by Jason Hewitt

If you stared hard enough and long enough and did not blink, not even when the dry heat outside made your eyes water and the salt marshes eventually melted into a blur, you could make it happen. Murky blobs would form on the horizon, like pinpricks of blood that slowly grew and multiplied, forming arms and heads and bodies as they drew closer, so that in that moment before you blinked them away you could make them come. No one ever did come though. Nothing had happened all day, nor yesterday, or the day before, and nothing would happen tomorrow. The German invasion had been desperately disappointing. In fact, the whole war, Eddie thought, had been a disappointment. At least in peace time you had no expectations. You just got on with things then, rather than spending the whole time waiting for something dramatic to happen that didn’t.

Now here he was holed up with his grandfather who was dozing on the floor and chasing Jerry in his sleep, while Eddie kept watch, peering through the cement slits of the pillbox across the salt marshes to the beach and, beyond that, the long quivering line of sea and sky.

His grandfather jerked awake with an, ‘Ay, what! What’s happening?’

‘Nothing,’ murmured Eddie.

His grandfather grumbled something, annoyed that someone – Eddie – had let him drop off. Eddie turned back to the narrow opening, resting his elbows on the cement ledge. Outside the day was warming up nicely but in the dank gloom of the pillbox the temperature never increased much more than a chill

‘They’ll not land here anyway,’ snuffled his grandfather, pulling himself up. ‘They’ll go up to Walberswick. If the blighters got any sense.’

‘Then why are we bothering?’ Eddie half-said under his breath.

‘Listen, lad, I may have fought at Bothaville,’ said his grandfather, as he was often prone to do, ‘but that doesn’t make me Colonel Gallais.  Who knows what goes on in a Jerry’s mind?’

He stood up from the crate and paced about as much as one could given they were in such a small space. He rubbed at the base of his spine and stamped his feet back into life.

‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘Shove up. And you should be concentrating on the what-not.’ He pointed at the window. ‘Not gawping at me. You youngsters have got to keep your wits about you, or you’ll turn ‘round in a minute and have one of them poking a rifle up your nostril. And you won’t much like that.’

Eddie shuffled over. From beneath the trees where the pillbox had been built, they looked out across the Suffolk marshes and mud flats where on good days you could spot oystercatchers and spoonbills or even a heron flying across with its long galumphing wings. Today though there was just the flicker of cabbage whites and a wagtail bobbing about on one of the grass ridges.

The pillbox was called ‘Coots’ Nest’ and was supposed to be one of a whole line strung across the Suffolk countryside but it was early days and so far only a handful had been built. If Hitler’s troops really did land and got through the beach defences that were also still being put in place, Eddie didn’t see what he or his grandfather could do to stop them – especially with nothing but an old war rifle and a handful of toilet rolls.

He slumped down on one of the beer crates that had been donated from The Cricketeers, his back against the brickwork, and watched his grandfather resting his elbows on the concrete window ledge, his old Lee Enfield propped and ready.

Nothing was ever going to happen. It was all so unfair.

He and Alfie had planned the war already, months ago in fact, before it had even started – Alfie a soldier on the front line, Eddie with the RAF. Now though Alfie had gone without him. He had wriggled his way into the army even though he wasn’t old enough, but no one would take Eddie. He had watched the village around him emptying of all the fit and eligible men. You’re lucky, you’ll have the pick of the girls at this rate, his mother had said, but Eddie wasn’t interested.

Village life was a bore, and being roped into the LDVs was even more of a drag. There was nothing adventurous about spending your afternoons cooped up with your grandfather, or his old allotment chums with sod all to do but sit through their stories for the umpteenth time.

Ne’er mind, his grandfather had said. There’ll be just as much drama here. You wait.

But they were still waiting, and it looked like they’d be waiting some time yet.

‘Your friend, Alfred,’ his grandfather suddenly said. He was the only person Eddie knew who called Alfie by his proper name. ‘I expect he’s doing a lot of waiting around too, you know. When we were at Bothaville.’

Here we go, thought Eddie.

‘We had to hide in a field of ground nuts for five days. Five days!’

‘I know,’ said Eddie, wearily. ‘With nothing to eat but the nuts.’

‘With nothing to eat but the nuts. Damn right. Never bothered me though. War’s a waiting game. I tell yer. We just need Jerry to get through them dragon’s teeth and you’ll be on the front line yourself, Eddie, mark my words. And you’ll not be fighting over some bloody French onions neither. We’ll be taking them on hand to hand. What about that, er? Hand to hand with a Jerry? Huh?’ His grandfather was grinning at the very thought of it.

He had been a hero once. In his younger days. He had fought in Africa alongside Lieutenant-Colonel Gallais and Colonel Baden-Powell. He had a scar in his chest where he had even taken a bullet and another on his back below his shoulder blade where it had allegedly popped out the other side. Some bullets, he reckoned, aren’t sent to kill yer.

His son, Eddie’s father, had fought in an altogether different war, but one no less thrilling.  Saving the world from infidels, thugs and savages ran in the family. It had drawn a halt at Eddie though. When the call-up came he had taken the bus to the local employment exchange in Woodbridge with Alfie and the rest. They had been so excited. They queued for hours it seemed to give their name and age and education and Eddie had told the man sat hunched behind the desk about the job he had at the farm and how on Saturdays he helped at The Cricketeers, only collecting up glasses, mind, but it was a job wasn’t it? It was, the man agreed. And do you have a preference for a special branch? he had asked. Not that we can make guarantees, you understand. And Eddie had said the RAF. It was what he had always dreamed of. And so that was it. Well, almost. They came away each with a certificate of registration and went straight to the pub where they got quite squiffy. But then he’d failed the medical, as deep down he had always known he would. There was just a chance, he thought, or rather hoped, that it might go unnoticed, that somehow he might slip through but, of course, he didn’t. The medical board attached to the allocation office gave no explanation. He wondered if someone local had tipped them off. Some do-gooder who claimed to have his best interests at heart. So that had been the end of it. They had taken everyone else but they would not take him.

His mother was relieved. Well, it’s probably for the best. We’ll still need a few strapping young men about the place, and there’s the boys on the farm. They won’t be going.

If things got really tight, maybe they’d call back the rejects, and he could always lodge an appeal if he felt strongly enough about it and could submit new medical evidence.

New medical evidence? His father had scoffed at that.

Well, I might get better.

Someone had said that to him once, he couldn’t remember who – probably a nurse who should have known better than to lie, even if she had done it with a kindness of heart.

Yes, and medicine is making such wonderful bounds these days, his mother said.

Ay, said his father, but it won’t fix his head.

Eddie’s father was of the opinion that it was the duty of every man to protect his country and he aired this frequently. What he would often refer to as his son’s ‘troubles’ played havoc with his pride.

His grandfather, however, was more tolerant. Nice to have some quality time with you, he’d said. You young un’s keep me on me toes much more than Ted and old Badger.

Eddie could hear them coming now, first the sound of Old Mr. Howe pushing his bicycle through the undergrowth and making the sound of a bugle before yelling, ‘All right lads, the cavalry’s here!’ Then came the sound of barking – Mr. Sugden with Patch.

Old Mr. Howe propped his bike against the back of the pillbox and then the door was pushed open and Patch came pelting in, running havoc around their ankles. Ted Howe followed with a small package in his hand wrapped in newspaper. Then, finally, there came the large frame of Mr. Sugden who was wheezing worse than normal and had to stand with his head bent, being a good deal taller than any man his age should be.

‘We’re early,’ Mr. Howe announced as if this in itself was a victory.

‘I can see that, Ted,’ said Eddie’s grandfather, ‘but ain’t you supposed to be on your rounds?’

‘I am, said Old Mr Howe. ‘Delivering old Badger here so this young ‘un can scamper off.’ He winked at Eddie. ‘Oh, and this is courtesy of your Mags.’ That was Eddie’s mother. ‘Swapped her letters for your sarnies. I should start charging.’

He tossed the sandwiches over and they slipped through his grandfather’s hands and for a moment Eddie thought they would have to wrestle them off Patch who instantly stopped his peeing against the crate and made a bolt for them.

‘That you don’t,’ said Mr Sugden, pushing the terrier away. It was a rare thing to hear Mr Sugden speak. He was an old beast of a man, locked in a body that seemed far too big for him so that he lumbered around lugging all its redundant weight. He stood with his head stooped and his grey beard, his silver hair creamed back over his head, and in that stained overcoat he always wore, even on a hot June day like today, making his strange grumbling noises.

‘You got the crossword, Badger?’

‘Ay.’ He always came with a copy of the Suffolk and Essex Free Press, a carved pencil in his pocket and a tangle of garden string in case Patch got too excitable and needed to be put on a leash.

‘Right then, you,’ Eddie’s grandfather said to him. ‘Looks like you’re off the hook. You be back for six, mind. I’ll be wanting me kippers.’

*

Eddie and Old Mr Howe both fished their bikes out from under the cover of branches and pushed them up through the wood and then the field to the lane, Ted Howe stopping twice to refasten his chain, his postal panniers on either side, and a package for Mrs Sturgeon wedged into the basket. He chattered all the way, about the curlew he’d seen that morning and the fox that bold as brass had come into their pantry – ‘Scared the living daylights out of her ladyship,’ he said, meaning his wife – and how, if they’d had boys like Eddie he’d have shown him a thing or two about fishing, and that young Alfie too. Friendship was important.

‘Yes, I know,’ said Eddie.

*

 Rejected. That was all the letter had said. He had cycled with it over to Doctor Henney’s and waited for almost an hour.

Yes, Edward, I did get information back from the medical board, the doctor said when Eddie finally managed to speak to him, but any data concerning medical defects is confidential. You know that.

Even to me?

Look, Edward, I’m sorry but you and I both know you’re not going to be suitable. Your condition causes all sorts of potential problems –

But I’m fine!

Especially if you’re put under pressure. I really think you need to make the most of the opportunities you have here in the village. Don’t you?

No.

Eddie did not.

He didn’t know why he had then cycled to Alfie’s house rather than home but he had. It was only the pounding of his pedals that had stopped him from crying, and h e was there before he knew it, his bicycle thrown down in the gravel, him standing on their doorstep just about ready to knock. It had been silly to talk himself into thinking that the RAF or anyone would take him, but somehow he had believed it and now he felt cheated. Everyone was conspiring to ruin everything. He just needed Alfie to say it didn’t matter, or that he wasn’t going either, that he’d changed his mind, or that if Eddie was staying at home, well then, he’d stay too, because after all they were friends, and that was what friends did. They couldn’t be split up, not ever, not even by a war.

But even though his hand was raised and ready Eddie hadn’t knocked. He had listened to the voices in the house, Alfie and his mother, the murmur of the wireless and then someone coming down the stairs, Alfie’s father with that familiar chipper voice, and then the shrill sound of Alfie’s sister, Lydia. And with that he had changed his mind. He didn’t want to be the centre of a family’s attention, all their fuss and commotion. He just wanted to tell Alfie in private, to have him for a moment to himself.

*

He stopped. He was there again. The house called Greyfriars. The bike taking him to the end of the familiar gravel drive. He knew the house as well as his own. All those summer days spent playing cricket on the lawn or wrestling with Alfie on his bedroom floor, or even playing the Bagatelle in the dining room, the ball shooting around the board that Alfie’s father had made.  The house looked dead now without him there, its windows like shocked and saddened eyes. Then Alfie’s mother appeared from around the side, clomping in her wellingtons and with a bucket of weeds and a trowel.

‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Eddie! What a lovely surprise. Have you come to say hello?’ She looked quite flustered. ‘How sweet of you.’

He stood looking at her, for, in truth, he didn’t know why he had come.

‘I baked some rock cakes yesterday,’ she said. ‘Can I tempt you in for one? I’ll not eat them on my own. Heaven knows what I was thinking.’

‘Oh, no, thank you,’ he said. ‘I’m fine. I’m in a bit of a rush actually. I just stopped to fix the, er, the thing here.’ He pointed at something on his bike that wasn’t much of a thing at all and certainly wasn’t broken.

‘Not even a small one?’ She seemed genuinely disappointed. It can’t have been much fun, he thought, rattling around the house on her own now that Alfie, her husband and even little Lydia were gone.

‘No, I really ought to go,’ he said. ‘Have you heard from Alfie though?’

‘Not since last week, no. Have you?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He’s fine. He writes all the time.’

‘Oh, that’s jolly good of him,’ she said.

It was also, he thought, a lie.

‘It can’t be easy being left here on your own.’

‘Oh, I don’t much mind,’ he said. ‘Actually, I prefer it nice and quiet.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Me too. You get more done.’ She stood there staring at him. ‘You don’t fancy giving me a hand, do you?’ she said. ‘In the garden, I mean.’

‘Oh no, I really ought to go.’

‘Eddie, you’re all right though, aren’t you?’

‘Oh, yes, thanks, Mrs Pendall. I’m fine.’ He said goodbye and hurriedly pushed off, pedalling rather faster than he needed to, and thinking almost immediately that perhaps he should have gone in for cake after all.

The problem was that it was all so confusing. The closer you got to people, the more they let you down. Perhaps he had expected too much. It wasn’t healthy, his mother said, to invest so much in just one friend. But he couldn’t help himself. That was half the trouble.

He cycled back along the lane, towards the railway station where Tommy Sparrow was up a ladder and unscrewing the sign. That last afternoon, before Alfie had gone, he and Eddie had cycled out together visiting old haunts, going along the brook and over the Halfpenny Bridge, across the lane and along the cherry path, through the woods and out on to the heath where for endless summer days they had waded through the gorse trying to net butterflies, Alfie’s sister always tagging along. That last afternoon though there had just been the two of them and Eddie had felt a cloud already forming over them. All Alfie had wanted to do was talk about the war and it seemed to irritate him immensely that he couldn’t, not now that Eddie wasn’t going as well. Everything else seemed trivial in comparison, so they had just cycled and sat around in the grass or dangled their legs over the bridge, and barely said a word to each other, both of them knowing, Eddie thought, what really needed to be said.

Now cycling home, he just wanted something to happen, something dreadful that would shake everything up. He had a good mind to write to Hitler, to tell him that this, here, was the ideal spot, not bloody Walberswick like his grandfather said; that he wanted the drama to unfold here where he could be a part of it and prove to everyone once and for all – even Alfie when he got back – that could just as easily be a hero, that they had all been bloody fools to leave him behind.

*

In his bedroom he took off all his clothes and stood in front of the mirror in all his pale and gangly rawness. It wasn’t the body of a hero, or a soldier, or even a man. This was the difference between him and Alfie, the difference between someone that the War Office wanted, and someone that they didn’t. He stood up straight and pulled in his slightly sagging stomach. There wasn’t even any hair on his chest, just a whitewash of skin and the pale pinky-brown of his nipples, and then below his belly button the shocking tangle of ginger hair. The thought of anyone seeing him naked filled him with horror. If he was Alfie – if he had a body or a face like Alfie – it would be so different. Alfie at least was turning into a man whereas Eddie it seemed had stalled.

If he got to Greyfriars early enough on the Sunday mornings when he and Alfie had been part of the village cricket team, Alfie’s mother would send Eddie up to kick him out of bed. Then Eddie could sit and chatter to him and watch him as he dressed. And Alfie hadn’t minded, not in the slightest. Sometimes it even felt as if he wanted Eddie to watch.

Now when Eddie went out to the back field it wasn’t the same. Bowl, he’d shout and then he’d bowl but Alfie wasn’t there to hit it. The ball would just land with a quiet thump and bounce away and he’d have to fetch it himself because even Alfie’s sister, who was always in field, was gone.

He just needed for Alfie to come back and for nothing between them to have changed. They’d cycle along the towpaths again and sit on the Halfpenny Bridge, and they’d be no more awkward silences between them. The war was just a glitch.

*

When he got back to the pillbox at six o’clock to take over from his grandfather, Reggie Dixon, the Parish Commander, had paid the men a visit and wanted them to fix some hooks up on the outside. Someone, somewhere, had an idea that they might camouflage it with some netting.

‘I told him,’ Eddie’s grandfather said, ‘that if he wants us to keep the bloody Jerries back we need some decent arms not a ruddy fishing net.’

Mr. Sugden made a strange noise in his throat that might have been a laugh. They’d been having swigs of his grandfather’s brew while Eddie had been away. He could smell it on his grandfather’s breath and when Mr Sugden finally turned from the loophole you could fire weapons from, Eddie could see that his grey cheeks had finally succumbed to some colour.

‘So, we’ve got to put some hooks in?’ Eddie said, hoping that his grandfather would stay awhile to help so that Eddie didn’t have to spend quite so much time alone with Mr Sugden.

‘No, we’ve done it,’ his grandfather said, proudly. ‘And the crossword ‘n all.’

Mr Sugden grumbled something.

‘Yes, alright, apart from the ones we couldn’t get,’ his grandfather added. ‘So, I’ll be off then. Leave you boys to it.’

Eddie asked what had happened to Patch.

‘Oh, out and about somewhere,’ his grandfather said. ‘Don’t you worry about him.’

‘He’ll be back,’ Mr Sugden muttered, and something about daft things not liking the dark that Eddie didn’t quite catch.

Then Eddie’s grandfather was off, gathering up his bits and pieces and having a good guttural cough into his handkerchief before he fished his bike out from behind the hedge. 

*

Oh, he’s harmless, old Badger, Eddie’s mother had said. Him and your grandfather go way back. He was on the scene long before Ted.

As a boy it had been Mr Sugden’s constant wheezing that had always unnerved Eddie, and then the incoherency of everything he said as if he was talking in his own badger language. Now though he realised that it wasn’t what the man had – not his overlarge body or the strange sourness to his breath, and the fact that he never went anywhere without his oil-stained overcoat – but what was missing from him that made him seem odd. Ever since Eddie could remember Mr Sugden had been alone. There was just him and Patch and even the little dog had a tendency to wander off, given half a chance. People weren’t built to be alone, Eddie thought, and if they are, it’s always because there’s something wrong, something about them that they don’t want to share.

Sitting in the pillbox, with his grandfather gone, and him and Mr Sugden both at the loophole saying not a word, he thought he understood that. Some things you have to bury. Some things deep inside of you should never be spoken of.

For that first hour he stood next to the man with his heart in his mouth. He was grateful when Patch came back, moaning at the door until Mr Sugden let him in, mumbling something like ‘where the hell have you been?’ Then as Patch scampered around the pillbox for a while checking that everything was in its place and no cats had been in, Mr Sugden said to Eddie, ‘They don’t always come back, you know.’ And for a while Eddie didn’t know what the man was talking about, and even when he thought it was perhaps the dog he still wasn’t sure because Mr Sugden suddenly had a strange sadness in his face.

After an hour the light eventually started to fade and an hour after that the heat of the afternoon was finally gone entirely. They watched a heron wading in the mudflats and casting its long wiry shadow. The colours in the sky were changing, a slow darkening coming over the marshes, and across in the distance just beyond the sea, a deepening grey was seeping up from underneath the horizon. Eddie stared at it and he did not blink. He let the vision water and blur until, at last, the dark blobs formed, slowly growing, heads lifting up out of them with shoulders and arms, as if they were pulling themselves up out of the mud. Still Mr Sugden said nothing. And eventually Eddie blinked it away. The horizon flat-lined.

Patch padded around in a circle and then, making the same grumbling sound as his master, he laid down resting his jaw on his paws. Whether it was him or Mr Sugden, a few minutes later there was a short rumble, and the pillbox was filled with a warm and vile stench.

Mr Sugden shuffled uneasily and cleared his throat. Over the last few minutes his face had paled again, and he had started fidgeting as if there was something in him that felt rather uncomfortable.

‘I’m just popping out,’ Eddie said stepping away from the slit opening. ‘You’ll be all right for a few minutes?’ The smell was quite unbearable.

‘Ay,’ said Mr Sugden. On the floor Patch grumbled.

Eddie went to the corner and made a show of picking out a toilet roll as if to prove that his exit was nothing more than an urgent toilet break. 

*

He picked his way along the trodden path that led from the pillbox, the edge of the marsh on one side and the woods on the other. He needed some air. He knew from his own nosiness that if Mr Sugden so desired he could watch him from the side loophole; so when Eddie thought he’d gone far enough he turned off the path and went a short way into the trees before he sat down in the undergrowth, pretending to do the necessary, the toilet roll by his feet and getting a little damp. Perhaps there would be a storm he thought looking up at the sky. A storm would at least be something. It would at least be a start. He enjoyed the frenetic ferocity of lightening, all that crazed electricity rattling uncontrollably around in the big Suffolk sky. He was envious of its release, all that pent up frustration suddenly exploding through the dark, the whole world beneath it cowering and quaking at its wrath.

Sitting in that pile of grass he prayed for something to happen.

* 

The day that Alfie left for war Eddie woke knowing that he had made a mistake. He felt the terrible weight of all the unsaid things that the cycle ride the previous afternoon had been meant for and that now all seemed to lay in his stomach turning sour. After all, he wanted Alfie to miss him, not be glad that he had escaped.

He got out of bed hurriedly. Alfie’s mother was driving Alfie to the train station. Alfie’s father had already gone up north to catch his boat. They were leaving at eight, Alfie had told him, as if, when he and Eddie had said their awkward goodbyes, he had already known that Eddie would still come to wave him off. And now Eddie was hurrying. There was a panic building in him. He would have to cycle fast. He clattered down the stairs and out through the kitchen past his mother who shouted ‘Steady!’ and then ‘Where the hell are you tearing off to anyway?’

War did strange things to people.

It made you feel strange things.

He pedalled through the village as fast as he could, then he powered along the lane, his legs pounding, until the chimney tops of Greyfriars came into sight and he swerved off the road into the ditch. He would come through the woods into their garden. He wanted to pick his moment when Lydia wasn’t buzzing around or Alfie’s mother wasn’t in a flap, her boy going off to war. He just wanted two minutes, one minute, anything with Alfie on his own. He dumped his bike and pushed hurriedly through the undergrowth, panicking now that he might have missed them. He just needed to straighten everything out, that was all, to tell Alfie that he didn’t mind that he was going to war and leaving him behind, he just wanted them to still be the friends that they had always been, for nothing that had happened or would ever happen between them to ever change that. He stopped far enough back from the edge of the trees for no one to spot him. The motor was still there, the doors wide open, the front door of the house wide open too. Alfie’s mother was ferrying in and out, trying to usher Lydia into the vehicle but she was making a scene about something. Then her mother managed to bundle her in. She slammed the door and went back into the house, stopping in the doorway and shouting up the stairs. For Goodness sake, Alfie, you’re going to be late. And then, Right, come on then. And have you got everything?

But Eddie never did see him. He never did hear his voice. He had blacked out as he always did when he went into an attack. There was no warning but that sudden familiar feeling the split second before, that tingling rush that burst through his body as it prepared itself to stiffen and then that forceful groan that suddenly lurched from him, and that no one but him had heard over the sound of Lydia’s voice and Alfie’s mother starting the car and Alfie banging the front door shut and crunching over the gravel. By that point Eddie had lost consciousness. His legs had slipped away from under him as he fell into the undergrowth. If Alfie had looked he might have seen Eddie convulsing in the grass and dried leaves and tangle of twigs and ivy and bracken; he might have seen Eddie’s head straining to pull itself up to see him from across the garden even though his eyes had shut of their own volition and his arms and legs were jerking. Eddie didn’t know. He would never know. These little dramas always happened without him being aware of them.

When, finally, he came to, exhausted and trembling, all he knew was that his mouth was bleeding where he’d bit the inside of his cheek and that the car outside the house had gone, taking Alfie with it.

* 

Now, walking back along the path to the pillbox on the edge of the marsh, the unused toilet roll in his hand, and seeing the last pinks and oranges spreading tails across the sky, Eddie realised that all the drama he needed was within him. He recanted all the prayers he’d made, all his silly wishes. He didn’t need anything else to happen. He just needed to be here when all the others returned. He’d do what he could to hold the fort. He’d keep things as they were.

In a few hours Tommy Sparrow would arrive to relieve Mr Sugden, and he could take his stench and Patch with him. Eddie had a good mind, even now, to say he knew it wasn’t the dog. How hiis grandfather would laugh about that. And Old Mr Howe. They were all of them, despite their age, nothing but boys.

He reached the pillbox and opened the door. Patch scampered up to greet him from where he had been licking Mr Sugden’s face.

The man was tipped over on the floor, his eyes wide and glassy. Eddie looked down and knew instantly that this was his doing. It was what he’d prayed for – some drama – and now Old Badger was dead.

*****

To find out what happens to Eddie, Alfie, his sister Lydia and Mr Howe, do check out The Dynamite Room.

Photo Copyright: © Moheen Reeyad