Limbo 56 - Mike Morris (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud TXT) 📗

the cigarette lighter in that little grey handbag.”

Jimmy shook his head. “I don’t want to be dead,” he told the thin man. “I know I’ve been a right arrogant bastard, but there are things I want to – need to do.” He sighed. “There are a couple of women who I’ve treated abominably, my mother and my ex-fiancée. They liked each other, but they obviously had the same bad taste in men. I need to make amends with the men I’ve been flying with. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up.”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to you,” Arthur said. “I thought you might change in the real world, but you still have that shadow about you, covering you like a shroud. I don’t know what’s holding you back.” He looked gloomily out of the dark windows. The bus had stopped a few times, and was almost empty. The dark factories and foundries had given way to terrace houses with small, neat front yards. A few gaps in the uniform redbrick rows were like rotten teeth, blackened bricks, torn damp paper where enemy bombs had destroyed the symmetry of the rows. “Not so much damage out here,” Arthur muttered, “I was thinking Corporal Williams might have been bombed. I wish I knew why Jimmy was talking to him.”

“Who is Corporal Williams?” Jimmy asked.

“I knew him from the other war,” Arthur said. “He was a Conscientious Objector, but he volunteered to be an ambulance driver. Went through Hell, and finally ended up in Limbo with a whole battalion of dead men. He was alive, though, - somewhere out there in the battlefield.”

“What happened?”

“He and Shadrach marched back out with the others. He must have rejoined his body. I seem to remember he had a girlfriend somewhere. The others followed their not-so-crazy General to their final resting place.”

“Was Shadrach alive?”

“No, he was one of my best workers at the foundry.” Arthur shrugged. “I never saw Shadrach again.” He consulted the file card and turned down a side street. “Here it is,” he said, stopping outside a redbrick townhouse. The curtains were drawn, and the small lawn looked neglected.

“What do we do now?” Jimmy asked.

“We knock on the door and say hello,” Arthur told him.

The house sounded dead and empty, but after repeated knocking, they heard shuffling steps approach. The door opened, and a middle-aged man in the uniform of an air-raid warden was revealed. “Come in, whoever you are,” he said. “I don’t want any light showing.” They crowded into the narrow hallway, and the man turned around and made his way, rubber boots squeaking on the oilcloth, to a small kitchen. A bottle of beer stood on the kitchen table, and an old plate with a half-eaten cheese sandwich. “You came back for me, Jimmy?” the man demanded. He squinted in the yellow light. “Not Jimmy,” he said. “But you look just like him.”

“It’s his grandson,” Arthur said, and Corporal Williams seemed to notice him for the first time.

“Governor Mossop?” he asked, surprised. “I thought never to see you again while I was alive.” He swept some crumbs into his hand and threw them into a waste bin. “Sit down,” he ordered. “There was no need for you to come for me in person, Governor.” He fetched two bottles of beer. “I hope you can taste this,” he said. “I have a piece of cheese and some bread you can share, too.”

“What I want to know, Corporal Williams,” Arthur said firmly, “is what you were doing with Jimmy, why you can see us. You’re not dead, you’re not sick.”

“Janie died, and I tried to commit suicide,” the corporal said wearily. “But a friend of mine from the ARP came around looking for me and found me before I was gone. I won’t make the same mistake next time.”

“There won’t be a next time,” Arthur said grimly. “What’s the matter with you? You walked through the tunnel back into the inferno five and twenty years ago, and now you’re whining about committing suicide. Do you want to join us in Limbo and mourn your wife forever?”

“I’ve done the right thing all my life,” the Corporal said, “and now my Janie is gone, and I want to be with her, I deserve to be with her.” He made a sound halfway between a sigh and a moan. “Look at me,” he said, “I’m no use to anyone now.” He waved a hand around the untidy kitchen. “She loved this house - wouldn’t move, even when bombs were falling all around.”

“What happened to her,” Jimmy asked.

“Bomb,” the man who had been Corporal Williams stood up creakily. “She worked as a volunteer at a local hospital. A bomb took her and three patients. I was on station about three streets away. I found her body. There was nothing I could do. Not a thing. I want to die, and be with her, Governor,” he said.

“You know you have to go on,” Arthur said. “You still have a duty. You’re not like me. I may never make up for all the bad things I did, all the chances I missed.” He grabbed the Corporal. “Look at you. You’re still in uniform, and you’re still saving lives. How many lives have you saved since you’ve been an Air Raid Warden?”

“Two, maybe three,” the corporal mumbled. “Not a lot for three years.”

“And how many have you kept out of harms way. And how many of those had husbands, wives, children, children who will grow up and have their own families…”

“Leave me alone,” the man cried, “save it for someone like him. For someone with a future.”

“Don’t use me as an example,” Jimmy said. “I’ve never loved anyone. I let my mother down. I never helped her or supported her. I never loved anyone. My grandfather is Jimmy Wheeler, who sells souls to the Devil, and my father is, was, Ezra Wheeler, a coward who deserted his men. I joined the Air Force to prove that I’m a big bold hero, not to help anyone. I shoot down Germans to make myself look good.”

The Corporal seemed to shrink. “I wish,” he said, “that you hadn’t come here.” He focused on Jimmy. “That’s why your grandfather gave my address to the Governor. Your father was Sergeant Ezra Wheeler, of the Second Welsh Regiment. I knew him; I served with him for a few weeks.”

“Yes, he was a sergeant,” Jimmy agreed.

“And you called him a coward?”

“He was shot for desertion in the face of the enemy – cowardice. I don’t know how many fights I got into over that, until I learned to accept it,” Jimmy said.

“Did you ever look down from that nice clean ‘plane of yours and see the soldiers below? Probably looks like a toy battlefield to you,” Corporal Williams said. “Little lead soldiers, pushed around by the Generals, miles away from your clean war.” He stood up. “Come over here, I’m going to show you some pictures.” He grabbed a key ring that hung from a nail in the wall. “The first war was worse for the soldiers,” he said. “This one is much worse for civilians.” He unlocked a door half-hidden behind a sofa. “Come down into the cellar. You know,” he said over his shoulder as they descended into the blackness, “The Generals, the ones who ran the war, had no idea of what it was like to be in the mud and stink and noise, the screams of the dying, men bleeding to death in the dirt, with no-one to help. Medics, like me with no pain-killing drugs, no access to medical information, no penicillin, just a few used bandages, half washed in a dirty stream that was used as a latrine. The Generals had no idea of the awful killing power of the machine gun. They thought you could dodge a bullet like they had dodged a saber-thrust. They had no idea of gangrene from constant sleeping and eating in a half-flooded ditch, where a scratch could balloon and fill with pus within hours. They didn’t know about shell shock.”

“Shell shock.” He said, unlocking a battered door in the corner of the cellar. “After a few days sleeping on our feet, smelling death, we were all a little crazy. Look at these pictures,” he said.

The walls were covered with pictures; dead men; dying men; blood and dirt. The walls seemed to stretch away into the darkness, as if he was in the trench himself and not some tiny room in the corner of a cellar. “How did you,” he said, turning round. Corporal Williams was gone. The heavens opened with a shattering roar, and a giant hand slapped the earth spraying mud in his face. A man close by screamed, and clutched his belly as entrails oozed between his fingers. Jimmy gagged on the smell of decay and fear, and his bowels tightened as he strove to control them. A soldier a few yards away screamed as shrapnel sliced off the top of his head. Jimmy tried to scream and found that he could not. Down the line a grey-faced sergeant was rallying the men, dragging bodies to the side and pulling live men to shelter. Their eyes met for a moment, and he tried to struggle towards the man. “Get out of here while you can,” his father screamed, and he was behind the wooden door, in the cool silence of the cellar.

He sagged, and the Corporal held him with a strong arm. Gasping, almost drowned, he shook his head to force back some sanity. “About thirty seconds,” the Corporal said. “You were there for about thirty seconds. Sit down.” He dragged some old chairs from the shadows. “Your father was there for months. The officers wouldn’t withdraw him for a break, because he was a good sergeant. He used to sleep leaning on the mud walls of the trenches, and wake up screaming. His whole body shook day and night – until he had to lead his men, fire his rifle. Then, somehow, he pulled himself together and did his duty. I was the only one who saw how sick he really was. Oh, and I forgot to tell you, he protected me from the others when they went insane and started to call me a ‘conchie’. Your father was the bravest man I ever knew, ever will know.” The Corporal sighed. “There were about thirty of us, shattered, wounded, half starved, behind enemy lines. The Army had forgotten about us. That’s when your father decided to lead us out, under cover of night.”

“They tried him for desertion and cowardice. We weren’t allowed to speak in his defense. I lost my stripes for trying. I think that’s why I followed General Scott into Limbo. I think I had some stupid idea of finding your father there and apologizing on behalf of the Army. I wish I could see your father again, just once. He was a brave man who gave his life for his country.”

The Corporal stood up and beckoned. “I suppose, now, that I’ll have to live the rest of my life without Janie. Too many brave soldiers died so I, and you, could live.” They marched up the dark stairs and into the light of the kitchen, where Arthur was sitting quietly. “I think he’s OK, now,” the Corporal said, and so am I. I believe you are done with us, Governor.”

“It’s been a privilege meeting both of you,” Arthur said in a small voice. “It was good seeing