Charlie's War

by David Fiddimore

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ You could feel the cockiness growing in the bastard again.

  ‘Because in the story, lad, the lion eats Albert. I want you to remember that when the Major asks you again. Do you think you can do that?’ Les had delivered all this with his back to us. The Italian shrugged, but he had stopped making eye contact again, so I suppose that it was enough. He told us about the vehicles they were travelling in, which we already knew. He told who they all were, which we didn’t know, and what medicines and equipment they had managed to amass, which turned out to be surprising. We were looking at a small travelling hospital. They had bought a lot of their stuff from black marketeers, of course, and stolen or traded for the rest. He told James that they were heading for Bremen. Then they were going on to Hamburg, and then to Lübeck. Why Lübeck?

  ‘It is where we will want to work after the war.’

  ‘The Russians may well be in Lübeck.’

  ‘Where else would a Communist want to work, except inside a Russian zone?’

  ‘Fucking anywhere, I should imagine,’ Les told him. He still didn’t turn away from the window. I dropped in my tuppence worth for the first time.

  ‘The English woman you call Grace Baker. She isn’t a Communist.’

  ‘Maybe she is,’ Alberto told us. ‘Maybe she’s not. She won’t go as far as Lübeck. She will go with my friend back to Italy: he has a small clinic.’

  James glared at me for breaking in, but picked up my thread.

  ‘He has a name? Your friend?’

  ‘Carlo.’

  Carlo: know thy enemy.

  I tried again. ‘They will expect you to catch them up: in Bremen. Where would that be?’

  He shot a must I? glance at James, who nodded encouragingly. Then he said, ‘The Hanseatic Hotel: it’s just outside the docks. They took it for a hospital last year. They need people like me.’

  I couldn’t help it. I said, ‘No one needs people like you. You’re a fair-weather Commie who betrays his friends: I’ll bet you were a Nazi when Musso was waving the flags.’

  James spoke quietly. He said, ‘Bravo, Charlie.’ He wasn’t the first to say that.

  Alberto sniffed. ‘I did not know them all that well,’ he told us.

  I don’t know why the Italian upset Les so much. I think that it was his attitude. Les said, ‘You make me sick. I don’t know why. The only reason I’m not going to kill you now is because I can’t be bothered, and it would get a policeman I know into trouble. That’s all. That’s all that’s keeping you alive.’

  ‘Your officer wouldn’t let you.’

  ‘His officer,’ James said gently, ‘would recommend him for promotion, and a medal, if he did.’

  Les didn’t leave it at that. He put on the earnest-toiler-in-the-fields face, which always unnerved me, and said, ‘I do want you to believe this. I want you to ask in every town you go to, for the rest of your life, is there a small, curly-haired Englishman there; one who keeps his cigarettes in his hat?’ He touched his grubby old black beret.

  ‘Why should I do that?’

  ‘Because if I see you again, I’m going to kill you.’

  The Italian smiled. He had a brilliant, winning, playboy’s smile. The signorinas probably loved it. He said, ‘I do not believe you.’

  I gave them something. I said, ‘Then you are very foolish.’

  A shadow passed across the Eyetie’s smile; but not for very long.

  In the ward outside I found myself keeping to my word. I always like doing that. The kid in the blue shirt gave me his smile again. It was no different from the Eyetie’s, except that it was genuine. Les and James wandered slowly on. The wounded boy showed me his right hand. It was under bandages, and looked a funny shape. I asked, ‘Is that a Blighty one?’

  ‘Too right, Father. Is it Father?’

  ‘Padre will do. What did you do to it?’

  ‘A Jerry cannon shell. Small job. Lost the little finger, and it smashed through the middle. I didn’t even feel it for a few seconds.’

  ‘I know an American tankie that that happened to. He’s had a run of bad luck. First he lost part of a little finger, then his middle finger completely, then his complete hand. He says he’s leaving bits of himself all over Europe.’

  ‘Is he going home, Padre?’

  ‘No. He says that seeing as he’s come this far, he wants to get to Berlin.’

  ‘I want to get to Accrington.’

  ‘I think you have a better brain than he does, and a better chance.’ Then I told him, ‘I’m sorry, but I have to go now. Say hello to England for me.’

  ‘I will, Padre, and thank you for stopping.’

  I didn’t turn to wave as I walked away from him. That was never my style. Even when I wanted it to be.

  The nurse I’d seen doing the hundred yards earlier was at the far end of the ward, near the door I was aiming for. I could see James and Les stopped outside, waiting for me. She was still now, and had changed her grubby apron for a fresh green one. She had a good clean smile, and tired eyes. Most of Europe had tired eyes these days. I asked her about the boy in the blue shirt. She said, ‘Oh, yes. Him. He’s a nice lad, isn’t he? Minor wounds in the hand, but gut-shot – very messy when they brought him in.’

  ‘Will he make it?’

  She sized me up to see if the truth was in order. I don’t know what decision she reached, because she said, ‘Fifty-fifty. No better than that.’

  ‘Here’s hoping,’ I told her.

  ‘Here’s hoping,’ she agreed back.

  Les had been earwigging. He said, ‘At least you could have said, God willing, Charlie.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think that I have that sort of pull.’

  As we walked down the steps to Kate, Les started again.

  ‘Well. That explains that, doesn’t it?’

  ‘What?’ James and I said it together.

  ‘Free love. That’s why your Grace will go with anyone. She’s obviously a Commie, just like the Wop says. They’re all for free love, that lot. That’s why we lost in Spain. The Anarchists were OK, but your Commie couldn’t leave off fucking for long enough to win the war when he had the chance.’

  James said, ‘That could be oversimplifying it, old man.’

  And I said, ‘That’s just what those artists we met in Paris were like. They weren’t Communists.’

  ‘ ’course they were. Common knowledge. Reds to a man. Perhaps that Redcap Sergeant was one: didn’t he ask you about free medical care in the future, sir?’

  ‘Yes, Les; but that doesn’t make him a Communist.’

  ‘They must be bloody everywhere. We’ll be finding them under our beds next.’

  ‘Reds under the beds? I like that,’ James told him. ‘Do you mind if I write it down?’

  Twenty-One

  When we sat in the car the penny finally dropped.

  I told them, ‘That American Police Lieutenant Kilduff, and his goon Bassett – they weren’t looking for me officially. They were after the three grand. It was going to be a quick hit: there and back in two days – I’ll bet they didn’t tell anyone where they were going. Now the Yanks think that they’re AWOL.’

  ‘Well done, Charlie,’ James told me, and, ‘now: lean back, close your eyes and answer the questions I am going to ask you, without actually thinking about them. Shoot from the lip.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Given that there’s a bounty out for you, who wants your head stuffed, and mounted on the wall over the fireplace?’

  ‘Peter Baker. Either him or Addy, Grace’s mum.’

  ‘Well done. Why?’

  ‘Because although they’ve changed their minds, I haven’t turned back even though the op’s been scrubbed. They don’t want Grace back now, after all.’

  ‘OK. Why did they want you to find Grace and the baby, to bring them back in the first place?’

  ‘To get an embarrassing situation back under control. And at first they thought the kid was mine. T
hat was OK – more or less. Then someone did the arithmetic: I was out of the frame, but several others were in. That includes bold Sir Peter, and might well shaft his hopes of promotion if it gets out. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t ask the questions, Charlie. That’s my job.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Now tell us why they’ve changed their minds and want to stop you, now that you’re close to bringing them both home.’

  ‘Because now they know what we know, and what they didn’t know when all this started. She’s heading east, and has no intention of coming back. They can live with that. Their problem has been solved, but Grace doesn’t know it. She’s still running, isn’t she?’

  ‘I warned you, Charlie. Two days’ CB.’

  ‘Sorry, Boss.’

  ‘That’s all right. Congrats, by the way; I knew that you would work it out – you have that sort of mind.’

  I opened my eyes, and looked first at Les, and then at James. I asked them, ‘What do you think?’

  Les didn’t say anything. He looked as if he’d just flipped over a stone and found something unpleasant there. After a pause James said, ‘It’s all pathetically fucking domestic, isn’t it?’

  Les fished a fag out of his beret and lit up.

  The odd thing was that it didn’t occur to me that I should stop right there, get on Cliff’s plane, and fly home. Albie had said that he’d got this far, and now he wanted to go all the way to the Big City. I was beginning to understand how he felt. It must have occurred to Les and the Major, but they didn’t say anything about it immediately either. We were close. It was a strange feeling.

  Kate was alongside one of those ungainly looking American armoured cars with six wheels: we leaned in on her bonnet looking as if we were having a war talk. I took the opportunity to fill a pipe, Les smoked a few of the strands of string he had that resembled cigarettes, and the Major produced a thin black American cigar from somewhere. What he said was, ‘I suppose that it only makes sense to push on, even though none of us seems to be conspicuously keen on it today.’

  ‘You’re supposed to be in charge, sir,’ Les told him.

  ‘I’d rather have a day off,’ he said, ‘but there isn’t anywhere to go.’ None of us said anything for a while, then he used one of those decision-made voices. ‘Let’s push on, and stop at the first place we find that hasn’t been raped by rude soldiery, and has a bar.’

  I suppose that that is the sort of reasoning the officer corps is paid for.

  Just as I was knocking out the bowl of my pipe on my heel, a flight of Tempests went low over us, howling out their customary bellows of rage. I don’t know why I chose to remember it then, but the pipe I was cleaning was my first and only . . . and Grace had given it to me. She went all the way up to London to get it from a shop with which her old man had connections. It was only months ago, but was like looking back a million years.

  The bar was just after a crossroads on a worn crease in one of James’s prewar maps. He thought that the village was called Corne, or Korne. There was plenty of that around: the big fields were a dusty emerald green, and not too many of them had been arseholed by tanks. There were probably ten or eleven buildings along each arm of the cross, but because the countryside around was wide and flat and firm – good tank country – the village wasn’t strategically all that important. The war had simply driven around it. One of those nasty little Dingo scout cars had turned a fetching shade of black and was still smouldering in a field close to the road. Its tyres had melted. The acrid smell of hot rubber bit at our eyes. A building at the very centre of the hamlet had had its corner lopped off by an inexpertly driven tank, and three-quarters along the west–east axis a knocked-out Tiger tank sat forlornly inside the blackened house into which it had been reversed. Its gun barrel drooped almost to the road. It was a big bastard, but not as big as the Elephant in the Bois.

  Les said, ‘King Tiger. Handy-looking thing, isn’t it?’

  I said, ‘It looks bloody lethal.’

  ‘Would be if the engines ever worked, but they don’t: they piss out oil everywhere.’

  Everything else about the village seemed to be conspicuously unwarlike and normal. There were people in the streets, and some children chasing an old car tyre: they just ignored us. We can’t have been the first Allied soldiers they’d seen: a tattered Union flag clung to a telegraph pole, kicking in the breeze, and there was an HD sign daubed large on the gable end of a low thatched cottage.

  ‘Mind the kiddies,’ the Major warned Les. ‘It’s not their war.’

  ‘Yes, Major.’

  I don’t know why it had taken me that long to get it, but that was when they slipped back into role: whenever we were on parade with strangers. It was like a blink of an eye, and Les and James became the driver and his Major. They ran a very good act.

  The bar was the furthest building into Germany, which is precisely where I would have put it if I didn’t want to share my best beer with foreigners. There were round wooden tables with rustic wooden chairs on the pavement outside.

  The Major said, ‘OK. Pull up here, Les.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that, Guv’nor. I’m feeling a bit exposed.’

  ‘Trust me,’ the Major told us. ‘This one’s going to be all right.’

  When James told us to get out, Les told him, ‘I should cocoa,’ and backed Kate into a small alleyway between the bar and the nearest cottage.

  So James got out alone. It was the first time I had sided openly with Les. James thrust his head into the car window on my side and glared at us both.

  ‘Gutless little ponces. What’s the point of my being a Major if you won’t do what I tell you?’ And he stalked off to sit at one of the round tables.

  Les asked, ‘I wonder what we did to deserve that?’

  I asked, ‘James been served yet?’

  ‘No. But you do understand that you can stop it right here, and get off free? You do get that?’

  ‘Yes. But I don’t think I can.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I heard somewhere that Red soldiers play football with new-born kids. Probably crap; but I can’t stand the thought of wondering if that had happened for the rest of my life – after all, if she knows I’m after her, I’ve virtually been used to chase Grace into their arms.’

  ‘She knows, Charlie. But it ain’t your fault, an’ you heard the man: she might go somewhere else. South.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. I ought to catch up: at least give her the choice.’

  ‘Even if the rest of your life ain’t so long because of it?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me, Les. I’m going to live forever.’

  ‘I hate soldiering with men like you; you know that? Wanna fag?’ Then, ‘ ’allo. Here we go. Fat man in a pinny coming up to the Major. He’s gonna get it in the guts or in the guts. I hate soldiering with him sometimes.’

  ‘What’s that mean? In the guts or in the guts?’

  ‘Beer or a bullet. It’s what he does sometimes. Takes some effing silly chance.’

  The barman waddled off. I saw him from the back. He had a tremendous arse: gold medal winner. He reminded me of those cows I milked in Holland. When he came back it was with three stone jugs of what I presumed to be beer, and a plate of something.

  ‘Pickled cabbage,’ James told us as we joined him, ‘oh, my windy ones. And steins of pale beer. If this is where you go out, at least you go with a beer in your hand. Did you ask him?’ The last bit was to Les alone.

  ‘Yes, Guv. He wants to go on.’

  ‘Told you. Stubborn little bastard.’

  ‘I’m here,’ I told them. ‘You don’t have to talk about me as if I’m not.’

  ‘Then bloody well say something sensible for a change,’ James told me.

  The cabbage was vile; but beggars and choosers, you know. Another stein of beer came along, and the cabbage tasted better. There was sun on our faces, but a heavy low line of grey cloud crouched along the horizon of G
reater Germany. Hitler was not having a good day. Les frowned.

  I asked, ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Dunno, sir. Something. Maybe it all looks too good to be true. The proper war’s only a few miles up the road.’

  ‘Is that what the rumbling is? I thought that was a storm gathering over there.’

  ‘Guns. Plenty of them. Some poor sod is getting theirs.’

  We watched James walking to and fro with the publican. The latter had the air of a relieved man. James’s little book was out, and whenever they stopped pacing he wrote in it. Once he stopped to shake his fountain pen: he must be running short.

  Les told me, ‘Look. If it ever goes bad on us, and the Major and I don’t wake up one day, make sure that you get his notebook, and get it back to civilization with you.’

  ‘Why? It’s only got lists of food in it, hasn’t it?’

  ‘. . . and the names of the prominent local Nazis, and Communists, who their contacts were in Britain before the war, and where their money and valuables an’ the stuff they stole have been stashed. He’s very good at food, but not half bad at the rest of it by all accounts. People talk to him.’

  ‘Cliff’s like that, isn’t he? Is that what makes a good intelligence officer, then?’

  ‘Not pissing folk off, sir, is what makes a good intelligence officer. Major James says you’re as good as the next thing your contact tells you.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘With respect, sir . . . anyone can get information out of somebody once; what counts is when that somebody comes back to you with more information because he wants to.’

  ‘And James is good at that?’

  ‘The best, sir. Why don’t you look at that now?’ He nodded at our glorious leader.

  The publican was earnestly explaining something. He had his arm around James’s shoulder. A thought occurred to me.

  ‘It won’t happen, Les, but if it did, who would I give the book to?’

  ‘You’d find lots of folk after it. Our friend Tommo and the peerless Pole would be after you a bit sharpish, I expect. They could use it.’

  ‘What about Cliff? Would he do?’

  ‘Aye. ’appen ’e would.’