‘No, Teo!’ Eleni grabbed his hand. ‘Not now, my dear. Winterbottom already trying on telephone – there’s nothing no one can do more tonight. Stay here. I feed you something, you scrawny to hell and frankly my dear pong high heaven. Get bath, food, sleep an’ tomorrow we find your mother.’
Winterbottom nodded. ‘And, ah, you should also report to barracks. And explain to the CO what you’ve been up to. Since absenting yourself from OCTU.’
He protested feebly but, exhausted suddenly, gave in to Eleni’s nagging and an hour later, bathed and fed, plodded up the stairs to his old attic bedroom, slumped on to his bed and fell into unconscious slumber. He was woken twelve hours later by a dream. Erwin Rommel was standing on a beach, hands on hips, while Theo swam desperately out to sea. ‘Make your decision!’ Rommel kept shouting after him in German. But he knew of no decision to make. He kept swimming, increasingly desperate, his arms and legs numb with cold and heavy like lead, but he could find no ship, nor any hope of salvation. ‘Treffen Sie Ihre Entscheidung!’ Rommel kept shouting. ‘Make your decision!’
Eleni had cleaned his uniform in the night; he dressed and descended to the dining room where he found one other lodger, a paper salesman who introduced himself as Brown.
‘Someone’s popular,’ Brown said, nodding at Theo’s plate which Eleni had piled high with bread and jam. After breakfast he packed a bag of Carla’s clothing while Eleni collected food for her; then, once she had donned her hat and coat, they set out for the bus together. Kempton Park racecourse was not far from Kingston and they arrived there in an hour. Closed since the outbreak of war, they found it encircled with wooden fencing and patrolled by a policeman who directed them to an entrance.
‘We come see prisoner,’ Eleni announced. ‘She arrested by mistake.’
‘No prisoners here, only internees. Name?’
‘Madam Eleni Popodopolous. And this prisoner’s son Captain Theodoros Trickey of famous East Surrey reggimento.’
‘I, um, I’m not a cap—’
The receptionist rolled his eyes. ‘The internee’s name, not yours!’
‘Oh, she Signora Carmelina Ladurner-Trickey an’ very important lady so you mind your manners, young man!’
Following more confusion and delay they were shown to a waiting room, once an office, with a window overlooking the racecourse. Through it they could see a wired enclosure on the grass near the grandstand. Within it stood a cluster of tents and huts.
‘What this bloody madness?’ Eleni muttered. A few minutes later the door opened and Carla hurried in.
Theo hadn’t seen her in six months, not since he’d left Kingston for OCTU the previous December. Cries of relief and tearful embraces followed; then she stood him back for inspection.
‘You’re taller,’ she scolded in Italian, ‘and thinner. You look like your father.’
‘You’re thinner too, Mama. Don’t they feed you?’
‘Pasta! They think that’s all Italians eat.’
‘When are they letting you out?’
She didn’t know – nobody did, so little was explained. Soon she was tearful again.
‘Mama, don’t upset yourself.’
‘I’m not upset! I’m angry.’
‘What do the officials say?’
Her eyes flickered. ‘They say I could be “A” Class.’
The Kempton camp, they learned, was just one of many across the country, set up as temporary transit facilities. And the facilities – eating, washing, sleeping – were basic and communal, while the regime was tedious and humiliating. Currently the camp housed four hundred Italian men and women aged between seventeen and seventy. Most, Carla explained, had been British residents for years, many for all their lives. Very few, in her view, were Fascists, or in any way a threat to the State. The rumour was that those with ‘C’ classifications would be sent home, while those classified ‘B’ were to go to permanent camps around the UK. ‘God knows where. Scotland, Wales, some place called Orkney, people say. Hundreds of miles away.’
‘What about the others? The “A” Class people?’
Carla’s face fell. ‘Deported. To special internment prisons, in Canada.’
Before they knew it their time was up and they were told to leave. Theo assured Carla he would do everything possible; Eleni promised to bring her more food and belongings. Carla embraced them both. ‘Maybe Brown knows something,’ she murmured to Theo, before being led away.
From Kempton he went back to Kingston and the King’s Road headquarters of the East Surrey Regiment, where his reception was less fulsome. ‘Where the fuck have you sprung from?’ the guard on the gate said. Inside, the barracks were quiet: 1st Battalion on leave following Dunkirk, 2nd Battalion en route to Malaya, and the Territorials, including Theo’s 2/6th, not yet regrouped following the chaos of France. He asked for Henry Winterbottom but was told he was unavailable; instead, after close questioning by an intelligence officer, and an angry grilling from a quartermaster sergeant – ‘Where’s your bloody rifle!’ – he was brought before the colonel of the whole regiment. Standing to attention on the polished parquet, some minutes passed in silence while the colonel read from a dossier.
‘Sit,’ he finally said, studying Theo over his spectacles. ‘So, young man, and what do you propose we do with you?’
‘I, um, don’t know, sir.’
‘No, and neither do I. Because it seems that nothing about you is quite as it appears, and that’s rather troubling.’
‘Sir?’
‘Yes, damn it! You go absent without leave, turn up in France, vanish for weeks, then wander in here without a by-your-leave. Don’t you find that troubling?’
‘Possibly, sir, but I can—’
‘And that’s just the start of it! Your nationality, for example. It says British on your signing-on form. But that’s not true, is it?’
‘I am half-British, sir.’
‘And half-Italian.’
‘South Tyrolean.’
‘Whatever that means.’
‘I’m English on my father’s side.’
‘Ah yes, your father. That’s another thing.’
‘He was English, sir. And an officer of this regiment, in the last war.’
‘No, he wasn’t. We’ve checked, and there is no record of a Lieutenant Victor Trickey ever having been an officer here.’
‘But—’
‘Which all puts me in a very difficult situation, Acting Officer Cadet Trickey. Because Italy, as you know, has declared war on Britain, and we can’t have Italians serving in the British army. Even Tyrolean ones.’
‘But, sir…’
‘In fact some might say you should be in an internment camp. Like your mother.’
Henry Winterbottom, he knew then, was at the root of all this. His mother’s trusted friend, confidant and amante, he’d probably written the dossier himself and passed it to the colonel. Why? Because the Trickeys and their problems had grown too burdensome, and too complicated, to manage any more, especially since Italy’s entry into the war. Or perhaps it was pique; perhaps Carla had simply spurned Henry for another – Mr Brown the new lodger, for instance. Or perhaps she was of no interest to him now she was interned. It didn’t really matter, Theo realized, his gaze wandering to the window, their minds were made up; nothing he said would change anything. What did matter was that no Lieutenant Victor Trickey ever served with the East Surreys. That mattered, and it hurt. And even if deep down he’d sometimes harboured secret doubts of his own, having it expressed so plainly like that was painful. And heartless of the colonel. Who was still talking. Something about the seriousness of going absent from his OCTU. No mention of his eagerness to serve his country, or his excellent record at the bridge in Caen, or his messenger work with the 51st. But then no one knew about those things, he realized; those who did were all dead or captured, even General Fortune. The colonel droned on and he half listened, his mind suddenly on four young Scotsmen outside Saint-Valery. You’re the fucking officer! t
hey’d shouted, before charging to their deaths. And then his encounter with Rommel. Make your decision! Or was that in a dream? It was so hard to tell any more. A pigeon landed on the colonel’s ledge, fluffing itself up against the glass. Beside the window was a noticeboard displaying standing orders, lists of names and units, and a couple of leaflets. Ready for Action? read one leaflet, and showed a crouching soldier holding a machine gun. Volunteers required immediately for hazardous duties. All ranks eligible.
He was to be sacked from the army, he learned at last, to little surprise. Cast aside because he was an embarrassment and a puzzle. The colonel assured him it would happen without fuss, his record showing he was discharged for ‘administrative’ reasons only. He was to leave the premises now and return tomorrow to hand in his uniform, pay book, identity discs and any other kit he still possessed. By noon he would be a civilian again. He was sorry, the colonel said, but it was best for all parties.
By which he meant himself and Winterbottom. Theo rose to go, then stopped.
‘Um, one thing, sir.’
‘Yes?’
‘My unit. B Company, the 2/6th. What happened to it?’
‘Still missing, most of them.’ The colonel shuffled papers. ‘So you can count yourself lucky.’
*
Back at the boarding house he paced aimlessly from room to room, trying to process all that had happened. His mother, Kempton Park, the huts and tents, deportation to Canada, then the barracks, Where’s your bloody rifle, and the colonel, disowning his father, then sacking him, and losing everything he’d ever dreamed of. It was too much, more than he could bear, he couldn’t absorb it, couldn’t think. He remembered he had letters, a small bundle Eleni had left for him on the mantelpiece, and with nothing else to do he sat down in the parlour to read. Apart from the usual circulars, coupons and catalogues, and a bill from Aldershot OCTU for unpaid accommodation, there were just two items of interest, a letter from an address in Rome, and a picture postcard from Normandy dated three weeks earlier:
‘Dear Theo, excusing my Anglish, the Boche will come very soon, these are bad days very sad, Madame Gondrée tell me send best wishes and bonne chance, think on me, sincèrement, Jeanette Bolpert x.’
The picture was of the bridge over the canal, with Café Gondrée in the background. He fingered the card, recalling the scene. Guard duty in the snow, soup and stolen kisses with Jeanette, warm conversation and hot chocolate at the Gondrées’. Only three months ago, yet already another lifetime. German soldiers now guarded his bridge, he reflected, and German officers drank at the café. If Thérèse let them.
The Italian letter was from his uncle Rodolfo Zambon, his grandmother Eleanora’s brother, who lived in Rome. Eleanora was in failing health, he said, with ‘nerves’, so he and his wife wanted to persuade her to leave Bolzano and live with them. He had written to Carla about this but she seemed reluctant, so could Theo perhaps intervene? Next, their efforts to secure his grandfather Josef’s release from prison were ongoing, including pressure from outside agencies, but the old man was stubborn and refused to agree the ‘terms’, which Theo knew meant renouncing his South Tyrolean identity and heritage – something Josef would never do. In the interim Rodolfo hoped to get Josef moved to a prison for political offenders nearer Rome. Theo’s cousin Renata, meanwhile, she of the ice cream and beautiful curls, was now eighteen, Rodolfo reported, and a noted beauty, which was causing him no end of headaches. She often spoke of her dashing cousin Theodor, he said, concluding somewhat facetiously that any time Theo found himself in Italy, he must be sure to look them up.
He folded the letter, recalling the family disputes, the riots and demonstrations in the street, the arrests and persecutions that were so much a feature of his childhood. And also remembering Rodolfo, with his oiled hair and fancy car, driving him and Renata for sweet treats and political indoctrination at the ice-cream parlour. Strong government and a disciplined proletariat, he said, were what a progressive Europe needed. Tyranny and oppression, in other words, with dissent ruthlessly crushed. As in Poland, and Belgium, and France, and even England it seemed, randomly throwing its foreign settlers in prison. What had the colonel said? Some might say you should be in an internment camp. Like your mother.
‘Good news?’ a kindly voice enquired. Mr Brown, the new lodger, had appeared in the parlour.
‘Oh, um, well – no, not terribly. My family, abroad, it’s complicated.’
‘I’m so sorry. Anything I can do?’
‘Thank you.’ He hesitated. ‘As I say, it’s complicated.’
‘When is it not with families! I say, are those foreign stamps?’ Brown stooped beside him. About thirty, with a disarming smile and swept-back hair, he had a military bearing, despite civilian attire. ‘Italy and France – heavens, may I take a look? My nephew’s mad about stamps!’
‘Oh, well, yes, of course.’ Theo handed them over, watching as Brown swiftly scanned them before passing them back.
‘Ah, pity, he has these ones. Never mind, thanks anyway.’
‘Tea, my dears?’ Eleni entered bearing a tray.
‘Ah, Mrs Popodopoulos, how very kind you are. A veritable Hellenic treasure.’
‘Get away you flattering!’
‘Not at all. Oh and I wonder, when you have a moment, could you prepare my bill? I have to leave in the morning.’
‘Blimey, so soon? You only jus’ arrive three day ago!’
‘Yes I know, but the company wants me up north for a bit. Blasted nuisance, but what can one do?’
And later that night Brown knocked on Theo’s door.
‘Hello, old chap, sorry to disturb and that. Wondered if I could have a word?’
Theo rubbed his eyes. ‘What about?’
‘Well, you seemed a bit down in the dumps earlier.’
‘Um, yes, family, and other things…’
‘I heard about your mother. You have my sympathies.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Listen.’ Brown produced a business card. International Research Bureau, it said, with an address in central London. ‘I sense you could do with advice: you know, careers guidance and so on. Go and see these people, ask for Captain Grant, tell him I sent you. They’ll help.’
‘Careers? Well, I suppose—’
‘Good man!’ Brown smiled. ‘Go tomorrow, while the iron’s hot, what?’ With that he slipped the card into Theo’s pyjama pocket, bade him goodnight and closed the door.
In the morning he was gone. Theo came downstairs with a list of questions, but Eleni said Brown had departed before dawn. Munching breakfast Theo studied the business card, wondering about Carla’s mention of Brown, and what line of work International Research Bureau might be in. Baker Street the address said, in the West End, and at least two hours from Kingston, and another two hours back. He checked the clock: he was supposed to return his uniform and kit to barracks. And sign off from the army for ever. Before noon. He’d never make it.
The building was unlike any business premises he’d ever seen. A featureless red-brick house like many others in Baker Street, its exterior gave no hint as to its purpose or trade. He pressed a buzzer, was admitted, gave his name to a uniformed doorman and within minutes was clanking upstairs in a rickety lift. Exiting on the fourth floor a female receptionist ushered him to a dingy, cluttered office, occupied by a chain-smoking officer wearing a captain’s uniform. The uniform was rumpled and ash-stained, it displayed no regimental insignia, the tie was loose, its owner looked dishevelled and unshaven.
‘I’m Grant,’ he said, hefting files from a chair. ‘Do please sit. Sorry about the mess – we’re at sixes and sevens rather. I take it you’ve seen this?’ He handed Theo a leaflet. The same Ready for Action leaflet he’d seen on the colonel’s noticeboard yesterday.
‘Well, I haven’t actually read it.’
‘No matter.’ Grant returned to his desk, which was festooned with files and papers. Outside a typewriter clattered; somewhere a telephone rang. ‘There, that
’s better. Now then, Theodor, isn’t it? Or do you prefer Teddy? Or is it Andreas, which is your first name, I believe?’
‘I… Theo’s fine, sir.’
‘Theo it is. So, Theo, tell me a little about yourself. Your family, upbringing, all that flummery. And especially about your recent adventures in France, of course.’
So Theo told him, at length, and all the while Grant watched him, and massaged his fingers, and chain-smoked, and said little except to prompt him about some detail or event, until eventually Theo faltered to silence.
‘And, um, that’s all, sir, really.’
‘Extraordinary. And Rommel actually spoke to you. At Saint-Valery?’
‘Yes, sir. He said it was vital each of us knows which side we’re on.’
‘How interesting.’ Grant ground his cigarette into an ashtray and then immediately lit another. ‘And how true. Now, tell me, Theo, do you know what a Kommando is?’
‘No, sir.’
‘It’s a Boer expression in origin. It’s a small unit of men, formed with a specific job in mind, operating autonomously, and often disbanded when the job’s done. Do you follow me?’
‘Kind of, sir.’ Hazardous duties, the leaflet said, beneath the picture of the soldier with machine gun. Volunteers required immediately for hazardous duties. All ranks eligible.
‘Good. Because we, the army that is, have been tasked with forming some of these units, bloody quick, to send into action against Jerry. Harrying tactics, a bit of sabotage, demolition, that sort of thing.’
‘Oh.’ Theo wondered what this had to do with International Research Bureau.
‘Yes, the PM’s very fired up about it.’ Grant pointed at the leaflet. ‘So every CO of every unit in the country has been sent that, with orders to get chaps to sign up.’
‘I see.’
‘But it’s all taking too long.’
‘Ah.’
More followed, dizzyingly fast. The very first of these new units, Grant said, called 3 Commando for some reason, was forming right that minute, and was already earmarked for a possible mission. But it was under-strength, badly in need of fit young men with good references and active experience to make up the numbers.
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