Bryant glanced at Dorothy Jenkins. She did not return the look. She was watching the American as intensely as the children. ‘The whole countryside around here is going to be surrounded by barbed wire, like that down by the ocean,’ he said, nodding at the window. ‘It’s very, very important that none of you ever go through that barbed wire. Ever, you get me? For any reason. Even if your dog or cat goes under, you stay the other side. Okay? The dog will come back.’
‘How about the cat?’ inquired Mary Steer. ‘I’ve got a cat.’
‘And the cat, Mary,’ said Schorner seriously. The smile dropped from her small face. ‘Just keep right away, because it’s going to be dangerous.’ He paused and looked along the desks. The children were intent on him. ‘And one more thing. If any of you find in any place anything to do with the army – like a bullet or a shellcase or a grenade, that’s a metal thing that looks like a pineapple –’
The teacher interrupted. ‘They don’t know what a pineapple is,’ she said quietly. ‘They’ve never seen one. They know what a grenade is.’
‘Excuse me,’ said Schorner. ‘I have things to learn also.’ He returned to the children. ‘Any of these things. Do not touch. Just leave it where it is. Tell your mom or your dad. Or a policeman. Or a soldier. But do not touch? He waited again and smiled. ‘Okay? You promise?’
‘Promise,’ came the chorus from the class.
‘Great. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.’ There were more giggles. Schorner turned to the young teacher again. ‘Do you think they could sing that song again? The one about the fairground.’
‘ “Widdicombe Fair”,’ said Bryant to Dorothy Jenkins. She looked surprised but she moved to the front of the class and said: ‘Children, let’s sing Old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh again. Our very best for the gentlemen.’
The tall, greying American, his face set, standing, hands behind back, while the Devon children stood at their desks and began to sing with loud, disorganized voices:
‘Tam Pearce, Tam Pearce,
Lend me your grey mare,
All along, down along, out along, lee …’
Schorner grinned with delight when they drew in their breaths and launched into the lusty chorus:
‘With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney,
Peter Davy, Dan’l Widden, ’Arry ’Awk
Old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all
Old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all.’
When they had come to the end of the song they remained standing until a motion with her hand from the teacher sat them down with a clattering of desks. Schorner said quietly: ‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’
Mary Steer suddenly beamed. ‘You sing sommat to us!’
All the children cheered and shouted. Schorner looked around at Bryant and Dorothy. Then back to the children.
‘Children,’ he pleaded, ‘if you heard me sing, you wouldn’t ask again.’
They laughed with delight. ‘But,’ he continued, holding up his head, ‘I’d sure like to tell you a poem. Something from America. Something I learned in America. Just like this.’
He looked directly at the intense faces. He felt suddenly sad for them and for himself so far from his home. He recited:
‘I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed raspberries grow.
O’er ruined fences the grapevine shield.
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.’
Schorner stopped. ‘I can’t remember how it goes on,’ he smiled. The children laughed shyly in sympathy. He swallowed, and suddenly embarrassed turned to the teacher and to Bryant, both watching him seriously. ‘I guess we have to go,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ said the young woman. ‘We enjoyed that very much.’ She clapped her hands and the class began to applaud with childish verve.
The sound followed them as they left the school and went out into the stiff sea wind, coming in from the west, whistling miserably through the coils of barbed wire. Behind them, the schoolroom dropped into silence. Then, when they had almost reached the car where Albie sat at the wheel, a burst of song came from the small, grey building. Schorner paused and grinned. He glanced at Bryant. Bryant said: ‘It’s “There’ll Always Be An England!” ’
Schorner said: ‘It gives me more confidence hearing it from kids.’
Albie got from behind the wheel and opened the door for his commanding officer. Bryant got into the vehicle the other side. As they drove back through Telcoombe Magna Mrs Bewler, the deaf woman, and her idiot son, loaded with cardboard boxes and carrier bags, were being put into a van. A notice in large letters, ‘Keep out. Back soon.’ was fixed to the door of a deserted shop.
In the lanes and the fields there were also changes. Two men with a horse were turning up mangolds from a field. Another man was taking them by hand-barrow to the edge of the narrow road. On the grass banks outside a cottage were bundles of poor agricultural tools.
Schorner said: ‘They do things the old way here.’
‘They tell you it’s the war,’ shrugged Bryant. ‘But if it wasn’t the war it would be something else. They don’t like things changing too quickly.’
‘It’s great farming country, though,’ nodded Schorner. ‘Look at that earth. It’s like cream. And the livestock looks good. Makes me wonder what’s happening back home.’
‘You’re a farmer?’ asked Bryant, a little surprised.
‘Yes. West Virginia. What do you do?’
‘I was at university. Reading law at Oxford.’
‘And when it’s all over you’ll go back?’
‘I’m not sure. Things are going to change after the war. Everybody’s going to change much more than we realize. I’m married too. I’ve got a child, a daughter. She’s two. I have to make a living.’
‘You’re young to be married.’
Bryant grinned. ‘Spur of the moment. Last leave sort of thing.’
Schorner said: ‘That’s what a lot of our guys did. As soon as they know they’re going away – maybe for ever – they get married.’ He shook his head.
They had reached the entrance to the camp now. Albie slowed the car at the gate. The sentry came confusedly to attention and George Ballimach, the rotund telephone engineer, appeared from behind the guardhouse, as if he had been hiding, awaiting their arrival. He gave a fast salute. Schorner returned it.
‘You got three telephones, sir,’ Ballimach beamed proudly. ‘Three. And they work. They all work.’
‘That’s really swell,’ said Schorner kindly. ‘How are you feeling now?’
Ballimach’s great face descended. ‘Okay now, sir. Fine. I just ain’t going to climb any more Limey trees.’
‘That sounds like a good idea, Ballimach.’
The big soldier leaned forward. He glanced at Bryant but decided he could say what he wanted to say. ‘There’s been a message already on one of the phones,’ he confided. ‘The special line I put in. I only got it fixed a couple of minutes and it rang and there was a message.’ He paused importantly. His great eyes narrowed to chasms. ‘From the general,’ he said.
Schorner took in the bemused expression of Bryant. ‘Okay, Ballimach,’ said the colonel. ‘Dismissed. Just keep moving.’
‘Okay, sir, you bet,’ said Ballimach flapping up another salute. He rolled away. ‘He’s a good guy,’ said the American to Bryant. ‘Not a great soldier, but a good guy.’
‘He fell out of a tree?’ asked Bryant. They had left the car and were walking towards Schorner’s hut.
‘Sure. But he meant well.’ He pointed to the three telephones on his trestle table. ‘See what I mean.’ Albie had been quickly to the cookhouse and appeared with two mugs of coffee. Bryant t
asted his. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘I’ve never tasted coffee like this. It’s wonderful.’
‘We’re good at coffee,’ smiled Schorner. ‘Albie get me Lieutenant Conroy Kenholm, will you. Or is it Kenholm Conroy, for God’s sake?’
‘Right first time, sir. Conroy Kenholm.’
‘Okay, whichever it is, get him.’
Albie went out. ‘The British have such a love affair with tea,’ commented Bryant. ‘It’s our ambrosia.’
‘Have people here been really short of food, I mean hungry?’ asked Schorner. ‘That’s something we’d never be able to understand in America. Being hungry.’
Bryant said: ‘A lot of people eat better now than they did before the war. They have to have their rations. Nobody would refuse them. The neighbours would talk. A lot of them made do with less in the thirties.’
Kenholm, the officer from Nebraska, came into the hut. Schorner introduced him to Bryant. The American officer shook hands and examined the British uniform with interest, like a woman looking at another woman’s dress.
Schorner said: ‘We got a message from a general.’
‘Oh yes, sure,’ said Kenholm uncomfortably. ‘I was just coming over, sir.’
He took a slip from a message pad from his tunic pocket, followed by a pair of rimless glasses which he put on his face. They made him look like Benny Goodman. ‘General Arthur C. Georgeton,’ he read importantly, ‘is coming right over. From Exeter … yes, Exeter, I guess that is. He’s just gotten here from Stateside.’
‘Thanks,’ said Schorner laconically. ‘When is the general going to arrive?’
‘They didn’t say,’ said Kenholm, allowing himself to look puzzled. ‘I guess right away.’
‘What time is the message timed?’
‘Oh sure, I got that. Eleven thirty-four.’
Schorner glanced at his watch. ‘I hope he’s not expecting lunch,’ he said. As he said it they heard a shout from the gate. Albie hurried into the hut. ‘There’s a big-time procession at the gate, sir,’ he said excitedly. ‘They turned out the guard.’
‘That’s bad,’ muttered Schorner. ‘I might have guessed they would.’
Albie glanced out. ‘I guess it’s okay, sir. They all seem to be in a line.’
‘Great,’ breathed Schorner. He said to Bryant: ‘You’d better come too.’ Then to Kenholm, ‘Get around and see everything’s okay. Nobody hanging about. No trash or scrap paper. Get the guys busy. If they’re doing nothing get them looking for wood. Okay?’
Kenholm saluted rapidly and with a short, oddly envious glance at Bryant went from the hut. Schorner followed him and Bryant went with the colonel. ‘This is the commanding general for the exercise area,’ the American said as they walked towards the gate. They could see the guard drawn up and the US Army staff car waiting under the Stars and Stripes. Soldiers were drifting towards what had become a path across the field, looking towards what was happening at the entrance. ‘You guys,’ called Schorner brusquely, ‘get busy. Go and collect wood.’
Bryant tried not to grin. He walked after the American, half a pace behind. At the gate the staff car had begun to move into the field, the driver taking it forward cautiously as though worried about holes or cow dung.
The car, with the general’s white stars on its khaki mudguard, drew to a halt a few yards in front of Schorner. The driver jumped out to open the door for General Georgeton although the officer was halfway out before the man reached it. Scarlett climbed out after him. There were salutes and handshakes. ‘I’m sorry to drop in like this, colonel,’ said Georgeton. ‘We got here last night, to Exeter, and I thought the quicker we took our first look at this area the better. I hope we haven’t arrived in the middle of a military exercise.’ He glanced around the field as if he doubted it.
Schorner said: ‘No, sir, that’s fine. We’re getting settled in. I’ve got the men collecting wood.’
Georgeton’s eyes moved fractionally. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Cold billets are lousy billets.’
‘Would you like some coffee, sir?’ asked Schorner. ‘We make great coffee.’ He glanced at Bryant. The general said: ‘No thanks. I’d really like to take a looksee around the evacuation region. Is it under way now? Are they being moved out?’
‘It started today, sir,’ said Bryant. Schorner had nodded at him. ‘We hope that everybody will be out, with all the belongings they can take with them, within two weeks.’
Georgeton had turned back towards his car. ‘The civilian population can’t be very pleased about things,’ he suggested, ‘… about us.’
Bryant was careful. ‘Nobody’s happy about it, sir. Obviously. But they’re getting on with it. It’s all part of the war, most of them understand that.’
‘Right, let’s go,’ said the general. ‘Maybe we can get a bite to eat on the route. I figure we’ll learn more like that than sitting with our own army.’
Bryant swallowed. ‘Well, yes … I suppose that could be arranged, sir. I could phone the hotel at Wilcoombe. But … it won’t be very special, I’m afraid. Not what you would get in America.’
‘That’s okay, son,’ said Georgeton easily. ‘I didn’t come across the ocean to eat.’
At first Bryant conducted them along the coast road, along the elongated landing beach. They stood in a tight group, Bryant a short distance away, collars up against the rattling wind, looking out to the Channel through binoculars, as if by some chance they would be able to see their enemy a hundred and more miles away. Bryant had stood separately, out of deference, in case they should be discussing things not meant for his subaltern’s ears. The general pointed out to sea and Schorner and Scarlett gazed dutifully in that direction. Bryant had a faint reminder of one of the pictures of childhood, ‘The Boyhood of Raleigh’. Georgeton’s voice was carried back to him by the wind. ‘Start Bay, Start Point. A good place to begin.’
He heard Schorner approve and smiled to himself because Schorner had said the same thing earlier. They turned back from the beach. ‘Where are the lakes?’ asked Georgeton. ‘The lakes are important.’
Schorner glanced towards Bryant, as if wondering how much he knew. The senior officer trudged back to the exposed road and the staff car. ‘The lakes are just along behind the road, just a few hundred yards,’ said Bryant. ‘They’re known as the leys.’
‘If the GI hears that he’ll think we’ve set up a whole load of easy women for him,’ joked the general as they climbed into the warmth of the car. ‘Boy, will he be disappointed.’ He shook his head and laughed: ‘Wow, the leys,’ he repeated.
They drove for a minute with the gushing sea on one side and dark high reeds, swaying as though threatening them, on the other. Soon the car cleared the banks and the small lakes came into view. ‘Hold it,’ instructed Georgeton. ‘Let’s take a look from here.’
They left the car and leaned against it, sheltering, looking out over the ribbed and ruffled water of the modest lakes. Some geese took concern and flapped away from their habitation with a startling honking. There was a narrow bridge going across from the coast road to the further bank of the lakes, a distance of a hundred yards. It was supported on wooden piles. The wind seemed to move it.
The general studied the riffled water with care, raising his field glasses like a bird watcher, searching the reeded banks on the far side. Scarlett and Schorner both followed his gaze through their field glasses. Bryant felt a little foolish standing there with only his eyes. He put his hand up like a shield and followed the direction of their watching. All he could see was cold, trapped water and grey-green winter rushes.
Georgeton took a long time examining the water and its fringes. Then he raised his glasses to the hinterland, rising, but not steeply, up through the wooded Devon coombes. Some fields were pale, January green, others vivid ploughed red. A few cattle dawdled on a meadow across the water. The general examined each of the rifts, the coombes, that sliced steeply into the quiet landscape. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s real good.’
He turned a
quarter turn and took in the roofs and walls of Wilcoombe, climbing the hill to the west. The church pointed like an admonishment into the dun sky. ‘That town would be outside the area,’ said Georgeton.
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Schorner. ‘Just. The boundary will be at the western edge of the lakes. That’s where the wire will be.’
‘I hope the gunners can shoot straight,’ muttered Georgeton. ‘I don’t care for the idea of them massacring the English before they’ve accounted for any Germans.’
He turned quickly on Bryant. It was as if he had suddenly made an important military decision. ‘Lieutenant,’ he said, using the English pronunciation, ‘I’m hungry.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Bryant. He ventured, ‘I was afraid you might say that.’
The Americans laughed together. Scarlett winked at him, his first sign of friendliness. The general said: ‘Like I said, son, I didn’t come all this way to eat well. Maybe it will give us some idea of how you British have suffered.’
Bryant thought it might. He said: ‘I tried the hotel in Wilcoombe, but they didn’t advise it themselves, not their lunch. The Telcoombe Beach Hotel sounded more promising, so I’ve asked them to keep a table for four. I had to take it. It’s necessary to make a booking.’
‘They get short of tables?’ asked Scarlett.
‘No, food,’ replied Bryant.
They laughed again and Georgeton patted the English officer on the back. ‘Okay,’ he said as they climbed once more into the car. ‘Let them do their worst.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ said Bryant.
The Telcoombe Beach Hotel was a raddled, once-white building, set immediately against the short sand and reed bluffs that divided the shore from the straight road. On one side it put a brave but ageing face to the sea and on the other looked over the more placid water of the leys and the elevated countryside behind them. Bryant was conscious of moving lace curtains and faces flitting against the windows as they left the car. It had begun to rain, immediately heavy, and it splattered against them as they ran to the hotel’s porch entrance.
Inside they were greeted by a distraught elderly woman in the tired black and white fatigues of an English waitress. ‘Mr Bonner’s away,’ she apologized immediately. She saw Bryant’s uniform and turned to him as a compatriot. ‘Would you tell them that he’s had to go to Plymouth,’ she pleaded as if the Americans understood only a foreign tongue. ‘He couldn’t put it off,’ she continued. ‘Even for the military.’ She began to take their coats, almost staggering under the weight. Georgeton kindly told her not to concern herself and they put the greatcoats on the hooks of a fine brass hall-stand.
The Magic Army Page 13