‘Tell them you had a blow-out,’ she suggested slyly. Her hands went to his neck and tugged at him. ‘Come on, that was smashing last time. I really felt it. I want some more.’
‘Mary, I can’t.’ He took one hand away and balancing on the other held his limp member for her to examine. ‘Look at that. I couldn’t get that into a cave.’
He suddenly saw that she had got the keys to the fifteen hundredweight. She was dangling them teasingly. At first he did not appreciate what she was going to do. Her face had taken on an impudent pose, much younger and freer than her strained looks earlier. It was as though she had been released from some private confinement. ‘More,’ she repeated girlishly, ‘or over the cliff they go.’
Gilman could not believe it. She was only playing. She had to be playing. Her hand bent, ready to fling the keys. ‘You’re mad,’ he breathed. ‘You’re barmy. You wouldn’t do that.’
Mary laughed slightly. ‘I would. I’ve done worse things than that. A lot worse.’ She was challenging him now. Threatening him. ‘Come on, soldier,’ she taunted. ‘Once more, or whoosh, over they go.’
Gilman said: ‘All right, Mary. I’ll try. But I can’t do what I can’t.’
‘Good lad,’ she said sweetly. ‘Come on, I’ll help.’ Her hands went to his member. ‘I’d help you a bit more,’ she said conversationally, ‘but it makes my lips sore out of doors.’
He made a sudden lunge for the keys, flinging himself across her with such force that she screamed and threw herself sideways as far as she could, even though trapped by his body. He grabbed at the keys. ‘Stop it!’ she screamed. ‘You bastard, swine.’
‘Give me,’ he said grimly. ‘Give me them.’
He thought he had won for she suddenly collapsed beneath him and he believed she was crying. ‘All right, tough guy. Here they are,’ she shivered. He relaxed his hold on her wrist. As soon as it was free she drew back her hand and flung the keys with all her strength. The glint of the sun caught them. They went in a curve over the rock and grass, in the same path as her cigarette stub had done, disappearing over the immediate horizon.
‘Bleeding hell!’ howled Gilman. He clambered up from her, wet and tacky, and stumbled, pulling up his trousers as he went, towards the edge of the cliff. The keys had gone, that was certain. They were somewhere far below among the brown pebbles and the soapy tide. He looked back hurriedly for he had a sudden idea she might push him after the keys. She was standing by the rock, laughing.
He stumbled towards her angrily, his stupid trousers dropping around his knees. ‘You’re mad,’ he shouted in her face. ‘Stark raving bloody mad.’
She stopped laughing and backed away, attempting to look contrite, but the grin kept breaking out. ‘I didn’t know they would go over the edge,’ she protested. ‘Honestly.’ She sat petulantly on the grass, put her hands under her dress and began to fiddle with her knickers.
‘Listen,’ said Gilman grimly, ‘what the hell am I going to do without the keys?’
‘My husband always says that,’ she said moodily, sitting on the rock. ‘The very same words, come to think of it. Stark raving bloody mad.’ She looked up at him with pleading. ‘It’s just I do things on impulse,’ she said. ‘I can’t seem to help it. The idea comes and I just do it.’
‘So I’ve bloody noticed,’ returned Gilman nastily.
‘We could go down and look for them,’ she suggested. ‘That would be like a film wouldn’t it, searching around on the sand and the pebbles for the keys, and the waves coming in and all that. I could even have a wash in the sea. I feel horrible.’
He regarded her wearily. ‘That’s nothing to how I’m going to feel,’ he forecast. ‘I’ll be doing jankers for a month. Come on, get up. I’ll have to think of something.’
She stood up. He offered her a hand but she ignored it. She strode off towards the road, a few feet in front of him, tossing her hair and strutting as if she might be a film star. ‘Anyway,’ she called over her shoulder, ‘if they put you inside for a month you’ll miss the training.’ She stopped, turned and faced him dramatically. ‘I might even have saved your life.’
He was so accustomed to her inconsequences now that he did not bother to query what she had said. It was just gabble. Catching up with her he walked alongside, wearily, defeated, towards the road and the parked fifteen hundredweight.
‘What am I going to say to bloody Bullivant?’ he grumbled.
‘Say you just somehow lost the keys. After all, you did. It wasn’t your fault. Well, not altogether your fault.’
‘He’s going to believe that like a shot, I don’t think. But it’s the only thing I can do, get a lift back and go and tell him. Christ, you’ve put me in for the high jump.’
They were nearing the gate now, walking up the last sloping grass. The sun had gone and the breeze was less friendly. ‘I told you,’ she said. ‘I might have saved your life.’
Now they were at the lorry. He leaned on the door and said: ‘What in God’s name are you talking about?’
‘If you get a month in the glasshouse or …’
‘I won’t go in the glasshouse. It’s not that bad.’
‘Whatever it is, then you won’t go to Plymouth for the Bofors gun training. Then you won’t have to go on the landing ships. No invasion for you, my lad.’
Astonished, Gilman stared at her. She smiled with coltish pleasure. ‘Landing ships? How … how do you know that?’ he demanded. ‘How could you know?’
‘I just know,’ she said. ‘I have friends. The guns are going on the landing ships.’
The truth of the information got to him. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘If that’s right, we’ll be chucked into the invasion after all. That’s not going to be very funny.’ He was almost talking to himself. ‘But Bofors, why Bofors? They’re so old. What about all these rockets they’ve got? It can’t be …’
A Royal Air Force truck came along the road and pulled up. ‘Wilcoombe, mate?’ asked the driver. He had bright ginger hair and a storm of freckles. ‘Straight on,’ said Gilman. ‘You can’t miss it. Unless you go into the sea.’ He jerked himself to reality. ‘Hey, hang on. You could take us back there.’
‘Right,’ said the airman. ‘Jump in.’ He glanced at the woman. ‘Nice day for an outing,’ he said. Then to Gilman: ‘Are you leaving the truck?’
‘I haven’t got any choice,’ said Gilman. ‘I’ve lost the keys.’
The youth laughed. ‘Blimey, I’ve done that before now. Why don’t you start it up with your badge?’
Gilman said, with slow hope: ‘What d’you mean?’
The airman laughed again and got down from the cab. ‘Blimey, don’t they teach you brown jobs anything?’ he said. ‘Your cap badge. Use that. Come here, I’ll show you.’
He took his own RAF cap badge and climbing into the cab of the fifteen hundredweight pushed the topmost metal point into the ignition key slot. He turned it without difficulty and the engine sounded obediently. Gilman was overjoyed. He slapped the airman on the shoulder. ‘Thanks very much, chum,’ he enthused. ‘Let’s hope it works with mine.’
‘You’ve got to have brains in the Cream, mate,’ smirked the airman. He took Gilman’s cap badge and easily started the engine with it.
‘That’s terrific,’ said Gilman. ‘I’ll soon fiddle another set of keys. Thanks a lot.’
‘You won’t be wanting a lift then,’ said the airman, patently disappointed as he eyed the smiling Mary.
‘I won’t,’ confirmed Gilman. ‘I’m supposed to be going to Plymouth.’ He nodded at the woman. ‘But you can take her back, if you like.’
The ginger man grinned broadly. ‘If I like? I’ll say I like.’ He strode towards Mary who was already standing by the blue vehicle. ‘I’m taking you off his hands, love,’ he said cheerfully.
‘Not just my hands,’ muttered Gilman to himself. He watched her climb into the RAF truck. The wind blew her skirt and he had a further moment to admire her legs. Then, composed and affable, she sat
down and the driver got in and, with a split grin, started his own engine. Gilman waved a little lamely. They both waved back.
‘And watch her,’ he called as the truck moved away. He couldn’t tell whether they heard or not. He doubted it. ‘She’s stark raving bloody mad.’
Scarlett found Colonel Schorner standing on the rising ground behind the leys, the inland lakes across the coastal road from Telcoombe Beach. He was alone, watching a flotilla of small landing craft moving irresolutely towards the steep, pebbled shore.
‘How’re they doing, sir?’ asked Scarlett from below. He climbed the sandy mound.
‘Just great,’ grunted Schorner unconvincingly. ‘It’s like trying to get a consignment of goddamn camels ashore. Every time it gets worse. We had so many men in the water last week, it looked like a mass baptism.’
‘You mean there’s room for improvement?’
Schorner lowered the glasses. ‘Room for it? I think they’ve given me every dumb guy who’s never seen the sea. They’re from Dakota and Oklahoma. They’ve never seen it except in the movies or books in school. Take a look will you.’
Scarlett took the glasses. He swept them across the sea, focusing as he did so. ‘They seem to be getting off the craft okay,’ he commented.
‘Sure, sure, they get over the side. But see where they get over the side. Over the wrong side. Twenty yards too soon. They’re above their dumb heads in water before they start. You don’t have to believe this, but they use their rifles to feel for the bottom.’
‘How is it when they get to the beach?’ Scarlett sighed and returned the glasses.
‘When they get to the beach, if they get to the beach, they’re so played out all they can do is lie there. Last week I found three of them asleep down behind a ridge of pebbles over there. You can’t make them believe that one day it won’t be for fun. They’ve still got to get across these lakes after they make the beach.’
‘We got the protection for the LSTs then. The anti-aircraft guns we asked for.’ Scarlett’s tone was ironic. He knew what had happened.
‘Oh sure, sure,’ nodded Schorner sardonically. ‘Bofors guns. Bofors! What in God’s name are we doing with Bofors guns?’
‘With British gunners,’ added Scarlett. ‘Maybe they can handle them okay.’
‘Poor stooges, that’s all I can say. If we get a concerted air attack on the invasion fleet I don’t think a couple more Bofors guns are going to help the guys in the LSTs and LCTs. According to the Supreme HQ it’s Hobson’s choice because we don’t have anything else we can spare either for troop landing ships nor the tank landing ships. And it’s only now that anybody even thinks of it.’
Scarlett said, ‘According to Supreme HQ, we asked for some rockets from the Pacific, but they didn’t show. Anyway there was some doubt about whether they could be used from the platforms of the LSTs.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Schorner unconvinced. ‘They pat us on the back and say, “Don’t worry, boys, everything is just going to be hunky dory.” ’
‘The Bofors is adaptable,’ said Scarlett with pessimistic optimism. ‘It can be used as a surface weapon.’
‘In case we meet a German pocket battleship,’ grunted Schorner. He began to walk down the hill towards his jeep standing with Scarlett’s on the road. Albie and the captain’s driver were talking and smoking. ‘What else is new?’ asked the colonel. ‘Go on, make me feel good.’ He stopped and frowned at Scarlett. ‘You know what I’ve got to do today? I’ve got to go and get the third degree from the leading citizens of this area – they’ve got complaints up to their asses. One of them is that priest who got through the goddamn wire.’
Scarlett laughed. ‘We heard the news. Your boys kidded him he was in a minefield, right?’
Schorner grinned at the memory. ‘Gee, was that guy grateful to get away. They exploded a dummy charge in the field, just to make him think it was the real thing, and they had him lying there for an hour before they got him to crawl out.’
‘It was a great idea,’ laughed Scarlett. ‘He won’t be back.’
‘I hear he was so grateful to be rescued, he’s changed his tune about the Yanks,’ said Schorner. ‘What else do we have that’s new and exciting?’
‘Well, we’ve got a film star coming to sing to the guys.’
‘Not Eddie Cantor?’ groaned Schorner. ‘Please don’t let it be him. I read in Stars and Stripes he was threatening to entertain us.’
‘No,’ said Scarlett, ‘Sherree Ann Lorner. Maybe Cantor’s got the big eyes, but she’s got everything else. Bigger. She’s a lousy singer but who cares?’
‘And she’s scheduled to give a show here?’ said Schorner, pleased. ‘The guys will go for that.’
‘Right here. End of next month, it looks like.’
‘Great. That ought to send the troops to France in the right patriotic frame of mind. A nice bold pair of all-American tits is better than “Old Glory” any time.’
Captain Scarlett looked at him curiously. Then he said: ‘Sure, I know what you mean, sir. I guess it’s the best they can do. It’s a shame each guy can’t have a Sherree Ann Lorner all to himself. But there’s not enough to go around.’
Schorner poked a face and said: ‘There never is. Of anything. Well, at least it isn’t Eddie Cantor.’
An obese landing craft was approaching the beach almost directly ahead, it’s maw open like a feeding fish. The flap clattered on its chains as the hull scraped the bottom and three jeeps followed by a truck, all loaded with men, the truck towing a field gun, ran efficiently on to the beach and began to drive carefully over the metal square that formed the emergency road over the pebbles.
‘That looked okay, sir,’ commented Scarlett. He liked Cantor himself and he wondered why the colonel did not. Maybe he just did not amuse him; or maybe Schorner was anti-Jewish. A lot of people with German names were still anti-Jewish.
‘Sure, they got it right at last,’ said Schorner nodding approvingly at the vehicles. ‘And my outfit is hot at getting the grids down across the beach. Cantor, he just can’t make me laugh. My wife thinks he’s terrific. But I don’t go for the voice and the goo-goo eyes.’
‘No shelling today?’ said Scarlett. He looked down in time to see Bryant pull up in his jeep. The British officer walked towards them.
Schorner said to Scarlett: ‘You should be getting a report at headquarters about yesterday’s shelling. They took the weather-cock off a church.’
‘That’s what weather-cocks are for,’ grinned Scarlett.
‘This was half a mile outside the evacuated area. They’re checking their range finders today.’
Scarlett and Bryant laughed. ‘We don’t seem to be endearing ourselves to the clergy,’ said Bryant. ‘They’ll start praying for the other side soon.’
‘Some already are going that way,’ said Schorner. ‘You know, gravitating towards neutrality. Christians never understand war, anyway. That’s why they end up on different sides, each making a claim on God. Right over there are Germans with some crazy idea that our God’s going to save them.’
They began to walk back towards the vehicles, crossing the coastal road and standing on the levelled area of what had been the Telcoombe Beach Hotel. Now all the debris had been moved and the rooms were marked out only by the foundations, like a full-scale architectural plan. Bryant wondered if the hotel would ever be rebuilt, whether people would doze on that beach again in peaceful, uncertain, English summer sun; whether children would again play on the garden swing, curiously still in position, although petrified with rust? Would there come a time again when the deck-chairs would be out, people would blandly eat ice-cream wafers, and laughter echo from the sea?
The big landing craft had discharged its vehicles and men and was now backing hesitantly away from the shingle like a slow but sensitive man who has just realized he has been offended. Scarlett said: ‘They’re going to try and get a railroad train on one of those LSTs. They’re trying it in Plymouth right now. They figure, I
guess, that the Germans won’t leave too many docking facilities for us to use. So they’ll get it across on a landing ship.’
‘As long as they don’t put it on the assault phase,’ smiled Bryant. ‘A railway engine would look wonderful going up the beach right behind the US Rangers.’
‘They’ll be stranger sights,’ forecast Schorner confidently. ‘Maybe there’ll be some guy digging for bait. Or maybe the French will be out sunning themselves and drinking wine.’ He went back, hunch-shouldered, towards the jeep and slowly climbed in. Albie Primrose started the engine.
‘This afternoon at three, colonel,’ Bryant reminded Schorner apologetically. ‘The village elders.’
‘How could I forget?’ groaned Schorner. He tapped Albie on the shoulder and said, ‘Let’s go, soldier.’ They drove away.
‘He hates it,’ said Scarlett, nodding after the jeep. ‘Every goddamn minute of it. And he’s going to hate it more and more when the shit starts to fly. But he’ll see it through to the last dead German – or they get him.’
‘His family must have come from Germany at some time,’ suggested Bryant.
‘Four generations, I bet,’ said Scarlett. ‘It must make things even tougher. He’s a good guy.’ He suddenly put an arm on Bryant’s shoulder and grinned boyishly. ‘Take a wild guess who’s going up to London with General Georgeton,’ he said. ‘I aim to take a week’s leave before we get too busy with this war. Any messages for anybody.’
‘Tell her she’s wonderful in bed,’ answered Bryant genuinely. He smiled. ‘And you’re a rotten bastard.’
‘She knows all that,’ returned Scarlett. His smile widened mischievously. ‘Why don’t I tell her you got a dose of clap?’
‘That’s something else she knows,’ retorted Bryant. They both laughed.
Then Scarlett said: ‘I know this seems a bit crazy asking, but I’m a gentleman in disguise. You don’t mind do you?’
‘Good God, no,’ exclaimed Bryant. ‘You saw her first. And if you hadn’t got so pissed I wouldn’t have been involved with her at all. I was just a poor substitute, Yank.’
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