“To the Promised Land. And you’re going to travel there in style, boyo. So make the most of it.”
The torch flashed ahead of him and he saw men moving in its beam. Men loaded with equipment. Engines started up all around him. The light picked out a truck directly in front, a small three-quarter-ton weapons carrier. The tailboard was down and the canvas flaps thrown back to reveal its load of miscellaneous equipment and jerrycans.
“In you go, then,” said Jones briskly, directing the torch beam into a small space between the jerrycans.
The night air and the walk and the coffee were working inside Butler to restore him to the human race. He could even feel a stirring of anger now; chiefly it was directed against himself for the sort of behaviour he had hitherto observed with contempt in others. It was true that he hadn’t set out to drink too much, as they so often did on a Saturday night with such mindless enthusiasm. But it was also true that he didn’t even like alcohol very much—and more, that he had been warned against it by both his father and the general, each in his different way. It was the general’s more oblique warning which hurt him more now, because in cautioning him to watch out for the untrust-worthiness of men who drank too much the old man had taken for granted that he would never be such a man.
“Go on,” urged Jones, more impatiently, taking his arm.
Butler shook the hand away. A little piece of that anger tarred his father and the general for not warning him more strongly when to beware the demon, but a much larger one blackened Taffy Jones, who had filled him up with wine and then betrayed him.
But there was nothing he could do about that now, when he was in the wrong himself. That accounting would have to wait.
He reached forward and took hold of the side of the truck. As he lifted his leg to lever himself aboard his knee struck the butt frame of the Sten, driving the gun upwards. Somehow the sling had twisted during the walk in the darkness and the movement of the gun tightened it round his neck, half choking him and throwing him off his balance.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” exclaimed Jones.
Butler untangled the Sten with clumsy fingers in the light of the torch, grasped the side of the truck once more, and attempted to hoist himself up. But this time, just as his foot was settling on the floor, he felt Jones pushing him from behind. His boot skidded along the metal, bounced off a jerrycan and lost its foothold altogether.
Meine Stiefel, he thought irrelevantly. Meine bloody Stiefel.
Jones gave an exasperated growl. “For fuck’s sake,” he hissed at Butler, “get into the bloody truck, man!”
Butler started to move again, and then stopped.
Meine Stiefel!
He turned towards Jones. ‘What happened to Sergeant Scott?” He stared blindly into the torch’s beam. “And Mr.—Mr. Wilson—the men we’re replacing?”
There was noise and movement all round him, he could sense it in the darkness. But he could also sense the silence behind the beam of light which blinded him.
Then the light left his face. “None of your business, boyo,” said Jones, reaching forward to push him towards the truck again. “None of your business.”
Butlers anger erupted. Before he could stop himself he had swept Jones’s arm out of the way and had grabbed the little Welshman by the throat with one hand while the other spun him round against the tailboard. The man’s cry of surprise, half stifled by the choking hand at his neck, turned to one of pain as he was bent backwards into the jerrycans.
“I said—what happened to Sergeant Scott?” Butler brought his knee up into Jones’s crotch menacingly as he felt a hand clawing at him. The hand went limp.
“Arrgh-arrgh-arrgh,” mouthed Jones.
Butler slackened his throat-grip, at the same time grasping the free hand which had tried to claw him and slamming it hard against the truck.
“You f— ahhh!” Whatever Jones had planned to say was cut off by renewed pressure. “You’re breaking my—breaking my back.”
“What happened to Sergeant Scott?” Butler repeated, wishing he could see the Welshman’s face.
Jones whispered something, but Butler resisted the temptation to lean forward to catch the words. The strength of his grip depended on his straight arm; once he bent his elbow he would also bring his face into range of a head-butt, which was the oldest last resort of all.
“Speak up, you little bugger,” he snarled.
Jones relaxed. “Accident,” he said hoarsely. “Had—an—accident.”
“What sort of accident?”
Jones lay very still. “Shot himself.”
“How?” Butler frowned in the darkness. He hadn’t expected this answer, but when he thought about such an accident it wasn’t so very surprising, particularly with the outlandish selection of weapons favoured by Chandos Force.
“Cleaning his rifle,” said Jones.
Butler was disappointed. “And Mr. Wilson?”
This time Jones seemed unwilling to remember. Butler lifted his knee a little to jog his memory.
“Accident,” said Jones quickly.
“Cleaning his revolver?” Butler kept the knee in position.
“No. Stepped on a mine.” Jones’s voice rose plaintively.
“Corporal Jones!” The sergeant-major’s shout was unmistakable.
Jones struggled convulsively.
“CORPORAL JONES!” The shout was louder and nearer.
Butler held him down. “Next time I ask a civil question, you give a civil answer—remember that,” he said, quickly letting go of the Welshman and stepping smartly to the side out of his reach as he did so.
The sergeant-major loomed up in the darkness just as Jones had managed to straighten himself. “Are you deaf, Corporal Jones?”
“Sergeant-major!” Jones’s voice cracked.
“Well—get that man into the truck double-quick and then report to Sergeant Purvis on the double, Corporal!”
Butler didn’t wait to be helped. Pushing Jones out of the way he hauled himself up among the jerrycans.
“Tailboard!” roared the sergeant-major.
Jones slammed the tailboard up and groped in the darkness for the locking pin. He had lost his torch, thought Butler with malicious satisfaction. Serve the little bugger right!
“Remember?” Jones hissed at him. “I’ll remember, boyo—you can bet on that.”
“You do,” said Butler.
“Don’t you worry”—the little man was clumsy with rage; Butler could hear the pin scraping as he searched for the hole—“don’t you worry about that”
“I won’t,” said Butler.
“No. You worry about having another accident—you worry about that, boyo … just you worry about that.”
The truck rocked as its crew came aboard. Away to the right a motorcycle was kicked into life. The shaded headlights of first one jeep, then another, then others, were switched on.
Chandos Force was going to war.
“You all right back there?”
Butler grunted and settled himself as best he could among the jerrycans. He wasn’t at all sure that he was all right. He wasn’t even sure why he had lost his temper with Jones like that; it had been as though there was someone else inside him. That was what drink did to a man, of course: he had remembered that simple question, the one he’d wanted to ask about Sergeant Scott, and—
The truck jerked forward, bumping over uneven ground and then tilting steeply up an incline before turning sharply onto a smoother surface. He watched the jeeps’ headlights buck and tilt as they crossed the same ground, then flicker on and off as the trees of the farm track obscured them. They were heading for the main road—
He stared at the lights, hypnotised by the return of his memory. The simple question had not received a simple answer: Taffy Jones had been by turns unwilling to speak, and then frightened, and finally threatening. Yet even before that, when he had been throwing up the contents of his stomach against that stone wall—Spilling the beans?
�
��Did you get what we wanted?”
That harsher voice questioning Jones—the voice he couldn’t place at the time, but which now seemed oddly familiar.
“Yes … spilled the beans he did…”
What beans?
What did “we” want?
Who were “we”?
Too many accidents—
The truck swung sharply to the left, then slowed as the driver crashed the gears. They had reached the main road.
“Keep it moving, buddy!” shouted a rich American voice.
Chandos Force was going to war.
But there was something very wrong with Chandos Force.
CHAPTER 8
How Corporal Butler heard, of his death
BUTLER MUNCHED an oatmeal block and tried to analyse why he felt much better than he had any right to feel.
It was true that he still felt thirsty, even after having drunk at least a quarter of the precious contents of his water bottle, so that he had decided to forgo the extra pleasure of a couple of boiled sweets from his twenty-four-hour pack, since they were notorious thirst-increasers.
It was also true that he had slept most of the night away in spite of his cramped position, with only the haziest impression of numerous stops and starts, several rumbling Bailey bridge crossings, and shouted American exhortations at intervals to keep closed up and to keep moving.
But the fact remained that when he shook his head vigorously—he shook it again just to recheck the evidence—there was no headache, and the oatmeal block was expanding comfortably inside him. Indeed, if anything he was feeling rather better than he usually did before he had had the chance of a wash and a shave.
Maybe it was because he didn’t feel as awful as he deserved that he was feeling better. But it was more likely, he decided dispassionately, that he had been lucky enough to be very sick before all the alcohol in that deceptively innocent wine could infiltrate his bloodstream. In fact he could recall now (and too late) that according to the hardest drinker in the platoon at the Depot the secret of heavy drinking lay in the proper defensive preparation of the lining of the stomach. Once the alcohol had advanced through that lining into the bloodstream then resistance was in vain, according to Rifleman Callaghan, who was accustomed to fortify himself in advance with a huge, greasy fry-up of sausages and chips before drinking all comers under the table—a sovereign recipe he claimed to have had from a quartermaster who had devoted a lifetime to the study of the subject.
That problem resolved to his satisfaction, Butler felt ready to tackle two more pressing ones.
Viewed from the vantage point of a clear head after several hours’ sleep, the previous evening had the unreal shape of a nightmare. What was certain was that he owed an abject apology to Corporal Jones, who had encouraged him to be sick and whom he had rewarded with weird suspicions and physical assault, the very memory of which now made his flesh creep with embarrassment.
He swallowed the last of the oatcake and decided not to eat another. Instead he took an extra swig of water.
So the first thing to do was to apologise to the Welshman.
The second thing was to find a private place and treat his left foot with gentian violet. He could already feel the sharp irritation between the toes—after missing the treatment for a full twenty-four hours it was noticeably worse, not very far from being actually painful; which was hardly surprising since regular application was the key to the treatment.
He leaned forward and parted the canvas flap. The pitch blackness of the hour before dawn had passed, and he could feel the coming of daylight even though he couldn’t yet see the division between land and sky. He sniffed at the air, but there was no strange smell other than exhaust fumes and warm rubber, which were familiar now. Yet there was still something disquieting to his senses.
Suddenly he knew what it was. Beyond the sound of the engines of the truck and the jeeps there was no sound. No distant gunfire, no drone of aircraft—nothing.
No flashes either—he stood up and twisted his neck to get a look ahead—and no flashes in that direction. He had had the distinct impression during the moments of half-consciousness on the journey that they had been travelling at breakneck speed, far too fast for safety, as though the Americans were determined to deliver them on time for some impossible pre-arranged zero hour. But it looked as though they hadn’t come nearly as far south towards the river as he had estimated —that they were still in the middle of nowhere in the newly conquered territory of the Third Army.
Which was disappointing. They’d never manage a dawn crossing of the Loire now, which was the obvious moment to slip across the river and through the German lines.
Someone was coming, he could hear the sharp tap of metal heelplates on the tarmac.
“Five minutes … five minutes …” The voice that went with the metallic taps was Sergeant Purvis’s. “Five minutes …”
Butler ducked down inside the back of the truck. Sergeant Purvis was one man he was ashamed to meet after his performance of the previous night.
“Five minutes”—the flap was jerked aside—“are you awake in there, Corporal Butler?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” said Butler quickly.
A torch shone into his face. “How d’you feel, lad?” asked the sergeant, not unkindly.
“Okay, Sergeant.”
“Then you must have a head like a bloody rhinoceros,” said the sergeant. “We’ll be stopping here for five minutes, anyway. So if you want a quick shit, now’s your chance.”
Butler thought of the water he’d just drunk. “Right, Sergeant.”
Purvis watched him as he climbed out of the truck, which reminded him of the trouble he’d had getting into it. If Jones had told the sergeant about it, then this might be the occasion when the sergeant would choose to dress him down for his behaviour. Or he might be just checking to see that he was in a fit state for duty.
He stamped his feet and pulled his equipment straight. His knees ached a bit, but the ground had a good firm feeling to it. He reached back inside the truck and lifted out his Sten.
The sergeant was still watching him.
“Anything the matter, Sergeant?”
“Here, lad—“ Sergeant Purvis handed something to him—it was smooth and cold. It was a bottle. “The hair of the dog … if you’re feeling as rough as I think you are that’ll set you up again.”
Before Butler could reply the sergeant had turned on his heel and continued down the road.
“Five minutes … you’ve got five minutes—“
He hefted the bottle in his hand. It was about half full, he judged, and there was nothing in the world he felt less like than drinking. But in this darkness that at least was no problem. He made his way cautiously off the road onto a grass verge beside which a big motorcycle was parked. He had the vague impression that there was a field of low bushes, maybe waist-high, beyond it, but as he was about to cast the bottle into the bushes there was a movement among them. A moment later a string of curses in an exasperated American voice issued out of the darkness and a match flared among the bushes.
For a bet, that must be the owner of the motorbike, decided Butler. And for another bet, the owner of the motorbike would know where the convoy was heading.
The flame kindled again—it was a cigarette lighter, not a match—and there came a satisfied grunt with it: the Yank had found whatever it was he was looking for. Butler waited patiently beside the motorbike, listening to his precious minutes tick away, until a darker nucleus loomed up out of the field.
“Who’s that?” said the Yank.
“A friend—British,” said Butler. “Would you like a drink, Yank?”
The figure approached him. ‘What you got?”
Butler remembered that Americans were devoted to whisky. “Only wine, I’m afraid,” he answered apologetically.
“Hell, mac, that’s better than nothing. I’ve swallowed enough dust, my mouth’s like the bottom of a birdcage.”
“Help yours
elf then.” Butler thrust the bottle into the American’s hands. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Okay. But watch yourself down there … and don’t eat any of those goddamn grapes—they’ll give you the runs.”
Grapes! So the low bushes were vines, Butler realised—and so they had indeed come far south of Normandy. He strained his eyes into the darkness as he unbuttoned his fly. He could just see—or now imagined he could see—a faint difference between the blackness of the sky and that of the land. But it was impossible to estimate how big the vineyard was—if it was a big one then the Loire couldn’t be too far away.
He made his way back to the road.
“Thanks, mac,” said the Yank.
“Keep the bottle, Yank,” said Butler. ‘Where I’m going I’m told there’s more of it.”
“Uh-huh?” The American chuckled. “Smoke?”
It was on the tip of Butler’s tongue to admit he didn’t smoke, but then he remembered what he was about. “Thanks.”
“Keep the pack. One thing we’ve got plenty of—and you won’t find more of them where you’re going, that’s for sure.”
“Thanks.” Butler extracted a cigarette from the packet and leant forward towards the flame extended to him. He must remember not to inhale the smoke, which would make him cough if he did—
Christ! The broad white stripe and the white letters “MP” on the American’s helmet were momentarily illuminated in the light of the flame: he had cheerfully offered illicit alcohol to a Military Policeman in a forward combat area!
The smoke found its way into his lungs and set him coughing. If anything, American cigarettes tasted even fouler than British ones.
But the American MP seemed as friendly as ever, the red tip of his cigarette glowing bright as he drew on it. “Ranger outfit, are you, mac?” he said amiably.
Butler managed to find his breath. Maybe American MPs were less bloody-minded than British ones; or maybe they took a more lenient view of foreign allies. “Ranger?” he repeated stupidly.
“Aw, hell—what d’you British call ‘em—Commandos, that’s it.”
Butler thought of the brigands he had seen the previous night, and wasn’t sure whether he was flattered or not. “Well—sort of, yes,” he admitted.
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