Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell? Read Free Page B

onto the grass below. Horace whooped with joy as he ran over to examine his kill. His joy turned to anguish as he picked the small bird up in his hand, felt its warmth. Why? hethought to himself as a trickle of blood oozed onto the palm of his hand and the robin breathed its last breath. Why did I do that? What was the point?
    From that day onwards, he vowed, he would never to shoot at a living creature unless it could be cooked and eaten. He would break that vow in 1940 in the fields and hedgerows of northern France.
    The following year Horace left school, along with his twin brother Harold, the two H’s as they were affectionately known. They were not inseparable as some twins. The simple truth was that they were different. Academically, Harold was brighter than Horace, always at the top of the class or thereabouts, and loved books and study. Horace hovered about the middle of the same class and longed for the end of each school day so he could hunt on the farm, tend to the animals or cast a roving eye towards the pretty girls on the short walk home.
    Jobs were at a premium in 1933, the year a certain Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, but within days of leaving school Harold’s academic achievements secured a much sought-after position in the ironmongery department of the local Co-Operative. There he joined his older sister Sybil in gainful employment, adding most of his wages to the family budget. The Greasley family now had three wages coming into the house. Mabel made fresh bread, baked cakes and almost overnight, a fruit bowl appeared in the middle of the kitchen table with exotic fruits such as bananas and oranges from hot countries overseas.
    Horace had just returned from yet another hunting expedition. He couldn’t wait to tell his father he’d dropped a running hare from 90 yards. Number four shot, he was about to explain, when his father announced he’d found Horace a job.
    ‘An apprentice barber?’ Horace whispered in astonishment.
    ‘A three-year apprenticeship, Horace, 12 months as an improver…’
    ‘But…’
    ‘Twelve months semi-qualified and one more year fine-tuning thereafter.’
    ‘But… but…’ Horace objected, but somehow his father didn’t listen.
    ‘You start next week. Norman Dunnicliffe’s in the High Street.’
    The following week four wages went into the Greasley household and Horace’s involuntary career as a gentlemen’s barber was under way. The two years’ training soon passed and as he honed his skills in the third, his wages rose to ten shillings a week. 1936 was going to be a good year, Horace thought, as his newfound confidence gave him the nerve to ask a pretty young girl called Eva Bell to the pictures. While they wrestled with each other in the back row of the local Roxy on Saturday night, a Pathé newsreel showed footage from the Berlin Olympics with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini parading in their finery for the world to see. Horace did not see them; his hand was up the jumper and down the skirt of his new girlfriend.
    Eva was a year older than Horace but a hundred years wiser. Several weeks into their courtship she suggested he bring to their next date a packet of French letters sold at the gentlemen’s hairdressers where he worked. Being a barber definitely had its compensations.
    Eva persuaded her mother to let Horace stay over in the spare room one Saturday night as the dance they were attending in her village of Coalville came out after midnight, far too late for Horace to catch the bus home. Mrs Bell liked Horace so she and Eva convinced Mr Bell that no shenaniganswould occur. Nothing was further from the truth. Eva liked Horace; it was time to make a man of him.
    About six o’clock on that special Sunday morning Horace lost his virginity. Eva’s father was a miner and had left for his Sunday morning shift at 5.30. Twenty minutes later Eva crept through to the spare room. Before she had even slipped out of her nightie Horace was standing proud