by Roger Bax
When he lay basking in the sun and peace of the deep countryside, it was difficult for him to tell how far the disintegration of the Reich had progressed. The villagers were going on with their work much as usual. But on the main roads, and in the small towns that he touched, the evidence was unmistakable. The German newspapers which he bought were trying to hide their panic under a din of threat and exhortation, but already it was difficult to tell from their reports where authority lay. The snatches of conversation he heard as he walked left him in no doubt that the ordinary German was waiting for the end and believed it to be near. Military traffic was still rumbling east, in a futile effort to plug the gigantic Russian breach, but the refugees from East Prussia and Poland, gathering snowball strength in every town, were convincing evidence of final disaster close at hand. By day and by night Cross witnessed scenes of utter chaos. The ring of fire and steel was closing and, in the narrowing gap between, frightened people were milling to and fro without clear purpose. The military had their hands full with their own problems, and it seemed unlikely that there was any longer an effective check on civilian movements. Cross felt that he had no more need to worry. Boldly marching through a small village named Grunfeld in the early evening, he passed a row of silent cottages from which every inhabitant had fled. The door of one was wide open, and all was confusion inside. It was obvious that the tenants had hastily packed all the possessions they could carry and had abandoned the rest. There was food in the larder – tinned meats and cheeses and wine – and Cross helped himself.
There were other signs of the approaching climax. Three times in a day great armadas of heavy bombers coming in from the northwest passed unmolested overhead. They bore American markings. Of the Luftwaffe there was almost no trace.
For two days Cross marched north of west, covering twenty-five miles a day on secondary roads. The weather was perfect, and so, he felt, was his timing. Very soon now he should reach the western battle zone. He wondered what it would be like, crossing a Front. Here, in the hinterland, it was almost like being a peacetime tourist.
Seventy-two hours later he heard the first rumblings of gunfire in the west. By imperceptible degrees, the noise of battle swelled. Waking after a short afternoon nap under an old strawstack, he found the air humming with planes, none of them German. There were silver specks reconnoitring high in the blue, and others studying the ground almost from tree-top level. Every now and again there would be a rattle of machine-guns, or the crump of a bomb not far away. He had no idea along what line the advance was taking place, or what the objectives were. He had an impression of a struggle so mobile and so confused that it was more like mopping-up than a battle. Once, crouching in a ditch, he watched four German tanks pass in silhouette across the brow of a hill. Once he saw men running across a distant field. The time had come, he decided, to go to ground. Crawling on hands and knees for the better part of a mile, he came suddenly upon a wide military road and settled himself in deep grass under a hawthorn bush to watch what happened. This, at any rate, was the main line of retreat for the sector. Trucks and ambulances, guns and tanks were streaming from the west. Many were in bad shape, and it seemed unlikely that they would fight again. A quarter of a mile away a tank was blazing, and as dusk fell Cross could see that fires were burning at intervals far along the road. Darkness had increased the congestion and brought the traffic almost to a halt. There were lights and shouts and curses and all the familiar chaos of defeat. Cross watched, indifferent to the fate of armies. He wanted the play to be over, and the curtain to fall, so that he could go home. He had had a bellyful of war.
All through the night the traffic jerked its way to the southeast. Planes dived so often to strafe the helpless target that Cross sought a safer hiding-place a mile back from the road. He slept a little, and when he awoke the road was quiet. It seemed to him that there was already gunfire behind him – that the battle had somehow passed him by. He moved back to the hawthorn bush. As far as he could see in both directions, the road was littered with wreckage, and the air was acrid with the smell of burning. Almost at his feet were three corpses beside an overturned car.
Suddenly he heard a plane and in a moment it had roared by, flying a hundred feet above the road. It circled and flew back. Presently there were fresh sounds of traffic. Cross peered from behind his concealing bush and saw three light tanks ambling up the road in line ahead. Once they stopped and two of them went off the road for a while, reconnoitring. Then they linked up again. Cross saw that they had British markings. He sat with his pack at his feet, a couple of yards above the road, waiting for them. He would call out in English when they were level. As they drew near two of them again plunged into the undergrowth and the third stopped almost opposite the bush. He stood up excitedly, his heart pounding. His pack rolled down into the road. The tank swung round, and as Cross shouted a machine-gun spat precautionary bullets into the hawthorn. Cross felt a blow on his head and pitched forward into the road beside his pack.
CHAPTER I
On a russet afternoon in October 1945 a car drew up with a scrunch on the gravel of Wheeler’s boatyard, just below Teddington Lock on the River Thames, and three men got out. Their movements were rather slow, for it was hot, and they had just enjoyed an excellent luncheon at the ‘Star and Garter’ in celebration of their post-war reunion.
The elderly man, with the shining, sun-browned scalp and the bottle of port tightly clutched under his arm, was Charles Hollison, the paint manufacturer. The much younger man, in the uniform of a Lieutenant-Commander, R.N.V.R., was his only son Geoffrey. The man in the pin-stripe ‘demob’ suit, also young but without Geoffrey’s breadth of shoulder, was Arthur Cross, Hollison’s nephew.
It was a very special day for all three of them. For Charles Hollison because against all reasonable expectations both young men were home from the war, safe. For Geoffrey because he was fond of his father and because – having been at sea on and off for seven years – he longed to settle down and live a normal life again. For Arthur because he desperately needed money to save his neck – and Uncle Charles had lots of money.
Charles Hollison, a widower for twenty-five years, had given all his affection to these two young men. After Arthur’s parents had died, he had become the boy’s guardian and treated him as a second son. Geoffrey and Arthur had been educated at the same school; had graduated at the same Oxford college. Both had been given equal opportunities in the family business.
When Arthur, a rear-gunner in a ‘Wellington’, had been reported ‘missing’ on a Baltic raid in 1940, Hollison had felt a father’s anxiety and grief. The miracle of Arthur’s survival, so recently revealed, had lit up the old man’s life. With Geoffrey back as well, unharmed in spite of all his adventures in the Pacific, Hollison felt ten years younger. Sometimes, during the war, his loneliness had been almost more than he could bear. Now all that was over. The boys were home.
“Come on, let’s get aboard,” Hollison called, leading the way down to the water’s edge. The tide was low, and they had to drag the dinghy across a few yards of wet gravel to launch her. Arthur took the oars, Hollison sat in the stern, and Geoffrey – seeming to take up all the rest of the room – gazed across to where Truant was riding to her moorings.
“Nice picture!” said Geoffrey appreciatively. “This is really like old times. What a lovely boat she is!”
“She could do with a coat of paint,” said Arthur, a little sourly, resting on his oars so that he could turn to look at her.
Hollison nodded. “Now the war’s over, perhaps she’ll get one. We’ll have a look at the shade card, and find something really smart. Easy, Arthur; don’t bump her.”
Arthur put the dinghy alongside, and Geoffrey tied her up. Hollison, with an agility remarkable in a man of his years and bulk, climbed aboard and threw back the tarpaulin which covered the cockpit. He looked at Arthur with a twinkle in his eye. “Do you still remember where the glasses and corkscrew are kept?”
“It’s about all
I do remember,” said Arthur, going below. He had never been as crazy about boats as the other two.
Geoffrey was already off on a tour of inspection. He had rarely felt so elated. Everything he saw delighted him. The river had never looked more peaceful. The willows at the water’s edge, over on the far bank, were barely stirring; the droning of insects and the occasional quack of a duck or plop of a fish were the only sounds disturbing this drowsy afternoon. Even the tall chimney of the refuse destructor, sticking up behind the boatyard, did not quite ruin the beauty of the scene. Geoffrey sniffed with satisfaction the peculiar remembered smell of Truant in summer – a rich mixture of diesel oil and hot varnish, of paraffin and dry cordage and bilge water. He strolled up and down the forty-five feet of well-caulked and beautifully cambered deck; he leaned over the side, examining a small dent above one of the ports; he peeped under the canvas cover of the eight-foot tender stowed beside the davits on Truant’s cabin-top. Then he went through into the wheel-house and down into the tiny engine-room, and scrutinized the twin diesels with the zest of a schoolboy. He saw at once that they had been well cared for. He would have liked to have given them a run, but there was a call from the cockpit. His father had just poured out three glasses of tawny port.
“I saved this specially for you two,” said Hollison. “It needed a lot of faith!”
“A lot of self-control as well, I should think,” said Geoffrey. “Well ...” He raised his glass, first to his father, then to his cousin. “Happy landfalls ...” He sipped and smiled. “It was certainly a wonderful idea finishing our celebration here.”
“I wanted to talk,” said Hollison, “and there’s nothing like a boat for privacy. By the way, has Truant passed your survey?”
Geoffrey gave the ‘thumbs up’ sign. “She’s in much better shape than I expected. What do you think, Arthur?”
“She’s fine,” said Arthur. He was drinking his port rather fast.
“Mind you,” said Geoffrey, “we’ll have to get another sailing dinghy. I want to do some more ditch-crawling next summer. But Truant’s a ship – she can really go places. Are the engines as good as they seem?”
“They’re as good as new,” said Hollison. “I’ve had a chap in from Wheeler’s to keep an eye on the boat, and we’ve run the engines every two or three months. With diesels there’s been no real trouble about fuel. Lack of time has been my worry. As a matter of fact, I’ve kept her ready for sea, the way she was before Dunkirk. The water-tanks are full, there’s plenty of oil, and even some rations in the lockers. Mostly bully and biscuits – pinched from the Navy, I’m afraid – and a few tins that I managed to wheedle out of Mrs. Armstrong. There’s nothing to stop us going straight off to France tonight, if you feel like it. We’d be there tomorrow evening.”
Geoffrey grinned. “Nothing to stop us except a couple of dozen formalities, and mines all over the Estuary, and no up-to-date charts. I bet those sandbanks have shifted a bit since we last ran aground! We ought to be able to do something fairly ambitious next season, though. I’d like to cruise to the Aalands. What do you say, Arthur?”
Arthur shook his head. “Not me. I’ve had the Baltic.”
Geoffrey remembered. “Yes, of course. Too full of nasty experiences. I expect I should feel the same if I’d been shot down into it. It’s amazing you escaped alive – I suppose the tail stuck out of the water for a while. You were darned lucky.”
“Perhaps,” said Arthur. “I sometimes wonder.” He was staring down at the deck, the smoke from his cigarette curling up between his nicotine-stained fingers. He was silently congratulating himself on his lunch-time performance. The atmosphere had been just right, of course – a bit emotional; and they had naturally been impatient to hear his story. He had told it skilfully. There had been, he thought, just the right amount of corroborative detail to make it sound convincing, and no obvious gaps. The crash, the internment, the escape – he had dealt sketchily but adequately with all of them. He had described the hardships of his life in camp and of his journey across Europe with a restraint commanding admiration as well as sympathy. He had rehearsed the tale so often in his mind that now he could almost believe it himself. And anyway, it did contain more than a kernel of truth.
“Of course,” said Geoffrey reflectively, “if you hadn’t socked that guard after your capture and tried to make a getaway you’d have been taken to an Oflag and we’d have heard about you.”
“I know,” said Arthur. “It was a damn silly thing to do, but the idea of being in a P.O.W. camp all through the war was more than I could face. I nearly pulled it off, too. Of course, I knew I was taking a big chance. I thought they might shoot me. It didn’t occur to me that they’d take it out of me by virtually writing me off. I imagine I just ceased to exist for them when they sent me to that ghastly dump in East Prussia. After that I was just one more anonymous slave.”
Hollison nodded. “That’s about it. No wonder we couldn’t get any information. I went up to the Air Ministry, naturally, and they told me they’d made all the usual inquiries. They hadn’t much hope, because of that last radio signal from your plane, but they were obviously doing all they could. Then when the report came through from the Red Cross that the Germans had no knowledge of any survivors, I had to make up my mind that you’d gone.”
“As a matter of fact, Arthur, you had unusually bad luck from beginning to end,” said Geoffrey, “apart from not being killed, of course. If you hadn’t been hit in the head by that tank gunner, you’d have been home months ago. Losing your memory on top of everything else was really tough. I don’t know why we don’t fingerprint chaps in our Forces, the way the Yanks do. It would save a lot of trouble.”
“Wouldn’t it?” said Arthur, without enthusiasm. The port did not seem to be cheering him up very much. His thin pale face had a little more colour in it, but he seemed unable to relax and his lips worried incessantly at the cigarettes which he chain-smoked. There were deep lines etched from above each eye slantwise to the temples. Geoffrey could not remember having noticed them before the war. In fact, Arthur was not looking at all fit in spite of his long convalescence.
The same thought had been in Hollison’s mind from the moment of their reunion. He was deeply concerned about his nephew. A man couldn’t possibly go through all the horror and strain that Arthur had been through and not feel serious after-effects. Hollison said: “Now you’re back, Arthur, I think we ought to get a good man to overhaul you. You need looking after, building up—”
“Oh, I’m sick of doctors,” said Arthur irritably. “I’m all right – I just want to be left alone. Let’s forget it all, shall we? As far as I’m concerned, those six years never happened. Life begins again.” He drained his port.
Hollison gave him an affectionate smile. “Perhaps you’re right – anyway, we’ll see. As long as you take things gently—”
A small pleasure steamer chugged by, and some children shouted and waved. Geoffrey waved back abstractedly. He was thinking how wars changed people. Truant rocked gently in the wash. When the river was still again, Hollison said, “You know, I think a speech is called for while there’s still something in the bottle.”
“Why not?” said Geoffrey encouragingly. “Go ahead!”
“Perhaps I’m a sentimental old man,” said Hollison, “but I’ll never have another opportunity to tell you both how ... how proud I am of you. You both did your job ... different ways, of course ... different luck. I’m very proud – and very, very glad to have you both back. This is the greatest day of my life.” He blew his nose violently, and with fingers that trembled slightly he pierced and lighted a cigar.
Geoffrey got up and quite unnecessarily gave an extra half-hitch to the dinghy’s painter. Fancy the old man getting all emotional! He looked at Arthur and nodded towards his father. “To hear him talk you’d never think he’d been at Dunkirk with his toy boat, would you? How many fellows did you bring back, Father?”
“Seventy-three,” said Hollison. “You know I
could never resist a cross-Channel trip. And don’t try to put me off – I haven’t finished yet.”
“Oh, come off it,” Geoffrey protested. “You’ll have me weeping over the side.”
“Well, I’ll pass on to business. I’ve been thinking a lot about your future – yours and Arthur’s. You see, I’m not as young as I was. Sixty-six next birthday, you know. I’ve felt the strain this last year or two – rushed Government orders, chronic labour shortage, and all the rest of it. Mind you, I’m not grumbling, but now the war’s over I think I’m entitled to a bit of a rest. I want some help, and I’d like both of you to come back into the business.”
“Will it stand it?” asked Geoffrey.
“It needs you,” said Hollison. “It’s still a first-class concern, but it needs new blood. I’ve always said it’s the Hollison blood in the paint that makes it better than anyone else’s. Of course, I know it may seem a little dull after all your adventures, but it’s a job you can be proud of. The name of Hollison has a fine ring in the trade. If we’ve fallen short of our own standards, it’s been because of circumstances outside our control – chiefly substitute materials. The future’s bright enough. Why, the whole world needs repainting!”
Geoffrey grinned broadly. “You sound quite lyrical. That ought to be the first line of a song, ‘The whole world needs repainting—’”
“So it does,” said Hollison stoutly, “and the fairies won’t do it, either. It’s going to take a lot of hard work. I’ve got some excellent technicians on the research side, and a first-class works manager. I need a couple of directors to take the bulk of the administrative responsibility off my hands. You both know the ropes. What about it?”