The Way Ahead

by Mary Jane Staples

  ‘Let’s harness Humpy to the dogcart and all have a ride to Tolpuddle, shall we?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, could we, Mummy?’ begged Giles.

  ‘Count us all in,’ said Felicity.

  ‘Up, everyone, up, up, on your feet,’ said Rosie, ‘and let’s enjoy the great outdoors.’

  * * *

  Leah entered Sammy’s office to place a cup of tea on his desk.

  ‘Well, ta muchly,’ said Sammy, who’d been wading through the more artful clauses of a new set of regulations from the Ministry of Supply. They might have been framed by Civil Servants in stiff collars, but they were still the work of blokes who knew the advantages were all theirs in the matter of giving out contracts. ‘That’ll cure my headache.’

  ‘Oh, d’you have a headache, Mister Sammy?’ said Leah.

  ‘Sometimes, Leah,’ said Sammy, ‘I’d be better off leaving my head at home, where Susie could look after it with a piece of old-fashioned affection, which is one of the things married wives are good at. When you’re a married wife—’

  ‘But all wives are naturally married, Mister Sammy,’ said Leah. She called him that in the office, as the other girls did. Outside of that, she called him Uncle Sammy, for he’d been like an uncle to her and Rebecca for as long as she could remember. ‘You can’t be a wife unless you are married.’

  ‘I can’t?’ said Sammy, taking a welcome mouthful of hot tea.

  ‘No, not you, you’re a man,’ said Leah.

  ‘I’m glad you said that,’ murmured Sammy. ‘By the time I get home some days, I feel like a fairy penguin with no flappers.’

  ‘Mister Sammy, stop making me giggle,’ said Leah.

  Sammy took a kind look at the lovely young lady, so like her mother at her age.

  ‘How’s your love life, Leah?’ he asked.

  ‘Mister Sammy?’ said Leah, slightly pink.

  ‘Well, you and Edward are still going strong, are you?’ said Sammy.

  ‘You don’t mind about us, do you?’ said Leah.

  ‘Mind?’ said Sammy.

  ‘Well, there’s our differences,’ said Leah.

  ‘What’s that got to do with young love?’ asked Sammy. ‘Listen, if Susie had been a Buddhist nun, would that difference have made me back off? Not on your Nelly. I’d have broken into her Chinese nunnery, carried her off and married her at the first church we reached in Hong Kong, even if she’d yelled it was against her vows to wear wedding garters and a frilly nightie.’

  ‘Oh, my life, Mister Sammy, stop making me giggle more,’ begged Leah.

  ‘I can’t hear you giggling,’ said Sammy.

  ‘Well, you will in a minute,’ said Leah. ‘Suppose Edward asked me to marry him—’ She let that hang in the air.

  ‘I happen to have heard that’s a possibility,’ said Sammy. ‘Edward’s mum and dad mentioned it to me and Susie. Leah, I seriously recommend you don’t let differences muck your life up. You and Edward can both do your own kind of praying. What’s the biggest difference between people in this country? Conservatism and Socialism. Sometimes they could beat each other to death with spiked copper sticks. But some Conservatives do marry Socialists, male and female respective, of course, and they get happy beating each other with rolled-up pamphlets. Rolled-up pamphlets are more loving than spiked copper sticks. You got that, Leah?’

  ‘Yes, Uncle Sammy, and you’re a dear,’ said Leah, who had heard from Edward to the effect that after considering how to frame the letter to her mother, he’d decided to put everything down in plain English. Any moment now, she expected her mother to receive the letter. ‘Well, I’d better get back to my work, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, we should all do a bit during business hours,’ said Sammy. ‘It helps us to remember we’re working to help the Army and the RAF look well-dressed, which I presume is noticed by the enemy and accordingly puts the wind up ’em.’

  ‘Mister Sammy, you’re making me giggle again,’ said Leah, and went back to her work.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Italy, mid-May

  THE ALLIES HAD taken Monte Cassino at last, and had begun their advance on Rome. American, Canadian, British, Free French and Polish forces were all involved. The Germans were retreating to a new defensive position, a prepared one, the Adolf Hitler line, but fighting all the way. South-east of the town of Frosinone, their artillery was giving 13 Corps of the British 8th Army a brutal pounding, checking its momentum and inflicting heavy casualties.

  At dawn, a flight of Bristol Beaufighters took off from the rear of 13 Corps to attack the German guns. They flew straight for their target, several batteries of camouflaged heavy artillery within an extensive ring of protective anti-aircraft batteries. On their way they passed high above regrouping German units, which issued radio warnings to a squadron of Messerschmitt fighters based northwest of Frosinone. The Beaufighters, however, arrived before the Messerschmitts, and their leader, coming in low, spotted the camouflaged guns. He gave orders through the intercom, and his flight manoeuvred at once into the attack formation. Down came the Beaufighters, one after the other, screaming through the bursting flak, to deliver their explosive rockets. The German gun crews scattered for shelter. The rockets struck home, and from the explosions huge balls of fire leapt.

  The Messerschmitts arrived as the last of the Beaufighters completed the mission. The RAF leader, high in the sky, was turning for home, his flight following. The Messerschmitts, higher, swooped.

  ‘Leader! Bandits! Twelve o’clock!’ The warning came from the pilot of the RAF tail-ender.

  ‘Break!’

  The Beaufighters broke formation, peeling off in an avoiding action. A frenzied dogfight took place. The Beaufighters, lightning-fast and superbly manoeuvrable, were an elusive target for the Messerschmitts and quickly turned their avoiding action into attack. The sky crackled with fire, and tracer bullets flashed streams of light. The Messerschmitts pressed home their own attacks. Two of them cut out a Beaufighter and downed the plane, its tail splintering and disintegrating. A revengeful Beaufighter screamed in pursuit of the victorious Messerschmitts which, warned by their leader, soared upwards. Too late. Cannon shells from the Beaufighter caught one amidships as it became a rising silhouette against the sky, and it blew up.

  ‘No apologies,’ grated the RAF pilot, and then shuddered as cannon shells from a pursuing Messerschmitt smashed into the tail of his own plane. Sparks flashed and blazed, plumes of black smoke streamed. The Beaufighter tottered in the sky, fell away and began a crazy spiral to doom a few miles south-east of Frosinone.

  It was late afternoon when Caterina Angeli came out of the school in the village of Asconi. She mounted her old jangling bicycle, and a lingering residue of young pupils called ‘Ciao!’ to her as she rode away. She smiled, heading for the quiet outskirts of the village. Into her vision as she reached her house five minutes later came a limping figure from the fields beyond. Her house was the last in this street. Dismounting at her door, she watched him, a man in a dusty flying kit, helmet under his arm. Seeing her, he hesitated, then made up his mind and limped quickly towards her. From the south-west came the sound of guns. It was said that the Allies were advancing from the south and the Germans retreating north. Perhaps, in their retreat, some German units would pass through Asconi. If so, everyone would be wise to stay out of their way.

  Here was a flying man, yes, that was obvious, but German or British or American? He approached in a positive way, despite his limp and she noted that the right leg of his combat trousers was raggedly torn. When he was close enough, his partly unzipped flying jacket disclosed a glimpse of what she was sure was the blue of an RAF uniform. She thought him a fine-looking man, despite a bruise on his right jaw. He spoke from a dry throat.

  ‘Signorina?’

  ‘Signora.’

  ‘Speak English?’

  Caterina Angeli did not answer that. She turned, opened her front door and said, ‘Go in – quick.’ He stepped in. She followed, with her bike. One di
d not leave any bicycle unattended these days. The RAF man closed the door for her. ‘Yes, I speak English,’ she said with a lilting Italian accent. ‘I taught English at the high school in Frosinone before coming here to live with my husband, and to teach at our village school. You are RAF, yes?’

  ‘Shot down this morning behind the German lines and landed about four kilometres from here,’ he said. ‘I’ve been keeping clear of the foe ever since.’

  ‘If they know you are alive they will search everywhere,’ said Caterina. She took off her black headscarf, and fluffed at her glossy black hair. Her dark lashes framed the melting brown eyes of Italy. She was twenty-eight, her colour healthy, her looks pleasing, her mouth full-lipped, and she was clad in a simple white blouse and black skirt. ‘You were limping, yes. Are you hurt?’

  ‘I’m not,’ he said, ‘my leg is.’

  ‘That is a joke?’ she said.

  ‘My leg’s no joke, signora, it’s gashed.’

  ‘Go in,’ she said, pointing, and he limped through from the little hall into a kitchen that exuded an aroma of lemons and spices. It was a neat, well-kept kitchen, its window looking onto the fields. ‘Sit, please,’ she said, ‘and show me your leg that is hurting.’

  ‘Have I found a friend?’ he asked with a smile. He was in good shape, apart from his injured leg. He put his helmet on the table, and took off his flying kit and his boots. Caterina saw at once that the right leg of his blue trousers was also torn and ragged. And badly stained. He sat down on a chair beside the table, and gingerly uncovered a leg that would have been a good-looking limb if it had not been foul with dried blood in some places and wetly red in others. The side of his calf showed a gash six inches long and still wetly raw. ‘A can-opener did that,’ he said.

  ‘A can-opener?’ she said, bending to examine the wound.

  ‘Jagged edge of a rock,’ he said. ‘I landed close to it, my chute pulled me over it and dragged my leg over the sharp edge. It felt just like a can-opener at work. Made a swine of a mess. Look at it. You could feed a sandwich into it.’

  ‘Ah, not good,’ said Caterina. ‘Or pretty, eh? But no artery is cut, so it is not as bad as it might be. I will clean it for you and disinfect it. Also bind it, and fetch a doctor to you when it’s dark. He will stitch it, I will ask him to. I will be careful, so will he. Even here, there are German secret police and some fascisti, some who still love Mussolini and Hitler.’

  Italy had come out of the war against the invading Allies last year, much to the relief and delight of a people who, unlike Hitler’s Germans, preferred a happy-go-lucky existence to conflict. It was to the grief and sorrow of most of them that, after Mussolini had been ousted and peace made with the Allies, a furious Hitler sent in hordes of jack-booted Nazis to occupy the country and to fight the Allied armies. Some Italian fascists became collaborators and informers, and some men and women became partisans.

  ‘I hope I don’t land you in trouble, signora,’ said the RAF pilot.

  ‘We will avoid that if we both take care,’ said Caterina. ‘First, this, I think, yes.’ She fetched a bottle of red wine from the rack on the stone floor of her larder, produced a glass and filled it. He moistened his dry lips with his tongue, took the glass and drank the wine in deep draughts.

  ‘Many thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ve been moving about for most of the day, carrying my ruddy leg with me. What luck to finish up in the house of a Florence Nightingale.’

  ‘Yes?’ Caterina smiled and her teeth showed moistly white. ‘I have heard of her. Who has not, eh, Inglese?’

  ‘Am I to know your name, signora?’

  ‘No, not wise, I think. Better no names, then you do not know me and I do not know you. Excuse, please.’ Caterina disappeared, but did not take long to return. She was carrying a white enamel bowl with a blue rim. It contained cotton wool, lint, bandage, ointment, and a small bottle of medical disinfectant. She placed the contents on the table, and half-filled the bowl from the tap. She added some disinfectant, then went down on one knee to examine more closely the RAF man’s gashed leg. ‘Please to bite your teeth, Inglese.’

  He shut his mouth tightly, and she doused the gash with pure disinfectant from the bottle. His wound went redhot with fiery pain, and he let out a sharp breath and an involuntary imprecation.

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘Ah, it helps to swear, yes?’ she said. ‘But it’s best for me to do this myself and not ask the doctor to come here in daylight, or to take you to him. You understand?’

  ‘Right,’ he said, and bore the pain as she cleansed his wound and his leg with a pad of cotton wool dipped in the disinfected water. The pad quickly turned a soiled, dirty red. She made another from the supply, and continued the cleansing. ‘Where’s your husband, signora?’ he asked.

  ‘Ah, my husband.’ She sighed. ‘Because of my teaching, I did not marry until a year ago. Later, after the Germans invaded Italy, my husband joined the partisans who were fighting them.’ Bitterness edged into her voice. ‘He was betrayed and taken. They tortured him, then hanged him. Slowly, you see, because he was against Hitler, and that is a terrible crime in the eyes of Germans. What an unfortunate people they are, and how unforgivable for what they did to my Pietro. This is his house, and I stay living here because that is the only way I can feel close to him.’

  ‘Hitler’s men have fiendish ways of making people suffer,’ said the RAF pilot. The wound was clean now, if still slowly seeping, and he watched as this caring Italian woman applied ointment-covered lint. Around it, she wound the bandage firmly, and fixed it with a safety-pin she had lodged in her hair. ‘I’m sorry about your husband,’ he said, ‘but thanks a thousand times for this.’

  ‘It’s a small thing to do for someone who is fighting Hitler and his Gestapo,’ she said, straightening up. ‘Now you may have more wine.’ She refilled the glass and gave it to him. ‘I will take you to a room where you can sit behind the curtain and watch the street for Germans, yes? Good. I will make a meal for both of us. It will not be much. Italy is being robbed of everything by the Germans. Come, Inglese.’

  She led the way to a charming room, and to an armchair by the unshuttered window over which lace curtains hung. He sat down with his glass of wine, and his smile conveyed admiration for her lack of dramatics and gratitude for her help. She asked him if he was going to attempt to get back to the British lines. He said yes. She asked if the Allies were definitely pushing the Germans back. Yes, he said. Then perhaps the British soldiers would be here in a few days, she said, and if so she would hide him until they arrived. That would save him from wandering about in hope.

  ‘You’re priceless,’ he said.

  ‘No, no, I am only doing what my husband would have done,’ she said.

  ‘You’re still priceless,’ said Pilot Officer Nick Harrison, husband of Annabelle and father of Philip and Linda.

  He was thirty-one, had returned to the war in Italy only a few days ago, and was now trapped behind enemy lines as his brother-in-law Bobby Somers had been during the retreat to Dunkirk, but his situation was different in that he had found a Samaritan, whereas in Helene Aarlberg, Bobby found a Tartar who took a long time to turn into a saviour.

  * * *

  General Eisenhower, in command of Overlord, the planned invasion of Normandy, was in daily conference with his field commanders, among whom was the extrovert Montgomery, famed destroyer of Rommel’s Afrika Korps, arguing constantly for the privilege of using his British and Empire troops to make Caen the anvil on which to break the major strength of German resistance. He was accordingly looked on by his American counterparts as a bigmouth.

  ‘Doesn’t that guy ever shut up?’

  ‘Not even in a dentist’s chair.’

  When these kind of asides got back to him, Monty grinned. He liked being noticed, and being talked about.

  From the moonlit sky above the flat area north-east of Ipswich in Suffolk, a troop-carrying plane, one of many that had left Scotland hours earlier, discharged
its complement of airborne Commandos. The men came floating earthwards as part of a final practice exercise before they were called on to help form the spearhead of the invasion force. One after the other, they touched down, supple limbs and bodies freely rolling. Collapsing parachutes tugged and strained in the night breeze. Harnesses were released, parachutes gathered and folded, and the men moved to rendezvous at speed with their commander, Colonel Lucas, the first man down. He waited in silence until the roll call had been completed.

  ‘No weaklings, Sergeant-Major?’ Which meant no fractures, no sprains?

  ‘None reported, sir,’ said Sergeant-Major Dawson.

  ‘Weaklings know they’ll get sent home to mother?’

  ‘They know, sir. Broken legs will march with the detachment. Sir.’

  ‘Time check,’ said Colonel Lucas to Captain Tim Adams, his deputy.

  ‘02.21,’ said Tim.

  ‘Right. We’ve a fifteen-mile trek to our rendezvous. Get going.’

  The detachment of Commandos moved off at a brisk pace, in single file behind Colonel Lucas and Captain Adams. Elsewhere in the area, other detachments on this final exercise were beginning their trek to the collective assembly point. Tomorrow they were scheduled to join the main division of airborne troops.

  That was the extent of their orders. If they guessed something big was in the offing, that guess pointed them at what was obvious at this stage of the war, an attempt to establish a front that would attack Germany from the west. Wondering about this did not prevent Colonel Lucas thinking of his wife Eloise, an ATS subaltern and Tim’s French-born half-sister. After another spell of duty at Troon following her return from the Middle East, she had been transferred back to liaison duties at the London headquarters of the Free French. Tim had suggested she’d have a fight on her hands. Luke, as Colonel Lucas was known to his intimates, said it wasn’t a fight that any oversexed French officer would win. He’d leave the ring awkwardly injured. Eloise had always been a handful, a woman whose French temperament surfaced all too easily, but she was nevertheless a lovely, beguiling witch and a challenge. Not that Luke had any real wish to tame her. As herself, she was endearing, exasperating and exciting all at once. Let her be. He had last made love to her on a leave three and a half months ago. During the early overtures she had suddenly begun to laugh.