‘Oh good!’ Audley blinked. ‘It’s just … I’m next door … and I shout in my sleep, so I’m told. I have these nightmares about a tank I once briefly occupied which was absolutely full of flies—big, fat greeny-black ones. But I don’t have ’em so often now. They’re going away—like my stutter. It’s the th-therapeutic effect of the soft life we now lead, the MO says. But I think it’s the absence of tanks from my life. I never liked them, you know—‘ He took two long steps past Fred and leaned out of the window ’—SHUT UP, OTTO! “FLUCH AUF DICH” TO YOU, TOO—YOU BLOODY CHERUSKER! SHUT UP!‘ He turned back, grinning widely again. ’He always sings his Teutoburger song when he’s washing the cars, and it really gets on my nerves. I think he only does it to remind us that victorious armies can come unstuck in Germany if they don’t watch out, too—he’s a caution, is our Otto! A man of many parts.‘
Fred looked down into the courtyard, where the silenced Otto had moved on to Major McCorquodale’s French limousine. ‘He sings as though he’s lost two of them.’
‘Lost two of them?’ Audley followed his glance. ‘Oh, I see! Yes—the Crocodile did say something about “castrati” singing when he first heard him. But the way old Otto gets on with the local girls suggests quite the opposite, if Hughie is to be believed.’
‘Yes? And where did we get him from—did you tell me?’ The golden elixir of British Army life had quite dissolved the pain over his eye, and he felt suddenly benevolent towards the young dragoon. Besides which, of course, there was the boy’s pristine innocence.
‘Do you know, I’m not quite sure.’ Audley sounded a little surprised with himself. ‘I think he just turned up one day, and made himself useful. Maybe he brought one of his wild boars with him—that would certainly have been a passport to acceptance in this mess!’ He thought for a moment. ‘But you’ll have to ask Amos—or Hughie. One of ’em’s sure to know, if the other doesn’t.‘
Amos de Souza, thought Fred with a pang of doubt verging so closely on disbelief that it was painful: if he had to stake his life on one officer in this unit he would have hazarded it cheerfully on Major de Souza. But, in spite of his instinct—and in spite of the night before last, which would have added circumstantial proof to that instinct until Brigadier Clinton had reinterpreted those events for him … in spite of all that, Major de Souza’s name was on the Brigadier’s list, and high up, too—second only to that of Colonel ‘Caesar Augustus’ Colbourne himself.
Damn and damn and damn and damn! he thought, remembering his own troubled sleep. This was going to be bad, one way or another, if Clinton was right and if Otto Schild had sung a true song—
Yet, in the Teutoberg Forest
Cold blew the wind,
And the ravens flew above.
There was an air of doom,
As of blood and corpses …
‘You’ll catch cold if you stand there in the window. This isn’t Greece, you know.’ Audley swung his arms. ‘God knows what it’ll be like in winter! Always supposing the Crocodile hasn’t got me posted to a tank landing-craft for the invasion of Malaya!’
Fred realized that he had shivered. ‘Oh, I don’t think there’s much chance of that, David.’ He forced a reassuring grin. Audley was a loyal young man as well as a clever one, if Clinton’s judgement could be relied on; and it was an irony that he was the only unfree man among them. But … (and brave too, Clinton had said: ‘foolishly and suicidally brave, according to his CO’; but that was no more than had been expected of very young officers, wasn’t it?) … but it was no real consolation, among all these other veteran officers, to have to rely on the least-veteran, and most callow and awkward, if push came to shove today.
‘You don’t?’ After searching his grin for a long moment Audley seized on his reassurance eagerly. But then the look became calculating. ‘And you are a friend of the Brigadier’s, aren’t you! And a bloody dark horse, therefore … at least, according to Hughie, anyway!’
Poor boy! ‘I wouldn’t put too much store on that … ’ A dull thump at the door stopped him from continuing to qualify his statement. ‘Come in!’
There was a scuffling noise outside before the door opened, to reveal Trooper Leighton piled high with Fred’s belongings.
‘Put it all down, Lucy—put it all down!’ Audley started to unload the man quickly of his variously well-pressed or well-blancoed and well-polished cargo. ‘Put it all down—and get out, man-juldi, juldi!’
Trooper Leighton gave Fred an agonized glance. ‘Your bath, sir—Major M’Crocodile’s servant took all the ’ot water while my back was turned—‘
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Fred was grateful for having been saved from contradicting the rumour Clinton wanted spreading. ‘I prefer to wash in cold water. Just bring me enough hot for shaving.’
‘Thank you, sir—’
‘No?’ Audley closed the door on the man. ‘Why not?’
The battle-dress was as immaculate as Audley had promised, Fred saw with relief. And, for good measure, his major’s crowns were there on the straps, too. ‘What?’ This was hardly the time to tell Audley that, according to Hughie, Captain Audley himself was a good friend of the Brigadier’s. Because Audley would know that that was a distorted version of the truth. ‘What?’
‘Ah!’ The boy’s downcast expression vanished suddenly. ‘It’s that bomb, of course!’ He grinned hugely. ‘Saved by a bomb—that’s me!’
‘Yes.’ Half the conversation over dinner had been about the amazing new bomb which had been dropped on Japan the previous day—or, at least that part of the evening which had not been devoted to a long and acrimonious argument about the origin of the recipe for the delicately-spiced meat balls which had formed the meal’s pièce-de-résistance … which the Crocodile had maintained was Berlin, while the Alligator had originated them in Hamburg; and which, in Otto Schild’s unexpected absence, had never finally been resolved. ‘Yes—I think you can rely on the atomic bomb, David.’
Audley nodded happily. ‘That’s what old Kenworthy said. Bloody marvellous!’
‘Kenworthy?’ Fred’s memory of the little bespectacled major was of sullen silence and heavy drinking. ‘But he didn’t say anything—?’
‘It was after you left.’ Audley nodded again. ‘He perked up then for a bit, before he was sick—before Lucy and Hughie carried him away and tucked him up.’ Nod. ‘But he said the Japs would be waving the white flag within a week. Or, if they didn’t, it didn’t matter. Because then there wouldn’t be any Japs left, so it came to the same thing. And that we’d all be going home.’ This time Audley shrugged his immense shoulders. ‘But that was just before he threw up—which was just after he said he was going home tomorrow. Which is today of course … But I don’t think he will.’
Fred looked across the room to his valise, and to the zip-fastened pocket in it with the lock, the key to which hung round his neck with his identity discs. Because his own envelope was there, with his wallet and all the things he had taken out of his pockets last night. ‘Why not?’
‘He was very drunk … drunker than I’ve ever seen him. So I don’t think he’ll be able to walk,’ explained Audley innocently. ‘But he certainly talked last night … before he returned to his Hamburger or Berliner meat balls … to us, coram populo. Which was all the more spectacular because that isn’t like him either … Besides which he’s not due for release until next year, by my calculations.’
‘What did he say?’ It was unfortunate that Audley was the one officer he couldn’t ask about the efficacy of the long brown envelope in practice, and whether it had ever been opened and given a date before.
‘Oh … he said this bomb was the real thing … not just like the Tallboys our gallant boys in blue dropped on the Bielefeld viaduct just down the road, which brought it down even though they missed it by miles … ’ The boy’s eyes widened as he exaggerated the RAF’s incompetence ‘ … he said it almost certainly isn’t very big … But that doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t work like an ord
inary bomb … it’s quite different from all the stuff we’ve dropped on Germany. In fact, he says that there’s no limit to its destructive power, and that the Jap scientists would know that themselves. So the one the Yanks dropped on wherever it was is probably just a little demonstration job. Some demo!’
It was plain that Audley wasn’t a scientist. But then, of course, he wasn’t: he was a historian potentially, and an unwilling ex-tank commander and temporary captain actually, at this moment. ‘What does Major Kenworthy do … refresh my memory, David? He collects machinery … ? But what was he … before the war?’
‘What he really does … don’t ask me! He never talks to me … or anyone else, much. But he is damn good with his machinery, certainly.’ The boy was still so entranced with the end of the war that the words tumbled out of him. ‘What he was … I think was a physics lecturer at Manchester, or Birmingham, or somewhere. But he kept talking about his friends in the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge last night … is there a Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge? It’s all Greek to me, I tell you!’
‘Yes.’ It was almost Greek to Fred, too. But there was a hint of Teutoburger Blut und Leichen about it also, with his mathematician’s war-weakened recollections of the bright boys of the Cavendish in mind, as well as what Clinton had said yesterday.
‘Well, whatever it is, it’s got my vote if it’ll end the war before the Crocodile sets his teeth into me!’ Audley peered out of the window again. ‘Ah! Good old Otto’s finally got round to my little car. So you won’t have to be ashamed of it if we use it today—’ He came back to Fred ‘—you know you’re with me today? Everyone else can pursue their private interests, or do their paperwork … or scratch their balls, and contemplate their navels, and generally recover from yesterday’s journey and last night’s excesses. But Jacko Devenish, and Hughie, and I—and you, Fred … for our sins, we four have to report to Amos bright and early, directly after brekker.’ He returned his attention suddenly to the scene below. ‘PUT YOUR BACK INTO IT, MAN! GET THAT MUD OUT FROM UNDER THOSE MUDGUARDS! Yes … but then, of course, you’ll know all about that already … won’t you, Fred!’
Driver Hewitt had done his work well—and quickly, too. Because even before Clinton had arrived in the mess to contribute his own brief but masterly performance, which had only hinted at an old and special relationship between them, his fellow officers had eyed him differently. So now it was not to be wondered that this young man was fishing: that, and not his self-revealing apology, was the reason for this visit, of course.
‘THAT’S BETTER!’ The boy’s pretended lack of interest in Fred’s advance knowledge of the day’s operations was not badly done for one of such tender years.
‘Why should I know that?’ What made the lie easier was the certainty that Audley wouldn’t like the truth any more than he himself had done, when the time came for it—if the time came for it.
‘Oh, come on! Aren’t you Our Freddie’s long-lost brother? Don’t disappoint me—’ Audley stopped as he registered Fred’s frown, and his own expression changed from youthful falsely-innocent ugliness to an honest ugliness older than his years. ‘No, of course—that’s not how the game is played, is it?’ He sighed. ‘And to think that I’ve been blaming myself for taking you away from your Greek fleshpots, because of my glowing references to the Fattorini family that day in the monastery! When in fact you were old acquaintances—’ He stopped again, and all expression blanked from his face, reminding Fred oddly of Clinton himself. ‘In fact, now I come to think of that particular day in all its beauty … that Greek bandit you were with—he certainly wasn’t there by accident, was he!’
A hint of belated satisfaction re-animated the boy’s face. ‘So, of course, you weren’t, either—were you? So I’ve been slow—slow as usual!’
It was exactly as the Brigadier had said: there was always a danger in making pictures from inadequate evidence and misinterpreted facts. So this boy, although he was no fool, was doing that now. But there was nothing he could do about it yet.
‘My shaving water will be getting cold, David.’ He steeled himself against the boy’s enmity with the promise of a future explanation—one day, if not today. And also, hadn’t Audley himself been playing games, with his story of those fly-blown nightmares? ‘And I’d also like my breakfast.’
‘Yes.’ Audley was himself again as he started to turn towards the door. ‘Well, I can recommend the breakfast here: it’s quite outrageously Old English, with mounds of bacon-and-eggs, and fried bread and bangers. And tomatoes and mushrooms too, if Otto’s obeyed the Alligator’s orders.’ He almost left, but then leaned back through the gap in the door. ‘But you’ll pardon me if I hope your shaving-water is stone-cold, eh?’
Fred stared at the finally closed door, in further agreement with the Brigadier: the boy had something about him, in spite of all his defects—in spite of his mixture of arrogance and uncertainty … the mixture which so outrageously loosened his tongue, leading him always to say too much. But what was it, exactly—?
He reached into his valise for the scuffed and worn toilet-bag which was the only thing he had left of those original gifts from his mother on the eve-of-the-war, so long ago, to reach this final eve-of-peace which was dawning amidst Japanese ruin far away: the writing-case had long gone, and those three slim volumes of Plato’s Apology, and Crito, and Phaedo with it—somewhere in Italy they were, with the Bible he’d always meant to read, but somehow never had—
What was it—?
‘Audley?’ the Brigadier had said. ‘Yes, he is an exception, and not just in the matter of loyalty … Because all the others were hand-picked by me. Just as you yourself have been hand-picked finally, major. And if you and I fail now … then it will be back to the beginning again. But much less confidently—’
But, as he lifted the bag, he didn’t want to think about that now: he had thought of that long enough already, across the candlelight of those same plundered silver candle-sticks of the first night, which had reappeared on the table last night. And he had continued to think about it during the night, while sleep eluded him, and then again on waking, before Otto Schild had sung his song—‘Yet, in the Teutoburg Forest, cold blew the wind’—
A cold wind also blew in the Brigadier’s list—
Colbourne,
de Souza,
The Crocodile,
The Alligator,
Carver-Hart,
Kenworthy—
He didn’t want to think of any of them now, but they wouldn’t let him go—‘All the others have been eliminated. And, the very devil of it is, that I can’t believe that any of those men would betray me either. But that only means that I’m making a mistake: that I’m making pictures which I want to see, Fattorini—Fred … So now we have to play for high stakes. Because I need all these men for the future, when the stakes may become even higher — because all of them are marked for promotion —’
But not Audley, of course!
The bathroom was huge, and its plumbing was antediluvian as well as foreign: this wasn’t the servants’ floor, but it was obviously for the less important guests. (Although he wasn’t a less important guest in Schwartzenburg Castle; he was just a late-comer—later than Colbourne, de Souza, The Crocodile, The Alligator, Johnnie Carver-Hart, Professor Kenworthy and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all, right the way down to Lieutenant (temporary Captain) David Audley—)
Audley had been wrong about the water: Trooper Leighton had done his best with it, so that the shaving-water in its antique silver bucket was more than warm, and even the bath-water was tepid.
Audley —
He stopped there, staring at himself in the mirror with the lather on his face and a new blade in his razor, as a new thought occurred to him—
‘But … Audley, yes: I took him on last year, in France. And only temporarily, to repay a debt and because there was no one else I could get who spoke fluent French at short notice … which he does do, although with a perfectly execrable accent … It was
his godfather who gave him to me, to save him getting killed, like all the other subalterns in his regiment were doing, in the bocage there … And I nearly got killed myself, actually — in a quite different operation from this, mark you … out of which I picked up several other useful men who are now obligated to me—Sergeant Devenish and Driver Hewitt among them, as it happens. But that’s another story—the irony now is that Audley is the only one we can trust … because I didn’t pick him!’
He saw another story in the mirror suddenly, in his own eyes—‘Of course, afterwards I checked him all the way back—as I have checked you … And the others, so I thought … But no matter! He did well in France. So … I kept him on. Because he’s also going to be a useful man one day, when he matures—because inside that great hulking overgrown subaltern’s body there just may be that extra thing that we need, and which is going to be in short supply in our business after the war, I fear—’
There was also another story there, Fred saw much too late, but which Audley had seen before him, albeit only just: of two officers on a Greek hillside, the English one (or the Anglo-Scottish-Italian one!) innocently and accidentally, but the Greek-Cypriot bravely and deliberately in the execution of his duty—was that it? And, if there was … then was there more than that, with no blind chance dictating events, all the way back to Frederick Clinton and Uncle Luke long ago? Was that it—? Had Kyriakos deliberately tested him under stress, to bring him to Osios Konstandinos at Clinton’s bidding?
He rasped the razor across his cheek, suddenly certain that he was hungry for more than his Old English breakfast. But he wouldn’t think of that now: he would think of David Audley—
‘But he’s too young for this: it’s always a mistake to give a man’s work to boys—even lucky ones, like our young David. Because he lost several of his nine lives in Normandy, before I ever caught up with him. And then I took several more of them, through my own stupidity, I’m sorry to say. So, although you can use him now—and trust him … I’d be obliged if you could return him to me intact if you can, major!’
A New Kind of War Page 26