Bremen was very odd. Right from the start. Some parts of the suburbs were almost untouched by war. We had driven through a large park where people were strolling. Three drunken sailors were trailed by a tail of inquisitive children and acquisitive young women – all out in Number Ones and Sunday-best dresses, despite the chill wind that came from the north-east. That was a metaphor for Germany that year: a chill wind from the north-east full of Russians. It was one of the things for which I was unprepared: the chill wind, I mean – I’d had plenty of time to think about the Russians. Then there were bits of the city simply missing. Whole blocks a half mile by a mile. The roads were still there – cratered, but cleared by the methodical Kraut – but where blocks of flats and tenements had stood, there were pyramids of stone and brick. Some of the pyramids had narrow paths cleared through them: they would have followed narrow streets and paths before the war, I’d guess. Where leafless trees or wooden posts remained – and there weren’t many – they were covered in tiny, handwritten notices . . . Ilse is now with her parents in Baden . . . Madelaine and Freya have moved to Bassum, Uncle Otto was killed in March.
I noticed one of those cellar doors in the pavement, open alongside a mountain of rubble. People moved in and out of it, blinking as they came into the light; moving slowly. None of us in the car spoke much. I had come looking for a city, but parts were only a red desert. A rusty mist of brick dust danced in the air like a dust storm, and blanketed everything. A woman pushed an old high pram. She had waved to the car as we cruised past. She was wearing a fashionable dress with a short fur jacket, and a jaunty black pillbox hat. And a surgical face mask. The baby in the pram wore one too. It didn’t wave as we cruised past. And there was that smell, of course: it even got inside Kate.
Les broke the spell.
‘Crossroads. Scotch soldiers over there. Which way do we go?’
Then there were the other places. Where the walls of the buildings still stood: more or less. But instead of containing functioning houses, flats, offices and businesses, they were filled by rubble and burnt or smashed beams, and open to the sky. Buildings with a wall cleanly removed so that you could see the contents of the interior: like looking into doll’s houses. One three-floor house had a top-floor bedroom, now open to the weather, with bright yellow patterned wallpaper, and a bed with a green and red eiderdown. It was like a garden in the sky. There was a red cross daubed crudely on its front door. I asked, ‘What’s that mean? Plague?’
James: ‘No, that will come next month. Probably cholera and TB . . . and syphilis, of course, once the Frogs get here.’ He’d been snotty about the French ever since spending a night in one of their cells. He went back to his thoughts, and they were probably too lofty for the likes of me and Les.
Les said, ‘The red cross means unexploded bomb. A Jerry we had a couple of months ago told us that. It explains why there’s anything still left in that house.’
There were more folk moving around in these recognizable ruins. The roads were more heavily cratered, and the craters hadn’t been filled in with rubble, as they had been in the areas of total devastation. A lot of infantry soldiers as well, thankfully all belonging to Scottish regiments, and not dressed in field grey.
One road we attempted was so badly cratered that we couldn’t move forward. Les started to back Kate up. A young brown job Sergeant with a Gateshead accent came sprinting from the cover and threw a sloppy one at James, although it was to Les that he spoke.
‘Would you mind backing up as quick as you like, chum, and getting off the street? Then I’ll explain what’s going on.’
The Good Soldier Finnigan. The Sergeant seemed a cluedup type, even if he was in a Scottish regiment. Les backed Kate between two shagged-out houses without roofs. The infantryman said, ‘Thanks. You were in harm’s way, and all that.’
James: I haven’t seen any fighting Germans yet.’
‘Neither you will, sir. It’s those fucking Canadians. It’s like the gunfight at the OK Corral down there.’ He waved vaguely in the direction we were travelling. ‘Where were you hoping to get to, anyway?’
James asked, ‘Charlie?’
‘The main telephone exchange, and the hospital in the Hanseatic Hotel. Doesn’t matter in which order. Befehl ist Befehl.’
‘Meaning?’ Then he spotted my collar crosses and added, ‘Sir.’
‘An order is an order. It’s a German saying. They use it to explain something about themselves.’
‘You speak German? Good. It will come in handy.’
That was a bloody laugh, wasn’t it? Les thought so: he smiled.
The Sergeant then said, ‘You’ll never get the car through. The Canadians are using anti-aircraft guns and mortars against anything that moves; particularly if it’s khaki. Someone has told them they’ve been infiltrated by Werewolf units dressed as British soldiers. My boss has said that Horrocks has threatened to call up air support if the fighting doesn’t stop soon. You wouldn’t want your transport to be caught in the open with a Tiffie up your arse. Begging your pardon, Padre.’
Then he examined James’s old prewar street map and showed us where we were, and where the telephone exchange had been, and hospital was. The telephone exchange had fallen down after one of the American daylight raids a few days previously. Les put Kate in somebody’s front room and stayed with her. We followed the Sergeant for a couple of minutes to find his platoon HQ set up in another. A spiky Highland Lieutenant confirmed our position, and showed us on his charts where the Canadians and the Americans were. As we left the little platoon he observed, ‘You’ve got a bit of a problem with the car. I don’t suppose you’d care to wait until the rough stuff’s died down?’
‘How long is that likely to take?’ I asked.
‘About this time tomorrow would be about par for the course once the Allies start shooting at each other. I don’t suppose you can wait that long?’
‘No.’
‘Then you’ll have to leave your wagon. You’ll never get any closer in that. The roads are fucked up. Full of big holes, burst water mains, and swimming in sewage in some places: don’t forget to take your tablets. You can leave your car inside the house next door, and then proceed on foot, although you’ll have to leave someone with it. Otherwise all you’ll have left when you get back is a bag of bolts. They’ll steal everything. The telephone place is about two miles away, and the hospital another mile or so beyond that.’
That was that, then. Except.
Except that when we moved back into the space between the houses there was a jeep parked in front of Kate, and Cliff was sitting on its bonnet talking to Les. The bastards actually looked pleased to see each other.
Addressing a superior officer as if he’s a bit of dog dirt you’ve found on your shoe is called insubordination. It’s what I did then. The only surprise was the grudging look of approval Les shot my way. I snarled at Cliff, ‘And where the fuck did you spring from; Fairyland?’
He ignored my tone, and lack of respect. I don’t suppose he wanted to charge me.
‘Your Pole’s aeroplane. He gave me a lift. We landed on a big dual-carriageway road around the town. Did you know that foreign bugger outranks me now?’
‘Only in the Polish Army: I’m not sure that it actually exists.’
‘Hello, Cliff,’ James said, and (meaning me), ‘Hasn’t he turned into a rude little sod?’
Cliff grinned. His grimy moustache twitched. I’ve told you before; he was actually another who it was impossible to dislike when he smiled. He said, ‘Must be the company he’s keeping.’
Les took a cigarette from his hat, and lit up. I tried again with Cliff.
‘How did you know where I was, sir?’
‘They told me. The same way my message got to you. You did get the recall, by the way?’
‘They told me I could stop, and come home. Having chased Grace and her baby into the arms of the Russians I can come back now.’
‘Then why haven’t you?’
It wasn’t as easy to answer as all that. We were standing on big grey flagstones between the smashed houses. Two aircraft roared by at house height about two hundred yards away. They flinched automatically. It was the engines that told me.
I said, ‘Mossies,’ and didn’t even bother to look up from the brick dust I was scuffing with my boot. Then I answered, ‘I never wanted to chase Grace away. I might even still want her back, which sounds stupid, but it’s true; you don’t stop loving her because she’s shagging somebody else. Loving someone doesn’t depend on them loving you back.’ I think that I embarrassed everyone with that revelation. I needed somebody on my side. I asked Les, ‘What do you think, Les?’
It was very odd. It should have been me who sounded tired and defeated, but it wasn’t. It was Les. He sighed, ‘You reminds me of meself when I was young.’
‘When you were twenty-one?’
‘No: when I was sixteen.’ Then he asked me, ‘You still want to find that ’ospital?’
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’
Les just said, ‘OK. I’m on for it.’
Cliff’s neat little mouth turned down at the sides. Out bloody voted; I knew that he wouldn’t pull rank, but he had a last try.
‘If you don’t stop now I can’t guarantee to keep you out of trouble once we’re back in Blighty.’
‘You never could, sir,’ I told him.
I used the sir again because the negotiation was over. But it didn’t turn out like that. James came over majorish, and insisted that Les remained there to guard Kate. Having manipulated the rest of us into scrambling through Bremen on our hands and knees, Les actually looked a bit smug about being left behind.
*
After an hour at the crouch or on our bellies, we slid into a bomb crater, only to find it already occupied. There was a single infantryman – one of ours – and four scared civilians.
Cliff said, ‘Bloody fine foxhole, this. Any port in a storm.’
A mortar round or light artillery shell landed up about fifty yards away. I crouched under the shower of mud and brick pieces it threw at us. I said, ‘I think you’ve said that to me before, Cliff. At least, someone did. About a woman.’
‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ the soldier said. ‘It’s not a foxhole. Not a proper one. It’s a bomb crater. The Americans gave it to us a couple of days ago – that’s why the heap of bricks is still warm.’ Another Scot: it was their sector now.
‘What’s that smell?’ I asked. There was this thin, familiar smell. Once it was in your nostrils it never seemed to go away.
‘I thought Les had taught you that.’ From James. ‘It’s what dead people smell like. Your lot probably did it.’
There was another dull thud of a nearby explosion.
Cliff asked James, ‘We’ve shared a foxhole before, haven’t we? Where was that?’
‘Caen, I think: it must have been in July or August. Les got shot in the arse again.’
‘Excuse me, sir.’ It was the Scottie again. ‘It isna a foxhole.’
Cliff said, ‘Does it make a difference?’
‘Aye, sir, it does. A foxhole wouldnae been large enough for the eight of us. I woulda denied you entrance.’
‘With that horrible rifle?’
‘It would be sad if it hae come to tha’, sir.’
There was something about these bastards who wore khaki, carried guns, and walked everywhere: when they made threats you tended to believe them. The eight of us were me, James and Cliff, the Scottie, two women and two children. The children were both girls of about ten. One of them had fair hair and wore a pink plastic patch over one eye. There was a pad of grubby cotton wool behind it. Most of the time we clung around the sloping sides of the bomb crater. From time to time the Scottie scuttled out to the bottom of the depression to check on the meal he was cooking, and slot more wood into the solid fuel stove that stood there. It had a short chimney that smoked a clear thin smoke you couldn’t see from six feet. It must have once been in a kitchen in the pile of bricks alongside us. Something evil was bubbling in an enormous greasy black saucepan on it. Lying around it were piles of broken wood ready to feed its red maw, potato peelings and empty bully cans.
The Scottie had told us, ‘It’s for them. They haven’t eaten for days . . . ye can have what’s left over.’
‘If you’re the Stovie man,’ James told him, ‘we’ve followed you around for weeks. Aren’t you trying to rejoin your unit?’
‘Yes, sir. We have a nice phrase from where I belong, which is part and part.’
‘What does that mean?’ James got out his book and scribbled it down.
‘In my case, sir, it means that I am trying to catch up with my platoon, but not too quickly. I prefer cooking up feasts for lost civvies.’
Cliff told the Major, ‘That sounds like your sort of soldier, James, why don’t you adopt him?’
We all ducked instinctively as another round went off. Nearer this time, I thought. The girl with the eyepatch whimpered. One of the women – who had a lock of blonde hair escaping from a scarf tied over her head – hugged her. Mother and daughter, I thought.
‘We’ve chased your bloody feasts across Europe,’ I told the Scot.
‘And now he’s probably saving lives with it,’ James said. ‘Potatoes, corned beef or spam if they’re lucky, is all that anyone will be eating here for months. At least someone’s showing them what to do with it.’
The Scotsman looked mollified. He said, ‘I put in a handful of ground oatmeal when I can get it: you can stir in a great gobbit o’ clotted cream if you hae’t. The kiddies go for that.’
‘Will you give me your recipe?’ James asked. ‘I’m going to open a restaurant in England after the war: it could be a novelty dish.’
The Stovie Man said that the Canadians hadn’t got any heavy stuff, so they were using Bofors light anti-aircraft guns to keep our heads down, and he said, ‘. . . an’ they’re being a bit half hearted about it. I don’t think they want a proper scrap. I’m thinking they’re waiting for someone to come and sort it out. Just like us. Excuse me a minute . . .’
He slid down to the stove at the bottom of the pit, and returned with two ally mess tins of grey and pink goo, which he handed to the kids. Every time I saw it, it had a different consistency. This time it looked like jellied dogs’ brains. They scooped it out with their hands, wolfing it down like, well . . . wolves. Maybe they were the Werewolf soldiers the Canadians were worried about, disguised as ten-year-old girls. They had nearly finished the food before he got back with two more, on big wide soup plates, for the women. One of the plates had lost a great chunk of rim. The girl with the eyepatch held her mess tin back out to him. A Bofors shell exploded with a sharp crack maybe a hundred yards away. The Scottie smiled at her, but shook his head.
He asked James, ‘Can any of you speak the lingo properly, sir?’
‘Les and I can get by; Charlie’s still a bit green . . .’
‘Les is not here,’ I reminded him.
‘Then that leaves me, I suppose. What did you need old boy?’ James.
The soldier smiled at the women again before he asked, ‘Can you tell them that there is more food, but that it would be wiser to wait half an hour before their second helping. I’m thinking they ha’en’t eaten for a couple o’ days. Too much in one go will mak ’em sick.’
James said, ‘OK, soldier . . . I can manage that.’
He turned so that he was facing them, and said about three sentences, speaking clearly and slowly. Both women smiled weakly. Eyepatch pulled the outstretched mess tin back, and cradled it to her body. There was a rattle of small-arms fire which seemed further away. A single multi-engined aircraft droned high overhead.
I said, ‘The firing’s getting further away. Are you ready to move on, James?’ I wasn’t going to call him sir, sitting in a bomb hole waiting for the next shell to catch us.
‘Give it ten, old son . . . let ’em get a bit further.’
I rolled over to face Cliff. He was about six feet from me. He had his revolver in his hand. He had had it in his hand since we’d left Les with Kate. I still don’t know who he didn’t trust – me, the Canadians, or the odd scraps of Scottish soldiery we came across from time to time. Most of those had been in cellars, shell holes and bomb craters just like the bloody Somme battles thirty years earlier. Cliff must have picked up on that, because as I turned to him he said, ‘Don’t you think that this is the better ’ole, compared to our last one?’
‘Don’t know what you mean . . .’
The Scot guffawed, and James gave his silly little giggle. The Scot told me, ‘Dinna mind them, sir. The Better ’ole was a musical entertainment from the First War. My father took me down to Glasgow to see it. To the music hall. You’re too young to ken that.’ Sure enough; he was closer to James’s and Cliff’s age than to mine. Then he started to hum, and then quietly croon a song that I took to be connected to it. It was ‘What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For?’ Possibly not the best thing to be singing to a ten-year-old girl who maybe only had one left, but she didn’t understand the words anyway. She smiled at him through her fear, and hugged her mess tin closer, as if it was a doll.
I asked Cliff, ‘Will you be straight about something with me, sir?’ Perhaps the truth would make me strong and joyful. Pause. Maybe five-beat.
Then he said, ‘Only possibly. There are always other considerations.’
This time the five-beat was mine. I could always choose not to ask.
First of all I told him, ‘The Major and I have already worked out that I’m not supposed to catch up with Grace and bring her and her baby back to England. I’m supposed to chase her into the welcoming arms of Mother Russia, where she and the baby will disappear into the snowy wastes for ever.’
Cliff eye-wrestled with me: he didn’t blink. I asked, ‘Did you know that when you sent me out here?’
‘No, Charlie. I didn’t.’
‘Would you have still sent me if you had known?’
‘Yes, Charlie. I rather believe I would.’
‘What did you know?’
There were three rifle shots. Two from in front of us and far to the right, and one answering shot from what I presumed was our side. It seemed even further away.
‘What I told you: although I suspected that there could be alternative plans that I knew nothing about.’
‘And you didn’t ask?’
‘Always better not too, old son.’
‘And you didn’t think to mention that to me or James?’
‘No. I kept it nice and simple, my ear to the ground, and my eyes wide open. For what it’s worth, I think that the Bakers actually wanted them found and brought back to begin with. It would have been messy, but they could have dealt with it. Then, when Grace moved so determinedly east, another solution presented itself.’
‘Did you ask the Americans to stop me?’
‘No, it must have been them. It’s how it works in old man Baker’s factories. He compartmentalizes: keeps people and their tasks in separate boxes. The person making the bullets in one part of the factory doesn’t need to know about someone rifling gun barrels in another. The parts only come together in the gun.’
‘I’m not sure that I understand . . .’
‘Power, old boy,’ That was James. ‘Keep what the individual knows to the minimum, but know the whole picture yourself. No one can challenge you then, and you get to do whatever you like, because no one else knows enough to do it better.’
‘. . . which is why he told the Yanks to stop you, but didn’t tell me. It wasn’t about not telling you, it was about not telling me. So that I couldn’t disagree with him, or learn enough to start worrying at it, and work out what’s what. Do you see that now?’ Cliff.
‘Maybe.’ I didn’t respond immediately; then, ‘Two more questions.’
‘No promises.’
‘OK. How did they get to the Yanks?’
‘Probably through that Captain that Addie is shagging. I don’t think that he’s done much flying since he took up with the old lady. He probably knew someone who knew someone, and so on. All of a sudden the Yankee police all over Paris are falling over themselves to lock you up.’
‘. . . and does Grace know that someone’s chasing after her to get her back?’
‘Almost certainly. Someone must have tipped her the wink. That’s why she’s on the move all the time.’
‘Does she know it’s me?’
‘That’s another question. And a particularly stupid one. You said two questions.’ I let that hang, and Cliff eventually said, ‘. . . anyway, I don’t know that. This all seemed so simple when I waved you off. How did I get to be hiding in a bomb hole in Germany explaining myself to you?’
He sounded tired. Almost as tired as James’s old street map looked. James glanced up, folded it and said, ‘See that spectacularly large heap of masonry over there?’ He gestured vaguely to the north-west. ‘That once could have been a main telephone exchange.’
The Scottish soldier said, ‘There must be two or three cellar doors around it. There’s folk under there: I’ve seen civilians diving in and out.’
I borrowed his helmet, and cautiously poked my head over the lip of our crater. No one shot at me. The heap of rubble was about fifty yards away: a mixture of brick and stone the shape of the long barrows you can still see in Wiltshire, but about a hundred times that size. The original building must have been as big as the Bank of England. There was another bomb hole just this side of it. I couldn’t hear any fighting. They must have run out of shells for their Bofors, or were saving them for afters. When I slid down, and gave the Scottie back his helmet, I told James, ‘Fifty-yard sprint, to another crater just alongside it.’
Cliff had put his pistol away, and had been prodding the ground thoughtfully with a three-foot length of half-inch piping he’d pulled from the crater wall. He said, ‘. . . and if they’ve a Bren zeroed on the space between we won’t get halfway. I have a better idea.’ He had finished tying a grubby white handkerchief at the end of the pipe. Then he stood up, and was immediately head and shoulders up, with his flag hanging limply above him. ‘Let me get halfway before you follow.’
James wasn’t that stupid. He let him get to the rim of the next bomb hole before he moved us. The Scottie came with us. We crouched, and moved fast. I asked him, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Alan. Sanderson. Gordons.’
‘I’m Charlie, and that’s James and Cliff. We don’t belong to anything.’
James turned for a half-pace, and gave him a nod. A Sunday stroll.
Our new pal asked, ‘What’s the matter with your army, sir? D’y’ hae no use for ranks?’
I explained, ‘It’s the work they do. Sometimes things get mixed up. I’m just along for the ride.’
‘That’s my first mistake then, sir. I thought that they were looking to you for their orders.’
‘We are,’ James told him. ‘Charlie just hasn’t worked that out yet.’
There was a foot of water in the bottom of the new hole. Cliff was up at the face of the crater. The heap of brick intruded into one side of it: I suppose that the water was burst main pipe – it looked clean enough.
‘What I want to know before I get my boots wet,’ James told us, ‘is what that bloody horrible rustling sound is. Sounds like rats.’
That’s when I noticed it myself. It was the noise that your boots make when you kick your way along gutters full of dried leaves in autumn. I bent to the bricks to listen, and then I heard them. Voices. The murmur of many voices. We needed a breather anyway, and I hadn’t actually worked out what I intended to do – stroll down the cellar steps, and ask if anyone knew Ingrid Knier – always remembering to spell it with a K.
I asked Cliff, ‘Whose baby did Grace have then? It wasn’t mine, or any of my lot. We came along too late.’
‘That leaves an American flyer, and the old man, doesn’t it?’
‘And once they worked out Grace might have had her stepfather’s baby, they changed their minds about getting her back? I wonder if they ever played Happy Families when she was a kid?’
When Cliff eventually responded he asked, ‘What are you thinking now?’
‘I was thinking What a cock-up. Sir.’
Cliff sniffed. So did James. It was probably some public school coded message.
Alan said, ‘There’s still no shooting,’ and, ‘I can see one of those cellar doors from here. It’s one of those big double wooden ones, like they have in front of the pubs on Rose Street.’
I said, ‘If we wait until the next time they open it, James and I can drop down there – I’ll need you because of your German, James – Cliff, you could stop at the doors: watch our backs, and Alan you can cover us all from here.’ None of them said anything so I added, lamely, I thought, ‘. . . unless you can think of anything better?’
‘Unfortunately, no.’ That was James. I had forgotten that he actually knew why we were here, whereas the others didn’t. ‘Shit or bust, eh?’
I could have thought of better similes. Cliff asked me, ‘Who do you expect to find down there?’
‘Just one of my contacts, sir.’
He gave an amused little smile, and said, ‘I was right about you, young Charlie. You have promise. Only been out in the field a few weeks and you’re already building your own little network. Nice stuff.’ I suppose that that was better than him knowing the truth.
You wouldn’t believe the number of wide, worn, red-brick steps that led down from the cellar’s doors to its floor. I nearly choked on the smoke from small fires, candles and oil lamps, and nearly gagged on the smell of unwashed bodies, and what would have been sewage if there had been a connection to a sewer.
Two teenaged boys had come up to scavenge, and we were up alongside them as they were closing the flat doors. As usual, James was on them before they heard him. Cliff had stayed with them at the top of the steps. I stopped counting the steps at fifty. The murmur of humanity died progressively as more and more of them saw us. I carried my Luger in my right hand. Remember that I’d already seen what their Home Guard could do at that castle in Holland.
Funnily enough, it didn’t feel dangerous. As we descended James whispered, ‘Remarkable. Bloody remarkable.’
‘What is, sir?’
‘This place. Enormous. Roman bloody brickwork.’
‘ ’s true. Water cisterns I think. I saw this in Istanbul before the war. They must have just built the telephone exchange on top of it.’
It wasn’t a nineteenth-century cellar at any rate. It was a series of huge vaulted brick caverns supported on massive brick pillars as far as the eye could see. The floor, where I could see it, looked dry and sandy. People were gathered in groups. Families? I wondered. Neighbours? Near the bottom of the worn steps an old lady caught at my ankle, and asked in English, ‘All right now, Tommy? War finished?’
I said, ‘War finished for you, Mother. War nearly finished.’
To make sure that she understood James repeated me in Kraut, and we stood, still not at floor level with them, and watched his words move from group to group. There were absolutely no soldiers that I could see; just women, children and old folk. My brain registered a couple of children crying, and a woman sobbing close by. James murmured, ‘What next?’
I nearly replied, Fucked if I know, but retreated a step or two up from him, and looked out over the crowd. They had joined up, silent now, pressing closer to the steps. Cliff’s voice boomed hollowly down to us, ‘OK down there?’
‘Fine. You?’
‘Yeah.’
Still they didn’t say anything. Still a couple of children cried, and still a woman in the darkness sobbed. I used the thirty-foot voice.
‘Is Ingrid Knier present? Is Ingrid Knier here? K-N-I-E-R.’ I hated the incongruous rhyme. I wasn’t trying to be funny.
James repeated it, and then said something else in Kraut. There was an odd experience of watching our words rippling out through the crowd, like a shock wave. Nothing seemed to happen. James murmured again: he said, ‘Long shot anyway, old man,’ and coughed.
Then I sensed some sort of movement that started at the back of the crowd. It parted as a figure moved forward, closing up again behind it. Bloody silly really, but I found that I was holding my breath.
The woman who stepped to the front spoke very quietly, but everybody in that place could hear her: one of those pin-drop moments. She didn’t look up. ‘Here is Ingrid Knier,’ she said. ‘I am her.’
She was small – even smaller than me – but roughly the same age, and dressed in baggy grey overalls, under a soldier’s jacket which had had its insignia and buttons removed. She had long dark blonde hair. I couldn’t say from where I stood whether she was plain or pretty, because a gash across her right cheekbone had been very roughly stitched: it pulled her face out of shape. She tried to smile but couldn’t make it.
I said, ‘I’m Charlie Bassett. Do you remember me?’ I’m always coming up with original chat-up lines. It sounded ridiculous, but I couldn’t think of anything else.
‘Yes. Of course. Pilot Officer Bassett. I did not believe that you would come here.’
How do you explain yourself to a girl you’ve never met, in front of a crowd of a hundred or more? I felt a lot of tension leaving me. I wondered what I was doing with a gun in my hand. I didn’t mean to sound pompous as I said, ‘I don’t make many promises, Fräulein Knier. When you know me better you’ll know that if I do, I keep them.’ I was particularly pleased to have remembered to say Fräulein.
James murmured, ‘And if I’m not mistaken it’s your doing just that sort of thing with your Grace last year that got us here in the first place.’
The woman moved forward, and stood up to the step below me, alongside James. Then she turned outwards, and spoke in German too fast for me to follow. One of the old men clapped, and another couple of the women began to sob. I asked James, ‘What did she say? I couldn’t follow it.’
‘She told them that you’d made a promise to her to come and save her from the Russians, and that now you are here with your Army. She told them that they are safe.’
That’s when the noise came. It was almost as if they all began talking at once. Their voices filled the cavern.
‘Fucking hell, James, what have I got us into?’
The crowd didn’t exactly disperse. It just moved back out into its component parts. I sat down on the step. James sat alongside me. Ingrid sat about two steps down. After a suitable pause James said, ‘I hope that you don’t mind me observing this, but now it seems to be my sort of a problem, rather than your sort of a problem.’
‘What do you mean, sir?’
‘Well, these people are starving, aren’t they?’
‘Are they?’ It hadn’t occurred to me. I asked the girl, ‘When did you last eat?’
‘What did you eat?’ That was James.
‘Soup. Everyone had a bowl of soup.’
‘What was in it?’
‘Cabbages: six cabbages and a few potatoes. The boys did well yesterday.’
‘Between a hundred people?’
‘Two hundred and nine,’ she said. She pronounced the words very precisely. ‘It was two hundred and eight, but a baby was born yesterday. It is not old enough for soup.’
‘No,’ said James, and, ‘Six cabbages between two hundred people, Charlie. They had a bowl of flavoured water.’ Then he asked Ingrid, ‘How long have you been down here?’
‘Twenty days.’
Then he said to me, ‘I’ll have to radio in. Get some trucks in here if the Canadians let us.’
The girl Ingrid had been following the conversation – probably better than me.
‘But you will need to go away . . . to bring help?’
‘Yes.’
‘You cannot use our telephone?’
‘Is it still working?’
‘Of course. It is the Deutsche Telephone Company.’
When she led him away I experienced an emotion I hadn’t met properly since my school days: jealousy. I sat and watched the crowd. They watched me back: she’d told them I was their saviour. It was a curiously uncomfortable experience. He returned alone.
‘Food and blankets here by close of play today, provided the Canadians agree to stop shooting at us.’
‘You’re beginning to sound like a Major again: you didn’t sound like one when we were in the bottom of those bomb holes.’
‘I suppose I am really.’
‘Then it’s sir, again?’
‘For the time being, if you don’t mind, Charlie.’
‘My pleasure, sir.’ As long as he didn’t try to pull rank on me over the girl, that was all right by me.
‘Would you mind cutting up the stairs to Cliff, and getting him down here?’
‘No problem, sir. What shall I tell him?’
‘Tell him that there’s a live telephone switchboard down here, one of the last that’s left in Germany . . . and he can listen in to some of the calls that are still being made between the remains of Jerry’s armies and their commanders, in what’s left of Germany. Still time to win him a medal for initiative. Your girl Ingrid is going to be busy.’
I had nothing to do. My brief experience of being in charge hadn’t prepared me for relinquishing it again. The girl Ingrid, who I had never truly expected to meet, threaded her way back between the groups. She sat on a step beside me and took my hand. It was the sort of gesture I remembered of my sister. Did that show on my face? Eventually she said, ‘I did not say Thank you. Thank you.’
‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘I explained that. It felt like a promise. I keep promises. Don’t Germans ever keep promises?’ Even for me, given her circumstances, that was a bit bloody brutal.
‘Germans do; men don’t.’
Me put in my place, wasn’t it? I wanted to change tack.
‘I expected I might find you, and maybe a few others hiding down here . . .’
‘. . . and instead you have a multitude to feed.’ She sounded pleased.
‘The Major says that the loaves and fishes will be here before nightfall.’
‘I didn’t know that you were a priest.’
‘I am not. I’m just an ordinary man in a priest’s jacket.’
She didn’t say anything for a time, but didn’t let go of my hand either. When she did it felt cramped, and I rubbed and squeezed my fingers together. She spoke very quietly as if she didn’t want anyone else to hear,
‘Sorry, Charlie Bassett. I thought that if I let go, you might disappear. I am afraid that I will awake, and not know what else to do except wait for the bombers again.’ Then she said something in German that I failed to understand.
I asked, ‘What was that?’
‘I said that your Major was a very good man.’
‘I think so.’
‘He values you also.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You are wrong.’
I asked her, ‘Is this our first argument?’
She didn’t understand the joke but laughed at it anyway.
She asked, ‘When will you go?’
‘I don’t know. Tomorrow probably. The Major will want to stay until his food and blankets are here. Tomorrow the fighting will have finally stopped. I have to visit someone in a hospital in the Hanseatic Hotel, in the docks, do you know it?’
‘No. I know where it is. You will find many people there also. Their telephone link failed.’
‘Of course. It was not Deutsche Telephone Company.’
‘Now you are making sport of me.’ Her face set like concrete.
‘Now I am making sport of you.’
‘So, I will go.’ She moved to get up. I pulled her gently down again by the arm.
‘No. Please stay.’
She looked directly ahead, and smiled a little smile: as if she knew a secret.
‘I was making sport of you.’
‘I know,’ I said, ‘but I wasn’t sure.’
Again there was a pause, but I didn’t feel uncomfortable. Ingrid said, ‘The other officer in the RAF uniform . . .?’
‘Mr Clifford. Yes?’
‘Yes . . . he asked your Major who I was. Your Major said that I was Charlie’s bint. Does that mean anything?’
‘Now you are making sport of me again.’
‘No. Tell me.’
‘The Major was making a mistake. It is an old Arabic word. Charlie’s bint, means Charlie’s woman. He made a mistake.’
When she spoke again her voice was small, and so quiet that it could have been the voice of a child. I had to lean close to her to catch the words. She said, ‘No. He did not make a mistake.’
Charlie’s little heart stopped.
We had visitors. I scrambled up the steps with James close on my heels. Alan’s voice had floated down with, ‘Soldiers, sir. Those Canadians, I think.’
James just carried on past me. ‘Don’t move, Charlie, I’ll handle this one.’
The South African, Major Ira Hendriks, stood in the light. His immaculate uniform was a little muddied about the edges. We could see that he had a pair of white undies tied to the end of his leather-covered cane. Either they were some girl’s, or he was a very peculiar man indeed. At about fifteen feet James said, ‘Close enough, Mr Hendriks,’ and, ‘I thought you were some kind of a policeman.’
‘I am. But to do my sort of policing you need all the medical stuff first, so I’m also a qualified doctor. I have another doctor, and two Corpsmen with me. Can they come down too?’
‘What about the bloody Canadians?’
‘That’s all calmed down a bit. They’ve pulled back to the docks . . . apparently a barracks full of Jerries has surrendered to them there, so they have their hands full anyway.’
‘How did you know we were here?’ James was obviously pushing it a bit.
‘Apparently your ranker phoned my ranker. We were at the hospital. He said that you were stuck out here with two hundred refugees, and needed help. Can my . . .?’
‘ ’course they can, old chap. Pleased to see you again.’ He stuck out his hand for the ritual. Explanation accepted. Pax.
One of Hendriks’s people was a black man in the arse-end of an American provost’s uniform. He had a green operating theatre gown over one shoulder, and was carrying a small case. I said, ‘Wotcha, Cutter!’ as he walked up.
He said, ‘Wotcha: that’s English for something I suppose?’ and, ‘I brought you a drink.’ This was as we walked down the steps. He gave me a half-bottle of bourbon.
‘Thanks. Does that mean we can get through to the hospital now?’
‘You can walk it in thirty minutes, although I wouldn’t try it. You’ll end up down a hole with a broken leg. There’s a lot of unexploded ordnance lying about as well.’
‘Grace Baker still there?’
‘She was when I left.’
I don’t know what I had expected, but it was as if all of the air had been suddenly punched out of my body. The silence spread around Hendriks’s people as they reached the lower levels, and the people got a sight of them. Especially the Cutter. Ingrid stood up to face us. I said, ‘Tell your people that they are doctors: from the hospital. They can help the sick and hurt. They will not harm anyone.’
She turned away from me, and spoke aloud. By this time the Cutter had reached her. When she had finished speaking he reached out, and turned her face gently into the best light, and told me, ‘I can tidy that up for a start.’
Ingrid looked a little panicky. I told her, ‘He is a friend – my friend. He is a very good doctor. We call him Cutter.’
She gave him the eye, and said perfectly, ‘You will not cut my head off?’
Cutter said, ‘No. It’s far too pretty for that.’ His teeth gleamed in the light.
I went to find James. He said, ‘It’s a funny old bloody world,’ about nothing in particular.
‘Yes it is, Major. I wonder what Les is doing now?’
‘Lugging your bloody supper around,’ Les said. He was above us on the steps, and fifteen feet back. ‘Where d’ y’ wan’ it?’ He had a rations box on each shoulder. It would be full of tins of corned beef.
You can trust an officer to be ungrateful. James said, ‘I thought I left you to guard Kate?’
Les said, ‘You can trust an officer to be ungrateful, can’t you?’ Then, ‘I left an Ordnance Corps type with her, sir. It was as far as your lorries could get. They needed me to show them the way across your brick field. There’s six of us will make two journeys each – it’s about a twenny-minute stroll if we’re careful, now nobody’s shooting at you – that will give you just about enough grub for tonight. They’ll get the rest through tomorrow. You’ll have to make do without the blankets for another night.’ James didn’t say anything. Les went on, ‘I trust that’s all right, sir?’
James didn’t say anything. Not at first. Les put the boxes down when he reached our level. I helped him with them. Then James reached out and touched him on one shoulder.
‘Of course it’s all right, Les. Thank you. Thank you very much.’ They both grinned like a couple of bloody Spartans.
After a couple of trips Les went back with his squaddies. Alan produced a couple of blankets from his pack, and spread them a few steps down from the doors, then closed up and battened us in for the night. I can still remember his face, half lit, high above us. He was smiling down at James introducing a circle of middle-aged Fraus to the mysteries of the Stovie as if he had been making it all his life.
Alan called down, ‘An’ dinna ferget the handful o’ oatmeal, sir.’
James waved back. He said, ‘I won’t, Sergeant.’
That took seconds to sink in.
‘Beggin’ your pardon, sir . . . I’m no Sergeant.’
‘You will be, when you get back to your regiment.’
I had tucked myself up against a wall, in the dark. I had expected it to be cold or damp. It wasn’t. It was dry like the floor. Ingrid found me there. She squeezed alongside me, and pulled a heavy, old curtain around our shoulders. She hooked her arm tight through mine, and put her good cheek against my shoulder. We took a good couple of medicinal sucks at the Cutter’s bottle of bourbon. Her closed eyelids looked purply blue in the half-light. I closed my eyes.