“Parti!” he grunted and waved his hand towards the bag. Esme took out a long-necked bottle of wine, and two broken halves of a French loaf. He was not hungry, but the man obviously wished him to eat, for he waved his arms and nodded his head encouragingly.
The wine helped to restore Esme’s confidence, badly shaken by the visit.
“Les Allemagnes?” he asked.
The stolid man nodded and spat. Then, without another word or sign, he walked out of the barn and across the sloping field in the opposite direction to the lane.
Esme watched him out of sight and carried the bag back to his hollow. His elation was returning and he decided to risk a cigarette, blowing the smoke into the deep hollow where he had hidden himself. He wondered vaguely which of the crew were captured, which of them were dead, and who was still free, but the fate of five of the crew did not depress him overmuch, for he was riding a tide of personal triumph.
Time passed very slowly here among the marigolds and he had leisure to reflect on the immediate past and the long-distant past. It seemed to him, lying in half-light at the back of a French barn, that so far he had achieved very little in life, but that this was unimportant now, for his achievements were on the point of commencing. Perhaps this was his big chance to achieve something. Perhaps this was something he might do well, escape across hundreds of miles of enemy territory, and get home to Judy and the Avenue. Perhaps, indeed, this was the big adventure that he had been seeking ever since he played in Manor Wood, and cast himself in an endless succession of heroic roles, many of them akin to the role he was now playing? He freely admitted to himself that all he had set out to do had not amounted to anything very much. He had dreamed his boyhood away, and then spent the next ten years in haphazard attempts to justify himself to himself, first as a lover, then as a writer, then as a romantic tramp, then as a husband, and finally as an airman, but so far he had made little impression on anyone. Of all the people he had met during thirty years of opportunity he had succeeded only in impressing one—Judy Carver. His romantic idealisation of Elaine was dead but he still smarted at his failure to have aroused in her anything more definite than lazy, good-natured contempt. As a writer his failure was less spectacular, but he did not shrink from admitting that his contributions to literature meant less than a row of pins, or that the urge to write had now burned itself out.
As a working journalist he was also a failure, for he was aware, by this time, that he had lacked the brashness and self-confidence demanded of the professional newspapermen and had, indeed, never considered himself as anything more than a glorified clerk in Fleet Street.
As an air-gunner, he decided, he had come slightly nearer to success, but even here he had ultimately failed the men who had trusted him, and had allowed that first Ju. 88 to rake the port engine before he fired a defensive burst. That, of course, might have happened to anyone, as old Mac’ would have to admit, but Mac’ was dead or a prisoner, and his tail-gunner’s failure to spot the first enemy fighter was surely a powerful factor in the loss of ‘R-for-Ronnie’.
Here, at last, however, was a chance to achieve something spectacular, for here, if ever, he was on his own, and facing the heaviest kind of odds!
If he could get home in one piece, instead of going tamely behind barbed wire for the remainder of the war, then at least he would have something to present to Judy to prove to her that he really was something of the man she had believed him to be all those years they had lived side by side in the Avenue. At all events he resolved to try. Dear God, he told himself, how desperately he would try!
It was almost dusk when the Agent returned and summoned him briefly from his nest in the roots. Apart from issuing a curt order to follow him the Frenchman said nothing, and Esme limped stiffly round the barn and into the lane, where the labourer sat perched on the high seat of a two-wheeled farm cart. The cart, thought Esme, looked like an ancient British chariot of the kind Boadicea drove on Westminster Bridge.
The back of the vehicle was piled with kale, but Esme climbed in and was immediately covered. Then the cart moved off down the lane, its axle creaking abominably, and for the better part of an hour Esme lay uncomfortably across its ribbed floor, half smothered under a hundredweight of wet leaves. When at last the cart stopped somebody thrust a hand through the kale and prodded him, so that he sat up, gratefully enough and discovered that it was now dark and pattering with rain.
The Agent appeared at the tailboard and crooked an imperious finger, motioning Esme to get down and move into an adjacent farmyard that was almost knee deep in slush and manure. Esme waded after him and into a low-roofed farm kitchen, lit by a single oil lamp, and furnished with a single table, two chairs and a narrow strip of coconut matting.
A young, oval-faced man sat at the table, writing. He could not have been much more than twenty-five years of age but he was almost bald and his pink skull gleamed nakedly in the soft light of the lamp.
The Agent nudged Esme and waved his hand towards the bald man, who did not, however, look up from his papers, but continued to write steadily.
“This,” he said briefly, “is Claude! Claude will talk with you!”
Having said this he left with his customary abruptness, closing the door behind him. Esme was thus left alone with Claude, who showed a disconcerting reluctance to break off his work and greet his visitor.
Esme sat down on the one vacant chair and waited, feeling rather embarrassed. There was a flatness, a businesslike precision about these people, that did not seem to fit his conception of the traditional conspirator. Esme would not have been much surprised to find himself among scowling, bearded men, wearing billowing cloaks, and a murderous array of weapons in their belts. Or, if this note was out of key in modern warfare, then they might at least, he felt, have been suave, mysterious characters, and have treated him with elaborate politeness, like the secret agents in Oppenheim novels.
As it was he already felt half a prisoner, pushed here and there by poker-faced gaolers, and as the minutes ticked by, and Claude continued to be absorbed in pen-pushing, Esme felt inclined to protest, mildly perhaps, but enough to make this bald-headed Frenchman show some interest in him.
Then, as the man went on writing, he remembered that each of these men was staking his life on this encounter. The worst that could happen to him, if a squad of Germans suddenly descended on the farm, was to be bundled off to a prison camp, whereas these people, the labourer, the Agent, and this enigmatic bald fellow, would certainly be marched into the courtyard and shot out of hand. The recollection sobered him and he folded his arms and waited, watching the man’s pen fly over the paper until at last he blotted his page and looked up, straight into Esme’s eye.
“You are a member of the crew of the Lancaster, shot down near here last night?”
The question, spoken in precise English, and with the suspicion of a lisp, was thrown at him like a challenge, and Esme recoiled from its icy directness. He recovered, however, and tried to sound casual in his reply.
“That’s so! I was the tail-gunner.”
“Name?”
Again the sharp note of directness, amounting almost to rudeness.
“Fraser, Sergeant, Number 926565.”
“Your base?”
Esme hesitated. Over and over again, during the security lectures at F.T.S. and O.T.U. they had stressed the importance of giving no information whatsoever to interrogators, nothing at all beyond number, rank and name. The bald man noticed his hesitation and made an impatient gesture.
“Please! I must insist.”
Esme quailed under the Frenchman’s eye and manner.
“Scratton Wold, in Lincolnshire,” he growled.
The man wrote something in a notebook and then leaned back against the wall, shooting his long, thin legs beneath the table.
“When you are at home, where do you live?”
Esme shrugged. In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought, and this fellow’s eye was almost hypnotic.
&nbs
p; “Near Croydon, in Surrey.”
The man nodded: “How near?”
“An outer suburb of Croydon, actually, but you wouldn’t know it!”
The man’s thin mouth twitched but it was more of a grimace than a smile.
“You would be very surprised what I know my friend,” he said, unpleasantly. “Describe to me where you live, describe it exactly or I cannot help you!”
Esme gave it up. He was dominated by the man and his irritation gave place to dismay.
“It’s an Avenue, called ‘Manor Park Avenue’. I live at Number Twenty-Two. It’s a turning off Shirley Rise, that branches off the Millbank Lower Road.”
“And where does this ‘Lower Road’ lead?”
“To London.”
“Via?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“To London, through what suburbs?”
The man now sounded like a testy schoolmaster, engaged in establishing the inadequacy of a small boy’s excuses.
“Elmer’s End, Clockhouse, Beckenham, Catford and Ladywell.” Mumbled Esme, transported by the litany to the ‘up’ platform of Woodside, where the porters sang out these names to travellers as the 8.40 drew in from Croydon. ‘That ought to satisfy the surly clot’, he thought, but it did not, not quite, for the man said:
“This Avenue, ‘Manor Park Avenue’, what is at the other end of it, going towards Croydon?”
“The Rec’,” said Esme, astounded.
“Please?”
Esme’s irritation returned. “The recreation ground, but we call it The Rec’. It’s got tennis courts and a children’s giant stride in it. One gate leads into Delhi Road, and Delhi Road runs parallel to the Avenue. The houses of Cawnpore Road back on to it, all down one side. Is there anything else you’d like to know while I’m at it?”
Suddenly the man thawed and smiled, a sweet, winning smile, that transformed his smooth, rubbery face, giving him the ingenuous look of a boy but somehow emphasising the nakedness of his skull.
“Yes, my friend,” he lisped gently, “I would like to know if the old Mill is still there, or whether our friends the Boche, have singled it out during a Baedeker raid?”
Esme warmed towards the man. It was as though he had shed his malignant personality like a shirt, and suddenly revealed himself as friend, confidant and neighbour, all in one.
“You know it? You’ve been there?”
“I lived there, until 1939! I was in lodgings, in Outram Crescent, whilst I studied at the London School of Chiropody! Perhaps your feet need attention? But no, you did not walk very far, did you? You were wise and found a good place to hide, down among the marigolds?”
They shook hands over the table and Esme produced his cigarettes.
“This is fantastic,” he bubbled, “absolutely fantastic.”
“No,” said Claude, “it is interesting, but it is not fantastic. Many of us spent periods in London, and all of us had to lodge in one suburb or another so why not Croydon? Why not your Avenue, near Shirley Mill?”
“But why don’t you check up on papers?” asked Esme, “what about our identity cards?”
“Papers mean nothing, my Shirley friend,” said Claude, “for we make them ourselves by the thousand. We take no one on trust however, not even when they drop straight out of the skies, not even when they travel on the old South Eastern and Chatham Railway each morning!”
Esme laughed. “I think my luck is going to turn,” he said. “Outram Crescent? Why damn it, that’s less than five minutes from the Avenue.”
“It is six,” said Claude, getting up, loosening the straps of a leather valise that lay on the floor near the table. “I know because I used to walk along the Avenue from the Recreation Ground on my way to visit a certain young lady each Sunday. But perhaps you know her…‘Edna’ she was called, Edna Stanton, and she lived at Number Six, Shirley Rise. Her father was a policeman!”
Esme felt that he would have given a month’s pay to have been able to say that he was acquainted with Edna, the policeman’s daughter, but he had to shake his head and suggest another possible mutual acquaintance in the person of old Arthur Setter, who sold sweets and tobacco at the corner of Outram Crescent. They drew another blank, for during his sojourn in London Claude had been a non-smoker, and had only become addicted to the habit since taking up the uncertain occupation of a full-time Resistance worker.
In the meantime, however, Claude had unstrapped the valise and was gently prodding its interior. Suddenly a faint hum emerged from the case, and Esme heard the impeccable accents of the B.B.C. announcer, reading the nine o’clock news bulletin. There was a list of familiar items, then:
…“Last night heavy forces of Bomber Command raided Hanover and Bremen, inflicting considerable damage on tractor works and chemical installations in one city, while other heavy forces destroyed port installations at the coastal target. There was strong opposition from enemy flak and night fighter formations; fourteen of our aircraft failed to return.…”
Claude left him to hear the rest of the bulletin and when he returned he brought with him a flask of cognac and two small wine glasses. Carefully he poured out two measures.
“To the Avenue, to your home, and your friends, Sergeant!”
Esme swallowed the drink and felt its warmth spreading through him. He said, sombrely:
“I’ve got a girl in the Avenue, my fiancée, actually. She’s called Judy…Judith, and I’ve just remembered, she’ll have heard that bulletin, and she’ll ring the squadron, poor kid.”
“She will face some weeks of wretchedness, my friend,” said Claude, “but in the end we shall return you intact to her! Let us drink to that, before we conduct you to safer quarters.”
They drank solemnly and as they put down their glasses the Agent came back and stood just inside the door. The geniality drained from Claude’s face and the keen, searching look returned to his blue eyes.
“Come,” he said briskly.
CHAPTER XXII
Black Week
JIM HAD LIVED through other Black Weeks but none so black as this.
He remembered the original Black Week, back in 1900, when the Continent capered with glee to see the arrogant British trounced by a handful of mounted farmers, but that was more than forty years ago, when he had been a footloose young man with no stake in Britain except his national pride. He had felt shamed by the South African defeats but not overwhelmed by them, and his patriotism had not impelled him to join the Volunteers, as many of his contemporaries had done.
There was another Black Week, in July, 1916, and this time the appalling losses on the Somme had touched him personally, for men had died in his arms, and many of these men were his friends.
It was the same some fifteen months later, when the men who replaced the Somme comrades disappeared by the score in the slime of Third Ypres. Jim felt all these losses very keenly, the more because they had appeared pointless to him then and indeed, appeared so still, but he got over them, and in time he almost forgot them.
When the next Black Week came along he was deep in the class struggle, and the failure of the General Strike did more to sour him than had the massacres on the Western Front. Then, twelve years after that, he rode out another Black Week, the week of Munich.
This week had almost driven him to despair, but even the Munich debacle was not a personal tragedy, and once Britain had begun to fight back he soon climbed out of his gloom and became aggressively cheerful about the war, particularly after Russia had joined in and he formed the opinion that Hitler’s defeat was a certainty.
This fierce and belligerent optimism had carried him right through the first eight months of 1942. He kept telling Harold that the collapse of German Fascism was now just a matter of time, that Hitler had a war on two fronts, and that America was now free to maintain an ever-increasing flow of war material to Europe. He said that there would be a Second Front at any time now, probably in the early spring of 1943, and that once a bridgehead was established the wh
ole of enslaved Europe would fly to arms and butcher the Nazis wherever they showed their coal-scuttle helmets.
Harold considered that his friend’s military judgment (which he had respected in the past) was being warped by enthusiasm, but he did not say so, not until the first rumours of the Dieppe Raid began to circulate. Harold, the cautious solicitor’s clerk, was an equally cautious war-prophet, and he could not believe that Churchill would launch a Second Front at this stalemate stage of the war, before more than a trickle of Americans had arrived in Europe. He told Jim so, that fine August morning. He said that, in his opinion, this Dieppe affair was only a large-scale commando raid, and he was understandably smug when the B.B.C. announcer practically quoted him that same evening, and news went round about the high proportion of losses incurred by the attackers.
Jim grunted his disappointment as they sat facing one another at their war council, over the kitchen table of Number Twenty-Two, but he qualified his admission that he had been wrong about Dieppe by saying: “Ah, but they were probing, just probing! They wouldn’t do that on this scale if they didn’t intend blasting their way in before autumn! Just hang on Harold…(as though Harold had applied to him for reassurance) …just hang on, until next week, and you’ll see, by God, you’ll see!”
Harold had shaken his head and doubted whether we should be ready to invade until late summer of next year. Jim pooh-poohed this outrageously pessimistic forecast, and advised Harold to wait until the twins showed up and gave them some inside wrinkles on the situation. He was extremely anxious to discuss the military situation with the twins, particularly with Bernard, but neither of them did show up that week, and a day or two later the telegram arrived, saying that the boys had failed to return from Dieppe.
Jim was stunned by the news. He sat staring at the telegram for nearly half an hour, before snatching down his cap and striding out across the meadow into Manor Wood, hoping to absorb the shock before reporting the facts to Louise or Judy, or even the pale girl, Pippa, who lodged with Louise, and seemed to have formed such an attachment for young Bernard.
The Avenue Goes to War Page 33