‘The ATA must have realized that she was missing?’
‘No, Cliff. That’s the irony of it, now. She’d been grounded by them for beating up Bawne airfield in a bloody Spitfire. They thought she had the twitch.’
‘So that business with the two phoney coppers: Grace was there all the time?’
‘You could say that. Out there on the edge. She helped us cover Pete’s disappearance.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘Indubitably.’ I hadn’t used that word since I’d left the squadron.
‘Good gunner, was she?’
‘Yeah. She got one. Bloody good shot.’
PART TWO
France: March 1945
Five
The airfield outside Fécamp had been a grass field used by German fighters during the Battle of Britain. We asked for it back again some time after D-Day, and laid a prefabricated metal runway, made up of steel links. Cliff got it almost right this time, but the track was wet from a morning shower, and caught him out. His approach was a shade too fast. Halfway down the strip, with all three of our wheels on the deck, he applied the brakes and slid out immediately to the left. One main wheel slipped off the metalling and dug in, while the rest of the plane tried to fly on. We did the handbrake left turn, then stopped with a distinctly loud metallic cracking noise, at right angles to the track. This all took place in less time than it’s taken to tell you.
Raffles, not strapped in, ended up on the floor. He muttered, ‘Effing hooray!’ but I’m not sure whether that was out of anger or fear. My strap had dug into my shoulder, almost dislocating it.
Cliff said, ‘Balls!’
An American female voice came over the radio, ‘Cliff, get your heap off the edge of my runway. I have 47s due in twenty-five minutes.’
Airfield control was from a caravan like the one I had known at Bawne: it seemed a long way away, but within a couple of minutes a jeep was moving away from it. A blonde girl in USAAF duds waved to us when she bailed out of it.
Cliff said, ‘Hello, Wendy.’
She replied, ‘Hi Cliff, hi Major . . .’ but she made for Raffles, and gave him a hug saying, ‘How’s my man?’ Then she spotted me, and said, ‘New boy.’
Raffles unwrapped her and said, ‘No. Nothing like that. We’re just giving him a lift to Paris. This is Charlie.’
I said, ‘Hello, Miss.’
‘Hello yourself, Charlie. Welcome to France.’
‘This is my first time over.’
‘Watch those girls in Paris. Come on.’
While we were climbing into the jeep Raffles told her, ‘Mr Clifford did well to keep us on our wheels.’
‘I didn’t doubt him for a minute.’
‘Pleased to hear that, Miss.’
‘You wanna drive me, Raffles?’
Raffles drove. She sat alongside him unwrapping the small brown parcel he’d magicked from somewhere, while James England, Cliff and I squeezed in behind them with our three bags. I looked over her shoulder at her tits, and the parcel on her lap. As far as I could see her tits were great, and the parcel contained several pairs of stockings, a couple of half-bottles of gin and a couple of packs of fat Turkish cigarettes. There was also what looked like an irregular lump of shiny dark brown ear wax, about the size of a thumbnail. The American girl said, ‘Thank you, hon. Will you all be staying tonight? They’ve opened a small estaminet down the road.’
There was a pause. Then, ‘Maybe on the way back, Wendy.’ The Major; at last. That was good: I’d begun to wonder if he’d died. ‘Charlie’s in a hurry to get to Paris.’
‘So was I, when I was his age.’ She turned and gave me the full blast of her smile: her lips were the colour of pumping venous blood. I’d seen some of that splashed around in aeroplanes. She must have been all of twenty-five years old.
Cliff said, ‘I’ll be staying if I can’t hitch a lift back. You can take me instead.’
‘OK,’ the woman said. There was something careless about it. False gaiety.
Halfway back to the control caravan Raffles stopped the jeep, got out and walked away to vomit on the grass.
‘He’s scared of flying,’ Major England said to me. ‘I don’t know why he does it.’
He wiped his mouth on a great handkerchief before he got back in. Wendy leaned over and gave him a hug again.
The caravan was crowded, so I stepped outside. Thirty feet away there was a concrete dispersal pan up against a perimeter hedge. One of those huge Queen Mary trailers sat on it, its load shrouded by a torn camouflage tarp.
I wandered over to it, trailed by Cliff, and pulled back the tarpaulin for a closer look. It wasn’t a large aircraft, but it was more or less all there, except for the radial engine. Its wings and struts had been disassembled and laid on the trailer, strapped to the fuselage. I recognized the horrible little Norseman. Cliff wasn’t paying close attention. The aircraft looked knocked about a bit, but not in bad nick. There were a couple of holes in the front screens which could have been bullets. Nothing big had touched it, unless the missing engine had copped it.
I told Cliff, ‘I think I know this aircraft.’
Cliff looked up, and then there was something funny. He looked rattled. That was a first. He said, ‘No you don’t. Can’t do: it’s been here for months.’
‘You’re wrong, Cliff. I’ve flown in it. I was given a lift in it up to Ringway, just after my tour ended.’
‘No, Charlie. That must have been another one.’
‘Don’t be an arse, Cliff. I know that I’ve been on this plane. I’m in the RAF too, remember. I was on this one and Glenn Miller was snoozing just behind me.’
He pushed me out of the way, and hurriedly started to drag the tarp over it again.
‘Charlie, I know that if you say that again, I’ll have to take out my revolver, push its barrel into your mouth, and pull the trigger.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Want to try me?’
It was such a stupid thing to get steamed up over, but there was a vein pounding on Cliff’s temple, and his cheekbones had gone white. I nearly said it, but then Major England’s voice cut in calmly.
‘Leave the boy alone, Cliff: you’ll scare him.’
He had ghosted in again. Cliff relaxed. Had he been prepared to do it? I asked him, ‘Have you got the twitch?’
He gave me a very thin smile, which went with his moustache. Then he said, ‘Yes,’ and laughed. ‘All the time. Sorry.’
The Major told him, ‘I’ll sort Charlie out, OK?’, put his arm around Cliff’s shoulder, and shepherded us both back towards the caravan.
An Army Humber saloon was rumbling up: it bore an Army Service Corps flash on its wings. It looked low on its springs and very second-hand. On the narrow area of scuttle between the passenger cabin and the engine, the name Kate was painted in army stencil white. The Major told me, ‘You’d better get acquainted with Raffles’s mistress: you’re going to be inside her for a few weeks.’ He laughed as if he had said something amusing.
Cliff walked away, and climbed back inside the caravan. When Les climbed out and opened the boot there appeared to be another half car in pieces inside it. Also the contents of a small bar, and a corner grocery shop before rationing. We squeezed our bags around the machinery parts. The Major told me, ‘It was something he learned in the desert. There’s nothing much on this old bus he can’t replace if he has to.’
Raffles had both wings of the bonnet up. I asked England, ‘Is there much to do before we leave?’
‘Buggered if I know, old son. I don’t think that he trusts anyone else to work on her. If I was you I’d stretch out on that groundsheet and get the last of the sun, while you can.’
‘What about Cliff?’
‘I’ll sort him out, OK?’
‘That’s what you told him about me.’
‘Exactly. Toddle along now. We’ll call you when we’re ready to move: won’t leave without you.’
I picked a spot that put the caravan bet
ween me and a gentle breeze. The sun was getting some iron into it again. I must have dozed, until I sensed a movement, and Wendy’s soft American voice.
‘Shove over, bud.’ I did, and she sat on the edge of the groundsheet just not touching me. ‘Mother Wendy’s medicine . . . here, I brought you this.’ This was an opened bottle of red wine. She said, ‘I’ve dozens of them.’
I propped myself up on an elbow to drink. We took alternate draughts from the bottle until it was half emptied. We watched Raffles working on the car. She held the bottle up to the light and asked me, ‘Tell me, Charlie Nobody, is it half empty, or half full?’
‘Half full. Definitely.’
She rested her head on her drawn-up knees, and moodily watched the Humber coming to life.
‘I was your age once,’ she told me; then got up and walked less steadily back to the caravan, taking the bottle with her.
Sitting in the car with Raffles, with the galloping Major behind me writing spells in his little notebook, felt better than being shouted at by Cliff. I asked our driver, ‘How far are we from Paris?’
‘About a hundred and thirty miles as the crow flies; about a hundred and eighty, two hundred, the way we’ll go.’
‘Say five hours then.’
‘Say two days’ – that was the Major – ‘if we’re lucky. You should see what you blue buggers did to the roads.’
‘I think it serves you right, sir,’ Raffles told me. ‘Your lot made the holes; now you get to drive round them.’
‘Thanks a bunch.’
‘Don’t mensh.’
‘Will there be somewhere to stay?’
‘ ’course there will, Mr Bassett. We came this way before.’
‘Would you mind keeping it down lads.’ That was the Major again. ‘Man in the back trying to get his sums right.’
Raffles and I grinned at each other. I was happier when he was looking at the road.
The first roadblock was after about six miles. A Redcap in battle gear waved us down at a pole across half the road. He had a stick with a white wood circle on the end; traffic, for the directing of. Raffles drove with his Sten in his lap. He pulled up a few feet short, and the hairs on my neck stood up as I saw him flick the Sten’s safety before the copper reached us. The Major didn’t even look up. Raffles wound down the window. I sensed that he was smiling at the man.
‘Wotcha cock. What’s up?’
‘UXB. That field down there, about twenty feet from the road.’ He turned and pointed away from us, and to the right. ‘Some Sappers are looking for it.’
‘One of ours or one of theirs?’
‘Theirs. The Sapper Sergeant said it was a five-hundred-kilo job, from the entry hole it’s made in the ground.’
‘What were they bombing, French cows?’ Raffles gave his little relaxed laugh, and asked, ‘Wanna fag?’ He took off his beret, and offered the copper a roll-up from about thirty ready made he kept in there. I always noticed how careful he was replacing his beret; I never saw him drop one.
‘Thanks. Don’t mind if I do, and you can slip that safety on now.’
Raffles laughed again.
‘That’s what all the French tarts say.’
They lit up. Raffles blew out the match and tossed it on the verge. As it touched the grass there was the flat thump of a close explosion, and in the field an immediate small cloud of that odd yellow-grey coloured smoke that the Kraut ordnance always generated. The car rocked. The policeman staggered. We were showered in mud, grass and small clods of earth. The copper swore. Then he said, ‘Found it.’
‘Do you think you’ll find them?’
‘Doubt it. No one’s screaming.’
‘Can we move along then?’
‘Yes. Take care until you’re clear of the lane. Thanks for the fag, mate.’
‘Pleasure.’
Raffles eased us carefully along the country lane. It was bordered by high hedges. There was a hole in the hedge on the right-hand side, and the smoke drifted through it. On the windscreen in front of him was a small red splodge. He tapped the glass to draw my attention to it.
I said, ‘We once came back from somewhere – Lübeck, maybe – with fifteen feet of human guts draped over the wingtip. Lanc just blew up in front of us and we flew through the remains.’
‘The trouble with you RAF johnnies,’ Major England said, just to prove that he didn’t miss much, ‘is that you always have to cap a good story.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll give you detention tonight. You can stay at home and look after Kate, if Les and I are on the town.’ I thought that this had been a slip of the tongue until he added, ‘Sod it, Les; I can’t keep up the Major baloney much longer. Are we far enough away from England yet, do you think?’
‘Yessir.’
‘You tell him then.’
‘This is a small car, Mr Bassett, and we’re a small team, so from now on, if it’s all right with you, sometimes I’m Les, and sometimes the Major’s Jim, or Jimmy or James.’
‘What about me?’
‘Charlie; that right?’
‘Yeah: pleased to meet you. It makes life easier, doesn’t it?’
‘So say thank you to Jimmy for saving your life.’
‘Thank you, Jimmy. I didn’t know he had.’
‘That shows you how good he is.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘Back at Fécamp. You were stupid. Cliff would have killed you.’
‘Oh, that. I wasn’t sure.’
‘We were.’
We were stopped at two more blocks before nightfall, and diverted off our route three more times. When I asked Les why, James answered for him.
‘Mines. Jerry left them as a going-away present. We must have driven down that last lane about . . . how many times Les . . .?’
‘Four.’
‘. . . four times, without seeing them or setting one off. Funny, ain’t it?’
‘Yeah; very funny,’ I told him. ‘Remind me to laugh.’
‘That’s the trouble with you RAF johnnies,’ Les said. ‘No bloody sense of humour.’
We stayed at a small inn just outside a place named Gournayen-Bray. It was showing no lights, but that was because they had a good blackout. Up close to the iron-studded front door you just got a glimpse of the light feeding out beneath it. Raffles hammered twice, with the flat of his hand: it sounded thunderous. Then he shouted, ‘It’s Mr Raffles, and the Major.’
Then he hammered again. The door opened immediately. He turned to me, and said, ‘I arranged with them how many times we’d knock, and what I’d say. It’s worth your remembering, in case you’re on your own on the way back.’
‘I couldn’t remember the way here, and I don’t know what the place looks like. It’s dark.’
‘That solves that problem, then, doesn’t it?’
He nosed inside, the Sten held vaguely at the port before him. In the small panelled reception we were met by a tall, thin woman and a boy of about fourteen. The boy had bulgy eyes of the palest blue-grey colour, and a massive goitre. You knew immediately that he wasn’t the full shilling. The boy had admitted us, and bolted the door behind us.
Raffles said to me, ‘This is our friend Madame Defarge.’
The woman laughed. It was a bitter sound, but she held her hand out to me.
‘Madame Demain. Your friend Raffles is droll.’
‘Not my friend. My driver.’
‘Make him your friend, Monsieur . . .?’
‘Charlie.’
‘. . . Monsieur Charlie. You will find him a useful friend.’ She paused and then added, ‘And a good one.’ The smile she directed at Raffles seemed genuine enough.
He asked her, ‘How is the boy?’
The boy’s right hand had begun to tremble. She took it in her own.
‘As you see him. Perhaps a little better.’
‘You have had news of Monsieur Demain?’
‘None since January . . .’
&nb
sp; James England seemed to have nothing to add to the conversation.
The boy’s trembling increased. His shoulders shook. Madame hoisted the sails of the most beautiful language in the world, and gave him a dozen or so sentences as fast as Browning machine-gun fire. He stuttered a couple back.
The Major had squeezed in behind me, and said, ‘That’s the trouble here. Neither Les nor I were picked for this job for our fluency in French. I can just get by in German, and Les even has problems with English. I don’t know whether she said something reassuring, or told him to cut our throats in our sleep.’
I told him, ‘The boy’s terrified of me because he hasn’t seen me before. He thinks that I’ll attack her. She told him that I was a friend of Les’s and wouldn’t harm them because they were too useful to you. She also told him not to make any trouble because they need the money.’
‘Good God. Why didn’t you say you spoke the lingo?’
‘Nobody asked. It’s something I’m learning from people like you.’
‘What is?’
‘Need to know.’
Raffles guffawed. Then he said, ‘Tell her that you speak good French.’
‘Fairly average French,’ but I did. Her raised eyebrows told me something about how Brits were regarded by their geographically closest ally. Thickos.
Raffles spoke again.
‘Tell her that I have tinned meat for her this time, from the Americans; butter and cigarettes. I’ll get them from the car shortly.’
I did. She looked curiously downcast, almost ashamed. I told her that we appreciated her accommodating us, and that we wished to put her out as little as possible. I also spoke directly to the boy, and told him that I wouldn’t harm his mother.
The woman smiled at last, and murmured, ‘Grandmère.’ At least I’d said something right.
That night I slept on a soft mattress between stiff, clean sheets, in a room that I could lock from the inside. It was as I did that, that I realized I was the only one without a weapon of some sort. I slept with the curtain open, hoping to let in the starlight, but cloud had blown south-westerly along the Channel in the evening, obscuring them. You could never have it all.
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