Or almost empty. For there in the doorway ahead of them, caught in the beam of someone’s torch, just inside it and silhouetted against the fierce mock-daylight of the searchlights outside, was an American soldier, rain-caped and armed.
‘Make way there!’ Audley’s voice was loud and offensively British. ‘Out of the way, soldier!’
Corporal Keys bridled just ahead of Fred, as though unwilling to take part in the charade at this last and most important moment, so Fred gave him a brutal shove to get him moving again, conscious at last that he was a full and paid-up member of the TRR-2.
‘Get on, you bugger!’ Devenish, ahead of Corporal Keys, admonished their newer prisoner angrily—that poor confused devil had also baulked momentarily, like Corporal Keys, at the prospect of finally exchanging his smelly freedom for the bright uncertainty of captivity beyond the doorway.
The American soldier stood aside, blank faced and holding his carbine close to his chest, and Fred caught an incongruous whiff of eau-de-cologne as he pushed by the man, as distinctive against all the doss-house smells as the perfume of roses in a midden. And then they were outside, in the open chiaroscuro of night-and-searchlights.
For a moment the bushes on each side of the doorway protected Fred’s eyes from the harshness of the searchlights, but after two or three strides the delicate tracery of leaves was gone, and he was suddenly blind in the full glare, transfixed by it as though it was focused on him only—
This way!‘ shouted Audley. ’Follow—‘ The ear-splitting explosion overwhelmed the rest of the shout, seeming to come from all around them in the millisecond of its concussion, but then galvanizing Fred to grab instinctively at Corporal Keys, to pull him down on to the wet ground.
The next elongated fraction of time was filled with the aftermath of the explosion, beyond rational thought. Then in the midst of its confusing echoes, as he began to think and hear again, Fred knew that the explosion hadn’t harmed them, and that they must get moving again.
But now there was another sound: where there had been a continuing babel of noise behind him, coming out of the passage from the entrance hall, now there was a terrible mixture of shrieks—which together became a thin wailing—God! He had heard that wail before, in Italy: it was the appalling distillation of maimed surviving flesh-and-blood on the edge of a bomb’s impact in a cellar crowded with human beings!
He raised himself slightly, above the body of Corporal Keys, which he had pulled down with him. First, the pitiless continuing glare of the searchlight blinded him; then Audley was on his knees ahead of him, cutting off the beam.
‘Get up—for Christ’s sake, get up!’ Audley was up now, and gesturing at him. ‘Get him up, Fred!’
Fred felt the wet earth under his hand, and the cold damp through his trousers at his knees as he levered himself up.
‘Jacko! Help him!’ shouted Audley.
Fred was suddenly aware of Corporal Keys beside him, and that only Corporal Keys mattered. But when he grasped the German’s arm, it was a dead weight, tensed against him: the man was hugging the ground almost literally, for the illusion of protection it gave him when everything else around him had gone mad.
Sergeant Devenish appeared out of nowhere, on the other side of the German.
‘Come on now, sir—let’s do like the officer says then, shall we?’ The sergeant addressed the German in a voice quite different from any he had ever used before in Fred’s hearing: unhurried, gentle, almost as though wheedling a frightened child. But without the slightest effect, nevertheless.
‘Right, then—’ Devenish spoke the two words to himself, and then his chest expanded ‘—take my weapon, if you’d be so good, sir—’ he thrust his gun into Fred’s hands a second time across the inert body ‘—LET’S BE HAVING YOU THEN, YOU BUGGER!’
Whether it was the effect of the sudden transition from gentleness to roaring anger, or the grasping hand-on-the-collar with every ounce of the sergeant’s muscle-power in the lift, or both, Fred never knew. But in the next second Corporal Keys was on his knees, and in the second after that he was moving, even before his legs were fully straightened, with one of Devenish’s hands still grasping the collar, and the other pulling his battle-dress blouse.
‘Fred!’ Audley gesticulated as he came alongside Devenish. ‘The other one—bring him!’
Fred followed the direction of the boy’s hand. Major de Souza’s prisoner, who had been lately Sergeant Devenish’s, was now all alone in the open and in the glare of the searchlights, hunched under his blanket and imprisoned by the same fear which had rooted Corporal Keys to the ground.
‘Right!’ He heard his forced acknowledgement of the boy’s order, and felt angry with himself for the inadequacy of his performance so far, for which the excuse of six peaceful months in Greece was no bloody excuse at all—damn, damn and damn!
The prisoner was no more than half-a-dozen yards away — the prisoner who, for a guess, didn’t matter a damn, compared with Corporal Keys—damn, damn and damn! But at least he’d get this right, damn it!
‘Come on!’ The wretched fellow had rolled sideways, into a twitching blanket-covered ball, even as he covered the distance between them. But Audley’s much-admired Sergeant Devenish was his model now, even though he couldn’t match either of the sergeant’s voices. ‘Get up!’
A bare foot, emaciated and filthy-white in the unnatural light, kicked out from under the blanket.
‘Damn you—GET UP!’ Fred seized an edge of the blanket and ripped it aside. ‘DAMN—’ But then the Devenish-words died on his lips as he saw the blood, black as ink, bubbling out of the man’s mouth and streaming to join the great spreading wound on his chest—God!
The man was trying to say something, but he was gargling and choking as he tried to speak, and he wasn’t even looking at Fred—he was arching his back and looking up into the dark sky, at nobody and nothing, as he died.
‘Fred—Fred?’ He heard Audley’s voice in the distance. ‘What the devil are you playing at—?’
Audley’s voice was one sound. And he could still hear the slaughter-house-din muted from the wrecked building behind him. And there was the roar of generators powering the false daylight, which blackened the man’s blood as his eyes rolled upwards and the breath rattled finally in his throat.
‘Christ!’ exclaimed Audley, above him.
That, among the other words of the ancient formula, was what Father de Vere had said over his dying sappers in Italy, Fred remembered. So, with no more time left, it would have to do for this poor unknown, who had just joined them. And, anyway, the exact words didn’t matter, Father de Vere always said.
He straightened up. ‘Come on, David.’
Audley looked at him. ‘What—’
‘Let’s go.’ For the first time he felt their roles reverse, and age and rank take precedence, together with self-preservation. ‘He’s dead. So he won’t mind.’ That last consideration hardened him: they were both still alive, but in the open, where it wasn’t safe. ‘Come on!’
Without waiting for Audley he ran towards the safety of the trees.
PART THREE
A Free Man
In the Teutoburg Forest,
Germany, August 7, 1945
I
AS THEY DROVE northwards, Fred slept the sleep of exhaustion. But, unmercifully, it was not dreamless: rather, it was full of images—sharp images, but disjointed and unconnected, of things and people … and even words.
Or a word—
Wildschweinrücken —
In Audley’s jeep, at first, he slept almost upright and very uncomfortably, with his chin down on his breast, so that his neck stretched and stretched as his head rolled first one side, and then the other, over every pothole. And there were hundreds of potholes—thousands, millions, billions … an infinity of potholes, into which Audley deliberately and maliciously drove, out of the last vestiges of night, into a grey, cloud-swept day—
Wildschweinrücken—
There w
ere, at irregular intervals, villages untouched by war. Then there were towns: towns of rubble, with tall chimneys standing in the ruins … buildings—burned, because they were not built to burn … but chimneys were built for fire, so they didn’t burn—that was the rule!
And then there were long stretches of flattened open countryside, so often like, and yet unlike, bits of the English countryside he remembered, out of another world, in August—another August, long forgotten—
He had taken the men, one day in that other August long ago, to a farm, where they were harvesting. And … it was wheat—stiff, heavy-eared wheat, deep yellow-gold … but also with a fine crop of thistles in it, which made the men swear, who had never before taken hold of a wheat-sheaf let alone a handful of thistles: they were mostly conscripts, with a leavening of regulars and territorials like himself, but they were also sappers, and proud of it—
Bridges, endless bridges! And the bridge over the Volturno was more than just a bridge: it was the eighth-bloody wonder of the bloody-world! And I saw Leese—Jolly Polly Leese!—drive on at one end, past irate, gesticulating Military Police, and approach a column of tanks which had lumbered on to the other end—the far distant end—towards him … and he was driving himself, too, Jolly Polly! And he’d had to back up all the way, while the MPs were tearing their hair, because the first tank commander wasn’t going to back up for anyone, not even God Almighty himself, let alone the commander of the 8th Army—not for Jolly Polly, not for anyone! But at least he’d still been jolly at the end of it—
Wildschweinrücken! And then a nightmare wild boar’s head poking out of a wall, with its glaring red pig-eyes but its tusks dripping black blood—
Harvesting! How the men had hated stocking! Men who fancied their skills with metal and wood—anything was grist to a sapper … but they couldn’t stand up two wheat-sheaves, one against another, in the stubble: while they were turning round to grab another sheaf, the first two had fallen over—to the loud contempt of the farm labourer driving the tractor, and the little gnarled man sitting high up on the binder behind him—‘Garn! Can’t yer do it, then? It’s too ’ard for yer, is it? Too much like ‘ard work, like, is it?’
Christ! There were no tractors in the fields of Germany now! And there were no men, either: only women, bent down in the corn—the thin fields of a poor harvest—among the flattened crop, beaten down by the rain—
And … was it the Crocodile or the Alligator who had said that they’d all be starving soon?—
Somewhere along the way, beside a copse of silver birches standing up tall and thin, in the middle of nowhere, with his tongue furry thick in his mouth, and his eyes gummed together … they had stopped.
And young Audley’s face had been brown-grey: brown with the outdoor soldier’s tan, but grey with weariness, and lined like an old man’s, with that ugly sneer of his … which wasn’t really a sneer, but the defensive mask of a youth’s uncertainty among his confident elders—was that it—?
‘What’s happening?’ His own exhaustion harshened the question. ‘What are we stopping for?’
Audley’s features twitched. This is where we’re meeting up with the others, old boy—the bloody baggage train, and the camp-followers … tirones, as Caesar Augustus calls them. But … chiefly Otto, and his German auxiliaries, rather than the QM and his acolytes—they have to follow us, being allegedly part of the British Army … But Otto … everyone’s nightmare is that he will suddenly fade away, and go native—maybe even decamp to the Russian Zone, to do even better business, maybe.‘
Fred blinked. ‘The Russian Zone?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Audley nodded. ‘It’s not far away, you know. North-South—that’s a long way … but West-East … that’s not really so far, if you know the right highways.’ Another nod. ‘Of course, you’ve got to be able to handle them—the Russkis. But they’re quite extraordinarily amenable to the right stimulus, apparently.’ Another nod. Then a shrug. ‘Same with the French—they’re really buddy-buddy with the Germans—that is, with the Germans who know their business, and what’s what … The French are what they call “pragmatic”, you see, Fred. “Pragmatique”—is that the word?’
Fred frowned. ‘What?’
Audley’s expression changed as he looked down the line of vehicles which had been parked nose-to-tail under the silver birches, alongside which the north-bound convoy had come to rest.
‘Captain Audley!’ What Audley had actually been looking at was a figure which had issued out of the parallel lines, who was striding towards them now. ‘Captain Audley, sah!’
‘Mr Levin—’ Audley blinked ‘—I d-d-don’t think that you’ve h-had the p-p-p … opportunity … of properly meeting Major Fattorini, who was with us during last night’s adventure—?’
‘Sah!’ RSM Levin was at once very Jewish, but also a very British Army RSM: compact and immaculate and confident, and in his prime: Joshua, strong in battle, but with a hint of Joseph, with Pharaoh’s civil service at his command. ‘With your permission … sah!’
‘Mr Levin—?’ Simultaneously (although also informed by what Audley had said in the past), Fred didn’t like RSM Levin, but was also a little afraid of him.
‘With your permission, sah—’ Levin fixed him for an instant, and then dismissed him ‘—Captain Audley is to report to the Colonel, sir—’ the basilisk eye came back to Fred ‘—and you are to travel with Driver Hewitt, as of now, in alternative transport … sah!’
‘Thank you, Mr L-L-L … ’ Audley curled his tongue round the consonant impotently, nodding his head like an idiot.
‘Thank you, Mr Levin.’ Fred wondered, and not for the first time, whether Audley’s impediment was nervous or deliberate. But, more than that, he knew that he must put Mr Levin firmly in his place now, or he would be lost forever. ‘When I’ve finished with Captain Audley … then I shall expect Driver Hewitt to find me … here—here, right?’
RSM Levin’s square blue-black chin came up aggressively, almost arrogantly, with the thin lips above it tight, as though he well understood the nature of this deliberate challenge to his authority. ‘Sah! But, if I may—’
‘Thank you, Mr Levin.’ Fred concentrated his failing courage on the RSM’s well shaved chin, aware that his own chin was undoubtedly stubbly, and even Audley’s ugly boxer’s-face had its own juvenile fuzz too—
And that poor dead bastard, from last night: the black frothy blood had dribbled down through several days’ razorless growth, blond and colourless as the pale eyelashes and eyebrows above the glazing dead eyes in that final moment of truth —
‘Thank you, Mr Levin.’ As he repeated the words he concentrated on Audley. ‘Now David—as you were saying—?’
‘Y-Yes … ’ Audley blinked and wrinkled his nose nervously, contriving to remind Fred of nothing so much as an enormous and terrified rabbit as the RSM stood his ground beside him.
‘With respect, sah—’ There was no respect in the RSM’s tone, only cold certainty. But then he stopped.
‘Hullo there!’ Amos de Souza’s voice came sweetly to the ear as the distant trumpets of any relieving force to a doomed garrison. ‘Morning, Freddie—David … Mr Levin. Is there some sort of problem?’
‘No.’ In turning towards his rescuer Fred was careful not to show relief. ‘No problem at all. Mr Levin was just relaying information about my transport, that’s all—’
It was curious—now he could remember exactly the end of his dream: how the men had always hated stooking until the very end, when there was only a narrow strip of uncut corn left in the centre of the field because then they could stop stooking and pick up sticks, and chase the poor terrified rabbits which had been driven back and back until forced at the last to break cover or be cut to bloody ribbons by the binder’s knife-blades … Only this time, in his dream, there had been no rabbits, but wild boars in the corn; and also, striding through the stubble, there had come not the farmer, but Colonel Colbourne and RSM Levin, both dressed in civilian tweeds, yet with
their medals at the breast—
‘—that’s all … Thank you, Mr Levin. I shall look for Driver Hewitt as soon as I’ve finished talking to Captain Audley … and the adjutant.’
No one enlarged on that for a moment. Then the RSM saluted de Souza smartly, and strode away, stiff-backed. And, for another moment, no one enlarged on that, either.
‘Phew!’ murmured Audley finally.
‘Oh yes … ’ De Souza looked from one to the other, more philosophically than expecting a straight answer. ‘So what mischief have you two been up to, then? Not annoying Mr Levin, I hope—?’
‘G-Good Lord, no!’ Audley relaxed like a schoolboy. ‘P-p-p … perish the thought, Amos!’ Then he straightened up belatedly. ‘Actually, Amos—’
‘The truth, please.’ De Souza shook his head. ‘Come on, young David—I have to run this Fred Karno’s outfit … one way or another—the truth, please.’
‘Of course!’ Audley was plainly delighted by this unwise admission of weakness. ‘I was just going to tell you—’
‘Yes, Amos.’ Fred overruled the boy sharply. ‘I was. And I’m sorry.’
‘Yes?’ De Souza raised a hand to silence Audley, without looking at him. ‘What happened?’
‘Nothing, really.’ Also without looking at the young man Fred understood the problem the boy represented: brains and over-promoted youthful arrogance, and immaturity, plus a tongue like a cow-bell, would not endear him to an RSM with no other subalterns to bully. ‘I rather think the RSM was pulling rank … or pushing it, if you like.’ He shrugged. ‘But I was tired, so when he pushed, I pushed back, I’m afraid.’ As always, honesty eased his conscience. ‘It wasn’t necessary. But I did—and I’m sorry, Amos.’
‘Yes … you will be—huh!’ There was no sympathy in Audley’s murmur. ‘Busy-Izzy’s a bad enemy—as I can testify from bitter experience, by golly!’
A New Kind of War Page 19