Les stopped the car once at about 0430. I awoke with a start. Someone was talking to Les from outside the car. A torch flashed briefly in my eyes, and on England’s sleeping face. When I focused on the stranger’s voice I found that it was reassuringly English – a Brummie, I think – and we were at some kind of checkpoint which was lit by subdued half-lights. I heard a match striking, and smelled tobacco smoke. Les said something I didn’t catch. I was too busy trying to get my body to move from the curled-up position it seemed to have set in. The stranger laughed, and his torchlight flicked briefly on my face again. The white and black pole in the narrow gleam of our shrouded headlights lifted, and Les got us rolling, winding up his door’s window as he did so. It was chill; I could feel it getting into the car.
He doffed his beret, with one hand still on the wheel, and handed it to me, saying, ‘Dig us out a couple of fags.’
So I did, selecting a couple of roll-ups from his store. He put the beret back on one-handed. I lit the fags with my American lighter, and we smoked companionably in the darkness. I asked him, ‘What did you tell that frontier guard about me?’
‘That you were a Chaplain on his way forward. I think there’s a lot of burying to be done.’
The sky was lightening a little a long way to the east. I said, ‘I didn’t realize that dawn would be as early as this.’
Les gave a grunt. It might have been a laugh, or it might not.
‘It isn’t. That’s Monty’s moonlight. You never heard of it?’
‘No.’
‘They do it on nights of low cloud. They shine hundreds of searchlights forward and upwards, until the light is reflected back down by the clouds. It means there’s enough light for the poor bastards to fight under.’
‘Monty’s moonlight?’ I said, not quite believing him. ‘That’s right. You still never heard of it?’
‘No.’
I rolled the window down an inch, and ditched my dogend. I hunched down in the seat again, and dozed.
Les woke me at about six. The roads were wet but I had missed the rain.
‘I want to get off the road and laager up – preferably with someone nasty near by to look after us if Jerry decides to come back. A nice snappy light tank squadron would do. Look for hedges that have been arseholed by something big and recent. You can follow tanks across the country by the flat stuff they leave behind them.’
‘Like I said: ’edges, flat houses and flat people . . . flat everything.’
‘There!’ shouted England, who was fully awake. He was pointing to a signpost leaning crazily to one side at a point just in front of us, where the road was crossed by a country lane.
‘Tank spoor!’ the Major yelled. ‘Knew it! Tally ho!’
We turned left onto a lane which wasn’t much more than a track, and followed what they assured me was a tank trail of broken tree branches and scarred verges.
I asked them, ‘What if they were Jerries heading the other way?’
James gave me the withering idiot stare before he answered, ‘Well: the signpost would have been knocked in the other direction, wouldn’t it?’
They were usually right. We turned right, off the road, when we found a hedge with several large holes smashed in it.
‘Told yer,’ says Les. ‘If they’d been coming towards us there’d be shite and mud all over the road. There ain’t.’ After two more fields we found them, grazing like cows, and steaming in the weak sun. Most of them had parked up around the edges of a humped meadow. A couple of them had their engines running and were crowned by tell-tale plumes of thin blue exhaust smoke. Les gunned us up alongside one which had two limp pennons on a radio mast. Kate’s engine block ticked as it cooled and contracted. A brown job Captain about twelve years old was lounging against the tank. He straightened up, but not by much, when James England unfolded himself from our Humber. He touched his black beret with a leather-covered swagger stick, and said, ‘Major,’ and England said, ‘Captain.’
I thought that it was about time somebody introduced them to the idea of verbs, pronouns and adjectives. Les turned and grinned at me.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘They’ll get down to business eventually.’
Breakfast was taken alongside a curious tank without a turret. When I asked about it a tankie sergeant said, ‘It’s a Kangaroo: that’s a Sherman without a turret. The Canadians make them. Our Skipper got it out of a Canadian squadron. We use it for dragging our nappies round in.’ He put a mug of tea in my hands that was so large I needed both my mitts for it. It was sweetened with condensed milk: wonderful. The tankies had rigged an awning out from the side of the Kangaroo to cover the field kitchen they cooked on: the officers – the Captain, two Lieutenants and Major England – stood underneath it. Les caught my eye, and flicked his head towards it. He was saying, You’re a bleedin’ officer; behave like one, and mix with the buggers! The plate of grub their cook pushed at me looked grey and familiar. I had to balance my mug of char on the Kangaroo’s track before accepting the food. The Captain told me, ‘I know that it looks like fifty-seven varieties of stewed snot, but it’s really quite tasty.’ It was a tankie joke. I smiled for him, and asked the cook, ‘Don’t you call this stovies?’
He said, ‘Aye, sir. How did you know that? A Scottie showed me how to cook this up, some place out of Caen. He was wandering on his own, and trying to join up with his unit. We lost him somewhere along the line. I wonder if he found them.’
I thought, He got as far as Paris, anyway. Another tank had fired up its engine. It differed from the others in that it sat in the geographical centre of the field, on a small hump. The rich smell of its exhaust drifted back towards me. I asked, ‘Why is it doing that?’
‘Dodgy engines. We have to run them up every few hours, otherwise the gremlins get into them.’
‘Why is it sitting in the middle of the field? Surely that’s a bit risky – every one else has hidden against the hedgerows.’
‘That’s the Judas Goat. If we get bounced by the Jerry fighter-bombers they get just one chance to hit us at three hundred knots before we start to shoot back. If you was Jerry, sir, who would you choose to go for in that split second – an easy target in the middle of a field, or indistinct, uncertain targets dispersed around it, who are going to start shooting back as soon as you circle to line up on them? The Captain is willing to sacrifice the one in the open for the others.’
Hard bastard, I thought.
James told Les, ‘Get the car undercover when you’ve finished your scran. Then you can get some rest. You might have forgotten you’ve been driving all night, but I haven’t.’
Les’s shoulders suddenly dropped.
‘Aye. You’re right.’ There was a pause that wasn’t quite long enough for insubordination before he added the ‘sir’ that we waited for, and sloped off.
He produced a camo net from Kate’s cavernous boot. It had coloured canvas leaves sewn all over it. He cut two long staves from a pollarded willow in the hedgerow, and standing them out from the wheels at forty-five degrees, draped the net between them and the car. That gave us cover, and an awning of our own. Les curled up on the back seat under James’s German cape, and was soon snoring.
James and I sat on Kate’s running board and smoked: the sun through the netting over us splashed us with shadow patterns. I was really getting the hang of the pipe now, but was worried about running short of tobacco. I hadn’t brought near enough with me. We talked war, and we talked personal. I felt comfortable with him the way I had never felt with officers before, so I didn’t mind when he said, ‘The trouble with being an Intelligence Officer – even if you’ve got a speciality like mine – is that you get asked to pick up any other intelligence tasking that might occur wherever you might find yourself. That’s how I picked you up. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘Sorry about that, James. I try not to get in the way.’
‘Know you do, old boy. Don’t mention it. You’ve actually been an amusing diversion, in a naive sort of way.’
Behind us Les gave an enormous snort in his sleep. James abruptly changed the subject.
‘How are you getting on with that pipe? Never got round to one myself.’
‘I like it better than fags now, but you can overdo it. It can sort of lie heavy on your stomach.’
‘I’ll remember that.’ He asked me about after the war. A lot of folk were beginning to talk about after the war these days. I remembered that Cliff had told me he didn’t believe it: he saw a bigger war around the corner. I told James England about wanting to emigrate to Australia to be a sports journalist. He asked, ‘Why? What started that?’
‘Because I don’t want to stay in the services and be ordered around for the rest of my life, and because the Aussies speak English, the sun shines, and sport’s the only thing that interests them outside of beer and sex.’
‘But you’d have to spend the rest of your life among Australians. Difficult.’
‘Yes. There were a few on my squadron.’
‘Ghastly, aren’t they?’
‘I suppose they were, come to think of it.’
‘You wouldn’t consider Wales, say Glamorgan or somewhere, would you?’
‘Christ, no! Have you ever met anyone from Wales, James?’
‘From Glamorgan, myself, matter o’ fact.’ He sounded moody, so I said, ‘You see my point then?’
‘I suppose so. Depressing, isn’t it?’
I asked him about his after the war. He said, ‘You’d probably laugh at me.’
‘So what? You laughed at me.’
‘There’s a small port near Chichester, in Sussex. All the yachty types anchor there in the summer: crumpet everywhere. It’s called Bosham; heard of it?’
‘No, James. Sorry.’
‘Don’t say sorry all the time. You don’t have to.’
‘Sorry.’
‘There you go again.’
I opened my mouth, but shut it again with a small pop. He said, ‘Don’t worry. Not many people know it: it’s where King Canute ordered the tide to turn. Anyway, I want to buy a small place there, and open a really good restaurant. I want to serve meals so good that people will talk about them the other side of the Empire.’ James added, almost as an afterthought, ‘You shouldn’t say Christ, no, you know; not while you’re a Padre. God won’t like it. Not seemly. Out of character.’
Before I could reply the tankie Captain mooched over. His name was Charteris, and naturally there was a white matchstick-man with a halo painted on the side of his tank’s turret. Before he could speak we were disturbed by the sounds of high-pitched aero-engines in the air near us. Until then the tank laager had had a languorous, sleepy air about it. Now everything changed. From the turret of the Judas Goat a head wearing a bugle poked up, and blasted a two-phrase bugle call: then it popped down again. Charteris spun to face the field, and used a fifty-foot voice.
‘Stand to! Stand to!’
He was behind the action though. Most of the tanks had Brens or Fifties mounted on their turret tops, and there were two on flexible mountings on the Kangaroo. Now each was manned by a trooper in a battle bowler. Some hadn’t had the time to put jackets on, but no one had missed his steel helmet.
They swept across the field: the three American Lightnings we’d seen the previous day. They were all hooked up with wings full of rockets. They were so low that when one of the pilots looked in my direction I’ll swear we had an eye lock. They were so low that they couldn’t miss the stars on the turret tops of the Comet tanks if they looked for them. In an eye blink they were half a mile away, but then they circled back.
‘They’re looking for something,’ Charteris murmured, but that was more for his benefit than ours. They circled slowly out of our Brens’ effective ranges, and when I sensed a relief and lessening of tension among the tank gunners, Charteris racked it up again by shouting, ‘Fucking stand to, I tell you.’
The Lightnings did another run near the field but their noses were angled up. Whatever their point was, it escaped me. When they were another blink away some nervous sod caught his finger in a trigger guard and pumped three or four rounds after them. Charteris said, ‘Bastard!’ and then bellowed, ‘Stand down! Stand down!’ in his parade-ground voice.
The bugle attached to a small head popped back up out of the Judas Goat again, and gave us the benefit of the two-phrase call once more. This time it held on to the final note until it died of air starvation. I could immediately sense things calming down. Except the fiery little Captain, who bellowed, ‘Sarn’t Cummings. To me. Sarn’t Cummings.’
Cummings, who’d been the first of the tankies to unwind to me, doubled over from a hedgerow Comet. He was obviously Charteris’s first man, even though there were two Lieutenants. Cummings skidded, and saluted.
‘Who was the cunt then? The one with finger trouble?’
Cummings looked pained; he blinked before he answered, ‘Trooper Wyatt, B troop, sir.’
‘Then Trooper Wyatt just became the Judas Goat, didn’t he? Get those bloody tanks switched over, if you please.’ He gave a quick little salute. Cummings didn’t move fast enough for him, so he said, ‘Sergeant?’
Cummings snapped out of it, saluted, and doubled away. By way of explanation, Charteris said, ‘Wyatt is Cummings’s gunner. Now he’s out in the middle until someone else drops one.’
James didn’t say anything, and I couldn’t think of anything intelligent to respond with. The little Captain looked briefly puzzled. He muttered, ‘They were looking for something, you know.’
It may have been my imagination, but I thought that he looked at us with a quizzical interest . . . but the moment passed. Behind us Les let out another great snort in his sleep. He’d slept through the whole damned thing.
Some time later the Major fell asleep as well, his head on his chest. One crew scoured out the barrel of their tank’s gun with a solution of hot water and piss, and others slept by their tanks. Cummings walked around on an informal inspection. Someone had tuned in to the services station and Vera Lynn was quietly doing her stuff. I never liked her singing, but like everyone else I fancied her to death. That’s an unfortunate phrase for a serviceman, isn’t it?
After Cummings had returned to his own tank he couldn’t seem to keep still: every few minutes his head would stick out of the lid, screw three-sixty degrees around and then jerk out of sight again. After my second pipe of the morning I tapped it out on my heel. The saliva in the stem made a hissing sound as it ran into the hot bowl. I cleaned it out with a screw of grass, buttoned it into my jacket pocket, and wandered over to the Cummings vehicle. It had the name Fred painted on a cast steel wing above the track, alongside a cartoon picture of a hound with floppy ears. The dog appeared to be taking a crap. Cummings didn’t see me the next time his head popped up – he was looking north-east, towards the enemy. When it got round to me I said, ‘Hello,’ and he jumped out of his skin. I remembered then what Les had told me about the Elephant on the Bois de Boulogne: he said that tanks were blind to what was happening directly alongside them.
The Sergeant gave me a weak grin, and responded with, ‘Oh . . . hello, Padre.’ Then there was a pause which embarrassed both of us. Eventually he said, ‘That may not be the best place to stand, Father. If Jerry comes over we’re likely to be the first one clobbered.’
‘So I heard. I thought I’d stroll over and maybe bring you the luck of the Devil.’
‘Thank you, sir, but it would be best if you just moved on.’
I sensed that he was just about to shake his head when his little Captain did something to prove that he was psychic. Or maybe he just heard us. We both heard his voice booming across the field at us.
‘Mr Cummings . . . move that fucking tank into cover before Jerry gets his sights on you, and does the bold Padre a mischief. Look lively now!’
I felt it was prudent to get well out of his way. The Comet’s engine gave great bellowing gouts of sound and smoke as it turned in its own length, and got niftily under a thick willow. Blackbirds and larks sang; they hadn’t paused for a minute. Fred’s smoke drifted away on the breeze. Cummings was out and on the ground as I pushed into the shadow of the great tree. The hatch above the driver opened; he leaned into it and said, ‘OK boys, secure her please. Then you can get some air.’ To me he said, ‘Thank you,’ again.
‘Don’t mention it. I was getting bored.’
‘What I will mention, sir, if you don’t mind . . . is that you’re a bloody odd sort of Padre.’
‘It’s a new line for me. Six months ago I was a wireless op in a Lancaster. I probably flew over your head a couple of times. Who’s Fred?’ I pointed at the picture of the defecating dog. Cummings laughed.
‘My dad’s dog. Shits anywhere; like us.’
Before his crew dismounted he leaned towards me and said quietly, ‘There’s a village less than a mile away. I was thinking of wandering over for a looksee. It will help to kill the time.’ When I failed to respond he added, ‘You said that you were bored, sir?’
‘Good idea, Sergeant.’ I shoved out my hand, feeling a bit stupid. ‘My name’s Charlie Bassett, what’s yours?’
‘You know it’s Cummings. It’s Alfred. Alf, or Fred. Like the craphound.’
After a hesitation he shook my hand. It’s bloody socialism for you; I called him Fred, and his driver Doug, and they called me sir, and it was me that was supposed to feel uncomfortable. Doug toted an empty pack, an empty gas-mask case, and a .303 short Lee Enfield rifle with a full magazine. He looked as if he knew what to do with it.
*
The village was called Brond. It had its own road sign.
‘I knew a fat Scotchman called that, once,’ Cummings told me. ‘We could be in luck.’
We walked into it from the south. It was a single wide street which was split by a spired church into a narrow Y at its north end. Cummings waved us back, and Doug and I fell in behind him, a six-foot gap between each of us. Cummings walked the walk, and we matched him. I hoped that no one was watching. What the hell had my curiosity got me into this time? Halfway up the street it opened out into a small square containing a huge and ornate bronze fountain. A big house on the square had been the Gendarmerie. It was burnt out; the rest of the place was relatively undamaged, if empty.
When I looked up I saw the other soldiers. They were moving down the road towards us in open order. Four Yanks. They closed to a single file to pass us, but never looked up as they walked through. No eye contact. Their uniforms were clean, and they were freshly washed and shaven. Even so, I knew immediately there was something not right about them. Something that made me shiver.
Doug said, ‘Aye, aye chums,’ to them as they trod warily past, but they ignored us.
Cummings muttered, ‘Eyes front,’ as if he bloody meant it. Then, ‘Don’t look at them. Don’t look back.’ The last bit was in an urgent undertone. I’ve had to do this before: write down something I’ve seen, and still don’t believe in. I’d seen something like it before, you see, so I knew what they were, that American patrol with the faded red triangles sewn to the shoulders of their uniform jackets. I knew they were dead men, walking to nowhere. Some people call them ghosts. I suppose Cummings knew that too: I suppose that he, too, had seen something like them before. Twenty paces further and Cummings said, ‘OK, lad,’ to Doug, and to me, ‘You’ll say something for those Yanks, Father? Once we reach the church, if it’s safe to go in?’
‘Of course I will,’ I told him.
We went into three houses, and then gave up on it. The houses weren’t knocked about at all; just empty. No furniture, nothing. Early vegetables in the back gardens needed thinning, and front gardens were overdue for attention. In the third and largest house we went into there was a modern Bakelite telephone in the hallway. I picked it up, there was that activity sound, and a sweet woman’s voice asked me in halting French which number I wished to reach. I told her I didn’t have the number, but could she connect me to the ARC Grand Central Club in Paris? She asked me where I was calling from. I told her Brond, and gave her the number on the phone cradle. The girl who answered at the ARC was a cheerful American. I asked, ‘Is Emily back yet? Miss Emily Rea. This is Pilot Officer Bassett, RAF. She asked me to contact her.’ It wasn’t exactly a lie.
The girl said, ‘The Programme Director is still out of Paris, sir, can anyone else help?’
‘How about Mr Kilduff? He’s a Lieutenant with your Military Police I think.’
‘We have no one with that name here, sir, but if you’ll wait a few seconds I shall connect you.’
Kilduff was laughing as he picked up the phone. He said, ‘You’re a cocky little bastard. I can’t believe that you’re still running around loose. What do you want?’
‘Nothing. I just picked up a telephone to see if it worked.’
‘They all do. Right across Europe. If you have the number you can phone up the bunker and speak to Goebbels.’
‘Have you done that?’
‘We all have. It really pisses them off – they’re still trying to fight the war. I’ve been doing that a lot since I met you: trying to piss people off. You give people really bad ideas.’
‘I don’t understand. What do you mean?’
‘You were born with the words I don’t understand dribbling out of your mouth; probably in a talk bubble, like in the comics. You remember my Scotch nigger McKechnie?’
‘Yes, I do. What happened to him?’
‘Done a runner, just like you, Charlie. The bastard even left me a letter, resigning from the war. You found that woman yet?’
‘I’m getting closer. When I do I’m coming back for you and your lunatics.’
He laughed at that, ‘Maybe they don’t want you to find her any more? Ever thought of that?’ Then he laughed again. Really laughed, and put the phone down on me.
Cummings was standing beside me, moving restlessly. He wanted to move. Something that Kilduff had said had registered with me. I told Cummings, ‘You go up to the church without me, if that’s what you want.’
He nodded.
I added, ‘I want to make another call while I can. This might be the only phone line in Belgium still working.’
‘OK, sir, but please don’t touch anything else. These spaces could be wired.’
‘OK, I won’t take any chances.’ But I already had, just by lifting the phone without thinking. Stupid.
He and Doug moved down the tiled passageway, and out into the light again. I picked up the telephone handset and the same girl answered. My French sounded better than hers. I gave the telephone number for Crifton – the big house in Bedfordshire – and asked if I could call there. She asked if I had an authorization for calling England. I said I didn’t know, and she asked for my service number. She went to silent running for about a half minute, and then came back and said that that was OK. Barnes answered. I told him, ‘It’s Charlie Bassett.’
He said, ‘It’s good to hear from you, Mr Charlie. Where are you?’
‘Somewhere in Europe. Is Mr or Mrs Baker at home?’
‘Mrs Baker’s standing alongside me, sir. I’ll put her straight on.’
Even over a crackly line Adelaide’s voice was unmistakable. Unless you mistook her for Lauren Bacall that is.
‘Hello Charlie. Any news?’
‘No. That’s what I was going to ask you.’
‘No. Except that creepy policeman from London came back to visit, and leer at me. He said that she’s definitely not in London.’
‘She’s been in France, but she’s not there now. I found someone who met her here. It sounds as if you have a grandchild, by the way, but I don’t know the details: congratulations. I’m heading north.’
The line was noisier now; and having phoned Grace’s home out of curiosity really, I now found that I had little to say. So I closed it down.
‘I must go now.’
‘Take care, Charlie.’
‘I will. Take care yourself. Look after Barnsey.’ Why did I think that she sounded odd: or that there was something different in her voice? Maybe that bastard Kilduff had spooked me.
I stepped away from the telephone; and then back to it, and picked up the handset for the third time. After a ten-second buzz the same operator answered.
I said, ‘This is Pilot Officer Bassett of the RAF. Somewhere in Belgium, I think.’
‘I know. I checked your number against our list. Serving officers are authorized for telephone traffic.’
‘I’m pleased. I telephoned again because I really like the sound of your voice, and wanted to know where your telephone switchboard is and if I could meet you. What town do you work in?’
After a pause she said, ‘I probably shouldn’t tell you.’
‘No. You probably shouldn’t. What’s your name then?’
‘Ingrid.’
‘Tell me where you work, Ingrid.’
There was a ten-beat pause again, before she said, ‘Bremen. At the International Telephone Exchange. I speak four languages.’
‘You’re German?’
‘Ja.’
‘Ja.’
‘Crikey!’
‘It’s funny, isn’t it? Do you think that the war is nearly over?’
‘Yes. Yes; I hope so.’
‘I hope so too. I am frightened. Frightened of the bombing and the occupation. Frightened the Russians will get here first.’
‘So am I. Frightened, I mean. I’ll find you if I get to Bremen. What’s your other name?’
‘Knier. We spell it with a K and an N. That is K-N-I-E-R.’
‘And where do you live?’
‘Here; at the telephone offices. My own house was bombed. This is a silly conversation, Pilot Officer – you are not writing down what I am saying.’
‘I have an exceptional memory; trust me. You are Ingrid Knier, with a K, and you live at a telephone exchange. You are very pretty – I can tell that from your voice. You’re frightened of the bombing, and the occupation. I’m going to find you in Bremen.’ All my life I have been good at girls who are good at conversational pauses. Then she said, ‘I think not, Pilot Officer. I must go now. Take care of yourself, and live long.’
Then there was a click. I put the handset down in its cradle, and picked it up again.
The line was no longer live. For the first time since I had joined up I had spoken to the enemy, and the enemy had spoken back to tell me to take care of myself, and live long. Funny bloody world.
I walked out onto the road, and caught Cummings and Doug outside the church talking to a man who was about eleven feet tall, and thin and blond. His hair was unfashionably long. It needed a good wash. Come to think of it, everything about him was long, and needed a bit of a wash.
Cummings said, ‘Meet Henk. He’s the Pastor here. The Dutch Unitarian Church.’
I said, ‘They’re Lutherans, I think,’ and our new friend said, ‘That’s right. I am very pleased to meet you. I’m Henk Lammers.’
He held out his right hand for a brotherly clasp. When we shook hands his fingers wrapped around me like small pythons. He wore the dress black cassock of a French Abbé – which didn’t look terribly Unitarian to me. Doug and Cummings were smoking his cigarettes. They said that they’d found him in the church, asleep on a pew near the door. His English was very good – better than Doug’s come to that – and I asked him about it. He paused before saying, ‘Cambridge. Then I went to a church school in Wales. Do you know it?’
I said, ‘No: not even the Welsh know Wales. It’s not knowable.’
At least he was bright enough to recognize a joke when he heard one. Either that or he was a halfwit: because he smiled. Every time you spoke to him there was a small deliberate pause before he answered. Then he smiled.
Cummings asked the question.
The Pastor drew deeply on his cigarette, exhaled, then ground his cigarette butt out on the church step before replying. He said, ‘I don’t know.’
I asked him, ‘All the people? Their animals?’
Pause.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Their vehicles? Their furniture?’
Pause.
‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you know?’
Pause.
‘Nothing. I arrived yesterday. It was like this.’
Cummings tried again. He was a more sympathetic interlocutor than I. He spoke gently. ‘Where did you come from, Father?’
Pause.
‘Den Haag. My Bishop sent me. He didn’t say that all of the people had left. I came by bus and walking. It was a long journey. Last night I waited, but nobody came, except the Americans. Did you see the four Americans?’
Cummings said, ‘Yes, we saw them.’
Pause.
‘They wouldn’t speak to me.’
‘They wouldn’t speak to us either. So no one came back last night?’
Pause.
‘No. This morning I knew that I would have to decide what to do next. I was hungry. So I slept – I get a better decision from a rested mind. Then you came.’
Doug had moved into the church. When he came out he said that it looked untouched, but empty. He brought out three suitcases tied up with string. Two were those nice leather travelling jobs that moved all over the Continent when people still travelled for pleasure. The third was smaller. I’d seen one like that before. Doug dropped them at our feet on the church steps. I was standing slightly behind Cummings facing the big Dutchman. I gave Cummings a small dig in the back before I spoke.
‘Sergeant, I think that the Pastor should come back with us to the squadron, don’t you? It’s not safe for him here.’
Lammers asked, ‘Squadron? You have aircraft near here?’ For the first time he hadn’t paused.
Cummings didn’t want me to answer, but I said, ‘No. Tanks. We can take care of you there.’
Lammers had taken a pace away, which put him a step above us, with Doug to his right on the same level. He replied, ‘Thank you, but no. I should wait for my people to return.’
I spoke softly, ‘I am afraid that I will insist.’
He said, avoiding eye contact this time, ‘It is not possible. I cannot come with you,’ and as he spoke his right hand dropped slowly. Maybe he was going to cry, and was going for his handkerchief. I got an eyelock on Doug, and dropped my glance to the pastor’s hand. Doug was bright enough to pick up on it. He let the hand almost disappear into the pocket before he casually swung the .303 he carried. Casual, but fast, and with some force. The brutal impact noise made me wince. Flesh and bone against metal. Doug said, ‘Sorry, sir. My mistake.’
The Dutchman screamed. That’s just the sort of noise I’d make if a clumsy Tommy had just crushed two of my fingers between the barrel of his rifle and my own gun. Doug’s hand dived into the pocket, and came out with a small pistol. He said, ‘How very naughty,’ and then, ‘Nice job. German Walther .30. Good souvenir.’
The churchman held one hand in the other. Blood dripped between his fingers. Cummings had drawn his own pistol by now. I’d once seen what an American Colt could do up close. He was refreshingly formal when he said, ‘I’m taking you into custody, Mr Lammers. My Captain will want to talk to you. If you answer his questions satisfactorily I’m sure that you will be allowed to return.’
The Dutchman looked at Doug and his .303, then looked steadily at Sergeant Cummings and his Colt pistol, then looked at me. He lifted a lip in a sneer, and spat on the step between us.
‘Piss off, yer gouk,’ he told one of us. I never worked out which one.
Before we left, Cummings asked me, ‘Would you mind going into the church, and saying a few words for those Yanks, sir? Don’t worry about chummy here. I’ll drop him if he so much as twitches.’
The church was dark and cool. They had left nothing but the pews. The altar was now just an uneven block of stone. I walked up to it, put my hand on it aware of a hundred years of prayer in this place, and silently asked the forgiveness of a being I didn’t believe in, for four American soldiers whom I didn’t believe I had seen. The sudden move into the sunlight out of the church made my eyes water.
Outside, Lammers had a bruise starting to show around his right eye. He was prodded off in front of us carrying his large cases. I took the smallest one because I didn’t want to let it out of my sight. It was a high, bright sun again, and I stopped at the fountain in the square for a drink, but it was dry. Cummings urged us on.
I sat on the ground in the shade with my back against Fred’s front plate. Twenty feet away from me Charteris sat with James under the awning that stretched out from the Kangaroo. Between them, and slightly forward, an old drum with a blackened skin was sitting on a small stool. There was a small book resting on it. Doug told me that it was the KRs. Lammers was sitting on the ground in front of them, his arms clasped around his knees. His fingers had been cleaned and bandaged. He wore iron handcuffs. Cummings stood at ease in front of the officers, clearly giving his report. From time to time I caught Lammers looking around the field. Counting us, I thought. He still expects to get away with it. Every time someone addressed a question to him he shook his head. I still had the small suitcase under my left hand. Eventually they waved me forward. Lammers didn’t even look up at me. James asked me, ‘What was the problem, Charlie?’
‘He was. He’s not right, sir. The village is like an army of cleaners have moved through it.’
‘Every time I asked him a verifiable question, where he went to college, where he trained for the church, he told me – then asked, Do you know that? I think he’s trying to work out how detailed his lies need to be.’
‘Well done, Charlie. I like that.’ James was being sincere, but he sounded bloody patronizing. Charteris frowned. I told them, ‘He says he’s a Lutheran, and then says his Bishop sent him here. I’m not sure that Lutherans have bishops in their mob. I’ll have to check that, sir.’
James asked me, ‘What else?’
‘He had this in the church.’ For the first time I gave him a decent butcher’s at the small suitcase I had lifted. ‘To me, it looks the same as the one you have: and you said that you got yours from Jerry.’
The Major’s eyes gleamed.
‘Well, well, well.’ I think that he addressed that to Charteris, not me. ‘What have we here?’
Charteris had Cummings open the suitcase.
‘. . . over there somewhere, old chap: just in case.’
He waved him over to the centre of the field. Doug went with him, without being asked. That impressed me. It was locked, but responded to one of several small keys found around the Dutchman’s neck on a piece of string. We waited for the discreet explosion that never came. After a decent interval they brought the case back to us. His papers and ration book had looked OK, and the other larger cases had just contained civilian clothes: some of them for a woman – that was interesting. It was the small case that got James’s attention, of course, but he fretted over it. He asked me, ‘Come and have a shufti at this, Charlie. If it’s a radio it’s like none I’ve ever seen.’
‘Me neither,’ I said, when I got alongside him. It was electrical all right, with ammeters and a voltmeter, and a small integral glass-cased battery, but James was right – it was never a radio.
‘I wonder what that does?’ Charteris asked us, and depressed what looked a bit like a Morse key, but wasn’t.
The concussion almost knocked me over. The sky went black. The noise deafened me. The wind stripped leaves from the willows, the awning from the Kangaroo, and wrapped Kate up in her own camouflage shroud. I had instinctively crouched, and when I looked to the source of the explosion saw a massive black cloud boiling over Brond. A shower of fine rubble, dirt and dust fell on us like a summer storm. Lammers must have made his move, because he was flat on his face with Doug astride his shoulders, pinning his neck to the field with his rifle. Cummings, crouched by me, said, ‘Effing hell!’ which seemed appropriate at the time, and James, picking himself up and dusting his uniform down, said, ‘Detonator, I think. It’s a remote detonator. Very sophisticated.’
I said, ‘I forgot. When I wouldn’t let him go the bastard swore at us in English. Something north-eastern. Gateshead or Newcastle.’
Charteris didn’t say anything. He’d gone white. Then he spoke quietly to Cummings. He said, ‘Peg the bastard out, Sar’nt.’
And that’s what they did. The military often seems to have a monopoly on cruel and unusual punishment. Two squaddies spreadeagled the poor sod in the middle of the field, and secured him with tent pegs, and Charteris threatened to have a tank driven over him. I remember the tank was named Rachel’s Dream.
Charteris said, ‘Come over with me, Padre. Maybe he’ll speak to you.’
When we were at Lammers Charteris squatted down to speak to him.
‘This is the way it works, old boy. I will signal the tank forward. It will move very slowly. Its starboard track will run right up the middle of your body. The first pain you will feel will be the pressure of it on your inner thighs, then it will crush your balls. It’s all downhill from there, I’m afraid. I understand that your head will stay alive until the tank runs over it. That will take about five minutes if my driver is very careful.’
Lammers was taking fast deep breaths to pump himself up. He spat.
‘Won’t say nowt.’ He still sounded like a Northerner, but said to me, ‘Give me absolution, Father.’
I said, ‘You’re a Lutheran. You don’t need it.’
‘I’m not. I’m a Catholic, Father. Please give me absolution.’
‘No,’ I told him.
‘That’s not allowed,’ he squealed. ‘You can’t refuse.’
‘Try me,’ and we walked away.
Charteris said, ‘That was a bit hard, Padre.’
I thought that that was a bit rich, coming from someone who was getting ready to drive a tank over someone else. He waved his hand at Rachel’s Dream, its driver revved it unnecessarily, and began to inch it forward.
England strolled over to join us: he seemed to have recovered his composure. Cummings’s driver doubled over to us and saluted. He’d been sent to look at what was left of Brond. He was out of breath, but reported, ‘The town square has disappeared, sir. Just a bleeding great hole. There aren’t many undamaged houses left. If the squadron had been driving through . . . well, they would have got most of us, sir.’
Charteris said, ‘Thank you, Trooper. Get yourself a cuppa, and try to ignore the screams.’
James asked me, ‘You were there. How much explosive would it have taken to do that much damage?’
‘We used four-thousand-pound blast bombs called cookies in the RAF. One of them couldn’t have managed anything that big.’
Charteris looked quizzically at me. James asked him, ‘Didn’t you know the bold Padre was in the RAF before he saw the light?’
‘Wireless Op,’ I said ‘. . . but now I’ve found Jesus.’
‘Good job someone has.’ That was Charteris again. ‘Fuck knows where he’s been for the last few years!’
Lammers had guts. He didn’t shout until the tracks touched him. Then he babbled fast and loud. Charteris waved a stop, and James told us, ‘My side of the business, I think.’ He took his time about strolling over. He returned about fifteen minutes later. Doug had come back, with char and a wad for Charteris and me. James had filled half a dozen pages of his small notebook with that fine script of his.
He told Charteris, ‘Three thousand kilos of high explosive under a fountain in the main square apparently – what’s that in pounds? They emptied the village in the path of our advance: deliberately stripped it bare, and didn’t booby-trap it with anti-personnel mines. Best result for Jerry was that we moved a field HQ in there. Next best was that we just advanced a column up the main street because the street was clear. Either way we would have been blown to bits. Our friend on the grass out there would have set it off from the church steeple.’
‘Who is he, sir?’
‘A Lithuanian SS man. Unpronounceable bloody name. Very well drilled in the Geneva Convention: expects you to treat him with respect and humanity. He was a merchant sailor before the war, sailing for a shipping line out of Middles-brough.’
‘Anything else, sir?’
‘They’ve prepared three more villages like this. He gave me the names. Do you want to radio them forward?’
‘Thank you, Major. What did happen to the people who lived here?’
‘He genuinely doesn’t know. They were gone before he arrived. He said that they were relocated by a Sonderkommando.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked him.
‘What we’d call pioneers, but they’re really clean-up groups. What they’re good at is disposing of lots of bodies.’
The tank had backed off Lammers for twelve feet or so. Even from where I stood I could see the relief on his face. He smiled, even as Rachel’s Dream suddenly lurched over him. It was over in seconds. Cummings was back with us.
‘Driver’s foot will have slipped, sir,’ he told me. ‘Do you want to say some words?’
‘No. I told you. That bastard can go to hell as far as I’m concerned.’
Cummings grunted. It may have been a little laugh.
‘Why don’t you stick around, sir? You’re our sort of Padre. The lads could get used to you.’
I wanted to be sick.
Les slept through the lot. Even the explosion. As we packed Kate for a getaway I told him, ‘I spoke to a Jerry today. I picked up a telephone in that village and was answered by a switchboard operator in Bremen.’
‘Does the Major know that yet?’
‘No; I haven’t had time to tell him.’
‘Do. It’ll make him laugh.’
He didn’t laugh. He wrote it down in his little notebook while we bounced down little Belgian country lanes. Les can’t have been happy with the roads we were using, because his hands on Kate’s wheel had white knuckles. James said, ‘Thanks very much, Charlie . . . only next time tell me sooner, savvy? These little things can be important.’