Free The Devil's Home on Leave (Factory 2) by Derek Raymond

mediocre; in the dead of night like this I could parade them all before my eyes.
Parade
. It always came back to the army. My instinct, like a compass, kept swinging round to find north no matter what I did, no matter how I argued it. Finally I got up, trod on my beer can and put it in the garbage; then I went and looked out of the window onto Acacia Circus. It was what passes for peaceful in 1984 – that is, quietly threatening. I found myself thinking of when I was small. The second war was just over and my father, who had left the Fire Service to join the Engineers, used to hum a tune that was popular then:
    ‘We’ll meet again
Don’t know where, don’t know when,
But I know we’ll meet again
Some sunny day …’
     
    It marked your childhood, the war, even though I was only four when it ended. My mother told me I was born during an air raid; it brought me on, she said, the bombs did. I used to listen to them both as they recalled goodbyes in uniform, a hurried kiss in the blackout, the tail-lamp of a taxi disappearing in the dark, a hand waving from a troopship, and then the telegrams (‘deeply regret … you’ll be glad to know … died like a man’).
    When the telegram for his brother came my father, who was on leave, said: ‘Christ, what else could he have died like?’
    My father had become part of a bomb disposal squad for landmines; quite unexpected people did remarkable things then.
    Long ago one December night, when I was on the beat in Euston Road with another officer, a woman came up to me in the fog with the glow of King’s Cross station behind her and said: ‘Could you help me, please?’
    ‘What’s the matter?’ I said. She was crying. ‘Look, cheer up.’
    ‘No, I’m afraid I can’t,’ she said, ‘my heart’s broken.’ I looked at her and her expression struck me like ice in the stomach.
    ‘His name’s Clive Masters,’ she said, ‘he’s shot himself. We’d had a few words and I went out to calm down, and when I came back he’d shot himself. It’s just opposite – forty, Argyle Crescent, would you go? I’m afraid I can’t. I’m afraid my life’s over now.’
    ‘Come on, it’s never that bad.’
    ‘Don’t you really understand?’ she said.
    The city roared softly in the night.
    My partner and I had separated, but he came up presently and I said look after her while I go and see. The house was all bedsitters and the landlord and I went to the room. The gas fire there was going out because there was no more money in the meter. There was the unmade bed, and there was the body on it – a small body it looked too, with the blood on the bedding and the white unshaven face and a silly two-two pistol on the floor. Well, we got the usual mob round to the place – lab, fingerprints, a detective-inspector.At last a squad car came and I was going to see her into it and carry on with my duty when she looked at me with eyes that I shall always remember, they were so dark blue, and said: ‘You’ll come with me, won’t you?’ and the inspector said yes, it was OK. Going back she told me she had wanted to be an actress and I said well, you will be, but she said no, not now, where are we going? I said to the station for a cup of tea, and then we’ll put you to bed there. In a cell? she said and I said no, in the duty room. Whereupon she was silent with me in the back except that once she cried out oh, Clive, come back, come back! Then she looked at me again and said, what am I going to do now? What would you do now, if you were me? Well, it was no good, I was young, I didn’t know and couldn’t tell her, and I still don’t know what I would have done if I’d been her. Then we got back to Tottenham Court Road and she went away with the inspector to make a statement and I didn’t see her any more.
    ‘Not all fun in this job, is it, sonny?’ said the duty sergeant. ‘Well, piss off then, you’ve got a report to make on it; I want it at nine sharp.’
    I heard her cry