We drove along the ferry road in the spring twilight and parked the car on the flat bank by the river, where the ferry bell hung on a sort of wooden gallows directly opposite the pub and a boat-landing by sallow-trees. I pulled the bell twice and the big sound donged over the water and the flat meadows and the fields of young corn beyond. The sallows were honey-cream with flower, and when finally the boy began to pull the ferry across to us I could see the yellow reflections of them pouring brokenly away behind the boat. In a few moments we were being ferried over.
In the bar of the pub we could look out of the windows, across the water, and see the ferry bell reflected, black and still, below the bare flat bank and the empty sky. I looked at it and it was like the old days again.
“Well, what will it be, sir?” Alf said. He flattened his hands on the bar.
“You don’t remember me, Alf,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Alf Said. He looked at me, large grey eyes screwed up. “I seem to remember your face. But I get so many Air Force boys in here.”
So I told him who I was. “You remember,” I said. “I used to come in a year or so back. With Mr. Taylor and Mr. Baker and Mr. Dibdin and Mr. Lockley. You remember. The boys of the old squadron,” I said. “You remember.”
“Well, bless my heart an’ life,” Alf said. He wiped his right hand across his apron and held it across the bar.
“How are you, sir? How are you? Fancy me forgettin’.” He looked up at me with eyes large and tender with regret. We shook hands. “But you know, sir, they come an’ go. That’s the truth. They come an’ go.”
“Yes,” I said. “They come and go.”
“Missus!” Alf shouted into the back of the bar. “Come an’ look who’s here! Come on.”
And in a moment or two Mrs. Alf came into the bar. She was dressed in black. Her hair was the colour of the sallow-blooms by the landing-stage outside, and the flesh of her face hung in loose powdered folds on the high lace collar of her dress.
“They y’are,” Alf said. “There’s a gentleman I bet you don’t remember.”
Mrs. Alf put her head on one side and smiled, pouting her scarlet lips.
“Don’t talk so wet!” she said. “Course I remember. Talk so wet. He’s a friend of Mr. Lockley’s.”
“Well!” Alf said. “Well! If that don’t call for one all round.”
“How de do,” Mrs. Alf said. “How de do.”
She held out her flabby white hand to me and smiled. The flesh of her hands was so thick that it had pressed the three rings on her marriage finger deep and tight, until they were like a small coiled gold spring locked on her fingers.
“How d’ye do,” I said. We shook hands, and I felt her hand over-soft and warm in mine.
“And this is Mr. Whitworth,” I said.
“How de do,” she said to my friend, and smiled.
“Well!” Alf said. “Well!”
He had drawn four light ales, and now he set them on the bar. We took them up and held them for a moment in the air.
“Well! Here’s to everybody!” Alf said.
“And here’s to you,” I said.
“And here’s to the boys of the old squadron,” Mrs. Alf said. “God bless them.”
We drank and smiled at each other. Alf wiped his mouth with his hand and breathed hard. “Ever see anything of the old squadron now, sir?”
“I saw Mr. Taylor the other day,” I said. “Back from Canada. Mr. McIntyre, he’s a prisoner.”
“No camp will hold him long,” Alf said.
“No,” I said. “And Mr. Armstrong—you remember Maxie—he’s an instructor. Mr.Butterworth, he’s a squadron leader. Mr. Colton, he went back to Canada too.”
“Scattered all over the place,” Alf said.
“Yes,” I said. “Mr. Feddington, he’s with the Americans.”
“But there’s something I wanted to ask you,” Mrs. Alf said. “What happened to Mr. Lockley, sir? We never heard. What happened to Mr. Lockley?”
“He was a cough-drop,” Alf said.
“Oh, a nice boy!” Mrs. Alf said. “You could always reckon on fun when Mr. Lockley was here.”
“You could an’ all,” Alf said.
“Always up to some game. The number of glasses he broke in here is nobody’s business. Always larkin’ about. Never took nothing serious. Acrobats on the bar. Swimming the river at midnight. All the capers you could think of. I bet he never took nothing serious in his life, that boy.”
I did not say anything now.
“I tell you a thing he used to do,” Alf said, “last thing at night I’d ferry him and the boys over. Shortest way home for ’em. I’d come back and lock the boat up. And then about a quarter of an hour later the bell would ring.”
“Mr. Lockley,” I said.
“Well, I ain’t goin’ to say it was and I ain’t to say it wasn’t,” Alf said. “For whenever I got over there, after unlocking the boat an’ everything, there was never anybody there. And that was him all over.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Him all over,” Alf said. “I bet he never took nothing serious in his life. I bet he never took his flying serious. You couldn’t imagine him. I bet he thought that was a lark.”
I put the glass down on the bar and looked at Alf, big and heavy like a boxer, and Mrs. Alf, simple and florid, her rings coiled tight on her fingers.
“The trouble was he took it too seriously,” I said.
“Ah, go on,” Alf said.
“He never had any luck,” I said. I looked at the glass on the bar, and then up at Alf and his wife again. Their eyes were big with surprise and a sort of vacant tenderness as I began to tell them how it had been with Mr. Lockley. I began to tell them how, both in his personal life and his service life, Mr. Lockley had never had much luck: how he had lost his family in an air raid in London, how when he had come to the squadron he had never seemed to be able to land an aircraft as it should be landed, how little incidents and little accidents seemed to fill his life with a sort of haunting fatalism until he was almost afraid to fly. I told them how hard he tried; and how, the harder he tried, the worse it seemed to get for him. I told them how, through one of those unaccountable misjudgements, he landed a Halifax fifty feet off the runway and survived to face the problem of his own utter despair.
“Well, you wouldn’t hardly credit it,” Alf said. “You wouldn’t hardly credit it.”
And finally I told them how, behind all the foolery and the larking and the tipsy lightheartedness and the practical joking, Lockley went out over Bremen and conquered at last the fears and failures and the accidents and incidents of despair.
“He rang the bell alright that night,” I said. “His leg was smashed by flak but he didn’t say anything. He went on and made one bombing run, and then another. His leg was very bad and the aircraft was falling to pieces. But he let all the crew get out, and then, at the very last, got out himself. He baled out with a smashed leg and they took him prisoner.”
There was silence in the bar as I finished speaking. I looked up at the big eyes of Alf, big and stupid and friendly, and of Mrs. Alf, florid and kind-hearted and full of wonder. They were shining with unfallen tears.
“It just shows you, don’t it?” Alf said.
“They gave him a medal for it,” I said.
“He earned it,” Alf said.
I looked at Mrs. Alf, tenderhearted behind all the powdered floridity, the lipstick cracked on her big lips, the tight rings on her too-fat fingers. “He earned more than that,” she said.
A little later Alf himself ferried us back over the river. We shook hands and then at last drew slowly away along the river banks as Alf began to pull the ferry boat back towards the sallow-trees, glowing now like misty cream dust by the dark walls of the pub.
“Good night, sir,” Alf said. “Nice to see you. Nice to hear about Mr. Lockley.”
“Good night, Alf,” we said. “Good night.”
We drove away along the empty river bank. The water was dark and smooth in the falling light. We drove about a mile and then stopped before making a turn in the road. And as we stopped I could hear a sound coming up way we had come, over the darkening water.
Someone was ringing the bell.