got together and put stuff in all the drinks and everyone died.’

  ‘There’d be a godalmighty row.’

  ‘Well, I’ve done that hundreds of times. I’ve killed more people than there are in this room hundreds of times. So have you.’

  ‘Lots more,’ I said. ‘But that’s different.’

  ‘Same sort of people. Men and women and waiters. All drinking in a pub.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Like hell it is. Wouldn’t there be a bloody row if it happened here?’

  ‘Bloody awful row.’

  ‘But we’ve done it. Lots of times.’

  ‘Hundreds of times,’ I said. ‘This is nothing.’

  ‘This is a lousy place.’

  ‘Yes, it’s lousy. Let’s go somewhere else.’

  ‘Finish our drinks.’

  We finished our drinks and we both tried to pay the bill, so we tossed for it and I won. It came to sixteen dollars and twenty-five cents. He gave the waiter a two-dollar tip.

  We got up and walked around the tables and over to the door.

  ‘Taxi,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, must have a taxi.’

  There wasn’t a doorman. We stood out on the kerb waiting for a taxi to come along and he said, ‘This is a good town.’

  ‘Wonderful town,’ I said. I felt fine. It was dark outside, but there were a few street-lamps, and we could see the cars going by and the people walking on the other side of the street. There was a thin, quiet drizzle falling, and the wetness on the black street shone yellow under the lights of the cars and under the street-lamps. The tyres of the cars hissed on the wet surface.

  ‘Let’s go to a place which has lots of whisky,’ he said. ‘Lots of whisky and a man with egg on his beard serving it.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Somewhere where there are no other people but just us and the man with egg on his beard. Either that.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Either that or what?’

  ‘Or a place with a hundred thousand people in it.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘OK.’

  We stood there waiting and we could see the lights of the cars as they came round the bend over to the left, coming towards us with the tyres swishing on the wet surface and going past us up the road to the bridge which goes over the river. We could see the drizzle falling through the beams of their headlights and we stood there waiting for a taxi.

  THE SOLDIER

  * * *

  First published in Someone Like You (1953)

  It was one of those nights that made him feel he knew what it was like to be a blind man: not the shadow of an image for his eyes to discern, not even the forms of the trees visible against the sky.

  Out of the darkness he became aware of small rustling noises in the hedge, the breathing of a horse some distance away in the field, the soft thud of a hoof as it moved its foot; and once he heard the rush of a bird flying past him low overhead.

  ‘Jock,’ he said, speaking loud. ‘We’ll go home now.’ And he turned and began to walk back up the slope of the lane, the dog pulling ahead, showing the way in the dark.

  It must be nearly midnight, he thought. That meant that soon it would be tomorrow. Tomorrow was worse than today. Tomorrow was the worst of all because it was going to become today – and today was now.

  Today had not been very nice, especially that business with the splinter.

  Stop it, he told himself. There isn’t any sense thinking about it. It doesn’t do anyone any good thinking about things like that. Think about something else for a change. You can kick out a dangerous thought, you know, if you put another in its place. Go right back as far as you can go. Let’s have some memories of sweet days. The seaside holidays in the summer, wet sand and red buckets and shrimping nets and the slippery seaweedy rocks and the small clear pools and sea anemones and snails and mussels and sometimes one grey translucent shrimp hovering deep down in the beautiful green water.

  But how could that splinter have got into the sole of his foot without him feeling it?

  It is not important. Do you remember hunting for cowries along the margin of the tide, each one so fine and perfect it became a precious jewel to be held in the hand all the way home; and the little orange-coloured scallops, the pearly oyster shells, the tiny bits of emerald glass, a live hermit crab, a cockle, the spine of a skate, and once, but never to be forgotten, the dry seawashed jawbone of a human being with teeth in it, white and wonderful among the shells and pebbles. Oh Mummy, look what I’ve found! Look, Mummy, look!

  But to go back to the splinter. She had really been rather unpleasant about that.

  ‘What do you mean, you didn’t notice?’ she had asked, scornful.

  ‘I just didn’t notice, that’s all.’

  ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me if I stick a pin into your foot you won’t feel it?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  And then she had jabbed him suddenly in the ankle with the pin she had been using to take out the splinter, and he hadn’t been watching so he didn’t know about it till she had cried out in a kind of horror. And when he had looked down, the pin was sticking into the flesh all by itself behind the anklebone, almost half of it buried.

  ‘Take it out,’ he had said. ‘You can poison someone like that.’

  ‘You mean you can’t feel it?’

  ‘Take it out, will you?’

  ‘You mean it doesn’t hurt?’

  ‘The pain is terrible. Take it out.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘I said the pain is terrible. Didn’t you hear me?’

  Why did they do things like that to him?

  When I was down beside the sea, a wooden spade they gave to me, to dig the sandy shore. My holes were empty as a cup, and every time the sea came up, till it could come no more.

  A year ago the doctor had said, ‘Shut your eyes. Now tell me whether I’m pushing this toe up or down.’

  ‘Up,’ he had said.

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Down. No, up. I think it’s up.’

  It was peculiar that a neurosurgeon should want to play with his toes.

  ‘Did I get them all right, doctor?’

  ‘You did very well.’

  But that was a year ago. He had felt pretty good a year ago. The sort of things that happened now never used to happen then. Take, for example, just one item – the bathroom tap.

  Why was the hot tap in the bathro