Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1

by Ian St. James

  But Margaret was not at the Dorchester. Instead, when Sean announced himself at the desk, Cynthia invited him up for a sherry. Although she was dressed for dinner and as immaculate as ever, she was clearly anxious about something. Sean was nervous himself. He always was with Cynthia, and not just because of his relationship with her daughter. Cynthia Hamilton, more than anyone, represented a privileged world which seemed forever beyond Sean's grasp, no matter how far he climbed from the Quays.

  They were quite alone. George had been detained at the office - but Cynthia was not worrying about her husband. "I'm glad you're here," she said, "and it was kind of you to think of Margaret." Her emphatic use of certain words was muted compared to the way she flayed them at parties. Even so, the habit was still there. "Margaret is on the Samantha. She's taking her up to Greenwich all by herself. I can't tell you how frantic I am."

  After that the whole story came out. How the previous evening George had recounted the rumours about the need for small boats, and how Margaret had left for Staines at the crack of dawn.

  Cynthia toyed with the stem of her glass. "George said if the Navy needed small boats they would take them over at Greenwich. I don't know, Margaret's getting so stubborn these days, quite as bad as her sister." She shot Sean a quick glance, then hurried on, "What frightens me is her taking the boat further down the estuary. She said she'd telephone when she reached Greenwich. I still haven't heard a word ..."

  Sean took a while to work out the details, but once he had established that Margaret was unlikely to have got beyond Greenwich he agreed to go there at once. It was what Cynthia wanted and she expressed relief at his offer. He finished a second sherry and, promising to telephone her later, hurried out into the evening's gathering gloom. Walking briskly to Green Park Underground, he reflected on the changes being wrought by the war - Cynthia Hamilton living at the Dorchester, worrying about her daughters, one on a boat and the other working in the East End, while husband George stayed over in the City. Changes were happening, and with gathering speed. The British were shaking off their apathy, he thought, and planned to say so in his CBS broadcast and his weekend article for the Gazette.

  Apathy was the last thing he found at Greenwich. The river was jammed with boats, many moored sideways to form a solid raft stretching into the middle of the Thames. Sean cursed himself for running a fool's errand. It would be impossible to find Margaret on the Samantha. Hundreds of people were milling about along the wharfs. But it was astonishingly easy when he started to ask. A river policeman directed him, "You want to see Captain Wheelan of the Small Boats' Pool. He's got dozens of owners down there at the pilots' office."

  Sean never found Captain Wheelan. He ran into Margaret almost immediately. She was dressed in oilskins and drinking tea from an enamel mug, talking to a group of men wearing duffle coats. She saw Sean as he approached and hurried to meet him. "Oh thank God you've come. We're off in another ten minutes."

  She had telephoned her mother, learned Sean was on his way, and hoped against hope that he would make it in time. "The Navy want these boats in Ramsgate by the morning, but they're making the most stupid fuss about me being a woman." She gave him the mug to hold while she fumbled through her pockets. "Here, sign this form. It makes you Samantha's owner. Then you can take me as crew."

  The BEF fought down a corridor fifty miles long and fifteen miles wide to reach the thousand-year-old port of Dunkirk. And Dunkirk was a trap, Freddie Mallon was certain of that. Not that he said so, he was too tired to say anything - Second Lieutenant Harry Hunt did the talking for both of them most of the time. In the ten days since their meeting, Freddie had come to regard Hunt as being either certifiably mad or the bravest man in the war. "The trouble is," Freddie grumbled, "my chance of staying alive would be much better with a coward."

  Hunt grinned, "You're a reporter, aren't you. I'm giving you something to report -"

  "To whom? Archangel Gabriel?"

  Of course Freddie could have opted out. When they reached Dunkirk that first time from Tourcoing he could have refused to go back for more wounded. But Hunt had pleaded - "I know we can only bring three men in at a time, but even one would be worthwhile."

  So they had daubed the car with Red Cross markings and Freddie Mallon became an ambulance driver. He worried about Hunt's leg at times. "If you stayed behind I could bring four men each trip. Did you think about that?"

  Hunt was stubborn. "You've no authority without an officer. You'll run into trouble without me -"

  "I'll run into trouble with you, that's certain."

  The first week had been bad. Stukas dive-bombed from dawn till dusk, and when bomb-bays were empty they screamed low across the fields to strafe columns of men with machine-gun fire. Gort's troops were powerless to hit back - without anti-aircraft guns, without air cover - they just had to take it.

  The British pulled back. Sappers laid mines under bridges and across roads as they evacuated one position after another. Whole villages were devastated. In ruined cottages and gutted barns huddled the now homeless Belgians, who had welcomed the British with open arms two weeks before. Priests had blessed the Army as it streamed past on its way to the front. Now the British were in full retreat. Signs of surrender appeared everywhere, white handkerchiefs fluttered on sticks, bedsheets hung from windows, and ashen-faced Belgians watched Gort's Army with hostile, bitter eyes.

  "Poor devils," Harry Hunt said. "They'll end up hating us as much as the Germans."

  If the first week had been bad, the days which followed were hell. The flanks of the corridor were being whittled away. In the South, the 3rd Grenadier Guards and the North Staffs fought desperately to hold a line on the Ypres- Comines Canal. Losses were appalling. The 13,000 strong 2nd Division was reduced to 2,500 men. It was the same in the north. Like a hangman's noose the perimeter of the escape route was drawn tighter.

  Through it all Freddie and Harry Hunt drove back and forth ferrying wounded men into Dunkirk. At night they slept, when they slept at all, in a field hospital close to the sea-front, where the groans and screams of the maimed almost drowned the thunder of guns. And at dawn came the Stukas, with the whistling scream of their bombs. Every morning was the same, and Hunt's response was the same. As soon as the stump of his leg had been dressed, he strapped on his revolver, and was carried out to the car. "Come on good shepherd," he called to Freddie, "let's round up some stray sheep."

  Finding stray sheep was easy. The British streamed over the countryside in the strangest retreat ever seen. Some came on bicycles, some pushed their wounded in wheel-barrows, a bombardier drove a tractor towing a gun, twenty men journeyed in a Brussels garbage truck, eight more crammed into a taxi. An Artillery sergeant rode a white hunter twenty hands high. They arrived in farm trucks and wagons and on litters drawn by cattle. But most of them walked, stumbling with fatigue on feet misshapen by huge blisters, with blood seeping through the soles of their boots. And they came in their thousands into Dunkirk.

  Freddie drove across that battleground every day. The landscape changed. Roads were pockmarked by new craters, short-cuts were blocked by smoking debris, no single route lasted more than one journey. Freddie pulled men out of ditches and dug others from under rubble, while Hunt ordered men to help, sometimes at gun-point. Twice he refused to allow senior officers to commandeer Freddie's car. "Sorry, sir. You'll have to walk. This vehicle is for wounded men only." Three times they were strafed by machine-gun fire. Once the car was lifted into the air by an explosion. But they kept going. When the radiator boiled dry they solemnly relieved themselves into a watering can, filled the radiator and drove on. Every day they managed about thirty sorties into that smoking wilderness. Every day their journey were just that little bit shorter. They were grimly aware of the reason. The advancing Germans were always closer.

  The night of 28 May was the worst of all. The day had been horrendous. The Luftwaffe had dropped 30,000 incendiaries and 15,000 high explosive bombs, and as darkness crept over the land, Hitler's
ground forces opened up as never before. All night long their artillery pounded the coast from Dunkirk to La Panne, nine miles away. By morning, black smoke from St Pol's burning oil refineries enveloped the harbour. Flames swept through miles of warehouses. Food stocks were exhausted. Nobody had had fresh water in four days. Only one telephone line remained open to London. One hundred and fifteen acres of docks and five miles of quays had been pulverised into rubble. Corpses of men and women and children littered the streets.

  Freddie felt a thousand years old. His bones ached and his face itched beneath its stubble of beard. He watched dawn lighten the sky before he rose wearily from his place on the floor just inside the field hospital. Stiff limbed he walked to the door. Once outside he sniffed the air and turned his eyes to the sea. Sand dunes heaved like ant hills as thousands of soldiers shivered in the chill air. Those who were awake did as Freddie did - they looked out to sea.

  Ships were not easily found on water the colour of gunmetal, especially with a grey sky behind them. They were there though - dark smudges a mile out from the shore. The ships of the Royal Navy. Freddie's eyes probed the morning light to focus on the smaller specks of lifeboats coming into the shore. He sighed with relief. He counted them - ten, eleven, twelve. Better than last night, when he had counted only nine. Rumour said that 7,500 men had been lifted from the beaches yesterday. He smiled wryly. 7,500 men out of 390,000. It would take more than a month at that rate. Nobody seemed to have figured that out.

  Half an hour later the Stukas attacked, but Freddie had left the beach by then. He and Harry Hunt were already a mile out of Dunkirk, driving south on a hair-raising run towards the Ypres-Comines Canal.

  They had argued the night before. Harry's leg had wracked him with pain, and Freddie had shouted at him. "For God's sake! It's time you packed up. Get down by the beach. They must take the wounded off first -"

  "What about you, Yank?" Hunt had cracked back. "It's not even your bloody war."

  One last day, they had agreed.

  And this was to be it.

  The Thames estuary was clogged with small boats. Sean had never seen so many. Wherever he looked he saw boats - all going the same way, down to the sea. But not out to sea. They hugged the coastline to slip past the Isle of Sheppey and in again towards Whitstable. "There's Heme Bay over there," Margaret pointed.

  They had talked all night, with Margaret at the wheel while Sean brewed coffee on a spirit stove in the galley. When dawn rose out of the sea they had waved cheerful good mornings to the crew in the boats on either side. They had talked of the war and of people they knew - and confessed their first impressions of each other.

  "You frightened me to death," Margaret giggled. "What with that black scowl of yours. I think even Val was a bit daunted to begin with."

  He lacked the courage to admit he had been just as afraid, although his fumbling recollections went part of the way - "You seemed so ... so aloof, inaccessible. Too damn good-looking, I suppose. And stinking rich. I didn't know what to say to you."

  "Now we've spent the night together," she joked in a sad-sounding voice, with her eyes dead ahead as she adjusted the wheel.

  It was their first time alone with each other. Each saw the other differently. A barrier had existed before. Margaret's reservations about Sean's relationship with her sister may have remained unspoken, but they had been felt. Just as he had felt sour at times about the way she treated Freddie. Now - after spending twelve hours together in a cramped cockpit, bumping into each other, sharing a dozen small intimacies - the barrier fell away. It was Margaret who breached it. "You know I've never slept with him," she said softly. "That's what I regret. I wish I had Val's courage and wasn't so bloody conventional. God, I've been a little fool. To hell with convention, and to hell with this war. Damn and blast it," she swore to stifle her tears.

  The outburst passed, until a while later, she said in a voice full of strain, "Why on earth didn't he stay in Paris? Or better still come home two weeks ago."

  Sean provided what reassurances he could. He remembered overhearing a navy man at Greenwich, "Didn't he say they've been lifting men off that beach for twenty-four hours already? I bet Freddie's back in London by now, raising hell about me being away with his girl."

  She slid him a quick look of gratitude. "I suppose there's just a chance

  "Or maybe he's waiting at Ramsgate," Sean grinned.

  He invented a dozen places where Freddie might be, anywhere and everywhere except the beach at Dunkirk. He made a game of it and laughed so uproariously that she had to join in. The tension eased for a while, but the haunted look stayed in her eyes.

  After sailing past Margate and skirting the North Foreland, they sighted Broadstairs and finally Ramsgate itself. The bay was already full of boats, all sorts, hundreds of boats, many built for short-run river work, never designed for the sea. A navy launch buzzed back and forth, directing newcomers like a collie rounding up sheep. Margaret slowed Samantha's engines to nose between a Thames barge and a sleek cabin cruiser with Anthony's Mermaid emblazoned in silver letters on its stern. Sean was glad that Margaret had to concentrate on the boat instead of worrying about Freddie - but the respite was brief. Twenty minutes later they were moored and Margaret was anxious to get ashore in search of news.

  They spent all afternoon listening to rumours. Another 17,000 men had been lifted from Dunkirk, making about 25,000 in two days. Margaret looked sick. More than 350,000 men remained trapped on the French coast - and she felt sure that Freddie was among them.

  "You don't know that," Sean kept saying.

  "Well where else could he be?"

  She telephoned her mother, while Sean contacted the Mirror- neither had heard from Freddie. The man at the Mirror confirmed that some of the rescued troops had already arrived in London. "Some of their stories make your blood run cold," he said in awed tones. "It must be hell on earth over there."

  The atmosphere in Ramsgate was electric. The town was full of weekend sailors all saying the same thing - "Let's go across and fetch them ourselves." But the Navy refused to allow that. The weather held fine. More small boats crammed into the harbour, arriving from points all along the south coast...

  Sean bumped into Peter Nicholls of the Express and Tubby Reynolds of the Standard. Both had boats and were waiting to sail if the order was given - and both agreed with Sean about Margaret. They took her for a meal in a pub that evening and told her so - "Look, the Navy's hemming and hawing about us," Tubby said. "They certainly wouldn't allow you to go. And as Freddie's friends, neither will we."

  Margaret tried to reason with them. "Nurses went over on a hospital ship this morning. If they can go, so can I. Besides, I can handle a boat a darn sight better than any of you."

  Peter Nicholls tried to describe what it would be like, relating what he had heard from his office.

  Tubby joined in, "The Navy can't even guarantee we'll get back."

  Margaret looked stricken. She was quiet for a moment, before saying, "I'm not sure I would want to come back, without Freddie."

  Sean had never seen anyone so determined. Her hands were steady. Her voice calmer than it had been on the Samantha earlier.

  Nicholls and Reynolds went off to the Small Boats' Pool in search of news, making it quite clear that they expected Sean to force her to see sense. He tried, but Margaret had made up her mind. She was going to find Freddie. "Even if I can't find him," she said, "just the Samantha being there increases his chances. You heard that man at Greenwich, they want every small boat they can get."

  "So okay. Send the Samantha. You can stay here -"

  "And who'll skipper her? You?"

  They both knew he lacked the experience. "I'll find someone -"

  "Don't be ridiculous," she snapped. "Anyone who knows port from starboard is already involved."

  Her voice softened to a plea. "Sean, I'm begging you. Tell the Small Boats' Pool that you're taking her across. Once I'm out there in oilskins they won't know I'm not you. Pleas
e, Sean, do it for Freddie, if not for me. You don't have to come."

  He sighed hopelessly. If anything happened to her Freddie would hate him forever. If anything happened to Freddie she would hate him. If anything happened to either of them he would blame himself for the rest of his life.

  Reynolds returned at that moment. "They won't let us go tonight. It might be on for tomorrow though, unless the RN makes a dent in the numbers." He slumped into a chair and looked hard at Sean, "Well, have you resolved the problem?"

  Sean took a deep breath. "Yes," he said, without elaborating.

  Margaret said nothing at all, and shortly afterwards they wished Reynolds goodnight and left. Ramsgate lay pitch black under a night sky. Not a single light showed in the blackout. She held his hand as they walked through the darkened street. Half an hour later they were back on Samantha.

  "Well?" she asked. "And have we resolved the problem?"

  He was about to reply when they heard a deep rumbling in the distance.

  "Thunder," she whispered.

  But she was wrong. It was the barrage of the German guns, twenty miles across the water.

  The Grenadiers had held the eight-mile front along the Ypres-Comines Canal, at the cost of a thousand dead and three thousand wounded. Freddie closed his eyes to obliterate the past fifteen hours. Deafening explosions denied any chance of sleep. Even to close his eyes was a mistake. Memories revived with searing clarity, sights he would never forget if he lived to be a hundred - which seemed very unlikely.

  Dunkirk outdid Dante's Inferno. Shell-shocked men roamed the waterfront, looting, pillaging, raping - even picking dead men's pockets. Some went mad. A man raced through the dunes screaming, "Lord have mercy on us." Another, stripped to a loincloth, pranced in circles, raving that he was Mahatma Gandhi. Discipline was non-existent in parts of the town. Defeat and shame bred anarchy. Bands of renegade soldiers, deserted by panic-stricken officers, prowled the streets in a mood of ugly violence. Men with lipstick-smeared faces ransacked shop windows for women's clothes. Many were drunk. Others blundered about, staring with sightless eyes, clutching children's teddy bears while weeping hysterically. Not since Corunna, more than a hundred years before, had a British army fallen back like this - leaving such ruin in its wake.