Last Man to Die

by Michael Dobbs

  After he had dumped the bike he knew he would have to quit the roads and try his luck cross country. South. As long as he headed south he was getting nearer his goal. Yet cross country was murder. By day he looked suspicious, an increasingly unkempt vagabond in miltary uniform, so he tried walking at night but that proved impossible in the perpetually cloud-covered countryside. And he was getting weaker, less able to fend off the biting wind which drove the temperature down and flayed at his resilience. As dawn broke, a week after the escape, he knew it was time for taking risks. The spirit was stubborn but the body was refusing to respond. It needed food, warmth, rest.

  This was farming country, mindless miles of hedgerow and ploughed mud across which a few homesteads and primitive cottages lay scattered like grains of discarded wheat. He had passed a small farm about half a mile back; there had been wood smoke curling from the chimney and the low of cattle at milk coming from the shed to the rear. Too much life; he needed something altogether more quiet. Ahead he could see but one house, of pale yellow stone like so many of the rest, nestling beside a meandering lane but set well back up its own track. He could see no sign of activity. It would have to do, but not up the track where he could be clearly seen from both house and lane. It would have to be once more across country, even though that would turn the few hundred yards to the front door into a mile or more, skulking behind hawthorn bushes, hugging the trees, trying not to startle and scatter the sheep. He was shivering, he knew it would hurt.

  By the time he approached the house the trek across ploughed fields and through damp hedgerows had drained what little strength he had left. It had started to rain again; he thought he couldn’t get wetter until he’d slipped and rolled into a mud-filled ditch. The once-clean Canadian uniform was now a sodden, filthy mess, as was the man inside. And he had stopped shivering, he was too cold even for that. What if there were someone home? He knew he should think of some passable excuse for his appearance, but his mind was numbed along with the rest of him and he could find no answers, only a desperate need to find warmth and rest. The cold was making him impatient as well as slow-witted. The prison camp seemed a lifetime ago.

  He broke cover from the apple orchard behind the house and stumbled across the lawn towards the kitchen door, a spring shower lashing at him like the Devil’s whip and he still couldn’t stand straight. He’d tried to slap his face into alertness but his wits had slowed; despite long minutes of inspection, during which he had seen nothing, as he drew closer there was movement at the window. Despairingly he threw himself low and to one side, falling clumsily, his left boot submerged up to the ankle in a small ornamental fish pond, then he realized he had been jumping at his own reflection. His brain was too frozen even to curse. He made the last few yards to the kitchen door on all fours, tripping over a bicycle as his legs buckled in protest. He was kneeling, catching his breath, finding comfort in the solid appearance of the door – no scratch marks, no sign of a dog. Perhaps it would work out after all. He had to claw his way upright, each movement of his frozen muscles requiring a separate and specific command, until he was leaning on the door and trying to peer within. All seemed quiet and empty. He stepped inside.

  At one end of the kitchen stood a wood-burning stove and the warmth cascaded over him as though he had thrown himself headlong into a bath. The room was large and low with a great oaken table in the middle and a rough staircase climbing the far wall, beneath which an open door led through to a tidy but undersized sitting room. The stove drew him like a magnet, he crossed the stone-flagged floor and sat on a hearth stool – not the comfortable rocking chair, too much noise – and began searching for signs of occupation. But there was no kettle on the stove, no sign of crumbs from an early breakfast on the table, no plate draining beside the sink. It took several minutes before the heavy pulse bombarding his temples began to subside and he could listen properly for any trace of noise, but he found none. At last he began to relax, prising off his boots, peeling down to his underwear, allowing the heat to replenish both body and spirit.

  He shook his head violently. The heat was beginning to play tricks with him, tempting him to close his eyes, turning from ally to enemy. He couldn’t afford to sleep, not here at least, for warm kitchens are not left empty for long. He glanced around, perhaps some food might help, and soon he had found bread, cheese, jam and apples – and butter! When had he last tasted butter? It was rock hard and tore the bread to pieces but after prison camp rations the taste was electrifying. It was as he was licking the final smears of strawberry preserve from his fingers that he heard it: a noise from the direction of the stairs, a noise which banished the last traces of drowsiness from his mind and left him coiled inside like a spring. The noise of wood creaking beneath someone’s step. As he looked up he saw a woman in her sixties, no taller than five foot two, wrapped in a white cotton dressing gown and with a face like an apple wrinkled from winter storage. The hair was steel grey and sported a patchwork of hair grips, the eyes were cold and blue and were staring angrily at Hencke from above the well-oiled twin barrels of a shotgun.

  ‘And don’t for one moment think I won’t use it.’

  Hencke could sense she was not bluffing. The suspicion in the eyes, the stiffness of her lined and leathery cheeks and the way the thin lips were drawn down to form an ugly, uncompromising gash reminded him of his aunt, and his aunt had never uttered empty threats. The promise of a beating had always meant a beating, often two, until he had grown too big and she had been forced to lash him instead with her tongue, inflicting far more torment than the hand. It had been a cruel weapon, always questioning, prying, demanding explanations for any form of absence, refusing to accept that the boy was growing to manhood and independence, was no longer hers, that he was forming loyalties to others. His explanations had never been sufficient then and, as Hencke looked at the mess of crumbs on the table and the pile of steaming clothes lying by the stove, he knew that no explanation would be good enough now.

  ‘I …’ But he didn’t bother to continue. He just shook his head and methodically began to wipe his fingers on his vest.

  ‘Don’t move!’ The voice was shrill as his hands moved down from the table. ‘Push the knife away!’ It was only a butter knife, but she was taking no chances.

  He managed a smile. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to argue with a loaded shotgun.’

  ‘And who might you be? Some sort of foreigner by your accent.’ She stepped from the bottom stair into the kitchen, chin up, prominent nose moving ahead like a ship’s prow, waving the shotgun with menace. He raised his hands.

  ‘My name is Peter Hencke. And I am sorry for the mess. I meant no harm.’

  ‘We’ll let the police decide that.’ She took another step into the room but was reluctant to come any closer. Her eyes kept darting from Hencke’s face to the wall behind him where he knew was the telephone. She needed it, but could take her time, working her way step by step round the room, keeping the barrels fixed firmly on him, until she had reached the telephone. One call and he was done for. One sharp move and he was dead. He had to gamble, to rattle her, throw her off balance, and quickly. Who knew how long it would be before a husband, postman, friend or farmhand appeared? Time was not on his side.

  ‘It is a special day for you. I am German. An escaped prisoner of war. I think you will find the police very happy to receive your call. Perhaps there will even be a reward.’

  He could see her eyes grow wild from the mixture of fear and excitement, and he could sense her finger tightening on the twin triggers.

  ‘I’m not a fool; I’ll cause no trouble.’ Hencke raised his hands still higher above his head and with great caution stood up from the table, stepping back out of her direct line to the telephone. ‘Your wretched English weather is enough to defeat anyone.’

  The attempt at humour was lost on her. Instead she waggled the shotgun with new fervour. ‘Back! Step back! Right away from the telephone.’

  Hencke took three deliberate
steps backward, the shotgun waved and he took another. He was a clear five yards away from the phone and she began her advance across the room – but he was on his feet, not pinned against a solid oak table.

  ‘Keep staring at these barrels,’ she snapped. ‘So much as breathe heavily and I’ll use them, don’t think I won’t. An escaping Boche, dead or alive – I’ll maybe get a medal as well as a reward.’

  Hencke remained silent and motionless until she had reached the telephone. She was there, had offered no chance of surprise, was reaching for the phone, now was dialling. Yet in order to use it she had to take one hand off the gun and both eyes off Hencke. Her solitary, ageing arm found the gun too heavy and, as the dial clattered round, the barrels began to droop towards the floor. It was the moment he had been waiting for. Hencke sprang.

  Even so she had time to see him coming. ‘Why you …!’ She leaned backwards, trying to force up the gun barrels and pulling the trigger as she did so. No, she was not bluffing, but in her weak grip the shot went wild and Hencke was upon her. She screamed and they both fell to the floor, ripping the phone from the wall as they did so, with Hencke landing heavily on top of the old woman and the shotgun wedged between them. She was still fighting and spitting, scrabbling once more to find the trigger for the second barrel, when Hencke wrenched it out of her grasp. The solid wooden butt flew away from her scratching fingers and caught her on the temple just above the left eye. Her head fell back sharply against the flagstones, hitting them with a loud crack. She lay still, breathing heavily.

  Unsteadily Hencke pushed himself away and gazed down upon the unconscious woman. Eyes shut, mouth open, gasping – snoring, just as he remembered his sleeping aunt. The adrenalin which had revived him had as quickly evaporated, leaving him weak and trembling once more. He slumped back into the chair, the shotgun on the table in front of him, leaning on it as he stared into the battered face of the old woman. He had hit his aunt, too, that last time. Not for what she had said, it had been no worse than any of the taunts she had hurled at him since puberty had snatched the child from her and turned him into yet another deceiving, unworthy man. He had remained at university one vacation, preferring to spend his time with books and fellow students, and she had pursued him there, making such a scene of sobbing accusation and hysteria in front of his few close friends that he had felt humiliated and forced to do what he had vowed not to, and return home with her. No sooner had they stepped inside the front door than the tears turned to taunts and recrimination. Accusations about his friends. His loyalties. His obligations to her. His right to be his own man. ‘I made you, and what you are. Never forget that!’ she had screamed.

  And he had slapped her. Once. Full across the face. He wasn’t quite sure why. Not just hate, nor simply frustration. Perhaps because what she said was true, she had made him, uncertain and unsure, a man with no family and no experience of love, perhaps not a full man, perhaps incapable of love. If he were ever to find out, to discover what sort of man he truly was, or might become, it would have to be without her. And he had slapped her because that was the only way he knew to put an end to it. To go beyond the point of no return, to walk away, never to look back.

  But as Hencke looked across the kitchen at the old woman he couldn’t stop himself looking back, reliving it all, losing himself in the mists of his haunted memories.

  Why on earth had they been painted red? Some Bolshy bloody painter, he supposed. Maybe he should have them repainted blue, a good Tory colour, and ignore the bleatings he would get from the two Labour members of his War Cabinet. Still, it scarcely mattered any more. The war in Europe would be finished with soon, the bombardment of London by Hitler’s rockets finished with even sooner as their launch sites were over-run, and then he wouldn’t have to use this subterranean rathole any more. Oh, to be in fresh air once again … He leaned back in his chair and blew a cloud of smoke towards the low ceiling and its huge steel girders, painted as red as traffic lights, which had captured his attention. According to the engineers they were strong enough to bear the collapsed weight of the entire building underneath which the wartime Cabinet complex had been built. ‘Has anyone told Goering?’ he once enquired sceptically. He always felt uneasy under here. It was not that he was afraid to die, his contempt for his personal safety had been proven on battlegrounds throughout the British Empire during his younger years as a soldier, but that had been in the mountains of India’s North West Frontier, on the Sudanese plains or the open veldt in Southern Africa. Not cooped up in a sewer. He felt claustrophobic, uneasy, and the damp wormed its way into his bones. His bad shoulder was playing up again and he tried unsuccessfully to massage the ache from it. Not much longer, he sighed, as he watched the cigar smoke being caught in the draught of a wall fan and dispersed to the far corners of the small room amongst the fifteen other people attending Cabinet.

  Churchill was distracted. The First Lord of the Admiralty was droning on about shipping figures, a matter which had ceased to interest Churchill since Admiral Doenitz’s U-boats had lost control of the Atlantic and stopped sinking merchantmen by the score. At that time it had been a matter of finding enough food to eat and oil to fuel the Spitfires and Hurricanes. Now it was all about tonnages of this and tonnages of that and how the fishermen were demanding the return of their boats requisitioned for war duty. Statistics. Bloody statistics. He had no mind for them any more. Some people wanted to fight the entire war with statistics, but war wasn’t about desiccated figures; it was about men, real-life flesh and blood men, and hopefully more of the other side’s flesh and blood than your own. He dragged his thoughts back down from between the bright red rafters as the First Lord came to a close.

  ‘Well, gentlemen, I think that concludes the business on today’s Cabinet agenda. Thank you for your …’

  Before he could finish there was a waving of a hand somewhere on his left side. Churchill turned to peer over the circular frames of his spectacles and spotted Ernest Bevin gesticulating for his attention. No interruption from Bevin was ever welcome. The Minister for Labour and National Service had done a grand job squeezing every last screw, brick and bullet out of the factories while heading off any serious strike activity, no one could deny that. But he was a died-in-the-wool, red-blooded, black-hearted, callus-handed Socialist, and the sooner Churchill could dispense with this wartime coalition and throw the Socialists out of the Cabinet, the better.

  ‘Prime Minister, not yet if you please,’ Bevin insisted, a quizzical, lopsided expression stretched across his leathery face which gave the impression of his being slow and dogged, like a rumpled blood-hound searching for a lost trail. Every syllable betrayed his West Country origins, but that hadn’t stopped him climbing out of the gutter and ascending very far – as far as Churchill’s left hand. ‘I’ve ‘ad some disturbing news this morning. I was called up at ’ome by a journalist from America’s CBS …’

  Churchill frowned disparagingly, making no attempt to hide his view of anybody who made himself available to journalists at home in the morning.

  ‘Talked of reports about a great POW escape in Yorkshire last week. The details were sketchy, but the ‘ole rotten camp got out, ‘e said.’ There was a slight pause while he considered how to frame the question before deciding, as he normally did, that bluntness was better than politeness. ‘What about it? What’s going on, Prime Minister? Is it true? What ’ave you been ’iding from us?’

  It was too much for Churchill. He was tired, very tired, and despite his ministrations the pain in his shoulder was getting worse. He’d been looking for someone to lose his temper with all morning since Clemmie had started up again with her endless nagging about his ‘extravagance’ and worrying about how they were going to pay for everything from his cigars to the new drains at Chartwell. With his wife he had a lifetime’s practice of closing his ears and gritting his teeth; with Bevin he could find no cause for self-restraint. With alarming abruptness the PM’s fists beat upon the makeshift Cabinet table. His pen flew from th
e blotter and performed a full somersault, while the lid of the red despatch box in front of him came down with a crash.

  ‘How on earth are we expected to run a war when we are bombarded with questions like that? Whose side is your reporter friend on, for God’s sake? Hasn’t Hitler made our lives difficult enough without half the American press corps snapping at our heels?’ Churchill’s shoulders were hunched and rounded, his solid forehead thrust forward like a bull about to charge, an impression made all the more acute as in the surge of excitement his glasses slid to the end of his nose to reveal furious red eyes.

  There was not a sound from within the room beyond the exertions of the Old Man’s breathing. The Cabinet Secretary had stopped taking notes while most of the others in the room found things at the edges of their blotting pads which required their urgent attention. Only Bevin seemed unperturbed.

  ‘For the record, Prime Minister, the man’s a journalist, not the Gestapo. And I’d like an answer to my question. Seems simple enough to me. If any of what ‘e ‘ad to say is true I think the Cabinet ‘as a right to know.’ He returned the glare.

  Churchill needed to play for time to recover his composure. It was all very well losing his temper, but only if it had a point and gave him an advantage. There was none in this.

  ‘Has anybody else picked up this sort of gossip?’ He made it sound as if he were making enquiries about a venereal disease. He glowered around the room, finding little response until he lit upon Beaverbrook, his close friend and Minister for Production, who was clearly agitated. Beaverbrook had tried urgently and unsuccessfully to catch him before Cabinet but, as usual, Churchill had been late and in a rush – delayed by Clemmie’s damned nagging. Had Beaverbrook been trying to warn him? Beaverbrook knew all the gossip running around Fleet Street – hell, he owned half of it – and now he was nodding his head as if to confirm what Bevin had said. He looked forlorn, biting his bottom lip, implying that even with his immense grip on the media there was little chance of bottling this one up. But he remained silent and Churchill was grateful for that, at least; it helped give him a means of escape.