Farewell To The East End

looked sideways at Chummy with an amused grin. She persisted in looking at the carpet, biting her lips and chewing her fingernails.
    The clock struck eleven. David stood up to leave. Cynthia said, ‘This has been so nice. We do hope you will come again. Chummy, would you show David out, while we tidy up?’
    Chummy reluctantly stood up and cast an appealing glance at Cynthia, who refused to notice her distress. In silence they left the room, and a few minutes later we heard the front door close.
    Chummy reappeared, looking pink, giggly and bewildered.
    ‘Well?’ we all said in chorus.
    ‘He has asked me to go out with him.’
    ‘Of course. What did you expect?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘Nothing?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Well why do you think he came here, all dressed up in his best suit with a clean shirt and a new tie?’
    ‘Was he? I didn’t notice.’
    ‘Of course he was. Anyone could see that.’
    ‘But why? I don’t understand.’
    ‘Because he likes you. That’s why.’
    ‘He can’t do. Not in that way, anyway. I’m not pretty. I’m not even attractive. I’m too big, and I’m clumsy and awkward. My feet are too big. I fall over things. I never know what to say to anyone. My mater can’t take me anywhere. She says I’m on the shelf.’
    ‘Well, your mater is an ass.’

    David had been in the Arnhem debacle during the war. He had been in the Paratroop Regiment, which was a crack division. In the autumn of 1944, 30,000 troops were flown behind the enemy lines to capture the bridges spanning the canals and rivers on the Dutch/German border. At the same time, British tanks and infantry were mobilised to push through from the Allied front in Normandy to relieve the airborne troops. But things did not turn out as planned, and consequently the advance airborne divisions were cut off in enemy territory without supplies or reinforcements. David was one of the lucky ones who survived. Exhausted, filthy and half-starved, he and a handful of men had made their way through the woods to the British and American occupied territory. He had been in the war only for two years, from age eighteen to twenty, but the experience had left a lasting mark on his mind and character, as well as giving him the scar on his face.
    After the war, he couldn’t settle down in civilian life. He had scarcely had time before call-up to decide what he wanted to do, and after the danger and drama of the war everything seemed rather tame at home. He tried factory work, and a milk round, he worked in a garage and in a pub, but found satisfaction in none of these. His mother was worried, and his father impatient. ‘Chopping and changing jobs all the time won’t get you anywhere. You want to settle down. A nice steady job with a pension, that’s what you want.’ David privately thought that a steady job with a pension would be worse than death, so he changed his job again.
    He had always been a quiet boy who read a lot. He was not particularly good at school, because none of the things the school taught seemed important to him. But he read voraciously, and his young mind and soul thrilled to tales of faraway places with strange-sounding names. He wanted to go to them all and learn about the people and their customs. The army had given him the chance to get away, but the horrors of war had shattered many of his romantic dreams.
    But he did not like peacetime either, and the new job – assistant in a hardware shop – was worse than all the others. His father said, ‘Stick to it, boy, you’ve got to learn to stick with things. When I was your age …’
    But David was not a boy. He was twenty-five and more disturbed than he or anyone else had realised. One of the older men in the shop, a man who had been through the First World War, gave him the help he needed. They were sitting in the back of the shop eating their packed lunches, and David must have looked particularly down that day. They started talking and reminiscing. David spoke of the perilous crawl through the forest after Arnhem, and the man said, ‘It’s funny how times like that can be the best times of your life, in a twisted sort of way. It’s the excitement, the adrenalin rush, the danger, the uncertainty. All these things make for intense living. You can’t carry on here like this, weighing half a pound of six-inch nails and sharpening a chisel. You need more activity, or you’ll go bonkers. Why not try the police? The Metropolitan are looking for recruits.’
    David