This was the worst time for Bill. Why had they kept him here, except to kill him? It had been a week since they had whisked away Violette and shot Jack. Bill had never felt so utterly alone. The surly guards had fed him, and he had regular visits by an SS physician who had treated his leg but had categorically refused to speak to him. It suited Bill just fine. Anything he did want to say to the miserable old sod would probably have earned him a punch in the throat anyway, perhaps by proxy via one of the guards.
It had all stopped about two days ago. When he was last taken to have his dressing changed, for most of the day, Bill could smell burning, and from within the depths of the building, Bill had been able to hear slamming doors and the distant sound of vehicles.
The noise had already subsided when he was dragged back up to his cell. He had then watched from his barred window the SS doctor leave the building on foot, wearing his greatcoat, with his case in hand. He had waited a few minutes, long enough to smoke a cigarette, for a smart black staff car to collect him. The purring engine changed pitch to an ominous growl as it disappeared from view along the avenue.
Now he sat in peace, alone in his cell. He suspected his firing squad was being assembled. His final release from this hell would soon be arranged, courtesy of the most sadistic organisation to trample the earth since Genghis Khan’s Mongol hoards.
He licked his lips to find there was no moisture left. He desperately needed water. He hadn’t taken on fluids for a couple of days. As he sat staring at the blank walls, he wondered if he should drink his urine. Try as he might, he couldn’t remember if that was the right thing to do or not. In any case, he had no cup, and any other way he could think of getting any into his mouth didn’t bear thinking about. Finally, Bill decided he’d instead try to sleep and not overthink it. If the Nazis didn’t kill him soon, they’d find him dead already.
He woke with a start and pulled the wiry blanket off, rubbing his itchy, dry eyes. He felt thirst like he’d never known before. A crippling thirst.
There was another dull, distant thud. He hadn’t imagined it. The dark sky flashed like sheet lightning. The gods were angry. Bill had no idea how long he’d been drifting in and out of consciousness. His head felt like a giant football, only half-inflated.
The rumbling and flashing took Bill back to the long autumns when he was young. Returning to school for the autumn term had always hit Bill hard. He always felt despondent standing at the entrance to the open car park, waving off his mother and aunt.
Without fail, Bill’s mother had collected him from school to spend the six free weeks at home every summer holiday. Bill had always felt sorry for the boys in his dorm who had been left to while away the break at school. Whilst trips and games had been planned for them, homework and additional studies were never far out of sight. Looking back now, Bill wondered if some parents had left their kids there for the summer hoping for some academic advancement.
His mother and aunt had taken up the reins following his father’s untimely death. At home, his nanny, Hannah, had also helped with the more menial tasks during his early formative years. She had also brought him up speaking his late father’s mother tongue, much to the dismay of his Aunt Nelly, a staunch nationalist. She had tolerated Bill’s father in her sister’s life and was friendly enough to Hannah but had never truly forgiven Germany for the war. Her sweetheart had died at the Battle of Mons in 1914, and she held a bitter resentment toward the country and most of its people ever since.
The autumn term, though, for Bill, held another adventure. Bonfire night was always a date to look forward to. Whilst the school organised a bonfire and fireworks celebration, it was nothing compared to the covert version of the event he and his friends planned in the fields beyond the cricket green. Invariably, one of the boys would have stolen some whisky or brandy from home during the holidays. Perhaps another would have some woodbines. They would trudge to the far side of the field, dragging various bits of dry firewood behind them.
They had managed to get away with it every year until Bill was twelve. One of the boys had stolen some fireworks from the groundskeeper’s shed near the cricket nets that year. After a few tentative attempts, they finally got one lit. But unfortunately, none of them had any idea what they were supposed to do with it, and the rocket had launched off sideways, bouncing harmlessly into a nearby hedgerow. A few moments later, they were trying to light a second one. This time stuck in the soft ground when suddenly the first rocket exploded with an almighty BOOM! A shower of sparks spat into every direction, and the boys flinched, then fell about, laughing.
They then spent half an hour drinking, smoking and talking about whatever you talked about before you discovered girls. Some of the others were still lighting fireworks. One particular stray rocket had fizzed off in the direction of Yew Tree Farm and been quickly forgotten.
Bill was passing a bottle of brandy around the circle as one of the boys shouted, “Shit, the barn’s on fire! Leg it!”
Dropping their bottles and cigarettes, they spun on their heels and took off back towards the school as fast as a herd of gazelles making off from a pursuing lioness. Their bonfire was still burning brightly behind them, and its glow was now joined by that of the dry barn, which was now a blazing inferno.
They vaulted the gate and sprinted towards the cricket green, only to be met by four angry prefects in the near darkness. This in itself would not have been a significant issue but for the fact that their headmaster, Mr Armitage, had recently extended the ability to carry out corporal punishment to the senior prefects.
Bill squinted out of his window again. Now the sky was flashing white, over and over. All he could think of was the fireworks on that night at Bloxham. They had taken a beating from the prefects. The following day’s assembly was a lengthy reprimand to the gathered schoolboys en-masse from the headmaster about citizenship, respecting the community and the sins of stealing. Bill had somehow forgotten most of that and fondly recalled only the night of fireworks, drinking and merriment.
Now here, on this cold dark cell floor masquerading as his uncomfortable death bed, he smiled as he listened to the advancing French forces. Death for him, he decided, would now be inevitable. Be it from a German bullet, thirst or, in the ultimate irony, a French artillery shell. This was his end.
He smiled to himself, happy he had at least managed to pass word back to Vera, through Lena, that Violette had been here in Paris. If nothing else, he clung to that thought. The thought that there might be a chance to rescue her, now that the war seemed to be coming towards an end. He then pictured Vera in his mind’s eye, nervously fussing over every detail of the changes in operations that were necessitated by his capture. Almost able to smell the distinct odour of the Senior Service cigarette trembling between her lips as she cursed him for being so negligent.
He closed his eyes as the crippling thirst kicked at him from inside his skull and his kidneys silently screamed. He didn’t care where he was going next. He knew it probably wouldn’t be heaven, and he had just spent the past week in hell. Still, eternal nothingness might, at the very least, be a blessed relief from the pain he was now feeling. Through it all, he felt a small amount of satisfaction that he had done his bit for the liberation of France, then slipped into unconsciousness. Sleep was immediate. The type of sleep from which you expect never to wake.
“Bill?” a disembodied, angelic voice spoke to him.
He was startled and almost fell from the winged horse he had been riding in his dream. But then, the clouds of his mind cleared, and standing in the shadow of his own Valley of Death, there indeed was no evil, just an angel.
Lena stood over him, tears in her eyes. “You’re alive!”
“The amount of pain I’m in would suggest so,” he barely managed through his parched, cracked lips.
Lena handed him a bottle of the sweetest water he’d ever tasted. Better than any whisky. He let the life-giving fluid flow through every fibre in his body. Then, finishing the bottle, he slumped back against the wall.
His brain was still throbbing, and his insides felt like they had been passed through a housewife’s laundry mangle. He gazed up at his saviour and beamed. Lena flashed back a relieved grin.
“They shot Jack,” he ventured.
“Who told you that?” she said as Jack, helped by Andre, limped around the doorway.
“You can’t get rid of me that easily, you bastard,” Jack grunted.