He lay down, hearing the chicken wire beneath his palliasse creak and ping under his weight, and closed his eyes. Two more days and he had a week’s leave coming. London.
‘Oi, Actor!’
He looked up. Lance Corporal Merrilees stood there. Frank Merrilees was very dark with a weak chin, in his early twenties, with a sharp, malicious mind.
‘Coming to the pub?’
They liked drinking with Lysander, he knew, because he had more money and would stand extra rounds. He was happy to conform to their expectations, buying, not popularity, but peace. The other men left him alone; he didn’t have to participate in the mindless bickering, persecution and mockery that occupied the others.
‘Good idea,’ he said, sitting up again and reaching for his boots.
The pub Merrilees liked was called The Anchor. Lysander wondered if it was anywhere near the port – he had no sense, even after weeks at the sawmill, what district of Swansea they lived in. He was shuttled to and from the billet to the camp in the back of a lorry, Swansea’s modest, rain-bright streets visible through the flapping canvas opening at the rear – that was the geographical extent of his war.
The Anchor was only a few streets’ walk away – no public transport required, which perhaps explained why it was so favoured. There was a saloon bar and a small snug, entry to which was denied the E.S.L.I soldiers. Along with Merrilees came four others of his cronies, all well known to Lysander, his drinking companions – Alfie ‘Fingers’ Doig, Nelson Waller, Mick Eltherington and Horace Lefroy. When they bought a round Lysander paid for the tumblers of spirits – whisky, brandy, rum, gin – that accompanied the pints of watery beer. That was why they tolerated him. The language as they chatted was always richly profane – fucking this and cunting that – and like the internees their conversation was a coarse litany of resentments and slights suffered, posited acts of brutal revenge or fantasies of sexual fulfilment.
‘Taps shut, lads,’ the barmaid called.
‘Let me get the last round in,’ Lysander suggested.
‘You’re an officer and a gentleman, Actor,’ Merrilees said, his eyes unfocussed. The others loudly agreed.
Lysander took the tray of six empty pint glasses and five tumblers up to the bar and gave his order to the barmaid, looking at her again as she pulled the pints. He recognized her, but her hair had changed colour since he was last here – it was now dyed a strange carroty-auburn. He seemed to remember she used to be fair-haired. She was petite but her stays gave her a hitched-up shelf of bosom, half-revealed by the V-neck of her satin blouse. Petite like Hettie, he found himself thinking. Her nose was bent slightly askew and she had a cleft in her chin that echoed the visible crease between her breasts. She had thick dark eyebrows.
‘And three gins and two whiskies,’ he added as she finished the pints. ‘I like your hair,’ he said. ‘It’s changed.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m a redhead, really, going back to nature.’ She had a strong Welsh accent.
Lysander took his pint off the tray and signalled to Waller to come and pick it up. The pub was slowly emptying but he’d rather talk to this girl than swear and curse with the soldiers.
‘You come in here a lot, you soldier-boys.’
‘It’s our favourite pub,’ he said. ‘We’re billeted at the old sawmill, down the road.’
‘But you’re not like them lot, are you?’ she said, looking at him shrewdly. ‘I can hear it in your voice, like.’
‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Cerridwyn,’ she said. ‘Old Welsh name – it means “fair poetess”.’
‘Cerridwyn,’ he repeated. ‘Lovely name for a poetess. I write a bit of poetry, myself.’ He didn’t know what made him tell her that.
‘Oh, yes? Don’t we all?’ Heavy scepticism. ‘Give us a line or two then.’
Lysander, almost without thinking, began:
‘She’s always the most beautiful girl,
Bewitchingly lovely and true,
Perhaps if I name her, you’ll know her:
She answers to “Love” – and she’s You.’
Cerridwyn was impressed, he saw – moved, even. Perhaps no one had recited poetry to her before.
‘You never writ that,’ she said. ‘You learned it.’
‘I can’t prove it. But it’s all mine, I’m afraid.’
‘Well – sounds lovely to me. What’s that last line again?’
‘“She answers to ‘Love’ – and she’s You.’’’
Suddenly he felt the urge to possess her, to unfasten that satin blouse and unpin her lurid hair. In an instant, also, he saw that she had registered this change in the look he was giving her. How does this happen, he wondered? What atavistic signals do we inadvertently send out?
‘It’s my day off on Monday,’ she said, meaningfully.
‘I’m going to London on leave on Monday,’ he said.
‘Never been to London.’
‘Why don’t you come with me?’
‘You could show me around, like.’
‘I’d love to.’ This was madness, Lysander knew. ‘I’ll meet you at Swansea station. Nine o’clock. At the ticket office.’
‘Ach. You won’t be there.’
‘Yes, I will.’
‘What’s your name?’ she asked making it sound like a challenge, a test of his sincerity.
‘Lysander Rief.’
‘Strange name.’
‘No stranger than Cerridwyn.’
Merrilees lurched up and said they’d better be getting back.
‘Nine o’clock, Monday morning,’ Lysander said, over his shoulder, taking Merrilees’s elbow and helping him out.
On the way back to the sawmill there was a lot of foul-mouthed lewd banter about Lysander and the barmaid. Lysander switched his mind off and let the speculation swirl around him. He was thinking, pleasurably: train to London, slap-up lunch in a chop-house or an oyster bar. A little hotel he knew in Paddington. Ticket home to Swansea on the milk train for Cerridwyn. An adventure for them both.
Sergeant Mott was standing at the sawmill gates, his long baton twirling in his hand. They were all dead drunk except Lysander. Merrilees saluted and fell over.
‘Fuck off out of it, you scum,’ Mott said. ‘It’s the actor I’m interested in.’
The others disappeared in a second.
‘I’m not drunk, Sarge,’ Lysander said. ‘Honest. Just had a couple of pints.’ He was frightened of Mott.
‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘Someone wants to see you in the office.’
Captain Dayson, company commander, had his billet in the sawmill office building across the yard. Lysander buttoned his tunic, straightened his cap on his head and knocked on the door.
‘Ah, Rief, there you are,’ Dayson said, in his usual drawl. He was a lazy man, more than happy with the internment camp job, hoping it would see the war out. ‘You’ve a visitor.’
Lysander stepped into the room.
Alwyn Munro rose to his feet. He was in uniform and Lysander saw that he had Lieutenant-Colonel’s pips on his shoulders. Promoted. Lysander remembered to salute.
‘Hard man to find, Rief,’ Munro said, and they shook hands.
‘What can I do for you?’ Lysander asked, his mind frantic with other questions.
‘I’ll tell you on the way back to London,’ he said. ‘I’ve a motor car waiting outside. Do you want to get your kit together?’
8. Autobiographical Investigations
The journey back proved strangely uneventful. I sat in the rear of a large military staff car beside Munro, with some sort of pennant fluttering on the front mudguard, as it sped towards London. As we left the outskirts of Swansea, Munro offered me a cigarette and I asked him what was going on.