Free Day by A. L Kennedy Page A

life inside your arms, under your fingers, knowing what she thought by the give in her, or the little tensions, twitches, and how she never seemed possible – the touch of her standing against you something no one could deserve. Joyce. Her making you a man of silver, bathed with light.
    Too much.
    Caring for her more than your mother, more than the skipper – of course, more than yourself.
    Too much.
    Alfred discovered that he was bent forward, elbows on his knees, eyes fast shut. His head stung, drummed. And this was the clear result of a failure in his discipline.
    The piano music had disappeared, he’d no idea when, and the air was beginning to redden, slow, the shadows tipping forward, one of them already thick across him which would explain why he was chilly. He stood, picked up his chair and his book and started walking. Dinner would be served up soon, he could smell it: some kind of soupy effort involving chicken, he thought, and afterwards vegetables and mutton: the moorland sheep disappearing and meat turning up in the pot. He wasn’t that partial to mutton, but if it was there he would eat it, no question.
    Before they started calling people in, he wanted to go back and be in his hut, check in his hut for the Luger. If there was no one about he would like to see it, have it in his hand.
    The Bastard had been the first of them to kill.
    Unexpected it was, in an easy January afternoon, their fresh, operational station drifting and darting out ahead beneath a heavy mist. It seemed purposeful, orderly – the end of their road, although Alfred had felt that most as an achievement, not a threat. This was a good day for the crew, swinging down from the truck, shagged after the journey, but ready as well and smart. They’d peeled away from the rest of the crowd, caught themselves trotting and had to ease off. No call to go looking too keen, too confident. Sometimes they were, but not today – they were only a little wary, nervous today.
    â€˜No need to rush now, lads.’ Molloy with his cigarette glued to his bottom lip. ‘They’ll keep the war warm for us while we unpack.’
    And they had laughed, because they were a crew that laughed, louder than they needed to be, warming the space between them and the low white sky. Alfred had turned his head from side to side, searching.
    â€˜What’s the matter, Boss?’ Skipper checking him, keeping in touch.
    Alfred might not have told anybody else. ‘Lancs. I can smell the Lancs. They’re here.’
    The skipper cuffed by the side of his head. ‘Yes. I think that was rather the point.’ He made another few paces. ‘That they post us to where they keep them. Makes all our training that bit more relevant.’
    They studied each other for a moment and Alfred wondered if his face was different in the way the skipper’s was, if the closeness of operations was so obvious in him, and that unsteady lift in his hands, under his boots, that fear of the next breath and its power to drag him forward, that fear it wouldn’t drag him fast enough.
    Formalities concluded, they’d set off for their new quarters. Pluckrose took the lead in the sergeant’s party and drew Alfred up beside him, Edgar following on and the Bastard last, trailing, proving he could handle things fine without them. They’d hurried under the frost, rushed themselves inside, but then had to pause at their new room’s door, because this would be their place now, a kind of home, but four of the eight empty beds were already owned: pictures on their lockers, a pack of cards, a collar, dress shoes, signs of life. They didn’t like to be intruders and were unsettled.
    All except the Bastard who brushed in past them to sit on a corner bed, bounce the cover slightly loose.
    â€˜Steady now, Johnnie – that one’s taken.’ Pluckrose smiling, but not happy, making a point of setting his kitbag down gently on a free bed.