GOING BACK
Content
TWO DECADES AND A BIT
My English Rose; back home, had rich blonde hair. As I fought my way across Europe all that time ago, she and my dad shared an Anderson shelter, small food rations and fear for my safety. But in this place, which I now revisit, my very Claudette was a shining brunette with deep blue eyes, wide with fright and wise through experience ahead of her years, was an unknown minute away. The road was rough-cobbled and pitted with shell holes. A war raged around us and an approaching shell took me to her and into a strange, adulterous bliss. The church is still where I remember it when she and Mama introduced me, an Atheist, to its mysteries and delights and formalities and respect. I missed the comfort of its rituals and sureness when I went back to England and to Rose. Now, half a century later and in spite of ageing limbs, the going is much easier than when I walked dangerously down that same French street; inches from instant death or mortal wounds with only two decades and a bit of life behind me. Fearful and alert I stalked in nervous patrol, knowing that my Rose was waiting for her man to return. Claudette was yet to come into my life as I held my solder’s gun before me, not convinced it could save my life, as I stalked along that war-torn way with step spring-tight and ears alert for the next evil act of war. My Rose, at home, had watched her young man depart; as smart as his pack and rifle would allow. Guard’s whistles blew and steam and cinders
dissolved me with a thousand others as pointless waving bade farewell to an unappreciative train. I’d traveled far in a very short time giving freedom by demolishing cities, towns, or hamlets. I'm the liberator, creeping khaki-clad with others just as fearful. I reached his humble town not knowing where in France it stood in relation to my own where Rose brewed tea for my dad and counted the rationed leaves remaining. Claudette peeked up from her refuge after many frightening and deadly days to see cracked masonry and burning timber and the unknown me, an armed soldier and a threat, picking unsteadily along broken cobbles. She ducked below and nudged her dad, who moved from shaft of light into shadow as a whistle from incoming munitions, and a need to survive took me to the same cellar in undignified rush and I shit myself. Rose at home, if as close to bombs that close, would have screamed and fainted, vomited or expired. Claudette, tougher and war-weary just froze and stared through clear young eyes, her armed fist ready to thrust the big kitchen knife to rip the guts of an enemy or lusting khaki ally. Her dad smiled a hopeful, friendly smile and gestured urgently. Understanding, I stepped closer to the wall, out of the line of fire in that foreign cellar whilst my dad was having tea or coming home from making guns on lathes in Kingston knowing nothing of his son’s very scary moment. More whistles and shells headed for that Frenchman’s hide as Rose, at home in Surrey, watched the sky and heard the drone of flying bombs and saw them dive; and prayed. In a moment, so far away from them, my world exploded
and I flew sprawling with ears ringing across the space and against Claudette’s dad; now dead from blast and lethal splinters. I woke from brief unconsciousness to filthy darkness, dust and damp and throbbing pain. A candle was lit. It lighted dust and muck and vague, crouching, figures. As I stand again today, in that same town, the rubble has gone, all is rebuilt and craters filled. Cheery voices in that familiar tongue I never mastered nor needed, echo in the street leading to the square from which dearly remembered smells greet this intrepid ancient veteran. But just here, so long ago, I heard a whimper from the girl with teenage blue eyes and from another soul as yet unseen before the candle blew out and the cellar fell in, I cried in shared despair hating my personal stench and counting my limbs; wondering if I was now sharing space with more bodies or souls about to fly. I inhaled the dusty air laced with a new stench as sewers burst. As Rose and my dad relaxed at home with the reassuring tone of the All Clear and set the table, and thanked the Lord, a groping hand touch mine. A voice spoke broken English and introduced them as mother and daughter, but I only understood the simple words after much patient repetition. Both wept for the husband and father and feared aloud and seemed to seek assurance from me who’s Rose was eating rationed ham and margarine sandwiches across miles of water, rolling Downs, and tidy streets. I had no assurance to give so muttered lies they couldn‘t understand: the army knew where I was and needed me so would seek me out and save us all. I cursed my elementary lying English tongue. My dad and Rose slept in peace and then broke their fast on brown bread
and margarine to start another day as we, now a team of three and a silent body, survived the dark and the stench and pondered the sorry prospect of gradual death. We choked and thirsted. I cursed quietly and they prayed aloud to their very God whilst Rose cleaned my house and my dad punched the clock and turned the lathe to make more guns as Claudette, Mama, and I watched our own personal glimmer of light go dark and re-ignite and heard the sounds of war diminish. We knew fresh hope when I moved the first reluctant brick and our void stayed intact, then one more, and more. A frantic, clawing, barehanded excavation brought fresh clean air and we filled our lungs and vented our stink. We found a shaft and cleared a route and left surviving rats behind and hauled her dad for a later dignified end. He was not alone on the shattered street. We found a deserted world beyond our temporary grave. I crawled; they limped and helped me, the foreign soldier, to find the pile of rubble that had been their home. They nursed my broken bones and swollen joints and cleaned my mess and dressed my wounds in another’s house, intact but deserted. For weeks I had no other life and little hope. My world was three desperate people; two who scavenged and cooked and soothed and touched and bathed and consoled me with no other help than prayer; and me the unbeliever. We grew closer as shyness diminished and I lived in a painful feathered nest as I healed and restored the strength of a twenty year old. Rose and my dad grew older across the narrow water, but oh so far away, as Claudette Mama and I survived by guile and petty theft and ingenuity. The war had gone afar and only a few came back to their homely cobbled streets. Most
had died in lines of blood-spattered refugees or fled for good. As Rose back home bought food for her and my dad with ration book from the Ministry of Food and butter from Spivs, we scavenged and adapted and I cared only for the future of my two new women and me. My rifle, grenades, my spade and pack remained in the crumbled cellar with much of my khaki drab. I stumbled about and mumbled awful French and Cockney English with my women. I healed and gained old strengths. We learned to laugh at silly, or nothing, and made efforts to joke and jest and fool. I followed Claudette around the house and out and about and managed a share of toil. My French did not improve but wasn’t needed as they grasped my elementary Cockney tongue. As Rose read the telegram proclaiming me missing, I slept with Claudette and knew the ecstasy of a new illicit love, which breached my marriage vows and I cared for nothing more than continuance. My adultery spawned no conscience and my need demanded ever more from my sweet young love. Familiarity and confidence deepened our shared desire and the blue eyes dark hair and subtle body consumed me. I cared for nothing outside my silly, unreal vulnerable world. The end of my idyll came with tears, handcuffs, rough soldiery and long, repeated explanations. Desertion was downed to disorientation and stress and excused. England and the peace came as a shock. An army had discarded khaki for a box -shouldered blue pinstriped imitation of civilian dress and struggled through rehabilitation. My Rose had always been to go back to; and Claudette doomed to be lost. Hard to disguise; my misery shone through pretence and was
never resolved. Uneasy matrimonial peace prevailed over the disgrace of divorce. I confessed my adultery and took blows and suffered in silence. We both wept tears and shunned parenthood, as Claudette and Mama grew older somewhere over there. My heart yearned for her clear young voice and her soft talking-touch and her deep urgent love. My life was a vacuum; my body an automaton, as my wrinkles deepened and my step became more hesitant. I guessed she must have found another and feared with ever-painful fervor that he pleased. She remained a fleeting vision on every passing reflection and was my constant dream, which never faded, as Rose and I persisted in a farcical portrayal of coupled life. Coupling was but a debt; her compensation for my infidelity; a physical act to discharge and a need to relieve. Duty, learned in khaki, crept in as Dad went to wherever we all go and Rose, still dominant but growing helpless, needed me more and more. Years racked our frames and deepened our jowls and moved us along with joyless pretence. I served that broken woman who’d served my dad and seen war from a sink and waited and wanted and faded into older age, unloved. I didn’t really know her torment as I watched the days go by and pined in selfish silent agony. I knew only my own waning hope that one day before too long I’d see Claudette again. The world moved on and changed. Short dirndl skirts, knickers and stocking tops were flashed in High Streets before tights came in. Man walked on the moon as Rose deteriorated to utter dependence and I collected pensions for both at the Post Office where to join the quickest queue was a lottery and we lost
the paper Pound and some fool talked of a common currency and we got used to metric and Celsius, micro tech, and digital this and that. One day, suddenly, Rose went to join my dad. I’d cared because I should but without really caring or helping or consoling as I had been consoled in France. We’d pantomimed a life; an empty life, which for me became a deeper vacuum and sucked my thoughts back to her who had never really left them. Now, the deserted crumbled French town of is transformed and bustling and I’m lost until the church sneaks its rebuilt spire around a corner. Then I know the place and seek out the refuge where Claudette became my second mate. The cellar of our survival lies rubble-filled beneath a Charcuterie, and, streets away, our borrowed house is resplendent with new paint and plastic windows and people within whose Grandparent’s clothes and food stocks we nicked to survive. I try to tell the tale with poorly remembered words. I quiz and pester, but my quest for Claudette elicits just one whispered question. ‘Mort?’ - Surely dead after all this time. Deeply depressed, I remember the tender flesh and soft cheeks and innocence of youth. She could surely not be so soon dead, but pulsing somewhere near and hiding perhaps, embarrassed by the ravage of years. Word spreads swiftly and faces turn, smiling ruefully on older cheeks, or with puzzled grimace from young innocents, gossiping. The cemetery is a long way outside the village and my tired progress is punctuated with stares or grins or turning heads. The populace must have heard my cries. With a simple forename to seek I blunder blindly round graves and monuments in the only cemetery, hoping there would be only few Claudette’s deeply etched on stone yet knowing
that to be the most foolish hope in the land of its very commonality for it is scored a hundred times. I mentally tick off dates, whittling down to a few. Memorial portraits, smeared with dirt, or gray with fading sun help. A stone; less old than most and a dedication in that strange foreign script, suggests my quest is at an end. My Claudette? I bend to tend the overgrown grass and straighten a vase. I wipe the plate with my sleeve and see a face on a faded print embedded in the stone and recognize it with a shock, as a presence joins me and I hear a feminine voice I know, in my own language, heavily accented but sweetly familiar. She says ‘That is Mama, my mother, also Claudette,’ and all the wasted years, the sorrow and guilt and my shame over Rose disperse in the warm summer breeze on Claudette’s soft caressing tone that has never left my heart. I hesitate to turn and see the older but still lovely Claudette. Her arms are wide, her smile the same, and I’m two decades and a bit once more. End 2200 wds
My English Rose; back home, had rich blonde hair. As I fought my way across Europe all that time ago, she and my dad shared an Anderson shelter, small food rations and fear for my safety. But in this place, which I now revisit, my very Claudette was a shining brunette with deep blue eyes, wide with fright and wise through experience ahead of her years, was an unknown minute away. The road was rough-cobbled and pitted with shell holes. A war raged around us and an approaching shell took me to her and into a strange, adulterous bliss. The church is still where I remember it when she and Mama introduced me, an Atheist, to its mysteries and delights and formalities and respect. I missed the comfort of its rituals and sureness when I went back to England and to Rose. Now, half a century later and in spite of ageing limbs, the going is much easier than when I walked dangerously down that same French street; inches from instant death or mortal wounds with only two decades and a bit of life behind me. Fearful and alert I stalked in nervous patrol, knowing that my Rose was waiting for her man to return. Claudette was yet to come into my life as I held my solder’s gun before me, not convinced it could save my life, as I stalked along that war-torn way with step spring-tight and ears alert for the next evil act of war. My Rose, at home, had watched her young man depart; as smart as his pack and rifle would allow. Guard’s whistles blew and steam and cinders
dissolved me with a thousand others as pointless waving bade farewell to an unappreciative train. I’d traveled far in a very short time giving freedom by demolishing cities, towns, or hamlets. I'm the liberator, creeping khaki-clad with others just as fearful. I reached his humble town not knowing where in France it stood in relation to my own where Rose brewed tea for my dad and counted the rationed leaves remaining. Claudette peeked up from her refuge after many frightening and deadly days to see cracked masonry and burning timber and the unknown me, an armed soldier and a threat, picking unsteadily along broken cobbles. She ducked below and nudged her dad, who moved from shaft of light into shadow as a whistle from incoming munitions, and a need to survive took me to the same cellar in undignified rush and I shit myself. Rose at home, if as close to bombs that close, would have screamed and fainted, vomited or expired. Claudette, tougher and war-weary just froze and stared through clear young eyes, her armed fist ready to thrust the big kitchen knife to rip the guts of an enemy or lusting khaki ally. Her dad smiled a hopeful, friendly smile and gestured urgently. Understanding, I stepped closer to the wall, out of the line of fire in that foreign cellar whilst my dad was having tea or coming home from making guns on lathes in Kingston knowing nothing of his son’s very scary moment. More whistles and shells headed for that Frenchman’s hide as Rose, at home in Surrey, watched the sky and heard the drone of flying bombs and saw them dive; and prayed. In a moment, so far away from them, my world exploded
and I flew sprawling with ears ringing across the space and against Claudette’s dad; now dead from blast and lethal splinters. I woke from brief unconsciousness to filthy darkness, dust and damp and throbbing pain. A candle was lit. It lighted dust and muck and vague, crouching, figures. As I stand again today, in that same town, the rubble has gone, all is rebuilt and craters filled. Cheery voices in that familiar tongue I never mastered nor needed, echo in the street leading to the square from which dearly remembered smells greet this intrepid ancient veteran. But just here, so long ago, I heard a whimper from the girl with teenage blue eyes and from another soul as yet unseen before the candle blew out and the cellar fell in, I cried in shared despair hating my personal stench and counting my limbs; wondering if I was now sharing space with more bodies or souls about to fly. I inhaled the dusty air laced with a new stench as sewers burst. As Rose and my dad relaxed at home with the reassuring tone of the All Clear and set the table, and thanked the Lord, a groping hand touch mine. A voice spoke broken English and introduced them as mother and daughter, but I only understood the simple words after much patient repetition. Both wept for the husband and father and feared aloud and seemed to seek assurance from me who’s Rose was eating rationed ham and margarine sandwiches across miles of water, rolling Downs, and tidy streets. I had no assurance to give so muttered lies they couldn‘t understand: the army knew where I was and needed me so would seek me out and save us all. I cursed my elementary lying English tongue. My dad and Rose slept in peace and then broke their fast on brown bread
and margarine to start another day as we, now a team of three and a silent body, survived the dark and the stench and pondered the sorry prospect of gradual death. We choked and thirsted. I cursed quietly and they prayed aloud to their very God whilst Rose cleaned my house and my dad punched the clock and turned the lathe to make more guns as Claudette, Mama, and I watched our own personal glimmer of light go dark and re-ignite and heard the sounds of war diminish. We knew fresh hope when I moved the first reluctant brick and our void stayed intact, then one more, and more. A frantic, clawing, barehanded excavation brought fresh clean air and we filled our lungs and vented our stink. We found a shaft and cleared a route and left surviving rats behind and hauled her dad for a later dignified end. He was not alone on the shattered street. We found a deserted world beyond our temporary grave. I crawled; they limped and helped me, the foreign soldier, to find the pile of rubble that had been their home. They nursed my broken bones and swollen joints and cleaned my mess and dressed my wounds in another’s house, intact but deserted. For weeks I had no other life and little hope. My world was three desperate people; two who scavenged and cooked and soothed and touched and bathed and consoled me with no other help than prayer; and me the unbeliever. We grew closer as shyness diminished and I lived in a painful feathered nest as I healed and restored the strength of a twenty year old. Rose and my dad grew older across the narrow water, but oh so far away, as Claudette Mama and I survived by guile and petty theft and ingenuity. The war had gone afar and only a few came back to their homely cobbled streets. Most
had died in lines of blood-spattered refugees or fled for good. As Rose back home bought food for her and my dad with ration book from the Ministry of Food and butter from Spivs, we scavenged and adapted and I cared only for the future of my two new women and me. My rifle, grenades, my spade and pack remained in the crumbled cellar with much of my khaki drab. I stumbled about and mumbled awful French and Cockney English with my women. I healed and gained old strengths. We learned to laugh at silly, or nothing, and made efforts to joke and jest and fool. I followed Claudette around the house and out and about and managed a share of toil. My French did not improve but wasn’t needed as they grasped my elementary Cockney tongue. As Rose read the telegram proclaiming me missing, I slept with Claudette and knew the ecstasy of a new illicit love, which breached my marriage vows and I cared for nothing more than continuance. My adultery spawned no conscience and my need demanded ever more from my sweet young love. Familiarity and confidence deepened our shared desire and the blue eyes dark hair and subtle body consumed me. I cared for nothing outside my silly, unreal vulnerable world. The end of my idyll came with tears, handcuffs, rough soldiery and long, repeated explanations. Desertion was downed to disorientation and stress and excused. England and the peace came as a shock. An army had discarded khaki for a box -shouldered blue pinstriped imitation of civilian dress and struggled through rehabilitation. My Rose had always been to go back to; and Claudette doomed to be lost. Hard to disguise; my misery shone through pretence and was
never resolved. Uneasy matrimonial peace prevailed over the disgrace of divorce. I confessed my adultery and took blows and suffered in silence. We both wept tears and shunned parenthood, as Claudette and Mama grew older somewhere over there. My heart yearned for her clear young voice and her soft talking-touch and her deep urgent love. My life was a vacuum; my body an automaton, as my wrinkles deepened and my step became more hesitant. I guessed she must have found another and feared with ever-painful fervor that he pleased. She remained a fleeting vision on every passing reflection and was my constant dream, which never faded, as Rose and I persisted in a farcical portrayal of coupled life. Coupling was but a debt; her compensation for my infidelity; a physical act to discharge and a need to relieve. Duty, learned in khaki, crept in as Dad went to wherever we all go and Rose, still dominant but growing helpless, needed me more and more. Years racked our frames and deepened our jowls and moved us along with joyless pretence. I served that broken woman who’d served my dad and seen war from a sink and waited and wanted and faded into older age, unloved. I didn’t really know her torment as I watched the days go by and pined in selfish silent agony. I knew only my own waning hope that one day before too long I’d see Claudette again. The world moved on and changed. Short dirndl skirts, knickers and stocking tops were flashed in High Streets before tights came in. Man walked on the moon as Rose deteriorated to utter dependence and I collected pensions for both at the Post Office where to join the quickest queue was a lottery and we lost
the paper Pound and some fool talked of a common currency and we got used to metric and Celsius, micro tech, and digital this and that. One day, suddenly, Rose went to join my dad. I’d cared because I should but without really caring or helping or consoling as I had been consoled in France. We’d pantomimed a life; an empty life, which for me became a deeper vacuum and sucked my thoughts back to her who had never really left them. Now, the deserted crumbled French town of is transformed and bustling and I’m lost until the church sneaks its rebuilt spire around a corner. Then I know the place and seek out the refuge where Claudette became my second mate. The cellar of our survival lies rubble-filled beneath a Charcuterie, and, streets away, our borrowed house is resplendent with new paint and plastic windows and people within whose Grandparent’s clothes and food stocks we nicked to survive. I try to tell the tale with poorly remembered words. I quiz and pester, but my quest for Claudette elicits just one whispered question. ‘Mort?’ - Surely dead after all this time. Deeply depressed, I remember the tender flesh and soft cheeks and innocence of youth. She could surely not be so soon dead, but pulsing somewhere near and hiding perhaps, embarrassed by the ravage of years. Word spreads swiftly and faces turn, smiling ruefully on older cheeks, or with puzzled grimace from young innocents, gossiping. The cemetery is a long way outside the village and my tired progress is punctuated with stares or grins or turning heads. The populace must have heard my cries. With a simple forename to seek I blunder blindly round graves and monuments in the only cemetery, hoping there would be only few Claudette’s deeply etched on stone yet knowing
that to be the most foolish hope in the land of its very commonality for it is scored a hundred times. I mentally tick off dates, whittling down to a few. Memorial portraits, smeared with dirt, or gray with fading sun help. A stone; less old than most and a dedication in that strange foreign script, suggests my quest is at an end. My Claudette? I bend to tend the overgrown grass and straighten a vase. I wipe the plate with my sleeve and see a face on a faded print embedded in the stone and recognize it with a shock, as a presence joins me and I hear a feminine voice I know, in my own language, heavily accented but sweetly familiar. She says ‘That is Mama, my mother, also Claudette,’ and all the wasted years, the sorrow and guilt and my shame over Rose disperse in the warm summer breeze on Claudette’s soft caressing tone that has never left my heart. I hesitate to turn and see the older but still lovely Claudette. Her arms are wide, her smile the same, and I’m two decades and a bit once more. End 2200 wds
