They went back into the room. There was a coal fire in the small grate. ‘That’s nice,’ observed Brand. ‘Nice and homely.’ Miller suspected he wanted to ask something. Brand made to pull up the armchair, intending to sit on the arm, but prudently changed his mind and took a small wooden chair instead.
‘It’s these I can’t figure,’ he said. From his pocket he took an assortment of small change. ‘All these cute little coins, for Christ-sake.’ He put them on the desk. ‘Now I can get along with the pound note and the five pounds. But, God help me, what is thirteen and a tanner?’
‘I know, I know,’ laughed Miller. ‘After dollars and cents it’s crazy. A tanner is sixpence, so thirteen and a tanner is thirteen full shillings and half a shilling.’
‘You don’t say.’
Miller spread the coins out and told Brand each one’s value. ‘There’s half a penny like this,’ he said, pointing to the small brown coin. ‘Called the ha’penny.’
‘That’s the smallest.’
‘Unfortunately, no. There’s a farthing which is half a ha’penny. There are nine hundred and sixty farthings to a pound.’
‘This is fun,’ said Brand unhappily.
‘And this is a shilling, also known as a bob.’ Miller felt in his own pocket. ‘And this is half a crown, known as half a dollar, and a threepenny bit … not “piece” but “bit”.’
‘Which is called …?’
‘A joey, but not so often. I’ve had to learn this the hard way, being Administration Officer. I have to deal with the English milk sellers. There’s a two-shilling piece called a two bob.’
‘Ah! That’s easy.’
Miller showed him the coin. ‘It says “one florin” on it. And a ten-shilling note which is called ten bob. That’s half a pound since there are twenty shillings to a pound.’
‘It’s so exciting.’ Brand picked up the half-crown.
‘Half a crown,’ recited Miller. ‘It’s the biggest in size.’
‘So two of these make a crown?’
Miller shook his head and said: ‘There’s no crown. Two make five shillings.’
‘Oh, exactly.’
He paused, then said: ‘Why do they use the letter “d” instead of “p” for a penny?’
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Miller.
‘And they teach all this to English kids in school?’
‘Sure thing. Kids soon learn about money.’
Brand looked hopefully at his fellow American. ‘And that’s all? There’s no more? Tell me there’s no more.’
‘There’s a guinea,’ said Miller. ‘But it’s used by lawyers mostly, or if you want to buy a civilian suit of clothes which, believe me, you won’t. That’s a pound and a shilling. When they buy racehorses, they deal in guineas.’
‘No racehorses, I promise. Anything more?’
‘No, that’s it. Sometimes you hear the British talk about a sovereign, but it’s mostly just talk now. It went out of use. The sovereign.’
‘It’s redundant. Good.’
‘It was known as a Jimmy O’Goblin.’
‘Jesus.’
It was Sunday morning. When Miller went through the low front door into the Pagets’ house there was the sound of a man and a woman singing about a nightingale in Berkeley Square. He sniffed the pleasing, homely smell of a roast lunch cooking in the kitchen.
‘Ann Zeigler and Webster Booth,’ Geoffrey Paget told him, nodding at the wooden wireless. ‘It’s Forces Favourites on the BBC. Do you listen to that?’ He poured a sherry for the American.
‘Most of our fellows listen to AFN, the American Forces Network,’ said Miller. He had absorbed himself into the village through the pub and the church; he had even been to the annual social of the cricket club. The Pagets had become his friends.
‘We usually listen to the Home Service,’ said Paget. ‘Jazz and crooners aren’t for us.’
Emma Paget came from the kitchen, a grey lock of hair adhering to her forehead with steam. ‘This is such a nice song,’ she sighed. ‘Berkeley Square.’ To his surprise she sang a pleasing snatch with the wireless duet. ‘So romantic, pre-war. Will you stay for lunch? If you don’t mind having just one slice of beef.’
The American sat in the now familiar chair by the fire. ‘I won’t stay,’ he said. ‘I just dropped in to say goodbye.’
The English couple looked distressed. ‘That’s awful,’ said Emma. She moved forward involuntarily and touched his shoulder with affection. ‘We thought, we hoped, you’d be here for a long time.’
‘It’s a pity,’ said Geoffrey. He filled each of the glasses.
Miller smiled. ‘The run on your sherry supply is finished.’ He lifted the slender glass. ‘I’ve enjoyed it but not as much as your company. I’m leaving tomorrow.’
Emma began wiping her eyes and blaming the kitchen steam. ‘Nowhere dangerous, I hope.’
‘Highly dangerous,’ he grinned. ‘London.’
‘We’ll miss you,’ said Geoffrey slowly. ‘Perhaps you will be able to have a drink with Martin. If he’s still up there.’
‘We don’t know where he is,’ said Emma like a complaint. ‘He wrote when he went back after Christmas and we had a postcard from Bournemouth, of all places.’ She nodded at the mantelpiece over the low fire. ‘It’s up there. Goodness knows what he was doing in Bournemouth.’
Geoffrey sniffed. ‘He wasn’t sunbathing.’
Emma almost blurted: ‘He had a long burn on his hand and arm. He said it was from a motor car.’
‘Cars get hot,’ said Miller.
The woman announcer on Forces Favourites ended the programme and asked God to bless all who listened. Swirling strings played the signature tune. Geoffrey turned the knob then and as an afterthought said: ‘Perhaps you want to hear the news?’
Miller held up his hand. ‘I heard it at breakfast.’
‘It’s better,’ said Geoffrey. ‘But only a little.’
It seemed as if they wanted to tell him something. ‘It’s so sad and so long,’ said Emma. ‘Is it ever going to end?’
‘I sure wish I knew,’ said Miller.
‘You’d be able to go home,’ said Geoffrey, seeming suddenly very old. ‘This village, this small place,’ he said, ‘has twelve sons who will never come back. And two daughters. There’ll be a village war memorial with their names carved on it. There’s one from the last war, twenty names. Five for each year.’
‘I’ve read them,’ said Miller. ‘Outside the church.’
There was the sound of a vehicle drawing up outside. ‘Harcourt,’ said Miller. ‘I have to go.’ There came a tentative knock from the front door.
They called, the latch sounded and Harcourt bent to get under the transom. ‘He’s been promoted,’ said Miller. ‘Private First Class.’
They congratulated him and he grinned his big white grin and said: ‘Sure thing. More bucks.’ He pointed to the inverted stripe on his arm, then hesitated. ‘And Lieutenant Miller …’ He looked towards Miller ‘… is now Captain Miller.’
They all shook hands. Miller said: ‘They had to give us something to make up for leaving here.’
‘Would you like some acorn coffee, Benji?’ asked Geoffrey. ‘We know how you like it.’
The tall black man glanced at Miller. ‘I don’t think so today,’ he said carefully. ‘But it was good. Really good.’
They shook hands again and Emma embraced Harcourt and then Miller. ‘God be with you,’ she sniffed. ‘And keep you safe.’
‘Safe from all the temptations of London,’ said Geoffrey, trying to smile. ‘Especially you, young man.’ He poked Harcourt on the middle button of his tunic. ‘Be careful of the wicked women up there.’
‘Sir,’ said Harcourt seriously, ‘the first thing I aim to do is to find a Southern Baptist Church. If I can’t, then any Baptist church will be okay.’
General Dwight Eisenhower, the newly appointed Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, had arrived in London and by mid-February 1944
was established in one of the tall Georgian houses in Grosvenor Square as his home and headquarters. At once, as if they had been told, the Germans began in earnest to bomb the capital again, after an interval of three years, much of the attack falling on the Mayfair and Belgravia districts surrounding the Supreme Commander. Art Galleries and fine-art businesses were destroyed overnight; there were books, some rare, two feet deep in the next London square to the Invasion Headquarters, the result of a direct hit on the London Library. A damaged barrage balloon settled like a silver roof over Wandsworth prison, causing fear among the convicts, and a stuffed crocodile from a famous antique shop lay in an apt pool caused by a burst water main in St James’s. General Eisenhower said he preferred to be in the country and, at night, he moved to quieter quarters outside London.
In Russia the Red Army encircled five German divisions who refused to surrender and were slaughtered in the snow. In the Pacific the island of Kwajalein was taken by American Marines with one hundred and forty-two dead against a Japanese loss of five thousand soldiers; the British Fourteenth Army stemmed the final attempt by Japan to invade India and the RAF dropped 2,500 tons of bombs in under forty minutes on Berlin. The war was turning a circle. Fighting in the mud and mountains of Italy was suspended by a temporary cease-fire so that both sides could bury their dead, and Allied soldiers and Germans were photographed sharing cigarettes among the bodies of their comrades. A foggy, freezing winter in Britain meant that the shops had few fresh vegetables apart from baleful swedes and turnips. The Kitchen Front programme on the BBC broadcast a recipe for swede-and-turnip casserole.
Captain Miller and Private First Class Harcourt drove towards London on a Monday morning that again was tinged with spring, the low hills and fields a promising green but the trees still naked. Rivers reflected the placid sky. Smoke wriggled from cottage chimneys for there was still enough wood, though little coal except at Swindon, which was on their route and where railway locomotives were replenished and the inhabitants found ways of diverting small quantities of steam coal to their own hearths.
The road went through the town and on to Marlborough, Newbury, Reading and eventually into London, but it was a protracted journey. Military vehicles were on the road, American with their white star signs, British troops flying pennants from armoured cars, Polish, Canadian, and an Indian battalion, dark eyes embedded below turbans.
‘I guess those oddball hats keep the guys warm,’ said Harcourt. Miller had told him to pull up in front of a thatched inn. They went in below the wooden sign showing St George and the Dragon. The wet-moustached landlord smiled as he saw Miller but his face dropped when Harcourt ducked under the door. Harcourt knew the look. ‘Maybe I’ll go and stay with the car,’ he suggested.
‘You need a break,’ said Miller. He caught the publican’s expression. ‘Anything wrong?’
‘We can’t have blacks in here,’ said the man bluntly. He was wiping a glass and he began to do so defiantly.
‘What exactly does that mean?’ said Miller.
‘I’ll leave,’ repeated Harcourt.
‘You stay,’ said Miller.
‘No blacks,’ repeated the landlord. He was polishing the beer glass so fiercely that it cracked loudly in his hands. He said something under his breath and threw it in a bin. ‘US Provost Marshal’s orders. It’s not my rule, it’s yours. Blacks and whites don’t mix. There’s been too much trouble, too many fights.’
Miller kept his dismay, his anger, in check. Once again Harcourt said: ‘I’ll leave.’
‘You’ll have to,’ said the publican. ‘Because I won’t serve you. There’s enough battles going on in the world without having one on my premises. There’s one of your truck depots down the street and if those whites have seen you come in, they’ll be in after you.’
‘I’ll leave,’ repeated Harcourt yet again. ‘I don’t want no trouble.’
‘We’ll both leave,’ said Miller. ‘Sometimes I can’t figure who’s fighting who in this war.’
The landlord picked up another glass and leaned on the bar. ‘Not my rules, like I say, but your Military Police – snowdrops you call them, isn’t it? And I got a consignment of whisky delivered this morning, two whole bottles, and I mean to keep them, not smashed over somebody’s head like the last time.’
When they returned to the car Harcourt said: ‘Sir, I’m used to this. It’s worse than Stateside. In America we know where everybody stands, we just keep with our own kind.’
Miller scowled. ‘It’s a God-dam scandal nothing’s been done about it.’
‘They do things about it,’ said Harcourt, starting the engine. ‘Like hit you between the eyes with a knuckleduster. Some guys got into a brawl in Bridgwater last week and six whites, six coloured ended in hospital. But the British put them in the same medical ward and they started fighting again. Smashed the hospital.’
For ten miles they drove in silence. Then Miller said quietly: ‘Stop along here, Benji. There’s a place. We’ve got to eat something.’
‘Where the pot is hanging, sir?’ said Harcourt.
‘Right.’
It was called the Copper Kettle and a bulbous and shining kettle was suspended outside. The bay window was screened with lace curtains and steam. Cautiously they went inside. A feathery woman in a flowered pinafore smiled genuinely. ‘Welcome, gentlemen. You’re just in time. We’re running out of food.’
Five of the dozen tables were occupied. Harcourt made a quick check but all the customers were civilian. ‘It’s okay then, ma’am? You take blacks?’ he asked loudly before Miller could speak.
The woman was nonplussed. ‘Black what?’
Miller laughed and said: ‘We just had a little trouble back there. The pub wouldn’t allow coloured people.’
A shocked and haughty expression climbed on her face. ‘Oh, we wouldn’t allow any nonsense like that,’ she said. ‘Here’s a table. Let me tell you what we have.’
Other people in the restaurant were grinning. ‘Everybody but Germans and Japs served in here,’ said a crimson-faced man struggling into his overcoat. ‘And conscientious objectors.’
‘What about farmers?’ suggested another man, still seated. ‘And auctioneers,’ retorted the one who was leaving. Some of the other customers laughed.
The woman warbled: ‘We don’t have any disturbances of that nature in here. The Copper Kettle is democratic. If there were any nonsense, our Margaret Rose would deal with it.’ She simpered a little. ‘The same name, of course, as one of our little princesses … Ah, she heard me mention her. Here she is.’
The Americans looked up and saw a fat, aproned woman filling the doorway to the kitchen. She had hairs sprouting on her face and a belligerent eye, and she was holding a steaming saucepan.
‘We get the picture,’ smiled Miller.
‘Beans on toast,’ mused Miller, attempting a genteel English accent once they were in the car again. ‘Egg on toast, sardines on toast.’ They laughed at the memory of the feathery woman holding aloft a thin tin of sardines like some trophy.
‘The egg was good, sir,’ said Harcourt. ‘Best single egg I ever did eat. And, sir, that toast … wow, that toast.’
‘The sardine was fine,’ said Miller. ‘And I agree about the toast.’
Through the closing afternoon they continued towards London in the military traffic. A squadron of British tanks was being transported on long, flat-bed trailers, the pulling trucks snorting fumes, just negotiating the two-lane road. A shop had been demolished to facilitate their turning of a tight village corner. ‘They pulled somebody’s store down,’ observed Miller. Harcourt said: ‘Tomorrow they call in the engineers and build it up again. Then maybe knock it down the next time.’
As they tentatively overtook each of the trailers and tanks they saw, tucked in the middle of the convoy like a brightly painted toy, an electrically propelled milk float, jolting to keep pace with the gigantic vehicles.
It was almost dark by the time they reached the suburbs. Harcourt h
ad spent a day studying the route maps but suddenly, faced with the darkening horizon, he became unsure. ‘There’s a snowdrop at the crossway here, captain,’ he called back to Miller. ‘Maybe he’ll know?’
Harcourt wound down the window as they approached the military policeman in his white helmet, belt, gaiters, and white gloves directing the army traffic, but he had no time to ask the question. The snowdrop thrust out a finger grunting: ‘London that way.’
‘We need this street called Bayswater Road,’ complained Harcourt as the white glove waved them on. ‘I can see London.’
They reached Hammersmith, where grimy double-decker buses circled the bombed ruins. ‘They got buses like houses,’ mused Harcourt. ‘People upstairs.’ There were crowds moving thickly along the pavements, heads down in the chilly blackout. ‘Everybody’s heading the same way,’ said Miller.
‘Going home,’ said a British policeman, also wearing white gloves. ‘Rush hour.’ He had a service revolver, massive and antique, in a holster at his hip. Harcourt had stopped and asked directions and then enquired, a little nervously, about the hurrying people. ‘I thought maybe there was a Nazi air raid going on,’ he said to the policeman. ‘People getting to shelter.’
‘All quiet at the moment,’ said the constable. ‘Tonight Jerry will be back, I expect. He’s turned up every night for a week.’ He gave them directions to Bayswater Road.
‘After that I have to find Wormwood Scrubs, sir,’ said Harcourt to his officer. ‘That’s where my quarters are. On the map it looks like they have some prison there.’
‘Maybe you’ll get parole,’ said Miller.
Harcourt laughed and said: ‘Don’t tell my mom, sir.’ He stopped the car again and this time asked an airman on the pavement for directions. The man was Czechoslovak but he knew the way. ‘One hour later and you could follow the lines of women,’ he said mysteriously. The car crawled forward, its narrowed headlights barely pointing the way. ‘No lights and wrong side of the street,’ grumbled Harcourt. There were buildings on the left but beyond the other pavement there were trees and the lighter grey of the sky. ‘That’s a park, sir,’ said Harcourt, proud to have got the map right. ‘They call it Hyde Park. Looks like it’s hiding right now.’
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