Home Guard

Tuesday, 4.30, July 1964, a very hot day. And there it was, the usual knock at the door- two loud raps and three light, playful ones. Stephen wished, just for once, it would be a different knock, a serious knock, the police perhaps doing a house to house about an armed robbery or a murder. But no, it was half past four on a Tuesday. Any minute now - yes there it was - the sound of his mother coming down the hall with a light patter of footsteps instead of her usual heavier tread.
  The girlish laugh, the deeper rumbles of his voice and the sound of the sitting room door closing, that would be all he would hear, he never listened at the door, not because he was very honest or good but for fear of what he might he might hear.
  He retreated back into the bedroom he shared with his father and shut the door quietly. It was stuffy in the room but he couldn’t open the window, his father’s bits and pieces cluttered up the sill and he mustn’t disturb them.
  He picked up a hard 2H pencil and began to draw – a quiet past time which absorbed him but not so much that he wouldn’t hear the distant roar of his father’s Enfield.
  Mr Persil, he thought, Mr Bloody Persil with his twirly moustaches and good suit. He was only a tallyman but somehow he managed to make himself glamorous – and his mother loved glamour. She worked at Shepperton Studios in Continuity and when he’d been a small boy, in the school holidays, she’d had a limo pick them up and take them to the studio. There, because he was a ‘pretty boy’ with beautiful curly dark hair and small, neat features, he was offered parts in Greyfriars Bobby and the like but always turned them down. He didn’t want to perform, he wasn’t shy, just didn’t fancy it, he’d rather have worked behind the scenes, making props and scenery. But he liked the limo. Of course, he wouldn’t now, wouldn’t go any where near it, Christ, what would his friends think?
  He and his mother had fallen out, he’d grown up and she wouldn’t admit it, so now he was more on his father’s side. You had to take sides being an only child with two parents who were constantly at war and didn’t hide it.
  He drew with all senses alert for sound outside, which actually helped his drawing; sometimes amazing things came from his pencil, dragons and mythical beasts copied from memory and some he’d never seen before and when he looked at them later he wondered how he’d done them.
  Now he was hungry. He crept downstairs. No sound came from the lounge and he hurried past, it didn’t bear thinking about what might be going on in there but he was sure she wasn’t ordering stuff off the catalogue, how could that take an hour and a half?
  A wasp buzzed against the kitchen window, drowsy with heat. He ignored it, though it bothered him to think it was trapped and might die, and cut a thick slice of bread. He spread it with butter and jam and hurried back to the bedroom to take up his post again – that’s what it felt like – a responsible post he was manning. But it filled him with unease, made his skin itch. The heat didn’t help either. He preferred winter.
  He gobbled down the bread and took up his drawing again. He was a bit disturbed to see that he’d been drawing a succubus – a lithe woman with huge breasts and a devil’s tongue – Stuart had a book on Mythology and he’d seen one in there. Apparently a succubus was a female creature who could suck the life out of you and do sexy things to you as well. There were incubi too – the male equivalent - but he wasn’t interested in them.
  He’d have to hide this drawing – he’d be so embarrassed if anyone saw it, specially his Mum or Dad, Christ knows what they’d think. At least he’d stopped doing that stupid stuff , half hidden behind the curtain, at the sitting room window when the factory women walked by, although they seemed to quite like it, they smiled and once a whole group of them had cheered him on, or so he thought. No, he’d cured himself of that but it hadn’t been easy and he still wanted to do it sometimes. It must be illegal, had to be, and he had been terrified that one day the police would turn up and arrest him. But he had stopped with the aid of a bible under his pillow and his throwing knives crossed at angles in all four corners of the room. He’d felt possessed by the devil, although he didn’t believe in any of that religious crap but maybe a succubus had been at him in the night.
  Stuart had a girlfriend now and had ‘done it’ or so he said. Stephen wished he had a girlfriend, not just for that, in fact he was frightened of it, frightened of what he might do with those feelings because they were so strong, overwhelming really; no he’d like a girlfriend to take to the pictures and hold hands with. He fancied Melanie Albright but she never looked his way. She had long hair, a shiny curtain of it, flowing down her back and long eyes like a cats’, which she exaggerated with black kohl and mascara. But she was too sophisticated for him, she wore full length black velvet skirts and went to the Roundhouse. In fact his succubus looked a bit like her. He slid the paper into his sock drawer, later he would burn it.
  He thought about Louise Jones, he’d noticed her looking at him the other day when he was playing football and thought he might ask her out. She was round and comfortable looking and always laughing, yes, he’d be better off with her. But then Dad had marched across the green and socked him on the jaw for taking the last banana and the whole thing had been humiliating. He didn’t blame Dad really, he’d been stupid to take the banana knowing how his father loved them but he’d been in a hurry to get out for football and was hungry. Got what I deserved, he told himself. Maybe he’d just stay single for now and bide his time.
  He started to draw again and then heard a faint roar, Dad, coming back. He sprang up and started stamping on the floor and went out into the hall and stamped again just in case they hadn’t heard. His head felt hot and his stomach clenched so that he thought he might throw up the jam sandwich. He felt like shouting “it’s my dad, it’s my dad, leave now, go, go!” But there was no need. He heard the sitting room door open and his mother and Mr Persil coming out into the downstairs hall. They stood by the front door talking in loud false tones and then Mr Persil went.
  When his Dad roared up on his Enfield Stephen was busy with his homework and he had placed a banana he’d bought earlier on the cluttered window sill.