National Service

by Sara Ridgley

My umbrella didn’t make it, abandoned in the wastebin,

broken raven, eight-piece haven with a handle like a hawk.

I had kissed her in a hailstorm underneath its tented darkness

as the icy baubles clattered on the shroud between its fingers

and her smile reached out to meet me in the doorway of the station

and she hid her tears beneath it when I said I had to leave.

But she hooked it on the hatstand when I sailed away to Egypt

like a narrow bat it hung there, smelling silence, breathing time

while I learned to kill in theory, drink in practice, smoke in secret

making friends with fat bravado, writing letters not to post

as she walked on rainy evenings underneath its wing of blackness

through the drizzle of October and a blizzard early March

past the pie and eels and mash shop by the summer-busy station

to the platform where I’d kissed her when I said I had to leave.

Sent a postcard from Malaysia and I should have said ‘I miss you’

but instead I wrote ‘The Army is the best time of my life’

and my mates said ‘Try the cherries, Joe, before you buy the basket’

which is how I lost the only girl who should have been my wife

when from under the umbrella as she met me at the station

on the platform where I’d kissed her, she said I had to leave.