When we sat in the car the penny finally dropped.
I told them, ‘That American Police Lieutenant Kilduff, and his goon Bassett – they weren’t looking for me officially. They were after the three grand. It was going to be a quick hit: there and back in two days – I’ll bet they didn’t tell anyone where they were going. Now the Yanks think that they’re AWOL.’
‘Well done, Charlie,’ James told me, and, ‘now: lean back, close your eyes and answer the questions I am going to ask you, without actually thinking about them. Shoot from the lip.’
‘OK.’
‘Given that there’s a bounty out for you, who wants your head stuffed, and mounted on the wall over the fireplace?’
‘Peter Baker. Either him or Addy, Grace’s mum.’
‘Well done. Why?’
‘Because although they’ve changed their minds, I haven’t turned back even though the op’s been scrubbed. They don’t want Grace back now, after all.’
‘OK. Why did they want you to find Grace and the baby, to bring them back in the first place?’
‘To get an embarrassing situation back under control. And at first they thought the kid was mine. That was OK – more or less. Then someone did the arithmetic: I was out of the frame, but several others were in. That includes bold Sir Peter, and might well shaft his hopes of promotion if it gets out. That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t ask the questions, Charlie. That’s my job.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Now tell us why they’ve changed their minds and want to stop you, now that you’re close to bringing them both home.’
‘Because now they know what we know, and what they didn’t know when all this started. She’s heading east, and has no intention of coming back. They can live with that. Their problem has been solved, but Grace doesn’t know it. She’s still running, isn’t she?’
‘I warned you, Charlie. Two days’ CB.’
‘Sorry, Boss.’
‘That’s all right. Congrats, by the way; I knew that you would work it out – you have that sort of mind.’
I opened my eyes, and looked first at Les, and then at James. I asked them, ‘What do you think?’
Les didn’t say anything. He looked as if he’d just flipped over a stone and found something unpleasant there. After a pause James said, ‘It’s all pathetically fucking domestic, isn’t it?’
Les fished a fag out of his beret and lit up.
The odd thing was that it didn’t occur to me that I should stop right there, get on Cliff’s plane, and fly home. Albie had said that he’d got this far, and now he wanted to go all the way to the Big City. I was beginning to understand how he felt. It must have occurred to Les and the Major, but they didn’t say anything about it immediately either. We were close. It was a strange feeling.
Kate was alongside one of those ungainly looking American armoured cars with six wheels: we leaned in on her bonnet looking as if we were having a war talk. I took the opportunity to fill a pipe, Les smoked a few of the strands of string he had that resembled cigarettes, and the Major produced a thin black American cigar from somewhere. What he said was, ‘I suppose that it only makes sense to push on, even though none of us seems to be conspicuously keen on it today.’
‘You’re supposed to be in charge, sir,’ Les told him.
‘I’d rather have a day off,’ he said, ‘but there isn’t anywhere to go.’ None of us said anything for a while, then he used one of those decision-made voices. ‘Let’s push on, and stop at the first place we find that hasn’t been raped by rude soldiery, and has a bar.’
I suppose that that is the sort of reasoning the officer corps is paid for.
Just as I was knocking out the bowl of my pipe on my heel, a flight of Tempests went low over us, howling out their customary bellows of rage. I don’t know why I chose to remember it then, but the pipe I was cleaning was my first and only . . . and Grace had given it to me. She went all the way up to London to get it from a shop with which her old man had connections. It was only months ago, but was like looking back a million years.
The bar was just after a crossroads on a worn crease in one of James’s prewar maps. He thought that the village was called Corne, or Korne. There was plenty of that around: the big fields were a dusty emerald green, and not too many of them had been arseholed by tanks. There were probably ten or eleven buildings along each arm of the cross, but because the countryside around was wide and flat and firm – good tank country – the village wasn’t strategically all that important. The war had simply driven around it. One of those nasty little Dingo scout cars had turned a fetching shade of black and was still smouldering in a field close to the road. Its tyres had melted. The acrid smell of hot rubber bit at our eyes. A building at the very centre of the hamlet had had its corner lopped off by an inexpertly driven tank, and three-quarters along the west–east axis a knocked-out Tiger tank sat forlornly inside the blackened house into which it had been reversed. Its gun barrel drooped almost to the road. It was a big bastard, but not as big as the Elephant in the Bois.
Les said, ‘King Tiger. Handy-looking thing, isn’t it?’
I said, ‘It looks bloody lethal.’
‘Would be if the engines ever worked, but they don’t: they piss out oil everywhere.’
Everything else about the village seemed to be conspicuously unwarlike and normal. There were people in the streets, and some children chasing an old car tyre: they just ignored us. We can’t have been the first Allied soldiers they’d seen: a tattered Union flag clung to a telegraph pole, kicking in the breeze, and there was an HD sign daubed large on the gable end of a low thatched cottage.
‘Mind the kiddies,’ the Major warned Les. ‘It’s not their war.’
‘Yes, Major.’
I don’t know why it had taken me that long to get it, but that was when they slipped back into role: whenever we were on parade with strangers. It was like a blink of an eye, and Les and James became the driver and his Major. They ran a very good act.
The bar was the furthest building into Germany, which is precisely where I would have put it if I didn’t want to share my best beer with foreigners. There were round wooden tables with rustic wooden chairs on the pavement outside.
The Major said, ‘OK. Pull up here, Les.’
‘I’m not sure about that, Guv’nor. I’m feeling a bit exposed.’
‘Trust me,’ the Major told us. ‘This one’s going to be all right.’
When James told us to get out, Les told him, ‘I should cocoa,’ and backed Kate into a small alleyway between the bar and the nearest cottage.
So James got out alone. It was the first time I had sided openly with Les. James thrust his head into the car window on my side and glared at us both.
‘Gutless little ponces. What’s the point of my being a Major if you won’t do what I tell you?’ And he stalked off to sit at one of the round tables.
Les asked, ‘I wonder what we did to deserve that?’
I asked, ‘James been served yet?’
‘No. But you do understand that you can stop it right here, and get off free? You do get that?’
‘Yes. But I don’t think I can.’
‘Why not?’
‘I heard somewhere that Red soldiers play football with new-born kids. Probably crap; but I can’t stand the thought of wondering if that had happened for the rest of my life – after all, if she knows I’m after her, I’ve virtually been used to chase Grace into their arms.’
‘She knows, Charlie. But it ain’t your fault, an’ you heard the man: she might go somewhere else. South.’
‘That doesn’t matter. I ought to catch up: at least give her the choice.’
‘Even if the rest of your life ain’t so long because of it?’
‘Don’t worry about me, Les. I’m going to live forever.’
‘I hate soldiering with men like you; you know that? Wanna fag?’ Then, ‘ ’allo. Here we go. Fat man in a pinny coming up to the Major. He’s gonna get it in the guts or in the guts. I hate soldiering with him sometimes.’
‘What’s that mean? In the guts or in the guts?’
‘Beer or a bullet. It’s what he does sometimes. Takes some effing silly chance.’
The barman waddled off. I saw him from the back. He had a tremendous arse: gold medal winner. He reminded me of those cows I milked in Holland. When he came back it was with three stone jugs of what I presumed to be beer, and a plate of something.
‘Pickled cabbage,’ James told us as we joined him, ‘oh, my windy ones. And steins of pale beer. If this is where you go out, at least you go with a beer in your hand. Did you ask him?’ The last bit was to Les alone.
‘Yes, Guv. He wants to go on.’
‘Told you. Stubborn little bastard.’
‘I’m here,’ I told them. ‘You don’t have to talk about me as if I’m not.’
‘Then bloody well say something sensible for a change,’ James told me.
The cabbage was vile; but beggars and choosers, you know. Another stein of beer came along, and the cabbage tasted better. There was sun on our faces, but a heavy low line of grey cloud crouched along the horizon of Greater Germany. Hitler was not having a good day. Les frowned.
I asked, ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Dunno, sir. Something. Maybe it all looks too good to be true. The proper war’s only a few miles up the road.’
‘Is that what the rumbling is? I thought that was a storm gathering over there.’
‘Guns. Plenty of them. Some poor sod is getting theirs.’
We watched James walking to and fro with the publican. The latter had the air of a relieved man. James’s little book was out, and whenever they stopped pacing he wrote in it. Once he stopped to shake his fountain pen: he must be running short.
Les told me, ‘Look. If it ever goes bad on us, and the Major and I don’t wake up one day, make sure that you get his notebook, and get it back to civilization with you.’
‘Why? It’s only got lists of food in it, hasn’t it?’
‘. . . and the names of the prominent local Nazis, and Communists, who their contacts were in Britain before the war, and where their money and valuables an’ the stuff they stole have been stashed. He’s very good at food, but not half bad at the rest of it by all accounts. People talk to him.’
‘Cliff’s like that, isn’t he? Is that what makes a good intelligence officer, then?’
‘Not pissing folk off, sir, is what makes a good intelligence officer. Major James says you’re as good as the next thing your contact tells you.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘With respect, sir . . . anyone can get information out of somebody once; what counts is when that somebody comes back to you with more information because he wants to.’
‘And James is good at that?’
‘The best, sir. Why don’t you look at that now?’ He nodded at our glorious leader.
The publican was earnestly explaining something. He had his arm around James’s shoulder. A thought occurred to me.
‘It won’t happen, Les, but if it did, who would I give the book to?’
‘You’d find lots of folk after it. Our friend Tommo and the peerless Pole would be after you a bit sharpish, I expect. They could use it.’
‘What about Cliff? Would he do?’
I emptied my stone jug. The publican must have had half an eye on us all the time, because as I replaced it on the table he looked towards the bar and waved his tablecloth. The woman who served the next two pots was clean and wholesome-looking, if not pretty. Her thick hair was a dull, burnished blonde colour. She reminded me of France, and the type of woman James went for. Then she smiled, and her missing teeth made me think of France again, and the family from Laon.
I asked Les, ‘OK, so we’re up at the Front, doing what you came out here to do. What happens next?’
Les shook his head as if I was a pupil who could never remember his lesson.
‘The same as we’ve been doing all the way through Froggie Land, Cloggie Land and Belgium. Clocking intelligence and signalling it back: don’t tell me you never noticed?’
‘I noticed, but I thought you were practising for now,’ I told him lamely. ‘What happens next? Tonight?’
‘Major’ll fix us up with digs, or we’ll sleep in the car. I think it’s been harder for the Major to fix up the three of us, than when we were just the two; although he ain’t said anything. He’ll sit in the back of Kate, code up his notes, and tap them out back to base. Then we’ll eat if we can find someone with something to sell.’
‘And if we can’t there’s always spam and beans in Kate’s boot?’
‘There you are, Charlie. You were watching all the time.’ I was back to Charlie again. Les must have been relaxing. God was in his Heaven, and all was well with our twenty square feet of the world.
James worked his magic. We finished the day with a thin mutton stew, and mountains of powdery potato. You had to ask yourself how the Highland Division had managed to miss that, when they swept through a couple of days earlier. It made you wonder what else they might have missed. I know that it made Les tense.
We billeted in a detached wooden barn behind the bar. The yard between was rough-cobbled from coaching days. All of the accommodation was on the first floor. The ground floor was open, as if the building was on stilts. There was a neatly stacked log lump, a few roughly squared bales of straw, and room beside them for Kate if her blunt radiator stuck out. After we had eaten I noticed that Les went outside to her to run his maintenance checks. I took him out a piece of black bread and lard, pressed on us as a treat. He was working by the light of a small shuttered oil lamp sitting on Kate’s bonnet.
‘You all right?’ I asked him.
‘No. Twitchy.’
‘Any idea why?’
‘If I had, I’d tell you and the Major, and we’d be out of ’ere, wouldn’t we?’
‘I’m sorry. I’ll leave you to it.’
He had her plugs out, and was washing each one carefully in a small tin of petrol.
‘No. Don’t mind me. I get like this sometimes when we’re near the Front. I got this feeling for weaknesses in the line; I don’t know how.’
‘You feel that now?’
‘Yeah, Charlie, and I’ve felt it every time Jerry has come back at us and we’ve been sent scarpering.’
I sat alongside him on Kate’s running board, filled and lit my pipe. If I didn’t get some tobacco soon I would be suffering.
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Make sure the Major knows I’m serious – sometimes he treats me just like I’m an old woman – and have everything you don’t need for the night stowed in Kate. Just in case we leave in a hurry. That OK?’
‘You’re in charge.’ I punched him lightly on the arm. The petrol slopped on his trousers. ‘Sorry.’
It was dark by seven. The inn didn’t have any other customers: probably because we were there. James helped the owners with the washing up, and gave the old man a paper that made him Chief of Police, or Master of the Municipal Sewer or something. There were a lot of bows and smiles after that, and the deal was sealed with a glass of syrupy, clear spirit that tasted of raspberries. I wasn’t that keen: it stuck to my teeth. James had met it before. I noticed that he tossed it right to the back of his mouth. Then he wiped his lips on the back of his hand. The hotelier poured us another round of the thick stuff in little glasses, but made it plain that that was the last. He wiped a fat finger around the neck of the bottle to catch a drop, and put it in his mouth. We were sitting around a small fire on smaller three-legged stools in the small bar. Our landlady’s cheeks were rosy: that must have been the heat. James was showing off for her. Were these people the enemy? It seemed ridiculous, but a week ago they had been, and if God’s Grey Jerries came back, they would be again. Did Winston and Adolf ever sit with their feet to the fire, and wonder how it had ever come to this?
The crude sleeping accommodation above the first floor of the barn was a single room, entered through a hole in the floor from a wide wooden stair. Long ago the animal feed would have been stored there. Our hosts had built a simple raised sleeping platform across about a third of it, and a stack of thin pallet mattresses stood in a corner. A heavy rope hung along one wooden wall; over it about twenty things like grubby eiderdowns were draped. There was a wash hand basin with a rust stain in one corner, and a toilet partitioned off with plywood in the other.
The woman showed us around the facilities. She made up one bed by pulling one of the straw mattresses onto another and dropping a couple of the quilts on them. James tried his luck by pushing her face-first onto them, rolling her over and lifting her skirts. He can’t have believed his luck when her legs opened so easily. I thought they looked plump and white and welcoming. Then she rolled over again, and gave him a haymaker around the side of his head that laid him on the floor alongside her. Then she offered him a big hand on the end of an arm the size of a ham, to haul him back onto his feet. Definitely nothing frying tonight.
When he asked, ‘No hard feelings, old girl?’ she plainly didn’t understand, but laughed, so that seemed to be all right.
I asked her, ‘What’s this for?’ and when she looked blank, used my hand to indicate the room we were in: you could have slept about thirty in it.
‘Jugend,’ was all that she would tell us. Then in accented English, ‘Like boys. Boy Scouts.’
Les smiled, and nodded a thank you at her, but what he actually said, still smiling, was, ‘Boy Scouts my arse! She’s talking about the Hitler Youth I think.’
It didn’t stop us sleeping.
Until about six, I suppose.