Cold War

Terry had grown up poor, but not rough. He’d spent his childhood in Oldham, which was industrial, gritty, monotonous, and working-class. Nigel, in contrast, had been born and raised in Liverpool, which was both more battered and more combative. During the war it had drawn the repeated attention of the Luftwaffe and, to Terry’s unfamiliar eye, it looked as if nothing had been rebuilt since. On the contrary, many smaller shipping companies and shipyards had fallen on hard times and were shuttered. Ships lay rusting at abandoned berths or rotted at anchor, floating derelicts. The men who should have been working in both the ships and the yards were idle, too. Terry passed a dole queue so long that it stretched around the block. Unemployed youths loitered around the lamp posts, eyeing passersby with malevolence.

Conscious of how small and weak he looked, Terry tried to walk fast and purposefully. He double-checked the instructions he’d written down and confirmed he needed to turn right at the next corner, just after the Jolly Tar. The gutter in front of the pub stank of vomit, which hadn’t yet washed down the drain. Just before he made the turnoff, he heard a shout and a second later a football smashed against his ankle. Terry kicked the ball away angrily without looking in the direction from which it came. He spun in the opposite direction instead and came face-to-face with the boy who had been about to pinch his wallet. “Bog off!” Terry snarled and the boy drew back.

This was a dreadful place to grow up, Terry registered, as he turned into the narrower, darker side street. He’d only gone about a hundred yards before a young woman in a short skirt stepped out of a doorway and slipped her arm through his elbow. “Want a quickie, love?”

“I beg your pardon?” Terry looked at her pale face, disfigured to grotesqueness by overdoses of lipstick and rouge.

“Oh, no,” she groaned, “you’re one of those. Wouldn’t know what to do, would you?” she sneered as she withdrew into the shadows.

Terry found the sign saying “Laundry,” and rang the bell. From inside a woman’s voice screeched, “I’m coming, I’m coming!” The door was yanked open and a woman in a pink dressing gown, pink slippers, and hair rollers stood in the doorway. “What do you want?” she asked hostilely, having already noted that Terry didn’t have a laundry bag.

“I’m looking for Nigel Osgood,” Terry answered.

“That lazy sod of-a-son-of-mine? I hope you’re here to take him off my hands!” Without giving Terry a chance to answer, she turned and raised her voice to yell towards the back of the house, “NIGEL! Come here!”

The answer was rude, but Nigel’s mother wasn’t put off. “You’ve got a visitor!”

A door crashed and Nigel staggered into the hall. He was wearing only his underwear, and one eye was swollen shut. The entire left side of his face had been transformed into a misshapen bruise, and his swollen lips bore scabs. When he saw Terry, his eyes widened and then he stumbled forward. “Terry? What are you doing here?” his words ran together because his lips were so badly swollen.

“Can we go somewhere else to talk?” Terry answered, looking pointedly at Nigel’s mother, who was staring at them.

“Yeah, of course we can. Do you know where the Sally Ann is?”

“I’ll find it,” Terry answered.

“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Terry retreated to the main street, stepped into the chemist’s opposite the Jolly Tar and got directions to the Salvation Army. When he arrived, he was told the soup kitchen was closed, but was offered tea and sat down to wait. It wasn’t long before Nigel showed up. He’d put on his uniform with the lone stripe of a Third Officer on his sleeve, but the uniform was rumpled and salt stained.

Seeing Terry’s look, Nigel growled, “What was the point of getting it cleaned? I’ll never get another officer’s berth.” As he slumped into the chair opposite Terry, he pounded a fist on the table only to wince. His hand, too, was swollen and bruised.

Nodding towards his face, Terry asked, “That what the Chief Mate did to you?”

“Nah,” Nigel unconsciously reached up to measure how swollen his face was with his fingers. To Terry, he explained, “Or not all of it. I tried to throw one of my mother’s boyfriends out. That’s why she’s so pissed off at me.”

“Did you manage?”

“Don’t know why I bother. If I throw one out she just picks up another. And each one’s worse than the one before!” The anger that lurked only just below the surface started to flare up, but then the spark died out again. Nigel shrugged in defeat. “This is going to sound sick, but sometimes I wish she’d just go on the game and charge ‘em for it. At least that way they’d bring some effing money in, instead of sucking us dry! We’ve got bugger all in the cupboards, and I haven’t had a solid meal since I came ashore.”

Terry had never seen Nigel so low before. He supposed it was because, for a while, things had been looking up. This reverse of his fortunes had come too suddenly and too profoundly to fully grasp. “I can take you out to supper, Nigel,” Terry offered softly.

“Yeah, thanks!” Nigel snarled back. “And what about tomorrow and the day after?” Yet, as before, no sooner had the anger erupted than it faded again. Nigel folded his arms on the table and dropped his forehead on them. To the table he slurred, “I’m a wreck, Terry. A worthless wreck. The bastards win again. Just like they always do. All the smart-arsed toffs always win, and the likes of us just get kicked further and further down into the sewer.”

Nigel had always had this streak of resentment that Terry did not share. Terry saw the injustice in the world, but he didn’t accept that he was helpless to change his personal circumstances. From long experience, however, he knew it was pointless to argue with Nigel. He wanted to comfort Nigel, but because he hadn’t known much physical affection growing up, he also found it hard to offer it. After a moment of hesitation, he timidly laid his hand on Nigel’s shoulder. “Look, Nigel, there might be a way out. You see, the skipper sent me—”

Nigel sat bolt upright. “You’d better not have told him about what happened!” Nigel warned, clenching his fists as he glared at Terry. He looked ready to punch him if he’d betrayed Nigel’s state to their wartime skipper.

Terry hastily shook his head and lied in self-defence. “No, of course not, but he’s trying to put a crew together again and he wanted to know if you’d be interested in joining us.”

“What?”

“He’s got a chance to fly the Airlift with a commercial aviation company, but he needs a full crew—”

“He needs an air gunner?” Nigel asked back flabbergasted.

“No. He thought you could join as navigator.”

Nigel gaped at him. “Me? Navigator? In Adrian’s berth?”

“You know Adrian’s not going to leave his comfy life to fly day and night!”

“That’s for sure!” Nigel scoffed, mollified by shared contempt for the most privileged member of their former crew.

Terry continued, “But you qualified as a navigator to sit for your Mate’s Exam.”

Nigel nodded slowly. “I did well on that part of the test. I like shooting the stars, and the new radio navigation aids are wizard stuff.” He paused, still staring at Terry, and asked, “Did the skipper really ask about me, or was it your idea?”

“It was his idea,” Terry assured him.

Nigel’s left hand crept over his battered face and he groaned. “Christ! I can’t let the skipper see me like this! I’ve got to get myself cleaned up. Terry, can you help me? I need to get away from here — from her, from Liverpool, from everything.”

Terry nodded. “You can come back with me to Oldham. I’ve only got one room, so you’ll have to sleep on the sofa, but if the Skip finds a second pilot and a flight engineer, we’ll be on our way to Germany by the end of the month.”

“Who would have thought I’d like the thought of going to Germany?” Nigel countered with a lopsided grin.