Avalanche of Daisies

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘Long as you like,’ Becky told her.

  So the letter was kept and answered – at length and ungrammatically but with more affection than she’d shown her poor daughter for a very long time.

  And the next morning Barbara had two letters from Lynn. There was nothing else, and she had so hoped there would be, but she encouraged herself that two letters from Lynn would do to be going on with. And they were a comfort, Becky’s so sensible and her mother’s so loving.

  I know I was not keen on you getting married but I would not have had this happen for the world. Your pa dont know on account of he is at sea at present. I have not told your brothers on account of they are too young. I do so hope you get better news soon which you will write and let me know wont you. I shall be thinking of you all the time.

  If only she could have written to me like that when I got married, Barbara thought bitterly, instead of all that hollering. It’s dreadful that I got to lose my husband before my ma will write to me properly. But then she checked herself. Missing hain’t dead. Don’t face the worst until you have to. And she offered up one of her quick, heartfelt prayers to make amends for her black thoughts, ‘Please God, don’t let him be dead. I’ll write back to Ma this afternoon and I’ll be really nice to her, and I’ll be really nice to Mrs Wilkins too, only please don’t let him be dead.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  ‘This is beginning to stink,’ Steve whispered, holding his nose and grimacing.

  ‘Speak fer yerself,’ Dusty whispered. ‘We all stink.’

  Which was true. After two days without washing, their hands and faces were seamed with grime, their chins covered with an ugly uneven stubble and they smelt like tramps, filthy-sour as though they were rotting.

  But Steve was referring to the situation they were in, which was steadily becoming more and more bizarre. They’d been travelling about the German countryside for more than forty-eight hours now, and in a most peculiar way, using minor roads and farm tracks and doubling back on themselves whenever there was any other traffic in the area. Their food stocks were low, there was hardly any water, they were down to their last two cans of petrol, and their captor was hideously bad-tempered but he still showed no sign of handing them over to anyone else.

  From time to time, his two prisoners attempted a shorthand conversation, pretending to look at one of their letters, or at Dusty’s calendar, and communicating in unfinished sentences and army slang, backing up what couldn’t be said with nods and frowns and changing expressions, for fear of being overheard and understood. Now the truck was lurking under a clump of trees at the edge of a field while a convoy passed noisily on the road below them and they were making the most of the cover the row gave them.

  ‘Sounds like tanks,’ Steve whispered.

  ‘Ours or theirs?’ Dusty asked. ‘’Ave a shufti.’

  Steve couldn’t see anything from where he was crouched on the floor of the truck. He wondered if he could move into a better position but decided against it. Their driver’s shoulders were too tense to run risks. ‘Can’t.’

  Sure enough the German turned to spit orders at them, his eyes narrowed, pale brows scowling. ‘Halt die schnauze!’

  So they had to shut up. But Steve mimed peeing against a tree and Dusty nodded to show he understood when they would continue their conversation. Which they did when the convoy had passed and they all went off into the copse. There was no sign of any more traffic but the tracks the convoy had left were clear in the dust of the road. They were the long zippered marks of passing tanks.

  ‘I don’t reckon he meant to take us prisoner,’ Steve said from his side of the tree.

  ‘No. I been thinking that too.’

  ‘I reckon he’s doing a bunk.’

  ‘A deserter?’

  ‘Yep. He’d’ve handed us over straight away if he’d been on the level. I don’t think he’s a Jerry either.’ ‘He speaks the lingo.’

  ‘Two lingos.’

  ‘Straight up?’

  ‘I reckon. He’s got two ways of telling us to shut up. You listen. I reckon he’s Polish or something like that.’

  ‘So?’

  It was time for a bit of courage. They’d been prisoners for long enough. ‘I think we should grab some food and make a run for it.’

  Dusty put his head round the tree to grin agreement. ‘When?’

  ‘Tonight. When it’s dark. If those tanks were ours we ought to be able to find them. If they weren’t they can’t be far away if the Panzers are in the area.’

  ‘He’s coming back,’ Dusty warned, glancing over his shoulder. Could they do it? Was it possible?

  The noises of the day were certainly encouraging. Something was going on and not too far away. Heavy artillery fire which had to be Allied. All the sounds of a tank battle. And eventually, towards evening, they saw a squadron of heavy bombers, heading east and not more than ten miles away.

  ‘Catching up with us,’ Steve whispered, looking skyward as the roar of their engines continued. ‘Grab that liver sausage while he’s not looking.’

  That night they made camp just inside a thick wood that covered a long sloping hillside. They ate their meagre rations hungrily, drank their coffee, which was particularly bitter that night, getting down to the dregs. Then all three of them ambled off into the trees, in what was now their customary way, to relieve themselves before settling down for the night.

  It had been a warm spring day – too warm to be cooped up in the smelly fastness of that truck – and now the sun was setting in a blaze of sumptuous colour, scarlet and orange and gold striped by long lines of lilac cloud. The fields below them were darkened with blue shadow and there wasn’t a sight or sound of another living soul but from where they were standing they had a good view of the road they’d just left and a clear panorama of the open countryside around, with a sizeable town to the south-east and at least four villages beyond that. Plenty of cover and good observation. It couldn’t be bettered.

  They watched as their captor strolled back to the truck. He was lighting a cigarette as he walked and the smell of its smoke drifted up to them most temptingly. They’d run out of their own supplies that morning but he obviously had a secret cache somewhere.

  ‘Trust him not to share it,’ Dusty whispered. ‘I’m dyin’ fer a fag.’

  Steve told him to shush. This was a crucial moment and they needed their wits about them. ‘Move up,’ he mouthed, tossing his head to show the direction they should take.

  They moved with caution, treading very carefully and wincing at what a lot of noise they were making as they crunched through the dead leaves. But the German was walking on, still smoking and didn’t hear.

  Bit further. And a bit more, slipping from tree to tree so that they could dodge for cover if he turned round. There were birds calling in the copse below them and they could hear a horse nickering somewhere. But he still didn’t look for them. Instead he sat with his back against one of the wheels and went on smoking.

  Dusty peered round the side of his tree. ‘What now?’ he mouthed.

  At that moment there was a roar of heavy vehicles and three armoured cars appeared in the road below them, travelling fast and too far away to be identified. The German jumped to his feet, glanced at the woods, hesitated for a second and then climbed into the truck and drove it at speed across the field, following the hedgerow and heading in the opposite direction. Within minutes they’d turned a bend and disappeared and he was bumping into the next field, driving like a maniac.

  ‘Christ!’ Steve said. ‘He’s going without us. He’s leaving us behind. Didn’t I tell you.’ It was too good to be true.

  ‘He’ll be back,’ Dusty said sourly.

  But he wasn’t. They watched until the dark shape of the truck had disappeared into the shadows and they listened for a long while after that in case they heard him returning. Soon, even the sound of his engine was gone. They were on their own and they were free. They wanted to jump about and shout but that wasn�
�t possible in enemy territory. So they thumped one another on the back instead, grinning like Cheshire cats. It was too easy.

  What followed was not.

  They decided to stay in the woods that night and to sleep if they could. ‘There’s no point trying to get anywhere tonight,’ Steve decided. ‘Once the sun goes down it’ll be too dark to see. We’ll make a bed in the leaves and stay here. Good insulation, leaves.’

  ‘Bleedin’ babes in the wood,’ Dusty mocked.

  ‘We’ll sleep like tops,’ Steve told him. ‘I betcher.’

  But in fact neither of them slept at all. As the last light faded, the woods gave an ominous shiver and the shadows under its thick branches began to lengthen and distort. It was as if it were returning to some older, more primitive, savage existence and the return brought a new fear with it, equally primitive and equally savage. Every swaying branch concealed a danger, every speckled trunk a threat, every shifting space was live with half-seen, irrational terrors. And when the last of the sunlight was gone, the terror intensified, for now the darkness was total and impenetrable and every sound was magnified. The harmless wood had become a menacing forest and the old dark forces of evil and horror were stalking in its depths.

  They fought their fears for nearly an hour until Dusty couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘Sod this fer a game a’ soldiers!’ he whispered. ‘I’m off out of it.’

  ‘It’s only superstition,’ Steve whispered back.

  ‘Then why are we whispering?’

  ‘In case they hear us,’ Steve admitted. ‘OK. You’re right. We’ll get out.’

  But even at the edge of the wood, it was still hideously dark and the demons were still waiting.

  ‘We’ll take it in turns to keep guard,’ Steve said. ‘I’ll take first watch.’

  But neither of them slept until first light and then they sank into such heavy slumber that it was some hours before they woke, drenched in dew, stiff-legged, much too far out in the open and parlously hungry.

  ‘I’m fucking perished,’ Dusty complained. ‘How the hell are we going to get back to the unit?’

  Steve produced the liver sausage from his tunic and cut off two large chunks. Now that the night was over, he was his reasonable self again. ‘Quit bellyaching,’ he ordered. ‘Least the goblins didn’t get us. If we head west, we’ll be going in the right sort of direction. Eat up!’

  So they breakfasted on liver sausage and dry biscuit, washed down with water. Then they set off along the edge of the wood, heading west, or west-north-west, and keeping their eyes skinned for any movement on the roads. None came. They saw a tractor and a farm wagon and a gang of labourers in the fields – and there was plenty of activity in the air, all of it Allied but none of it near enough for them to hazard a guess as to where it was coming from.

  Towards afternoon they found a stream and crouched beside it, scooping the water into their hands to drink. It restored them a little for it was cool and sweet-tasting and they’d both been extremely thirsty. They filled their water bottles, rested and went on. But there was still no military traffic of any kind, Allied or German.

  That night Dusty crossed off another day on his calendar and they slept under a hedge, taking it in turns to keep watch. At sunrise they set off along a completely empty road, still heading west. But after another long day they were still in enemy territory and no nearer to finding the British army or to knowing where they were.

  ‘How much longer can we keep this up?’ Dusty wanted to know.

  ‘While there’s food, there’s hope,’ Steve told him. But the days went by and the food gradually ran out, even though they were rationing it carefully. By the fifth day they had nothing left but water and they were both very hungry.

  ‘We should’ve stayed with the Jerry, you ask me,’ Dusty grumbled, as the morning trudged away. ‘At least he fed us.’

  ‘We’d’ve ended up in Poland,’ Steve said. ‘And he wouldn’t have fed us once his supplies ran out.’

  ‘Six days we been going, an’ we ain’t seen a soul.’

  ‘Five and a half,’ Steve corrected. ‘It’s midday.’

  ‘Five, six, what’s it fucking matter? We’re finished. We got no fucking food, no fucking maps, we don’t know where we fucking are. I say we ought to walk to the nearest farm an’ give ourselves up. Call it a day. That’s what I say.’

  ‘Well I don’t,’ Steve said, and tried to encourage him. ‘They could be just over this hill.’ It was a very slight incline but it hid their view of anything ahead of them.

  ‘Or they could be sixty miles away. Face it, Steve, for Christ’s sake. We’re finished. We might as well give up. I’m for the farm. Next one I see …’

  ‘We’re not going to fucking surrender a second time,’ Steve said fiercely. ‘I’ll tell you that for nothing. Where’s yer guts?’

  ‘Bleedin’ empty. That’s where they are. Bleedin’ empty an’ killin’ me.’

  ‘Listen!’ Steve ordered, holding up his hand.

  ‘Bleedin’ killin’ me!’

  ‘Listen! Listen!’

  ‘What?’

  They’d been so angry with one another they hadn’t heard the sound of engines. Now they realised that there were armoured cars approaching and scrambled behind the hedge just as the aerial of the leading car trembled over the brow of the hill. They watched, breathless with fear and hope, as the car gradually rose into their view, first the gun turret, then the driver – wearing the familiar black beret – then the chassis, clearly numbered and bearing its wonderful, unmistakable badge, the bright yellow rectangle with the charging black bull of the 11th Armoured Division.

  Dusty leapt out of the hedge in a moment of pure joy.

  And they opened fire. Sweet fucking Jesus! They opened fire.

  There was a moment’s total confusion, as both men flung themselves on the ground and Steve screamed, ‘We’re British for Chrissake! Don’t fire!’

  Then there were boots running towards him and a sergeant beside him and he was being picked up and dusted down and sworn at for a fucking idiot, ‘jumping out on us like that. You could’ve been killed.’ And then they were both looking at Dusty who was still lying in the road with his hands over his head.

  ‘Oh fuck!’ the sergeant said. ‘Did we hit him?’

  ‘No!’ Steve roared, running towards him. ‘No! Not now!’ It was too dreadful. To be killed now, just when the war was so nearly over, when they’d come so far and endured so much, and by his own side. His own fucking stupid side! He was torn with grief and shock and fury, raging at the sergeant. ‘Fucking idiots! You’ve killed him an’ he’s on your fucking side. How could you be so fucking stupid?’

  And Dusty rolled over and grinned up at them. ‘Rotten shot!’ he said.

  Then they were all laughing and whacking one another across the shoulders, and Steve and Dusty were hauled aboard the second armoured car and back with the British army again. They were given cigarettes – the bliss of a smoke after all that time – and iron rations to take the edge off their hunger, promised a shower and a good slap-up meal, brought up to date on the news of the war.

  ‘Can’t take you back to base just yet,’ the sergeant explained. ‘We’ve got to liberate some bloody concentration camp. Jerry’s packing it in all over the shop. This lot just came out of nowhere with a white flag, would we take over the camp. They got typhus there apparently. You’ll have to come for the ride.’

  Steve didn’t care where they went. Dusty was alive. They were back with their own side. That was what mattered.

  The three armoured cars turned off the minor road to follow a track between a forest of pine trees. Long beams of sunlight plunged like shining swords through the tall trunks, touching the branches with rich bright green, and striping the sides of the three war-worn vehicles with dappled patterns of white light and blue-green shadow. They could hear a bird singing high in the branches, peep-a, peep-a, peep-a. It was blissfully peaceful.

  At first the smell was just a m
inor irritation, something that they were passing, something that would pass. But as they drove on, it grew steadily stronger and more putrid, like a combination of rotting meat, stinking rubbish and foul drains, a miasmic stench that penetrated to the inmost corner of the cars and filled their mouths and throats until they were retching.

  ‘What the hell is it?’ they asked one another. There was nothing in the woods to cause it, as far as they could see. Yet the further they drove, the stronger and more repulsive it became. It even blocked out the scent of the pines.

  Then their journey came to an end and they saw what it was. The camp lay directly ahead of them and scattered on either side of the track were scores of dead bodies, men and women, some in convicts’ striped suits, some in rags, some half naked, their arms and legs stick-thin, their heads shaven, all of them blotched with purple bruises and smeared with blood.

  The men of the 11th Armoured looked out at them in horror, all thinking the same thing. Why were they so desperately thin? Why had they been left where they fell? It must have been an execution of some kind, because they’d been shot from the front and fallen face upwards or onto their sides. Had they been starved and then shot?

  ‘Dear God!’ Steve said. ‘What sort of place is this?’

  The gates were being opened. It was time for them to enter.

  ‘It’s called Belsen,’ the sergeant said.

  Chapter Thirty

  The commandant of Belsen concentration camp was waiting at the gate. From their vantage point beside the leading armoured car, Steve and Dusty had a good view of the proceedings and the man. He was exactly the sort of creature they expected – thickset, stocky, arrogant, cruel – and he dominated their attention, dressed in the immaculate, be-medalled uniform of a high-ranking officer, with a well-brushed cap and brightly polished jackboots, his face a mask of brutal insolence, heavily jowled and fleshy, with small eyes and beetling eyebrows. He showed no sign of fear at all and had turned his back on the camp and his prisoners, as if they were nothing to do with him, as if they didn’t exist.