A Piece of the Sky is Missing. David Nobbs

don’t you, Bellamy?’ says the corporal. ‘Yes, corporal.’ ‘Right. Then we’ll all laugh at you.’ The voice is calm, spiteful, holding great power in reserve. He is not altogether an unsubtle operator. He has a sense of rhythm, and even rations his swear words. ‘You will all go ha ha ha by numbers. Squad will laugh at Bellamy by numbers, squaaaaaaaaa – wait for it – squaaaaaaaaaaa krwghaaaarrrh. Tups three. Ha. Tups three. Ha. Tups three. Ha ha ha. Tups three. Stand at ice. Tups three. Stand easy. Are you funny, Bellamy?’ ‘They seem to think so.’ Titters and gasps. ‘Shurrup. They seem to think so what?’ ‘They seem to think so, corporal.’ ‘I suppose Mummy thinks you’re very funny, Bellamy, does she? I suppose the mater thinks you fraightfully amusing.’ ‘My mother’s dead, corporal.’ ‘I don’t care what she is, Bellamy, you’re in the army now. Any more impertinence you’re on a charge, yunnerstand, yunnerstand?’ ‘Yes, corporal.’ Your breath stinks of fascism. ‘Now listen, Bellamy, I can break you, I can break you just like that, yunnerstand? Yunnerstand?’ ‘Yes, corporal.’ ‘I’ve broken wogs, I’ve broken krauts, I can fucking break you, yunnerstand?’ ‘Yes, corporal.’ ‘If I have any more trouble from you I’ll shove your rifle so far up your fucking arse you’ll be coughing point two two bullets. Yunnerstand? Eh? Eh? Eh?’ ‘Yes, corporal.’ ‘What’s wrong? Itching, are you? Got crabs? What do you think you are, the London Zoo? Eh? Eh?’ ‘No, corporal.’ ‘God help me, he’s got safety pins in his balls. What’s wrong with you, Bellamy? Eh?’ ‘Nothing, corporal.’ ‘Potential bloody officer? You’re not fit to be a potential bloody sanitary inspector. Now get fell in.’

      When you aren’t marching you’re up to your elbows in cold greasy water in a cookhouse sink, and when you aren’t up to your elbows in cold greasy water in a cookhouse sink you’re picking the loose leaves off the trees so that passing officers won’t be struck and possibly seriously injured by falling leaves. Three huts down the row there is a suicide.

      January, 1956. All he remembered about Sally afterwards was that she had dark hair and a perfect physique. He met her at a party. She made a pass at him. Therefore he took her home. She was drunk, perhaps also a nymphomaniac. She kissed him with tremendous pressure and perfect teeth. She forced him back on the divan and ran her body over him as if he was a harp and she was a musician’s passionate fingers. They asked no questions about each other.

      It was easy. She practically did it for him. He could have stopped at any moment, but didn’t. After all, he was only giving her what she wanted. It wasn’t hard to imagine a society in which she would get him on the national health.

      Afterwards he wondered who had been using whom the most. He felt for Sally a disagreeable mixture of disgust and pity. He felt very young and small. He felt both a sinner and a prig. He lay in bed, no longer a virgin, ready now for Sonia, and he wondered just how much he had lost. Nothing, he suspected. And that was terrifying.

      November, 1966. ‘She was a good woman. We shall all miss her,’ said the Rev. J. W. Scott.

      ‘I know I shall,’ said Robert.

      ‘She never came to church, but she was generous in her support of all our activities,’ said the Rev. J. W. Scott.

      ‘So I believe,’ said Robert.

      ‘She has been called to a better place,’ said the Rev. J. W. Scott.

      ‘She’s dead,’ said Robert.

      Chapter 8

       Hopes

      He was ninety minutes late. It had been a hard day at the office.

      ‘I’ve missed you, Robert,’ said his wife, a delicate warmth and charm softening her severe, almost feudal Emmentaler-Battenburg beauty. Can this superb creature really be mine, thought Robert. I, dull gross fellow that I am, can I really have won the hand of the fairest daughter of the most gifted family in all Europe?

      They had met on a steamy July day in the Bavarian Alps. He had paid his 1 mark 50 pfennigs and had joined the small multi-lingual party waiting in the hall to tour that unrivalled gem of the baroque, the Schloss Hohenbattenburg, sometimes affectionately known, after a disastrous dinner party of legendary fame, as the Schwarzkartoffelnhof. Who should be his guide but the youngest daughter of the house herself? He could never remember afterwards whether he fell in love in the Festsaal, with its famous musical chandeliers, or in the Crystal Grotto, but he was certain that they became engaged in the Huntsman’s Lodge. He gave her a 20 pfennig tip. That night she played all ten Beethoven symphonies exquisitely. Beethoven had bequeathed his Tenth Symphony to her family on condition that its existence was never revealed to the world. Robert was the first foreigner ever to be entrusted with the secret. They were married four days later in the family’s summer chapel high in the mountains, the tiny Battenburger Maria-Kapelle, to the tinkling of mountain streams and cow-bells, and the thundering of a massive organ.

      Did she really renounce all that without hesitation, and come back to Kentish Town, and so charm Mr Mendel that he gave them the whole top two floors of Number 38? Could it all be true? Yes, it’s true, says her smile. Yes, echo her sweet lips. Yes indeed, whispers her slight but infinitely appealing Adam’s Apple.

      ‘I’ve missed you too,’ he said.

      ‘See what Kate has done,’ she said, handing him a beautifully simple and wonderfully flattering portrait of himself.

      ‘Bless her, the lamb,’ he said, lighting the rough but effective pipe that Tim had made for him in woodwork.

      ‘I’ve done you some Trout Battenburger Art and Emmentaler partridge with grapes,’ she said. ‘But first you must go upstairs and tell them a bed-time story.’

      ‘I don’t want to leave you.’

      ‘I don’t want you to go,’ she said, handing him a large sherry in the rude but serviceable goblet that Michael had made for him in pottery.

      ‘But on the other hand I want to see them,’ he said.