I woke again in daylight when the car stopped moving. Les was stumbling around outside like a man in a dream. Major England was snoring in the back with a splinter-camouflaged cape pulled up to his neck. I think that it was German. We were parked up against a brick wall, out of sight of the road, in a shell-shocked farm courtyard. The three-storeyed farmhouse which formed one end of an open square was burned out; its roof caved in. I extracted myself with difficulty: the running board was almost up against a wall. Les was piling pieces of wood and dead branches around the car, mumbling to himself. He noticed me – a bit late, I thought – and said, ‘Camouflage. We don’t want the jabos to spot us.’
‘What are they?’
‘Jagdbombers: fighter bombers. They can be a bit of a nuisance.’
‘They won’t attack us, Les. There’s a fucking great white star on Kate’s roof. You could see it for miles.’
‘Not our jabos: theirs. Welcome to the real war, Charlie.’
Even the last sally had almost been beyond him. He was out on his feet.
I said, ‘Get in, and get your kip, Les. You’re beat. I’ll finish this. Where are we?’
‘Still in France. I had to make a couple of diversions in the night. Look . . .’ He pointed vaguely forward and upwards as he slumped back into the driving seat. The farmyard appeared to be set at the bottom of a small fortified mountain: a massive castle wall ran around it in both directions, climbing out of sight.
‘Windsor Castle,’ I told him. ‘I’ve seen pictures of it. You’ve taken us home again by mistake.’
Les yawned. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. He said, ‘Laon. About eighty mile north-east of gay Paree. Don’t go up there; we’re still in France, and I don’t know if the natives are all that friendly.’
‘Couldn’t be less friendly than the fucking Americans, could they?’
‘Wanna bet?’ Les yawned again, collapsed down behind the steering wheel, and pulled his beret down over his eyes. He was snoring before his hands had fallen back.
I finished hiding Kate as well as I could. To my unpractised eye it still looked like a car under a heap of wood when I’d finished. Perhaps it wouldn’t look the same if you were overflying the farm at 300 knots. The morning sun was drying out a short dawn shower. The ground glittered with light reflected back from water. I sat on the thick greystone doorstep of the farmhouse, took out and filled my pipe, and smoked in great contentment. An hour later three Mustangs armed with rockets belted close overhead heading north. They curved around the walls of Laon and didn’t give me a glance.
It took me twenty minutes to walk around the wall of Laon, along a muddy farm track I chose to avoid the vehicular traffic. I had learned at least one thing from Les, and that was how to recognize the sound of a Sten being cocked as someone worked the bolt. My boots were heavy with mud, and I was passing between two dilapidated farm buildings. I froze. That may have saved my life, because the armed twelve-year-old in the doorway to my left didn’t seem to know what to do next. Maybe he’d only trained on moving targets. The old man behind him coughed, spat into the mud and said ‘Enough,’ in guttural French, and asked me if I was a deserter. I said, ‘No. RAF aircrew. I lost my clothes in a crash.’ I tried to make my French sound less efficient than it was. I remembered that the English were supposed to be cack-handed at European languages. He spat again.
‘You speak good French.’ So much for that.
‘My school was keen on it.’
‘You have proof of identity, of course, or did you lose that in the crash, as well?’
I moved my hand, and the boy twitched. The old man pushed him not too gently to the side. This time I fished my ID discs from around my neck. I told him, ‘I have a pay-book as well.’
The old man nodded, and didn’t speak for at least thirty seconds, then he sighed. Regretfully, I think. He would have preferred to have killed me. The interrogation took a new route. He asked, ‘You are a socialist?’
‘I am a nothing. I have no time for politicians.’
‘Ah.’
‘Is that bad?’
‘In Laon it is better that you are not a socialist in these times.’
‘Then I shall not be a socialist in Laon.’ I thought that I was being amusing.
‘So young, and so wise.’ He thought he was being ironic.
‘Can I take my feet out of the mud now?’ I asked him.
He jerked his head. I moved. He asked, ‘Where are you going?’
‘I was looking for the way into Laon. To buy food and drink, if I can.’
It must have been the word buy that bucked him up. His smile showed gaps in his teeth you could get a pipe stem into.
‘For one?’
‘For more than one.’
‘Ah . . . you mean the two brave British soldiers sleeping in the car you so badly hid in Modoc’s farmyard?’
The old man had me. I grinned.
‘Yes, those. One, at least, is a brave British soldier. He has fought in France, North Africa, Italy and now France again.’
‘I know a man like that. He says that he has been in every retreat the British Army has made in this war.’
‘That is cruel, M’sieur.’
‘But it is also funny.’
‘Yes,’ I told him, and grinned again. ‘How do I get into Laon? Is there a gate in this long wall?’
He said, ‘Uh,’ and, ‘We will walk with you.’
He joined me in the mud. So did the child. The child sank up to his ankles. When he smiled happily at me I saw he had the same gaps in his teeth as the old man. We squelched on together until we reached a metalled road; the old man alongside me, and the child behind. Even through the mud I could smell the old man’s feet. I asked him, ‘Is it still necessary to guard the track?’
‘No,’ he told me. ‘We stopped that the day we were liberated.’
‘What were you doing then; back there?’
‘Rabbits.’
‘With a machine gun?’
‘Big rabbits.’ It was all he’d say on the subject.
The road passed through the wall, and turned immediately to starboard, following the curve of the hill upwards. It had been constructed as a defended causeway: there was always a wall on each side of you until you climbed out into a square, and a couple of weird churches. One was as big as York Minster, made of gold-grey coloured stone and washed by the sunlight. It staggered under the weight of thousands of small Gothic sculptures of grotesque animals and mythical beings. The other was small and circular and squatted in its shade. It had an open porch with pillars. The old man rested us there. On a piece of level ground covered with coarse sand a group of men played bowls with stone cannonballs, and drank from greasy wine bottles. A lot of staggering about seemed to be going on. Finally a fat man with thick black hair came into the porch, and plonked himself down alongside me. He mopped his brow with a clean, red handkerchief, wiped his hands with it, and offered one to me. The ritual shake. He gripped my hand a funny way, and frowned when I did the wrong thing.
‘Rey. Mayor,’ he said. ‘I was two years the Mayor when the Boche came. Then there was a German administrator. I still have two years left to do. I start them now. Are you a socialist?’
‘Not this week. How about you?’
He laughed at the challenge.
‘This week I am a Gaullista.’
‘Is that a good choice?’
‘This week it is. You are the Englishman who speaks good French. Clément thinks that you are a spy. It is Clément who you came in with.’
‘We weren’t introduced. I am not a spy. How did you know what he thinks?’
‘His daughter told us.’
‘I saw no daughter.’
‘She stayed behind in the barn, and then ran up here the quick way. We have been waiting for you for fifteen minutes.’
‘The old man slowed me down.’
‘I doubt it. He can walk all day without breaking a sweat – you say that in English?’
‘Yes, M’sieur. We do.’
‘I think that you are out of condition, Englishman: like a man newly out of hospital.’
Then he laughed a big pealing laugh that filled the small porch. The bowls players joined in. The boy and old man joined in. Bastards. When His Worship had had enough of the joke he wiped his brow again, and said, ‘What do you want? Food?’
‘Yes. For three. I have companions.’ No harm telling them what they knew.
‘I know. I have two men watching over them. They will be safe. Are you in charge?’
‘No. One of them is a Major.’
‘No matter. It is the rule of some people’s lives: no matter how high in the ranks you rise, you still end up making the coffee, and fetching the supper. Maybe you are one of those.’
‘Maybe.’
‘No matter. I am one. Look; I am their Mayor, and yet the lazy swine expect me to deal with you myself. Maybe you be Mayor one day.’
‘I would be honoured.’ He smiled when I said that. A little inward smile. It was the first really clever thing I’d said all day. He called over a man he called Gaston, took his wine from him and pressed it on me, saying, ‘You stay here, and toast the République. Stay here. I will bring food for your journey. You will be safe if you stay here. You have money, of course? ‘Then he asked me, ‘Why are you smiling, my friend?’
‘There is no right answer to your question, for me. If I say yes you might steal my money; if I say no, you might say, no sale.’
‘I think you can pay,’ he told me. ‘Clément’s daughter told me so. I will get you what we have most of: bread, wine and cheese. OK?’
‘Fine.’
‘No eggs, no meat – unless you eat rabbit.’
‘Fine.’
He threw me an insulting mock salute as he strolled away. And winked his left eye. Its purpose was either to keep face in front of his subjects, or to warn me not to panic. I began to panic. There was a notice in Ancien French on a brass plate on the door which led into the chapel. I could just make it out. It told how a local laird, the Duc du something or other, a Templar Knight, was discomfited at this very spot (probably by distant relatives of the people I could see around me) in defence of his religion and the chapel. Only our Gallic neighbours would use a word like discomfited, when they meant that the poor bastard had been chopped to pieces with sharp agricultural instruments. Maybe the panic I began to feel was a residual of what he had left behind him in his last moments, sunk into the stone, like his blood. That had happened in 1307. It can’t have been a very good year to be a Templar.
A pretty, dark-haired girl turned up hauling three bottles of wine and a big stone jar of what turned out to be water. Then she went back and returned with flat loaves of bread and a round cheese. I could have fancied her if I hadn’t been so nervy. That, plus the Luger pistol she wore in a holster on a stout leather belt cinched in around her waist like a corset was a discouragement to the amorous. The Mayor didn’t return with her; he went back to his game of bowls. Sir Francis fucking Drake. I asked Clément, ‘Is that his daughter?’
Clément gave me his gaps, and laughed.
‘She’s my daughter. Clémentine. He wants her, but all he can do is look. His wife would geld him.’
‘Who do I pay?’
‘Me. I found you.’
‘How much?’
‘Fifty invasion francs or fifteen dollars American.’
‘That is a lot, M’sieur Clément.’
He shrugged. They call it the Gallic shrug. It’s what the French do when they’ve fucked you over, and want to lay the blame on God. He said, ‘You’re still alive.’
I paid him. I got it at last. These folk were old-fashioned bandits, lurking beneath their castle walls to waylay careless strangers like me. He escorted me away from the cathedral with its grotesques, and back down the way I had come. Giving him sly sideways glances, I was sure that they had been carved from life. The boy with the Sten had disappeared, but the girl with the Luger walked at my other side. As we neared the gate through the walls Clément spat in the road, and laid a hand on my arm to slow me. He was carrying the wine, me the food, and the girl the water jar. He said, ‘I think that you’re going to make me an offer, either for the girl, or for the Boche gun she’s wearing.’
‘Which would be best?’
‘An offer for the gun would not offend.’
‘Ten dollars?’
‘Done.’
‘The food cost more than that.’
‘Food and drink are short. We have hundreds of Boche pistols. Officers can’t fight. They threw them away as they ran. Give him the gun, girl.’
She unbuckled the belt, and passed it over as if she was granting me a bodily favour. Who knows? Perhaps she was. She thrust her hand into a pocket in her skirt and came up with a fistful of 9 mm bullets for it. I buttoned them into my Chaplain’s battledress blouse pocket. I couldn’t help watching the way her breasts moved under her shirt. Her father couldn’t help watching me watching.
It took another half-hour to drag the vittles back to Kate on my own. Clément’s duties had ceased once he saw me from the premises. England was standing alongside the car sharing a cigarette with a mad-looking youth with a Schmeisser machine pistol. It didn’t look as if his rudimentary French had dented their relationship. Raffles was still asleep at the wheel; or looked that way.
‘There you are!’ the Major said to me. ‘I think that this johnnie wants some money not to kill me.’
‘How much?’
‘Five dollar,’ said the man. His gaps matched Clément’s and the kid’s. I was glad the girl hadn’t opened her mouth as she smiled. I told him, ‘I’ll think about it.’
Clément Three – that’s how I labelled him – helped us to unbury the car. I got Les to move over, dumping the goodies in the back with the Major. I put five miles between us and the small walled citadel before stopping to eat. That was in a small unwalled town with a flat, open square and no bomb sites that I could see. I parked the car in the shadow on the up-sun side of the square. The people smiled and passed by. We woke Les up, and ate a long lunch in the sunshine. He admired my new gun, and showed me how to strip it, and clear a jam. He told me he wouldn’t swap his Sten for it: I hadn’t asked.
With my mouth full of greasy bread and cheap cheese I told them, ‘I’m sure the bastards knew who I was. Somebody’s been spreading it around. They dropped hints, but didn’t come right out with it.’
‘A wanted man,’ the Major said. ‘How damned colourful.’ Then he said, ‘You can’t say I didn’t warn you. They were probably pals of Maggs.’
It was late afternoon. Les told us, ‘I need another forty winks. Come back for me in an hour or so, and we’ll move on. I want to be in Blijenhoek the day after tomorrow.’ I didn’t know where Blijenhoek was, but what the hell? Grace was up there with the tanks somewhere . . . or had she already been passed on to somebody else?
England and I sat away from the afternoon sun at the back of a darkened bar, the way Les had taught us. We kept the car in view all the time, although I doubt that we could have reached it in time if some bastard had decided to have a go at Les. A flight of four P-38 Lightnings passed low over the square, with one flash git waggling his wings at the local popsies. The aircraft were all painted drab green, and had black and white invasion stripes around their wings: the wriggler had a big, smiley, orange and yellow sun on the aircraft’s nose. Their twin supercharged engines whistled as they beat us up. England said, ‘Saying hello to his girlfriend. They must be based close to here.’ Deductive logic.
The wine was thin and watered, and dearer than better stuff in Paris. The waitress who flashed her chests at us probably was as well: Paris seemed a thousand years and a million miles away. I wondered where Lee Miller was – up ahead of us probably – and if the artist had come back yet.
‘I didn’t like the way I got into this,’ I told England. ‘When I joined up they told us how the service was supposed to work. That was training stations, until you were ready to go to war, then crewing up at an O.U.T.’
‘Don’t you mean an O.T.U?’
‘Perhaps I did. This wine is getting better . . . after that you had the squadron and thirty trips to Germany, and if you survived that, a posting to a cushy number for six months, before coming back on ops.’
‘Didn’t it work out like that?’
‘Only until I finished my trips; then it went wrong. After my posting to Tempsford, and the crash, everything got very unofficial. Goldie, that was my last proper CO, told me I’d been lent to Cliff, and Cliff lent me to the Bakers – that’s Grace’s parents. They sent me looking for Grace. First with Cliff’s help, then yours.’
‘What’s so worrying about that?’
‘No papers. No orders. Nothing. If I’m picked up by the MPs, and Cliff denies all knowledge of me – which he could just do, on his current showing – what have I got to prove that I’m not just AWOL?’
‘Nothing. But their need for a commonsense explanation will direct them. Very straightforward folk, the rozzers: even Army ones like ours.’
‘How come?’
‘Most deserters travel away from the Front: not towards it, like you. You’re bound to find some Redcap bright enough to at least listen to your story.’
‘Then there’s another thing. That charge sheet the Yanks said they got from my people.’
‘I told you: they probably embroidered it to give you the shits. I should imagine your CO just issued something innocuous to cover his own back, and Cliff probably monitors signal traffic about you as a good way of keeping tabs. Maybe he even provided some of the lurid embellishments. If so, he fucked up: he gilded the lily and our American cousins thought they’d do us a favour by picking you up . . . especially if they put the word out on you, and Maggs picked up on it. That’s why Cliff came out to get you back.’
‘What about the theft of a Stirling bomber then?’
‘I thought that that was a good touch, too. How much is a Stirling worth?’
‘Thousands and thousands.’ The thought depressed me.
‘If they ask you to pay that back out of your pay you’ll be fucked.’
‘I get the feeling I already am.’
He leaned over and tapped me on the arm. He said, ‘Ask her what her name is . . .’ He meant the waitress.
The girl told me, ’ortense. No H, the way she said it. I told him, and he asked me, ‘Look old boy, if you’re not going to roger her . . . and she’s begging for it worse than Fay Wray does . . . would you mind awfully if I did?’
I left him to her, or her to him, whichever way you care to see it, and strolled back across the square to Kate. Seeing her in the subdued light of lengthening shadows I realized that I was fonder of her than any man had the right to be of just a simple car. Maybe she wasn’t so simple after all. Anyway, I hadn’t better tell Les about it.
Just as I was about to climb in the front passenger seat alongside him, and kip until he woke up, the flight of Lightnings crossed the air above me again, on their way back. The racks on their wings, which had contained armour-piercing rockets for the low-level stuff, were empty now . . . And there were only three of them: not the four seen an hour earlier. The one that was missing was the one which had the big, friendly sun painted on its nose. Inside me I gave that Gallic shrug: maybe the flash git was walking home. You never know. I woke up when I felt the car shift under me as the Major settled in the back seat. He pulled the door shut. Les yawned and stretched, nearly braining me. James told me, ‘I told you so.’
‘Told me what?’
‘That girl. Her boyfriend is one of those fighter pilots who flew over the square this afternoon. She says he always shakes his wings at her.’
‘What was she like?’
‘Excessively agricultural.’ He coughed one of those weak apologetic coughs. ‘But any port in a storm, and all that.’
*
Some distance out of town, with the light all lost, Les stopped us on one of those straight, tree-lined Roman roads that crisscross northern and central France. England radioed a check into his HQ, wherever that was, and Les filled our tanks from a jerrycan. When we got going again James soon fell asleep, whilst I performed the little navigation feats that were required under the light of one of those right-angled WD-issue torches. The miles sang under Kate’s wheels. Les whistled ‘Lili Marleen’. Life was OK, but I remembered an evening I had once spent in a field with Grace, when I had never been happier.