by Tracy Groot
Some of the boys Jamie served with had never been to London, let alone France and Belgium. And now they’d been to Germany, too, if it counted to see the face of a German behind a gun. That was days ago, on an eight-mile stretch along the Franco-Belgian border that Jamie’s division was supposed to hold. They didn’t hold. They fought for a murderous two hours, and fled—rather, they were ordered to flee.
Yesterday he and Milton caught a ride on the back of a lorry with a group of guys and rode for hours. If the medic was right, and Dunkirk was only twenty miles off, they should have arrived yesterday. The lorry ran out of diesel, with no supply truck or fuel dump in range. To make the vehicle useless for the Germans, the men drained the oil and let it run until it seized; for good measure, they trashed the belts and yanked wires and punctured the fuel tank, then they gathered their gear and walked away. Jamie tried to stay with them, but they moved too fast for the captain.
He realized later how lucky they had been for the ride. Hours of walking now produced an arc of blisters at the top of Jamie’s feet where the boots did not give. If he unlaced them and pulled back the tongue, it made them too loose and produced blisters on his soles when his feet slid around. The best he could do was pad an extra pair of socks between his skin and the boots and lace the literally bloody things up again.
He unshouldered the Bren and switched it to the other side. The heavy automatic rifle could be set to fire single shots or bursts. He missed his Lee-Enfield. A 1914 model, to be sure, but it wasn’t as heavy and it was the weapon he’d trained on. He’d left it with the boys when Lieutenant Dunn sent him for orders. Pulled the Bren off a dead soldier on the road. He’d never fired a Bren.
Jamie walked behind the captain. A man with a horrible wound like that would be in the emergency ward back home. Jamie had him hoofing it like some sadistic drill sergeant. He wished he could find a motorbike.
He came to himself, and glanced about—he’d gone into that walking stupor, and just now realized that for the first time in two days, he saw no one else on the road.
They came to the outskirts of a little village. The posted sign at the side of the road, just before the canal bridge, said Montmartre. The other side of the bridge opened into a place with houses on either side. Maybe they could find somewhere to rest for a few hours, take up again at dusk; Milton’s gait had gone a bit weavy.
“Winning cheap the high repute which he through hazard huge must earn,” said the captain.
“Well—welcome back, old man. Have a nice holiday? You know, sooner or later you’ll really regain your senses, and I’ll be in serious trouble. You’ll remember all sorts of things. Try and keep in mind it was in your best interests.”
“To perish rather, swallowed up and lost in the wide womb of uncreated night, devoid of sense and motion. Shall we then live thus vile, the race of heaven thus trampled, thus expelled to suffer—”
“Why can’t you find something cheerful to say? Isn’t there something cheerful in that book?”
Captain Milton stopped walking.
Jamie had a hopeful flash that it was some sort of response. Then he saw what the captain did.
All along the road for two straight days they’d passed evidence of war: abandoned army equipment, abandoned home goods that were too heavy for civilians to push or pull or carry. But they sometimes passed dead soldiers or dead citizens, strafed by aircraft since enemy ground forces had not yet come through. In the dire haste to get to Dunkirk, Jamie could do no more than avert his eyes and wish the departed souls well. Haste was a relief, then, with no moral obligation to tend to the dead bodies.
Jamie came beside the captain.
Two small girls lay in the ditch, tumbled from a child’s wagon. The wagon half covered one of them, whose face was turned away. Then Jamie realized it wasn’t turned; she had no face, strafing bullets had made off with it, made it blend with the dark compost of the earthy ditch.
The other little girl lay staring at the sky, face cold and sweet, eyes filmed, delicate eyebrows raised as if in surprise. Black curly hair with a purple ribbon, black-and-white checked dress, white lace at the collar, a great dark compost hole in her chest.
Jamie’s head swam, and he pushed away from the captain. He stumbled about, and then stared at the sky.
Surely, even a fighter pilot could see they were kids. He took a few steps forward.
“How could you?” he shouted, shaking his fist at the sky.
Two little girls in a wagon. Maybe pulled by a big brother. Big brother gets hit, family leaves the little girls who are clearly dead, grabs him, goes to the . . .
He swiveled toward the town. No, no, something wasn’t right. It was too quiet, too . . . empty. No one on the street. No dogs.
No one on the road for a while, and it usually ran with refugees. Had they taken a wrong turn? Jamie’s heart began to race.
Where were they? How far was Montmartre from Dunkirk? He had no compass, no map. He’d always followed others. Sometimes soldiers, sometimes civilians, and they always outstripped them.
They had come to a fork a while back, and with no signposts, Jamie chose to stay on the curve bearing right. Right seemed north. Wasn’t it? Or had they doubled back east?
Was this a German-hit town?
Infantry?
Milton stepped down into the ditch, slipping, sliding, righting himself. He stood over the girl in the checked dress. “For in their looks divine the image of their glorious Maker shone,” he said softly. He knelt beside the body.
“Something’s not right.” Jamie scanned the area. “I’ve got a bad feeling.” A wood lay on the right side of the road, just before the canal bridge, with a far more open area on the left. They should take to the woods.
He went to the ditch. “Captain—”
But tears ran down Milton’s face. He touched the girl’s lace collar.
“So lively shines in them divine resemblance, and such grace the hand that formed them on their shape hath poured.”
“Milton. We’ve got to go. I think the Germans have actually been here.”
The captain lowered his head. A tear dripped from his nose. Did he have girls this age at home?
Milton looked like Jamie felt, all undone. Maybe the same thing that broke this man and made him a Milton box had broken other things, too, maybe a wall of defense. But soldiers could not afford to come undone. No, there was no training for dead civilians along the road, for little girls murdered in a ditch, but it was a thing to be sorted later, ideally with a bottle of whiskey and a captured German in their midst.
Milton was a brave man who had saved the lives of an entire unit—they didn’t hand out the Victoria Cross for being nice. And now he was broken, and now he sat crying beside a dead girl, and Jamie felt a flash of rage.
Maybe the captain felt it too—he raised a darkened face to the sky, frighteningly livid, and there came a guttural growl like a hackles-raised dog. He rose, and shouted at the sky, “Consult how we may henceforth most offend our enemy! If not victory, then revenge!”
Jamie suddenly felt better.
“Easy, easy! I’m with you on that one, mate, but I’m buggered if I’ll let you wreck those stitches.” Jamie slid-stepped into the ditch, and took Milton’s arm, but he threw off Jamie’s hand, and cried, “War hath determined us!” Then the captain gasped and clamped both sides of his head, sinking to his haunches.
“Hands up!” A steel-helmeted soldier stood at the top of the ditch, aiming a rifle.
Jamie’s hands went up.
“Who are you?” the man demanded.
“Private Jamie Elliott. Queen’s 9th Lancers, infantry. Who are you?”
The rifle lowered. “Private Todd Balantine, 2nd Grenadiers.”
“Where are we?”
Balantine turned and pointed to the right of the bridge. “Best we can sort, looks like this canal leads that way to Bray Dunes, on the sea. West of that is Dunkirk. The word is to head for Dunkirk.”
“How far is
it?” Jamie realized his hands were still raised, and lowered them.
“Don’t know. Twenty, maybe thirty miles due north to Bray Dunes. Truth is, we’re really not sure. Not a map among us, and the town’s deserted. Except for the dead. This canal will at least get us to the sea, even if it’s not Bray Dunes. Maybe we can see England from there. Won’t that be nice?”
Maybe it was just jolly good to have company again, but something about Balantine made Jamie like him instantly. He seemed friendly and capable.
Jamie looked down at the girls. “What happened?”
“Germans, mate.”
“Aircraft?”
“Infantry.”
“Infantry?” Jamie stared at him. “This far west? This far north?”
“Oh, it’s worse than that. They’ve cut us off.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’ve shot straight through. They’ve made it to the Atlantic. They’ve taken southern France.”
Jamie couldn’t speak.
“Afraid it’s true,” said Balantine grimly. “Last we heard, they’re just south of Boulogne.”
“No,” he breathed in horrified awe.
“Cut through us like butter. Best we can sort, seems they met some opposition here, maybe one of Gort’s divisions, then withdrew to the south to concentrate. Truth is, we don’t know.” He looked over the bridge to the town. “Truth is, we’re lost and there’s dead people everywhere. Can’t’ve been aircraft that did this.”
“But—they’re civilians. They’re kids.”
“I know, mate,” said Balantine wearily. His fair hair and blue eyes reminded Jamie of Lieutenant Dunn. “But this is war, isn’t it?”
Jamie collected himself enough to say, “What’s going to happen? Where will we make our stand? When will we make our stand?”
“Don’t know if there’ll be a stand.”
“Then we’re alone.”
England, the last stand.
His sister and her family in Richmond. His father in the boatyard on the Thames. Now only the Channel stood between innocent people and Hitler. He could scarcely take it in.
“You’ve heard Chamberlain’s out, Churchill’s in?” Balantine asked.
“That I heard. I’m glad for it.”
“We all are. He’s for war, not appeasement.”
“’Bout bloody well time.”
Balantine looked at the captain, who clutched the side of his head with one hand and placed leaves over the small body, one at a time, with the other. “Who’s he?”
“A captain. Wounded. His head’s pretty banged up. I’m to get him to Dunkirk. Those were my last orders, two days ago.”
Balantine shouldered his rifle. “Well, come on, then. There’s five of us. We’re taking a breather for the night in a home with food and a decent wine cellar. Word is that Germans don’t usually move at night. You can join us.”
A weight slid from Jamie’s chest. To be with a group again was an enormous relief. “You have no idea how good it is to speak English again.”
Balantine looked at the captain, puzzled. “Is he French, then?”
Jamie watched the captain lay a large leaf across the hole in the girl’s chest.
“Innocence,” he was whispering, lips trembling, “that as a veil had shadowed them from knowing ill, was gone.”
“No. He’s Milton.”
CLARE STOOD OUTSIDE Murray’s cabin, ear pressed to the door. No stirring yet, just even breathing. Must have snored himself out at last. Clare could hear the horrible racket on the other side of the boat until the small hours when either he stopped or she had fallen asleep. She’d not seen him since he turned in yesterday afternoon—he was sleeping before she went below, on his stomach in his clothing on the bottom bunk.
“Right,” said the Shrew, seated at the dinette. She had a busy pencil at a notebook in one hand and a hovering triangle of toast and marmalade in the other. “I’ve gone to work on a Muse Retrieval Plan. Mr. Vance may wish to call it something more in keeping with filling his pool. By the by, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that a ‘magic well’ is rather trite; I will guide him toward filling his pool whenever necessary, and perhaps that will spark a renaming of the Muse, or at least, the place where the Muse resides.” She took a bite of toast.
“Right, then,” she continued, after a sip of tea. “We shall divide the Muse Retrieval into two categories: Context and Content. We shall start with the art galleries, which falls under content.” She made a note. “Places such as the Tate Museum. The National Gallery. We shall then visit places of architectural splendor, such as St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament.” She thought hard. “Context and Content to be had in those places, I should think.” She took a bite of toast. “We need more marmalade, by the by. I prefer the kind made with Seville oranges, fine cut, if you please.”
Oh, do you, Clare thought sourly. Do you prefer the higher price, too? No, of course not—that must come out of my pocket.
“The box of newspapers, Mrs. Shrew—sbury; do you know where it is?” asked Clare, hoping Mrs. Shrew had it in her cabin.
“It’s in Mr. Vance’s quarters.” She looked at Clare over her reading glasses. “The room is rather a collect-all.” It was another you-best-learn-from-this look that Clare had come to know well. Yet what a difference between Mrs. Shrew and her uncle. Any rebukes from Mrs. Shrew were like shouts of admiration, compared. Clare learned there was nothing in the rebukes. It was simply normal conversation.
“Oh dear,” said Clare, a hand to her cheek. “I never did have a chance to clean it out. What a frightful mess. How long has he been sleeping? At least around the clock.”
“He’ll have a good long wee, that’s for sure.”
“Goodness!” Clare turned a look on the Shrew.
“We must plan for loud conversation when the time comes. Perhaps bang a pot or two. It’s awfully hard not to hear everything that goes on in a boat.” She consulted her list. “Right. First, we shall do all of these things, which may take several days, and then we must embark upon a soul journey—which falls under content.” She made a note. “These places can of course be considered soul journeys, but I see them useful in a technically constructive way—context. Content involves things like taking the train to Canterbury Cathedral—a very soulish place. Lovely shops, too. What other soul things can you think of? Oh! Stonehenge. Though that’s a bit obvious. But then there’s Cornwall—ancient and mysterious and muse-stirring. The Lake District, of course—lovely walking. Keswick. Moot Hall, endearing place, love the name. Wales! Wales.” She wrote furiously. “Gracious, Tintern Abbey—couldn’t be more soulish. And the sea! Oh, the sea.” She gave a wistful sigh. “Though I suppose we had best confine our travel to the west; the papers say the southern and eastern coasts are being covered with barbed wire and notices of mines. Not exactly breadcrumbs for the Muse, I shouldn’t think. One hates to wake up and realize war is upon us. Did you see the sandbags in London? They’re going up as barricades in front of key buildings. Barricades!”
“Speaking of vicars . . . I have something to tell you.”
It simply made no sense to keep it from her. Clare had woken up with the realization that she did not want to.
“Well, pull up, pull up,” said Mrs. Shrew, and Clare slid into the bench across.
The Maggie Bright had a darling little living area that doubled for a breakfast room. A comfortable cushion-filled couch was built into the port side of the room, fitted under a long shelf of Clare’s favorite books. A narrow walkway ran between the couch and the tiny dinette to Murray’s and Mrs. Shrew’s forward cabins. A cold locker lay under the walkway, the pull of which fitted into a depression. There, Clare stored items which could not fit into the very small refrigerator—cheeses, bread, eggs, bacon.
Clare’s cabin, the captain’s cabin, was behind the companionway ladder where the living area started. It was small and smart. She had to hoist herself into the bunk every night, and it t
ook a little while to get used to the cramped space between her bunk and the deck, but now she loved it. It was very snug and comfortable.
The captain’s table was in there, too, where the wireless sat amid a clutter of wonderful sea things: battered navigation charts filled with little pinpricks from a wonderful old steel protractor; a footed, sturdy brass table compass given to her by Captain John for plotting journeys; a sailor’s book of knots.
The boat’s tiny galley lay on the other side of the captain’s cabin, with a sink, a paraffin cooker with a clever gimballed design—allowing it to swing on two pivot points and remain level when the boat was not—and a tiny Electrolux paraffin fridge.
The stern cabin past the galley was the largest on the boat, and would have made an ideal guest room for two, but it was loaded with Clare’s possessions—clothing, shoes, books, all manner of odds and ends. She’d lived aboard only a few months before taking Mrs. Shrew as a renter; she’d not gotten used to the spare lifestyle of a houseboater.
The lovely dinette table had a rich patina of use—scratches and marks in the wood, but polished, cared for. Clare ran her fingertips along the edge. Everything about the Maggie Bright had a rich patina of use. All was close, and snug, and comfortable. How she adored a houseboater’s life.
Renters, for a time, could not dampen her happiness. Four months aboard, one of them with Mrs. Shrew, had not lost a single day of newness.
Mrs. Shrew cleared aside some breakfast things, as if what Clare had to say would certainly include usage of a cleared bit of table, and sat at the ready with her pencil and notebook.
“Well—you won’t need to take notes.”
“Right.” Mrs. Shrew laid them aside. She folded her hands. “What’s the news?”
Her severely innocent, stark-blue eyes expected nothing less than a Murray Vance sort of revelation.