THE GREEN TOBY
In the summer of 1949, Mr. Harvey Stovall left his suite at the Hyde Park Hotel and strolled toward Piccadilly enjoying himself. First, he had just cabled good news to his partner in the firm of Stovall & Stokes, the go-gettingest legal team, he reflected, in Columbus, Ohio. Second, he was faced with a free day in which to poke about London.
Stovall paused at the intersection of Piccadilly and Bonds Streets, more out of curiosity than from an intent to make a pur- chase, and observed the latest in men’s hats in the window of Scott’s, hatterer to his Majesty the King. That black Homburg, he thought, would certainly create a stir in Columbus, but he’d better stick to his own conservative brown Stetson.
Involuntarily he appraised his reflection in the window, which mirrored a prosperous citizen, a trifle heavy about the middle, with gray hair and the shrewd, tired eyes of the overworked American businessman, a dark blue double-breasted suit, a dark red carnation in the lapel and neatly shined black shoes. He re- called, with a pang, that he had been leaner when last he walked these ancient streets.
Sauntering through the Burlington Arcade, he recognized the shop in which he had once bought an old silver cigarette box as a wedding-anniversary present for his wife, Martha. He was about to enter and explore the establishment when he stood suddenly transfixed, his eyes drawn by a green enameled Toby on display in the window.
Vigorously modeled, with a well formed satyr handle, the mug depicted a robber, with a Robin Hood hat and a black mask over the eyes. Stovall hurried into the shop with such precipi- tance that he jostled a gnarled gnome of a man just inside the door.
“Wot’s the bloody ‘urry, mate”, said the gnome, who resem- bled one of the Tobies on the wall shelf behind him? “I’m the proprietor ‘ere.”
“Excuse me”, said Stovall, making no effort to conceal his excitement, “I’d like to see that green beer mug in the front window.”
“It’s Tobies you’re after, sir? Allow me to show you a rare salt-glazed Toby I ‘ave ‘ere . . .”
“No, no”, said Stovall impatiently, “the one in the window, please.” “Right you are, sir.”
Grumbling to himself, the gnome crawled into the window and fetched the Toby, watching with evident disapproval while his customer examined it eagerly.
“That one’s been knocked about a bit, sir”, he persisted. “Not in it with this fine collection of Staffordshire Tobys over ‘ere.”
“Where did you get this”, asked Stovall? The proprietor searched a huge ledger.
“An auction at Archbury”, he said. “After those bloody Americans left.” Stovall’s eyes lighted up.
“How much will you take for it?”
“I ‘ates to take advantage of you, sir. Now if you’ll allow me to show you a Staffordshire in perfect condition . . .”
“I want this one. How much?”
“Well, sir. Wot do you say to fourteen bob? Frankly, there’s not much value to it.”
Instantly Stovall’s expression hardened into a glare and color mounted his cheeks. Mistaking this sign for sales resistance, the proprietor added hastily:
“Call it twelve bob.”
“Fourteen bob is very reasonable”, said Stoval, quietly.
He counted out the money and watched while the proprietor wrapped the jug carefully in excelsior, placed it in a box and tied it with a stout cord. Then he thanked him, hurried outside and hailed a taxi, instructing the cabby to take him to the Hyde Park Hotel. It was his intention to leave the Toby in a safe place be- fore he resumed his stroll. But halfway to the hotel he changed his mind.
“Paddington Station”, he said.
Almost before his decision had fully crystallized, he found himself aboard a train bound for the village of Archbury in the Midlands. Two hours later he walked through the winding old streets of Archbury, direct to a pub called the Black Swan, borrowed a bicycle from the bartender, slung his package to the handlebars, and pedaled out of the village along a country road lined with hedges and shaggy houses with thatched roofs. Breaking in and out of the scudding clouds, the sun gradually thawed the chill from the air, and a light breeze cooled Stovall’s forehead, moist from the exertion of pumping the bicycle up the occasional hills. More than once he felt a little foolish, and won- dered, whether or not, if he should turn back.
Certainly he, Harvey Stovall, was a methodical rather than an impulsive or emotional man. Furthermore, it annoyed him that he had brought the package along; if he should took a spill, he might break it. But he pedaled steadily on, glancing down now and then to insure that the metal clips were protecting his trouser cuffs.
After a while, he turned off on a side road, propped the bike against a hedge and strode slowly a hundred yards out onto an enormous flat, unobstructed, field. When he halted he was stand- ing at the head of a wide, dilapidated avenue of concrete, which stretched in front of him with gentle undulations for a mile and a half. A herd of cows, nibbling at the tall grass which had grown up through the cracks, helped to camouflage his recollection of the huge runway. He noted the black streaks left by many tires, where they had struck the surface, smoking, and nearby, through the weeds, which nearly covered it, he could still see the stains left by puddles of grease and black oil, on one of the hard-stands, evenly spaced around the five-mile circumference of the perime- ter track, like teeth on a ring gear.
And in the background he could make out a forlorn dirty gray control tower, topped by a tattered gray windsock, and behind it two empty hangers, a shoe box of a water tank on high stilts and an ugly cluster of squat Nissen huts. Not a soul was visible, no- thing moved, save the cows, nor was there any sound to break the great quiet. And yet Harvey Stovall, standing there against the green landscape, was no longer alone.
Nor, to him, was the suit he wore still blue. Rather it was an olive drab, with major’s leaves on the shoulders, as befitted the Adjutant of a heavy bombardment group.
A gust of wind blew back the tall weeds behind the hard-stand nearest him. But suddenly Stovall could no longer see the bent- back weeds through the quick tears that blurred his eyes, and slid down the deep lines in his face.
He made no move to brush them away. For, behind the blur he could see, from within, more clearly. On each empty hard-stand there sat the ghost of a B-17, its four whirling propellers blasting the tall grass with the gale of its slipstream, its tires bulging under the weight of tons of bombs and tons of gasoline needed for a deep penetration raid.
In the large Nissen hut used for briefing, now deserted and covered with dust, he saw the gathering of a ghostly company of 250 pilots, navigators, bombardiers and gunners, encumbered in their bulky flying clothes, life vests and oxygen masks, straining to hear the words of a ghostly Intelligence officer as he indicated a target on the map.
In the Group Commander’s quarters, with its luxury of a bath- room, and a fire grate, now rusty and cold, he saw two ghosts wandering about, one of whom had broken under the pressure of great events.
In the station hospital, there were no rows of beds in the ward, and the operation room was vacant. But he knew that many ghosts assembled there in the small hours of the night, to speak of frostbitten faces and hands, of wounds inflicted by jagged flak and exploding 20 millimeter cannon shells, and of survival.
In the Adjutant’s office, Stovall recognized a middle-aged ghost, himself, examining the papers that flowed across his desk. Telling the tale, in brief reports and in cold figures, of the ordeal of the rest of the ghosts who populated a small, self-contained universe, bounded by the limits of this deserted station, in which they had endured a terrible hour, and in which demoralization had threatened American arms, with a shameful and disastrous defection.
Regaining his composure, Stovall walked back to the bicycle, perplexed at the nature of the emotion that had inspired the first real tears he could remember shedding since his youth, and then he understood. They were born, not of a sentimental wallowing in Auld Lang Syne, but of the clear realization, emerging through the perspective of time, that here, on this one station, America might have lost the war. That this one rotten apple, decaying at a critically early juncture, almost spoiled the whole barrel.
Americans only remember victories. Little did they know how perilously close the sequence of events at Archbury Field had come to destroying, in its cradle, the future giant of air power which, even according to its victim, was the decisive factor in Nazi Germany’s plunge to defeat?
He mounted the bike, pedaled down the runway, scattering a formation of plover, turned off at the far end, and followed a narrow concrete road to an outsize Nissen hut which had been the Officer’s Club. Seeing that the door stood ajar, he leaned the bike against the entrance and place his hand on the rusted door- knob.
He had to shove with his shoulder before the door, having warped on its creaking hinges, finally scraped inward, sending a hollow reverberation through the empty room. Cobwebs shroud- ed the windows and a layer of dust powered the floor.
Stripped of its furniture and pictures, the room was lifeless, save for a pair of rats which streaked away from him, and dis- appeared through the hole under the mantelpiece at the far end, near which was a faded square where a radio had once stood against the wall. But here, too, Stovall could see many ghosts - ghosts of the aircrews who had found, in this room, a haven where they could relax, order a drink, shoot craps and listen to the radio.
His roving eyes came to a halt on the mantelpiece, and imper- ceptibly his shoulders straightened and his whole body stiffened.
Abruptly he returned to the bicycle, removed the package from the handlebars, untied the cord and lifted out the shiny green Toby.
He reentered the club and walked purposefully to the mantle, where, with his handkerchief, he cleaned a spot in the thick dust.
And then, with the reverence of a man laying a wreath on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, he placed the Toby with precision on the clean patch in the center of the mantelpiece, so that the masked robber faced out towards the empty room.
He walked swiftly to the door, where he turned around for a last look at the Toby, which stared back at him with a malignant leer. Then, having seconds thoughts about leaving it behind, he retrieved the mug and carefully returned it to its box.
Once more, as he was about to leave, he looked back and noticed the faded square on the wall where the radio had been. He then closed the door and mounted the bike for the ride back to the village. And as he pedaled slowly away, he imagined that he could again hear a cryptic broadcast that had once blared from that radio, one evening, in those first few months of 1943.