“Don’t put words in
“Just the words you’ll probably find in his. He has them all, there’s been time to find the right ones. But it would hold up an assault charge,” he said simply, “if you’re hard up. Every little helps!”
George thought it might, but discreetly said nothing. He patted Jim with an absent-minded cheerfulness, as he might have done a Dominic smitten with stomachache, bade him do as he was told, like a good chap, and not worry about anything; and with the exchange of a glance committed him again to the surprising care of Chad Wedderburn, who was inexpertly putting together the small necessities of a stay in hospital from the chest-of-drawers. “See him off, and keep him happy. Come along to the station on your way back, will you? I’ll take care of brother Ted, you can be easy, you shall have him back safely.”
He went down, not very well satisfied, to collect three vague and confused statements from the dart-players. An incident only three seconds long is not seen clearly by men whose minds are concentrated on a dart-board placed on the other side of the room. Tom Stephens, who was the most anxious to back up his roommate, said he had seen the blow struck, and didn’t think it was any accident. He had also seen the insult to Ted’s photograph, which still lay on the table with half-dried stains of spittle undoubtedly marking the glass, and his firm impression was that that had been no error of judgment, either, but a deliberate provocation. But the other two were less ready to swear to it. The German had started up to defend himself, and the open knife was already in his hand; what could you expect in the circumstances? Jim had hit him first, and quite possibly on mistaken grounds. They wouldn’t like to say he had meant any harm.
As for the warden, he wanted everything smoothed down into a chapter of accidents, the eruption of contrary temperaments intent on thinking the worst of each other. Schauffler had always been a good, quiet fellow, a little sullen and defensive in this place where he felt himself unwanted, but anxious to avoid trouble rather than to court it. The position of an anti-Nazi German soldier allowed into industry here was certainly a difficult one, and it was the warden’s opinion that hot-headed young people like Jim Fleetwood did nothing to make it easier. All this he poured into George’s ear as they went along the corridor to his office to have a look at this vexed case in the flesh.
The warden’s assistant was sitting at a desk near the top-heavy Victorian fireplace, and opposite him in a straight-backed chair, perfectly still and inert, sat Helmut Schauffler.
He was perhaps twenty-three or -four, blond as a chorus girl, with a smooth face weathered to dark ivory, and light-blue eyes a little moist and swollen, as if he had been crying, and could cry again at will. But the rest of his face, smooth across broad, hard bones, was too motionless to suggest that any sort of grief was involved in the phenomenon. He should, thought George, be a pretty impressive specimen when on his feet, broad-shouldered and narrow-flanked, with large, easy movements; but just now he didn’t look capable of movement at all, he sat, as Chad had said, like a damp sack, helpless and hopeless, with his flaccid hands dangling between his knees. They didn’t look as if they had bones enough in them to hold a knife, much less steer it into another man’s ribs. When George entered, the blue eyes lifted to his face apprehensively, like the eyes of an animal in a trap, but the rest of his face never moved a muscle.
His voice was deep but vague in pitch, fitting the sullen indefiniteness of his person; his English was interestingly broken. He burst easily into a long and pathetic explanation of the whole incident, the burden of his song being that here he was an outcast, misinterpreted, misunderstood, that his most harmless gestures were held to be threats, and the most innocent lapses of his tongue, astray among the complexities of the English language, taken as deliberate affronts. Once animated by his own woes, his body exhibited some of the tensions which had been missing, drew itself into the compact and muscular mass it was meant to be, with double the adolescent strength of Jim Fleetwood in it. It appeared, in fact, to enjoy its own animal competence. The hands, flattened along his thighs, no longer looked incapable of killing.
“I never wish to hurt this boy, I never wish to insult his brother, never. That one was a soldier, I too, I respect him. It is by a bad chance it happens like that. But the young brother is so hot, all at once he runs at me, strikes me in the face—I do not even know what it is he thinks I have done! When I am struck so, I jump up to fend him off— who not? The knife I forget, all is so suddenly happening, I am so confused. It is only he, running at me, he runs on the knife in my hand— What am I to say? If I am not German, this does not happen. If I am not German, he does not so quickly think the worst in all I do. What is it, to be here in this country a German?”
George reminded him delicately of the Nazi salute which had not passed unnoticed at the colliery. He admitted it, tears of despair starting in his blue eyes.
“Thus we are taught so long, thus it must be done years of our lives, can we so soon lose it? It comes to my hand, so, my will does not know what I do. Never have I been a Nazi, only one must conform, or for parents, family, all, is very bad life. I am young, I do as I am taught. And now it makes me to seem an enemy here, where I would be only a quiet citizen.”
His depression deepened when the unwarrantable blow at Chad Wedderburn was recalled to his memory. Five people had seen that, and to deny it was purposeless; even excuses might carry less weight here, but he could try. He enjoyed trying, George could see that. As the tragedy and doom of his eyes deepened, the exultation and sleekness of his body became more clear and insolent, like the arrogant stretchings of a cat before a fire.
“That was a bad thing, I own it, I regret it. But even that I do not mean. I am confused, angry, I am in trouble and afraid, no one helps me, no one explains or wishes to make things easier. This man, it is well understood he is very angry for the boy Jim. But he rages at me—half he says I do not understand, and so perhaps I think it worse than it is. I lose my head, and strike him because I am in despair. But when I have done it I am sorry, I no longer wish to hurt him. I am very sorry and ashamed.”
He wept a subtle tear or two; George was impressed in spite of himself. He went away to phone Weaver, and get a car from Comerbourne. This hostel was no place for Helmut Schauffler now, from any point of view; even the warden would be glad to get rid of him, though one felt that he would be equally glad to get rid of Jim. And in view of the fact that somebody, somewhere, was due to have considerable trouble with Helmut in the future, maybe a few days in custody wouldn’t do any harm; especially as the tears and broken words were due to flow for the magistrates’ benefit even more readily than they had done for George’s, and he doubted if a charge of unlawful wounding or causing bodily harm was going to stand up successfully under their weight.
He didn’t forget to collect Ted’s photograph, clean it gravely of the traces of Helmut’s attentions, and commit it to the care of Tom Stephens until Jim came home. It was the usual conventional photograph of a simple young man in uniform: candid-eyed, vulnerable, not too intelligent, very much Jim’s brother; easy meat, the pair of them, for a Helmut Schauffler. George felt depressed, and not altogether because of the immediate upsets of Comerford. Something was going wrong here which had also larger implications; it wasn’t in a few months’ time that the world was due to hear about it, but in twenty years or so, after a few people had shouted their hearts out about it and been shrugged aside as mental for their pains.
George went home at last, late and slowly, and found Chad Wedderburn talking to Bunty in the kitchen. The cut on his cheek was discoloring badly, and by tomorrow would be a focus of extreme interest for the Fourth. George said, remembering the beginning of his evening as if it drifted back to him from a thousand miles away: “I hope Dom hasn’t seen that. If he has, you’re liable to be sued for breach of contract, or obtaining money on false pretenses, or something.”
