The Captain and the Enemy Read online

  After our very good lunch the Captain began to talk to the landlord about the dinner which we would be taking next. ‘We’ll want it early,’ he said. ‘A boy of his age ought to be in bed by eight.’

  ‘I can see you know how to bring up a child.’

  ‘I’ve had to learn the hard way. You see, his mother’s dead.’

  ‘Ah! Have a brandy, sir, on the house. It’s not an easy thing for a man to play the mother’s part.’

  ‘I never refuse a good offer,’ the Captain said, and a minute later they were clicking glasses together over the bar. It did occur to me that I had never seen anyone less like a mother than the Captain.

  ‘Time, gentlemen, time,’ the landlord called and added in a confidential tone to the Captain, ‘Of course it doesn’t apply to you, sir, you being a guest in the hotel. Can I give your nipper another orangeade?’

  ‘Better not,’ the Captain said. ‘Too much gas you know.’ I was to discover as time went on that the Captain had a strong disinclination for gas – a sentiment which I shared, for in the dormitory at night there were too many of my companions who liked to show off the vigour of their farts.

  ‘About that early dinner,’ the Captain said.

  ‘We don’t usually serve a hot meal before eight. But if you wouldn’t mind something tasty and cold …’

  ‘I prefer it.’

  ‘Shall we say a bit of cold chicken and a slice of ham …?’

  ‘And perhaps a little green salad?’ the Captain suggested. ‘A growing boy needs a bit of green – or so his mother used to say. For me – well, I’ve lived too long in the tropics where a salad can mean dysentery and death … However if you have a bit of that apple tart left …’

  ‘And a bit of cheese to go with it?’ the landlord suggested with a sort of enthusiasm for good works.

  ‘Not for me, not at night,’ the Captain said, ‘gassy again. Well, we’ll be getting along now. I’ll take a look at the pictures outside the cinema. Tarzan’s Daughter you said, didn’t you? One can generally judge from the pictures outside if a film’s suitable for a child. If it’s not, we’ll just go for a walk, and I might slip in myself for the evening performance when the boy’s safe in bed.’

  ‘You turn left out of the door, and then it’s just across the road a hundred yards down.’

  ‘We’ll be seeing you,’ the Captain replied and we went out, but to my surprise we turned sharp right.

  ‘The cinema’s the other way,’ I said.

  ‘We are not going to the cinema.’

  I was disappointed, and I tried to reassure him. ‘Lots of the day boys have been to Tarzan’s Daughter.’

  The Captain halted. He said, ‘I’ll give you a free choice. We’ll go and see Tarzan’s Daughter if you insist and then back you must go to – what did that pompous old ass call it? – your “house”, or else we don’t go to the film and you don’t go to your house.’

  ‘Where do I go?’

  ‘There’s a good train to London at three o’clock.’

  ‘You mean we can go all the way to London. But when do we come back?’

  ‘We don’t come back – unless of course you want to see Tarzan’s Daughter.’

  ‘I don’t want to see Tarzan’s Daughter that much.’

  ‘Well then … Is this the way to the station, boy?’

  ‘Yes, but you ought to know.’

  ‘Why the hell should I know? I took a different route this morning.’

  ‘But you’re an old boy, the headmaster said.’

  ‘This is the first time I’ve ever seen the bloody town.’

  He put a hand on my shoulder and I could feel kindness in the touch. He said, ‘When you get to know me better, boy, you’ll realize that I don’t always tell the exact truth. Any more than you do, I expect.’

  ‘But I always get found out.’

  ‘Ah, you’ll have to learn to tell a lie properly. What’s the good of a lie if it’s seen through? When I tell a lie no one can tell it from the gospel truth. Sometimes I can’t even tell it myself.’

  We walked down what was called Castle Street, which led us past the school, and I dreaded to think that he might prove to be wrong in his choice and that the headmaster would come sailing out of the quad with his gown spread like the sail of a pinnace and catch both me and the Captain out, but all was as quiet as quiet.

  Outside the Swiss Cottage the Captain hesitated for a moment, but the door was shut – the bar had closed. A child screamed at us from one of the painted barges on the canal – the barge children always screamed at the schoolchildren. It was like cat and dog – the enmity was noisy but never came as far as a bite. I said, ‘What about your bag at the hotel?’

  ‘There’s nothing in it but a couple of bricks.’

  ‘Bricks?’

  ‘Yes, bricks.’

  ‘You are going to leave them behind?’

  ‘Why not? One can always lay one’s hand on a few bricks when required and the bag’s an old one. Old bags with a few labels stuck on inspire confidence. Especially labels from foreign parts. A new bag looks stolen.’

  I was still puzzled. After all I knew enough about life to realize that, even if he possessed a return ticket, he would have to pay for mine. All my money had gone at the Swiss Cottage to help pay for his gin and tonics. And then there was the lunch we had eaten – a feast, there was no meal in my memory that I could compare with it. We had nearly reached the station when I said, ‘But you haven’t paid for our lunch, have you?’

  ‘Bless you, boy. I signed for it. What more do you expect me to do?’

  ‘Is your name really Victor?’

  ‘Oh, sometimes it’s one thing and sometimes it’s another. It wouldn’t be much fun, would it, always carrying the same name from birth till death. Baxter now. It’s not what I’d call a beautiful name. You’ve had it a good many years now, haven’t you?’

  ‘Twelve.’

  ‘Too long. We’ll think of a better name for you on the train. I don’t like Victor either if it comes to that.’

  ‘But what shall I call you?’

  ‘Just call me Captain unless I tell you different. There might come a time when I’d like to be addressed as Colonel – or Dad too might prove convenient – in certain situations. Though I’d rather avoid it. I’ll let you know when a certain situation does arise, but I think you’ll soon pick things up for yourself. I can see that you are an intelligent boy.’

  We entered the station and he had no difficulty at all in producing the cash for my ticket – ‘Third class half single to Euston.’ We had a compartment to ourselves and that gave me the courage to ask him, ‘I thought you had no money.’

  ‘What gave you that idea?’

  ‘Well, there’s all that lunch we had and you just signed a paper and you did seem to need some money too at the Swiss Cottage.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘that’s another point you’ll have to learn. It isn’t that I’m without money, but I like to preserve it for essentials.’

  The Captain settled in a corner and began to smoke a cigarette. Twice he looked at his watch. It was a very slow train, and whenever we stopped at a station, I could feel a certain tension stretching from the window seat opposite me. The lean dark Captain reminded me of a coiled spring which had once snapped on my fingers when I was taking an old clock to pieces. At Willesden I asked him, ‘Are you afraid?’

  ‘Afraid?’ he asked in a puzzled way as though I had employed a word that he would have to look up in a dictionary.

  ‘Scared,’ I translated for him.

  ‘Boy,’ he said, ‘I’m never scared. I’m on my guard – that’s different.’

  ‘Yes.’

  As an Amalekite I understood the distinction, and I felt that perhaps I was getting to know the Captain a little bit better.

  (2)

  At Euston we took a taxi for what seemed to me a very long ride – I couldn’t tell in those days whether we were travelling east or west or north or south. I could only su
ppose that this taxi ride was one of the essentials for which the Captain had kept his money. All the same I was surprised that when we arrived at our destination – a certain number in a dusty crescent where the dustbins had not been emptied – he waited for the taxi to go, following it with his eyes until it was out of sight, and then began to walk a long way back on the route we had come. He must have felt a question in my silence and my obedience because he answered it, though unsatisfactorily. ‘Exercise is good for the two of us,’ he told me. He added, ‘I take a bit of exercise whenever I get the chance.’

  There was nothing I could do but accept his explanation, and I think that in some way the readiness of my acquiescence worried him just a little, for, as we strolled silently along side by side, taking this turning and then that, he began occasionally to break the silence with a too obvious attempt at conversation.

  He said, ‘I don’t suppose you remember your mother?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I do, but she’s been dead, you know, an awfully long time.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true. Your father told me …’ but he never said what it was that my father had told him.

  We must have walked at least a quarter of a mile before he spoke again. ‘Do you miss her?’

  Children, I think, lie usually from fear, and there seemed to be nothing in his questions to make me afraid of the Captain. ‘Not really,’ I said.

  He gave a grunt, which with my limited experience I took to be a note of disapproval – or perhaps of disappointment. Our footsteps on the pavement measured out the long length of the silence between us.

  ‘I hope you aren’t going to be difficult,’ he said to me at last.

  ‘Difficult?’

  ‘I mean I hope you are quite a normal boy. She’d be disappointed if you weren’t a normal boy.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I would say a normal boy would miss his mother.’

  ‘I never knew her very well,’ I said. ‘There wasn’t time.’

  He gave a prolonged sigh. ‘I hope you’ll do,’ he said. ‘I hope to God you’ll do.’

  Again he walked along in silent thought and then he asked me, ‘Are you tired?’

  ‘No,’ I said, but I said it only to please him – I was tired. I would have liked to know just how much further we had still to go.

  The Captain said, ‘She’s a marvellous woman. You’ll know that as soon as you see her if you’ve any judgement about women – but how could you have any at your age? Of course you’ll have to be patient with her. Make allowances. She’s suffered a great deal.’

  The word ‘suffer’ meant to me at that time the splashes of ink upon my face which still remained there (the Captain, unlike the headmaster, didn’t notice things like that), the visible sign of being an Amalekite, an outcast.

  The reason I had become an outcast at school was not at all clear to me – it was partly, perhaps, because my name had leaked out, but I think it was connected too with my aunt and her sandwiches, the fact that she never took me to a restaurant as parents always seemed to do when they visited their children. Someone had spied on us, I suppose, as we sat beside the canal and ate the sandwiches, drinking not even orangeade or Coca-Cola but hot milk out of a thermos. Milk! Somebody no doubt had spied the milk. Milk was for babies.

  ‘You understand what I mean?’

  I nodded of course – there was nothing else I could do. Perhaps this strange woman would prove to be another Amalekite if it was true that she had suffered. There were three other Amalekites in my house, yet somehow we never combined in our own defence – each one hated the three others for being an Amalekite. An Amalekite, I was beginning to learn, was always a loner.

  The Captain said, ‘We’ll turn around at the end of the street. One just has to be careful.’

  After we turned he said, ‘I won you fairly.’

  I had no idea then what he meant. He added, ‘No one in his right mind would try to cheat your father. Anyway you can’t cheat easily at backgammon. Your father lost you in a fair game.’

  I asked him, ‘He’s a devil, isn’t he?’

  ‘Well, I suppose he could be so described,’ the Captain replied, ‘but only when he’s crossed.’ He added, ‘You know how it is – but of course you don’t, how can you? No child would dare to cross him.’

  We came finally to a street where some of the houses had been repainted and others were in course of demolition, but there were at least no dustbins. The houses, as I know now, were Victorian, with steps that led down to basements, and attic windows four floors up. There were steps which led to front doors, and some of the doors stood ajar. It was as if the street, which was called Alma Terrace, had not made up its mind whether it was going up in the world or down. We stopped at a house marked 12A because I suppose nobody would have cared to live in number 13. There were five bells beside the door, but someone had stuck Scotch tape over four of them to show that they were not in use.

  ‘Now remember what I told you,’ the Captain said. ‘Speak gently because she’s easily scared,’ but I had the impression even then that he was a little scared himself, while he hesitated with his finger near the surviving bell. He rang once, but left his finger on the bell.

  ‘Are you sure she’s there?’ I asked, for the house had an unlived-in look.

  ‘She doesn’t go out much,’ he said, ‘and besides the dark’s coming down. She doesn’t like the dark.’

  He pressed the bell again with his finger, twice this time, and I heard a movement in the basement, and a light went on. He said, ‘I’ve got a key, but I like to give her warning. Her name’s Liza, but I want you to call her mother. Or Mum if you like that better.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh we’ll go into all of that one day. You wouldn’t understand now and anyway there isn’t time.’

  ‘But she’s not my mother.’

  ‘Of course she’s not. I’m not saying she is. Mother is just a generic term.’

  ‘What’s generic?’ I think he took a pleasure in using difficult words – a sort of showing off, but there was more to it than that I learned later.

  ‘Listen. If you aren’t happy we can take a train back. You can be at school nearly on time … Only a little late … I’ll come with you and make excuses.’

  ‘You mean I don’t have to go back? Not tomorrow?’

  ‘You don’t have to go back at all if you don’t want to. I’m only asking you.’ He had his hand pressed on my shoulder and I could feel it tremble. He seemed frightened, but I wasn’t frightened at all. I was no longer an Amalekite. I was freed from fear and I felt prepared for anything when the door in the basement opened.

  ‘I don’t want to go back,’ I told him.

  2

  (1)

  ALL THE SAME I was not prepared for the very young and pale face which peered up at us both from the gloom of the basement where a bare globe of a very low watt gave all the light. She didn’t look to my eyes like anybody’s mother.

  ‘I’ve brought him,’ the Captain said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Victor. But I think we’ll change all that and call him Jim.’

  The possibility had never occurred to me of changing my hated name as easily as that, just by choosing another.

  ‘What on earth have you done?’ she asked the Captain, and even I could detect the fear there was in her voice.

  He gave me a small push towards the basement steps. ‘Go on down,’ he said, ‘say what I told you to say. And then give her a kiss.’

  I took a very small step forward across the lintel and muttered, ‘Mother.’ It was like the first embarrassing rehearsal I remembered in a school play, in which I had been allotted the most minor part, a play called Toad of Toad Hall, but that was before anyone discovered I was an Amalekite. As for the kiss I couldn’t manage that.

  ‘What have you done?’ she repeated.

  ‘I went down to the school and I brought him out.’

  ‘Just like that?’ she said.

 
; ‘Just like that. You see I had a letter from his father.’

  ‘How on earth …?’

  ‘I won him quite fair and square, I promise you, Liza. You can’t cheat at backgammon.’

  ‘You are going to be the death of me,’ she said. ‘I never meant you to do anything when I said … I just thought … if only things had been different …’

  ‘You might invite us in and give us a cup of tea.’

  ‘Oh, I put the kettle on as soon as you rang. I knew what you’d want.’

  In the kitchen she told me rather harshly to sit down. There were two hard chairs and an easy one, so I followed the Captain’s example and chose a hard. The kettle was beginning to splutter on the stove. She said, ‘I haven’t had time to warm the pot.’

  ‘It won’t taste any different to me,’ the Captain said, I thought with a certain gloom.

  ‘Oh yes, it will.’

  They were both strangers to me, and yet already I found that I liked them better than my aunt, not to speak of the headmaster or Mr Harding, my housemaster, or any of the boys I knew. I could tell that in some way they were not at ease with each other and I wanted to help them if it was in my power. I said, ‘I had a spiffing lunch.’

  ‘What did he give you?’

  ‘Oh, just a bit of fish,’ the Captain said.

  ‘That was only the start,’ I told her, ‘and the fish was smoked salmon.’

  I knew smoked salmon was important because I’d taken a look at the menu and had seen the price they charged. It cost far more than a pork chop.

  ‘How did you pay for it?’ she asked. ‘You aren’t so flush – or you weren’t this morning.’

  ‘I gave them that old suitcase you lent me in exchange,’ he said.

  ‘That old thing, why it wasn’t worth two bob.’