The town was a mass of burning, smoking rubble; its streets a shambles of broken glass, fallen masonry and twisted girders, dangling cables and wires, wrecked military vehicles, dead soldiers, dead civilians, dead horses. The heat from the fires scorched the skin and there was a hideous stench of blood and rotting flesh and bad-eggs cordite. An ambulance klaxon had jammed and was blaring non-stop, a herd of loose French cavalry horses cantered wildly up and down, whinnying in terror. In one estaminet drunken Tommies sat round a bottle-filled table, singing and swaying, in another that had been drunk dry, French poilus were smashing shelves. A platoon of British infantry marched smartly down the street, heavy boots grinding glass to powder. Guy stopped their officer.
‘What’s happening? Where the hell are we all supposed to be going?’
The lieutenant eyed him caustically. ‘Where’ve you RAF chaps been? The Navy are taking us off at the harbour. The bloody Belgians have surrendered and the Jerries aren’t losing any time breaking through. Our rearguard can’t hold them back much longer. I’d look sharp about getting on a ship, if I were you.’ His eyes moved to Anna. ‘You’ll have to leave the girlfriend behind.’
As he marched his men away he called back over his shoulder, ‘There’re some small boats working the beaches, too. You could try those.’
More enemy bombers roared over and they ran for cover down some steps into a cellar. ‘The dog … we have left the dog. We must fetch him.’ Guy yanked Anna back as the bombs shrieked down and exploded, shaking the cellar walls. He held her tightly while all hell broke loose above. When the raid was over they crawled out of a ruin. New fires blazed and thick smoke and a worse stink of explosive choked the air. Their bikes were a mangled heap; the dog nowhere to be seen. One of the cavalry horses flopped around in the middle of the road, a hind leg blown off, the gutter running with its blood. Guy took out his revolver and shot the beast between the ears where it lay. Tears were pouring down Anna’s cheeks and he put his arm round her. ‘Come on.’
‘The dog …’
‘We can’t waste time looking for him.’
A Tommy lay face down close to a deep crater in the road. Guy knelt and turned him over. He was a slightly built boy of no more than eighteen or nineteen – stone dead, but unmarked other than by a small gash on his forehead that had spattered his greatcoat with blood. ‘We’ll take his uniform.’ He fumbled with buttons and began tearing the filthy clothes off. ‘Get these on.’ Anna recoiled. ‘I can’t, Guy.’ ‘You damn well have to. Get them on.’ He was undoing laces, tugging at the army boots. ‘These, too. Good job he’s small.’ He tore the soldier’s vest into strips and used them to stuff the boots. When she was dressed he put the steel helmet on her head, the rifle in her hands and redid the tie that she’d made a hash of. ‘You’ll pass – in the dark, at least.’
‘What about my bag? It has my photographs, my passport, my papers.’
‘You can take what you can put in your pockets, that’s all.’
The water-bottle was broken and they left the remains of the ham, fearing it would make them too thirsty, and started walking in the direction of the harbour, clambering over mounds of rubble and past more bomb craters and row upon row of abandoned trucks, tanks and guns. At the port, burning oil tanks poured out a great pall of dense black smoke and fires raging all round the harbour lit up the smashed docks and broken cranes, and the silhouettes of half-sunken ships – funnels and masts poking up from greasy black water. Long lines, three and four deep, of ragged soldiers were formed up, waiting patiently. ‘Been here for hours,’ one of them told Guy. ‘The big ships can’t use the docks since the Jerries clobbered them. They’re having to tie up at a breakwater on the outer harbour. We can get to them along it – if Jerry doesn’t put a spoke in.’ Guy went back to Anna. ‘We’ll try the beaches first.’
Outside the town, away from the heat and smoke and flames, what power was left in the torch battery showed forlorn holiday houses squatting behind grassy sand dunes. They climbed up onto the dunes, their feet sinking deep into soft hummocks of sand. Anna sat down. ‘My feet are too sore to walk more.’
‘OK, we’ll stay here and wait for daylight.’ At a faint sound behind him Guy swung the torch beam round sharply, and picked out two shining eyes. ‘Good God, it’s the dog! Come on, old chap.’ The mongrel, who had waited for the invitation, came forward, tongue lolling, flanks heaving but wagging its tail. ‘He likes us,’ Anna said. ‘He trusts us.’
He’s wrong, Guy thought. We can’t take him with us. Not possibly. It will be a miracle if we get away ourselves. He climbed to a higher point of the dunes and stared into the darkness. The stink of death still clung to his nostrils but now he could also smell the clean, salt smell of the sea and he could hear it in the distance – the regular shushing of waves breaking onto the shore. He listened carefully. It sounded a long way out – perhaps even as much as half a mile. Must be low tide, the depth probably very shallow, shelving gently, and not much deeper at high tide. The tides would come in very fast and go out very fast. There would be no chance of any big ships getting anywhere near this beach. Nothing drawing more than two or three feet would be able to manage it without running aground. Smaller ships – if there were any – would have to be very small and what use would that be to move an army? He went on staring into the dark. As his eyes grew more accustomed to it, he could make out thousands of tiny pinpricks of light all over the beach. He took them for fireflies until he realized that they were the lights of thousands of cigarettes being smoked by thousands of soldiers.
Matt felt the Rose rocking gently. In the darkness, the night before, he’d sailed along the coast and run her aground, bow on, into soft sand and sat waiting for dawn. With the incoming tide, she had refloated herself.
The pre-dawn light spreading gradually across the sky revealed sandy beaches extending for what looked like several miles, all the way west to the great mushroom of smoke over Dunkirk. He had come much further east than he’d thought or intended. As the daylight grew he could see that closer to the town, the beaches were black with troops and littered with wrecked equipment. Lines of men wound like snakes across the sands and into the water. Several big ships were anchored offshore and small craft – lifeboats, cutters and whalers – were moving between them and the men queueing at the water’s edge. He hoisted the mainsail quickly and took Rose out seawards, bringing her about and back into shore towards the closest line of men. Those in front were standing shoulder-deep in the water, rifles held over their heads. He lowered the sail and let the Rose drift gently towards them. Twenty Tommies or more, in full kit – steel helmets, greatcoats, gas masks, capes – waded over and sprang at her gunwales, almost capsizing her.
‘I can’t take you all … I’m sorry. Not more than ten or she’ll sink.’ He dragged one on board who was too weak to manage it for himself; the rest of them hauled themselves up clumsily, weighed down by sodden uniforms and waterlogged boots. ‘Thanks, mate,’ a corporal said to Matt, grinning as he rolled into the boat. He had a week’s growth of beard and looked like a tramp. ‘Start the engine.’
‘Sorry, no engine. We have to row. Can you give me a hand with one of the oars?’
His face fell for a second. ‘Blimey … You’ll have to show me how.’ There was hardly enough room for the two of them to wield the long, heavy oars but the corporal, who had sat facing the wrong way at first, spat on his palms and soon got the knack. They pulled towards the nearest large ship, a cross-Channel ferry. ‘Here comes Jerry,’ the corporal announced. ‘Right on bloody time.’
The Stukas came screaming in from the eastern end of the beach. Men on the sands flung themselves to the ground or scattered to the dunes; the ones already in the water stayed put. Bombs exploded, blasting sand high into the air and sending up giant spouts of water in the sea. Messerschmitts, following on the Stukas’ tails, roared over at a hundred feet, machine-gunning the length of the beach. The Stukas flew on to drop more bombs on the harbour and wheeled out to sea to attack the bigger ships. AA guns opened up furiously but a steamer took a direct hit amidships, broke up, ablaze, and began to sink. ‘Reminds me of the Serpentine,’ the corporal yelled above the din, pulling energetically on his oar.
They came alongside the cross-Channel ferry and the lowered scrambling nets. She was already loaded down with troops and getting ready to leave. The corporal, last to jump for the nets, hesitated and turned back. ‘I’ll stay, if you like, mate. Give you a hand for the next trip.’
All morning they went to and fro from the beach out to whatever large ship was there waiting to take troops on board. Some of the men were too weak or too badly wounded to manage the scrambling nets and fell off. More and more troops were pouring onto the sands, the queues growing longer, not shorter. Only the smallest of the boats could get close enough to pick the men up from the beaches, the larger ones came in as near as they dared and the men had to swim out to them. Those who couldn’t swim grabbed planks of wood or pieces of wreckage and kicked their way along. Matt saw two men float past on a door, using their rifles as paddles, another sitting in an inflated tyre, propelling himself with his hands. They picked up another trying to swim out in overcoat and boots, weighed down by a large pack. The men in the queues grew more desperate – so many of them fighting to clamber on board that, again and again, they threatened to swamp the Rose. The corporal fended them off ruthlessly with his oar. ‘Get back, you bastards. You’ll sink the ruddy lot of us.’ Sometimes men clung onto her gunwales all the way out to the ship, or lost their grip, exhausted, and simply disappeared. The corporal leaned out and grabbed a steel helmet floating past upside down and handed it to Matt. ‘I’d put this on sharpish, mate, if I were you.’ Civilians crewing other small boats were wearing enamel basins and bailers and buckets on their heads. At regular intervals, the German bombers and fighters came back to strafe the beaches. Matt learned to ignore the hail of bombs and shells and bullets – to carry on, like the corporal, without flinching. ‘If one gets us, it gets us,’ the corporal maintained firmly. ‘No good trying to dodge ’em.’ The sea grew red with blood and bodies bobbed around the Rose, nudging her bows as she went from ship to shore and shore to ship. Some of the dead faces were already bloated.
‘What’s this old girl called, then?’ the corporal asked on one trip.
‘Rose of England.’
He nodded. ‘Not a bad name for her, I reckon.’
For three days they had waited impatiently for orders from High Command, expecting the advance towards Dunkirk to be resumed. Instead the Panzer divisions were directed south. Stephan was torn between frustration at being denied the chance to finish off the British and delight at the prospect of dining in Paris.
‘The British are done for in any case. The Luftwaffe is already pounding them to pulp and the infantry will do the rest. It’ll be no more than a mopping-up operation for them. Our talents will be better used elsewhere, don’t you agree, Otto?’
‘Well, it’s true that the marshy terrain of Flanders is not ideal for tanks, but perhaps it would have been better to make quite sure of the British. To stop her army escaping.’
‘A few of them may get away but most will not. If they are not killed, they will be captured.’
‘A few?’ Otto said drily. ‘I heard that large numbers are being rescued and taken to England. They will live to fight another day. And we may live to regret it.’
Guy had been prepared for the sight of troops on the beaches but not for the sheer numbers of them. Black masses swarmed over the dunes and long lines wound across the sands; it looked as though some gigantic ants’ nest had been stirred up. He watched the larger boats waiting offshore and smaller ones shuttling to and fro, cramming as many men as they could on board. Not naval ships, as he’d expected, but civilian ones – dozens and dozens of them, working ceaselessly all along the beaches.
He knew that, sooner or later, the Luftwaffe would come, and when they did, Junkers and Dorniers and 109s shrieking across the beach, he protected Anna with his own body, lying flat in the sand dunes, the dog crouched beside them. Men were firing their rifles in hopeless desperation, from the dunes, from the open sands, from the water, aiming wildly in the general direction of the attackers. Men were throwing themselves into the sea and thrashing about, weighed down by their uniforms. Some of the small boats had been hit and had capsized or were sinking, spilling men overboard; he could hear their cries for help. On the beach, the dead were everywhere, the wounded groaning and screaming. A soldier stood shaking his fist. ‘Come down you fucking bastards and fight fair!’ Jesus Christ, Guy thought, what a bloody, bloody mess.
The Germans would be back but taking refuge in the dunes would not get them a place on a boat. They joined the end of one of the long queues, the dog still following them faithfully. He had been afraid that Anna would soon be spotted but the men were too dead beat to notice or care. They stood, one behind another, leaning on their rifles, shuffling forward a few inches at a time, some asleep on their feet. ‘Got any water, sir?’ one of them croaked hopefully. His lips were cracked and dry and smeared with sand. ‘Awfully sorry, I’m afraid not.’ He was thirsty himself – so was Anna – and he cursed his stupidity in not taking proper care of the water-bottle. ‘Cigarette?’ he offered instead. ‘No, thank you, sir. Makes it worse.’
The Germans returned, bombing and strafing the length of the beaches. Men scattered, diving under the water, flinging themselves to the sand, burrowing into the dunes. When the planes had gone the dead were covered with their greatcoats; precious little could be done for the wounded, some of them crying out in agony.
By mid-afternoon, the queue had shuffled forward a mere thirty yards. The bombers and the 109s had returned again and again. Only twice did Guy catch sight of any RAF fighters – a lone Spitfire chasing three Junkers over the harbour and despatching one of them before going down itself in flames and another, mistaken for a German and brought down by savage machine-gun fire from the dunes. All day he’d been getting jibes about the RAF and cold looks from soldiers. Wherever the RAF were, he reasoned, they would surely be concentrating on bombing enemy positions and supply lines further back, and the fighters would be trying to intercept the raiders before they reached their targets. It would be no help to the men on the beaches to wait until the Germans were overhead. He had tried to explain this once, but he might as well have saved his breath.
As darkness began to fall, they were a long way from the front of the queue. Boats with fouled or broken-down engines floated uselessly offshore and wrecks of those that had been sunk stuck out of the water on the falling tide. And troops were still arriving, streaming onto the sands. It was hopeless, Guy decided. They’d go back to the dunes for the night and try their luck again at the harbour at dawn. In the dunes men sprawled, sleeping the sleep of the exhausted. Someone was praying aloud: Mother of mercy, keep me through this night … somebody else playing ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ softly and slowly on a harmonica.
‘Got a fag, mate?’ the corporal asked Matt.
‘Sorry, I don’t smoke.’
‘Pity about that ’cos I’m out, an’ I could do with one. Don’t know about you, but I’ve had it.’
They were both stupid with exhaustion, flesh rubbed raw, muscles tortured. Matt had lost count of the number of trips they’d done from the beach out to the bigger ships and back. They’d rowed to and fro without stopping, the Rose swamped with as many men as she could possibly take. When the last of the bigger boats had left as darkness fell, Matt had tied the Rose’s painter to the prow of a sunken wreck halfway out. He slumped in the stern, leaning on the tiller, and watched the oil tanks blazing at Dunkirk. At the harbour men were still being loaded onto a ship but the Rose could do no more until the next boats arrived from England.
‘What do they think of us back in Blighty, then?’ the corporal asked, scooping sardines out of a tin with his fingers. ‘Must think we’re a right lot of useless bastards, getting kicked out of France by Jerry. My old woman’s goin’ to give me what for – if I ever get home again, that is.’
‘They don’t know much about it. It’s been kept out of the papers. Most people didn’t have a clue how bad it was.’
‘Well, they’ll soon find out when they see this lot of conquering heroes turnin’ up.’ He sucked the remains of the oil out of the sardine tin. ‘Might as well get a bit of shut-eye.’ He settled down on the Rose’s wet and bloody bilge-boards. ‘You sail this old bucket over here on your own?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sooner you than me. You’ve done a good job, mate.’ He draped his sopping greatcoat over himself. ‘You can call me with a nice hot cuppa first thing. An’ I take two spoonfuls.’
Matt grinned. ‘I’ll remember. By the way, what’s your name?’
There was no answer; the corporal was fast asleep.
Guy watched for the dawn to come up. As soon as there was the faintest trace of light in the east, he woke Anna. ‘We’ve got to get over to the harbour.’ She struggled to her feet. ‘What about the dog? They’ll never let him onto one of the big ships.’
‘We have to leave him behind. He’ll be all right.’
‘You know that he won’t, Guy. And he trusts us. Are you going to desert him when he has come all this way?’
‘We couldn’t stop him.’
‘Supposing it was Nereus?’
‘Nereus was quite different. He belonged to us.’
‘This one thinks he does too. Even Otto saw that.’
He looked down at the dog who was listening, one ear cocked. Poor little sod, he thought, I should have finished him off ages ago. It would have been much kinder. ‘They won’t let him on any boat, Anna – big or small.’
She said stubbornly, ‘I saw a soldier taking a dog on a boat yesterday – he was carrying it under his arm. Please, Guy. Let’s try. We could go all the way down to the other end of the beaches. There are not so many people there.’
‘And not so many boats, either.’
‘But I think we may have more chance. And when the Germans come back today they will be very sure to bomb the harbour and any big ships there – just like they were doing yesterday. They don’t take so much notice of the little ships.’
There was some sense in that, he acknowledged. He looked eastwards towards the dawn. If they started walking now, they would soon see if the situation was any better in that direction, and, if it wasn’t, then they could go back to the harbour. There was another factor to be considered, too: the Navy would certainly have officers in charge of boarding from the harbour breakwater and Anna was much more likely to be discovered. Even if they were prepared to let a woman on board, which seemed unlikely in the extreme, Anna’s passport showed that she was an Austrian citizen – an enemy. That she was also a Jewish refugee might make no difference. ‘We’ll give it a try,’ he agreed. ‘But that’s all.’
As they walked, the dog a small shadow at their heels, she said, ‘Will you promise me something, Guy?’
‘Depends what it is.’
‘If I am not allowed to leave – if they stop me getting on a boat – that you will go, just the same.’
‘Leave you behind? Don’t be absurd. I’d never do that.’
‘But you must, Guy. You must go back to England and fly fighters again for the Royal Air Force. They need you. If you don’t go the Germans will capture you and put you in a camp and what use is that? I’m not afraid to stay. So, will you promise me?’
‘I won’t do anything of the kind.’ But he knew that she was right.
She’d been wrong, though, about there being fewer troops at the eastern end of the beaches. The murky light of dawn showed the same long queues into the water, the same black clusters of men on the dunes, the same junkyard of wrecked vehicles and the same dead lying in the sand. No big ships had yet arrived offshore. Anna was throwing a stick for the dog for all the world as if they were on holiday. In summer it was probably a pretty nice place for one, Guy thought. The French families would come in August and stay in the beach houses behind the dunes and play on these sands, building sandcastles and flying kites. But not this summer. Not next. Maybe not for a long time.
Anna came back with the dog bounding happily round her. ‘Guy, there is a little boat out there. It looks like the Rose.’
‘Lots of boats look like her.’
‘No, they don’t. She has a straight back.’
‘Stern, you mean,’ he said absently. ‘Look, Anna, we’re wasting time. This is no good. We ought to get back to the harbour as quickly as possible.’
‘She’s empty, I think. And she has a sail.’
He walked down to the water’s edge. He had very good sight but, even so, it was difficult to see clearly in the poor light. The boat looked as though it was caught on the wreckage of one of the ships sunk offshore. Fourteen foot, he judged, clinker-built, gaff-rigged … and she did have a straight Viking stern and a stowed sail. And she did seem empty. He’d noticed yesterday how some of the boats were abandoned and left to drift once the men in them had reached one of the big ships. He gauged the distance. She was probably between four and five hundred yards out and the wind had shifted, roughing up the water. Tough for Anna, but he could help her.
‘Do you think you could swim out to her?’
She looked at him in anguish. ‘I can’t swim, Guy.’
He couldn’t believe her. ‘But you told me you could. I remember.’
‘I knew you wouldn’t take me out in the Rose unless I could. I’ve never learned. I don’t like cold water.’
‘My God, Anna …’ He stopped himself. ‘We’ll manage somehow. Get the boots off and the greatcoat, but leave the battledress tunic – it’ll help you float. You’ll have to do exactly as I say and trust me.’
They waded in until Anna was up to her shoulders. The mongrel stayed, perplexed, at the edge. ‘Maybe he cannot swim either, Guy.’
‘All dogs can swim. Don’t worry about him. He’ll follow us.’ He didn’t think the dog had a hope. ‘Remember, you must trust me.’ He swam on his back, pulling her through the water in the way that they’d practised life-saving in the swimming-baths at school. She didn’t panic or struggle and he swam slowly and steadily, turning his head occasionally to check the direction. The dog was still on the shore, a small dejected figure watching him, but three other swimmers were following, splashing and kicking noisily. If any more of them see us and get the same idea, he thought, it’ll swamp the boat and none of us will get away. He swam on strongly, faster now.
‘Wakey-wakey,’ the corporal said. ‘Some blokes are coming out to visit us. Take a dekko.’ Matt staggered to his feet, bleary-eyed. It still wasn’t light – sea and land merged in a uniform grey. ‘Where?’ The corporal pointed. ‘Two of them there, and another three further behind. I’ve got X-ray eyes, see. I always eat up my carrots.’
‘We’d better start rowing and pick them up.’ His blistered left hand was agony to use. They manoeuvred the Rose towards the two swimmers closest to them – one, he saw, was supporting the other in the water. He and the corporal shipped oars and leaned over to help them. It wasn’t until they were both landed in the bottom of the boat that he saw their faces. ‘You lot know each other?’ the corporal enquired with interest.
They picked up the other three soldiers. ‘There’s a dog out there somewhere,’ one of them gasped. ‘Don’t think he’ll make it, though.’
The corporal searched the water. ‘I can see him. Over there. Come on, Rover, you can do it.’ The dog was paddling frantically, nose just above the water. They sculled the Rose to meet him and Guy reached out, grabbed hold of the mongrel by the scruff of the neck and swung him, legs dangling, on board. ‘Let’s get the sails up, Matt,’ he said. ‘Time we went home.’
Oberleutnant Karl Halder had been patrolling the Channel in his Messerschmitt 109 on the lookout for enemy boats returning with British soldiers from Dunkirk. He had already despatched a lifeboat packed with survivors from a Royal Navy destroyer sunk by von Richthofen’s Stukas and attacked a pathetic old steamer and her crowded decks with some success. Now, below the fighter’s wings, he sighted the burning carcass of a British minesweeper, sinking slowly by the stern. He went down lower to have a closer look but could see no boats taking to the water and no sign of life. The men must have been taken off earlier and the boat was finished in any case. Disappointed, he banked away and turned south-east, heading for his base. He was low on fuel but it would be nice to find just one more target to finish up the rest of his ammunition. He went on searching the sea – flat as a lake with not a single white horse to be seen, which had given the enemy quite an unfair advantage. He swooped low over another abandoned vessel. It had green and white awnings and slatted passenger seats and looked like a river-excursion boat – the sort that went up and down the Rhine. The British must have brought out every vessel they could find. He’d seen drifters and dredgers, barges, fishing smacks, ferries – the most extraordinary collection of craft, and with scarcely a peashooter between them to defend themselves. If it had not been that so many of the Tommies were getting away, it would have been quite comical. Really, one had to hand it to the British for ingenuity. Guts, too. Their rearguard was still managing to hold the Dunkirk perimeter – by the skin of their teeth. They were a tenacious race. He flew on, searching.
He had almost given up when he spotted a very small boat with red sails, all alone and obviously making for the English coast. He peered down, considering it for a moment. A tricky little target and hardly worth the bother, but he might as well use up the few rounds he had left.
The canteen had run out of cups and they were using jamjars to serve the tea. The never-ending stream of troops continued to shuffle and hobble through the station, some without boots, some wearing borrowed civilian clothing, others wrapped in army blankets, one dressed in a sack with holes cut for neck and arms, another with a woman’s fur coat draped round his shoulders. Lizzie held a jamjar of tea for a stretcher case to drink. The Tommy, head and arms bandaged and what was left of his uniform in filthy tatters, winked at her with his one visible eye. ‘Now I know I’m in heaven.’ A badly wounded sergeant on the next stretcher blinked away tears as she put a cigarette to his lips and lit it for him. ‘Never thought we’d get a welcome like this. We thought you’d all be blowing raspberries.’ One of them asked if she’d let his mother know he was safe. She wrote down the address, promising to send a postcard. Then more of them kept asking the same. In the end she got a stack of railway labels from the booking-office and wrote AM SAFE on one side and gave them out. The men signed them and wrote their addresses on the other side and she collected them up for posting.
‘Take a break, dear. You’ve been working nonstop all day,’ Lily told her.
‘What about you?’
‘I’ll get on with this lot of sandwiches. We’re running a bit low. Besides, if I leave here I might miss seeing Peter and I wouldn’t want to do that. Off you go.’
‘Just for a few moments, then.’
She walked out of the station in a daze. Yet another lorry was arriving. Yet another full load of exhausted, filthy, hungry and thirsty men. It was a frightening sight. They were bringing them back in their thousands. The whole of the British army in France must be being evacuated. In the station yard, a middle-aged woman was going up to the soldiers. ‘Have you seen my boy, Billy?’ she kept asking, again and again, tugging at arms. ‘Have you seen him? His name’s Billy. Billy Rice.’ They answered her gently. ‘Sorry, love. Don’t know. What unit’s he in?’ ‘The Gloucesters – the 2nd Gloucesters.’ All down the line helmeted heads were shaken. ‘Sorry, love. Never saw any of them.’
Lizzie walked on to the old harbour. It was packed with ships, the quayside seething with troops and officials, doctors and nurses, ambulances and trucks, WVS and Red Cross. Loud hailers were bawling instructions and a military policeman barred her way. ‘Sorry, miss, you can’t go any further.’ She stood, staring at the scene: at the processions of weary troops stumbling down gangways; at men plunging their heads into buckets of water to drink like horses and gazing round them in bewilderment as they saw the Coronation bunting and flags and the huge white sheet, daubed in black paint with the words WELL DONE, B.E.F. A band struck up, playing ‘There’ll Always be an England’. People were waving and cheering. A girl ran forward and kissed several soldiers on the cheek. The bewilderment on the men’s faces turned to grins and some of them put their thumbs up tentatively. It was just as the sergeant on the stretcher had told her. They had all expected to be booed – to get jeers and catcalls. They couldn’t believe that they were being given a heroes’ welcome. A woman next to her was weeping but behind someone said acerbically, ‘All very well to make a fuss of them but what are we going to do when the Germans invade us next. We’ve got nothing left to fight them with.’
‘We’ve got this lot,’ someone else retorted. ‘They’ll do.’
More ships were entering the port. Lizzie stood on tiptoe searching over heads for the sight of a little ship with red sails. ‘Get further back, please,’ another MP ordered, putting out his beefy arm like a barrier. She ducked under it. ‘You can’t go there,’ he shouted after her as she ran towards the quayside. She fought her way through the crowds and ran on down the ranks of big ships, past the gangways and the disembarking soldiers to where smaller ships were berthed. No red sails. No Rose. A Royal Navy sailor stopped her. ‘Not supposed to be here, miss – not unless you’re official.’
‘I’m looking for a ship – one of the little ones. I thought she might have come in.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Rose of England.’
He shook his head. ‘Haven’t seen her. What kind?’
‘Just an old fishing boat. She’s got dark red sails with patches.’
He glanced over her shoulder. ‘Like this one coming in now? Looks as though she’s been in a spot of trouble.’
There was a jagged tear in her mainsail and she was low in the water because of her heavy burden but she came in proudly. Thank God, Lizzie thought. Thank God. Matt’s safe. She started to wave frantically. The mainsail came down and the Rose drifted towards the quayside. A soldier jumped ashore holding the painter and the sailor helped him to make it fast. He brushed past her in a hurry. ‘I’ll get an ambulance down here.’ Lizzie stopped waving. She saw all the blood, and the dead and the wounded … and Guy holding one of them in his arms. There was a small brown dog at his side.
‘Escargots to start with, I think. Followed by Côtes d’Agneau with pommes nouvelles and some haricots verts.’ Stephan smiled charmingly at the French waitress as he handed her back the menu. ‘What wine shall we have, Otto? Since you are paying, you should make the choice.’
Otto watched the waitress walking away; she had long dark hair, coiled loosely in a knot at the back of her head. ‘Have whatever you wish. I don’t mind.’
Stephan observed him drily. ‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’
‘No. Not in my opinion. Quite ordinary, in fact.’
‘You are always so choosy, Otto. You miss a lot of fun.’
‘Very few women are truly beautiful. I have only ever known one.’
‘And who is she?’
‘Nobody that you know.’
‘You seem out of sorts, my friend. You should be in excellent spirits, like me. Here we are in Paris, just as I predicted, and about to enjoy a most delicious dinner. And when we have eaten and drunk to our hearts’ content, the possibilities for further amusement in this marvellous city are limitless.’ Stephan passed over the wine list. ‘A bottle of claret would be rather pleasant.’
Otto beckoned the sommelier. The elderly man hurried forward, bowing. ‘A votre service, monsieur. What do you wish to order?’ He picked one of the most expensive wines. ‘Merci, monsieur. Merci, merci …’ The wine waiter bowed several more times, retreating backwards, and scurried off. Stephan watched, amused.
‘They cannot do enough for us. It’s really quite funny. Do you think they imagine that we shall instantly shoot them dead if we are not satisfied? If our food is not cooked as we like, or the wine is corked? I hope your English will be as anxious to please when we are in London.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘They are a stubborn lot, that’s true. It’s a great pity that so many of them escaped. Three hundred thousand or more! One has to admire their nerve. Of course, we would have polished them off easily if we had not been halted. It was crazy to stop us. Still, in reality, they are finished. Within the space of three weeks we booted them out of France, within five we are in Paris. Their army has been defeated, their tanks and weapons lost. What can they do now? We can walk into their country whenever we choose.’
‘They still have their Royal Navy. And their Royal Air Force.’
‘Our Luftwaffe sank six of their destroyers at Dunkirk and our U-boats will finish off the rest. As for the RAF, they are useless. The Luftwaffe outnumbers them and our pilots and machines are vastly superior. There will be no problem. So long as I am not sent to fight against the Russians this winter, then I think I am going to enjoy this war. Ah, here is the wine.’ When it was poured, Stephan raised his glass. ‘To victory.’
Otto drank. He set down his glass. ‘Unfortunately, because of what happened at Dunkirk, I’m not so sure that we shall ever achieve it.’
There is silence in the room as I finish speaking. After a moment or two he says, ‘Was Anna killed?’
‘The bullets caught the bows of the Rose just where she was sitting. She died later in hospital in Ramsgate. The corporal was killed outright. And two of the soldiers. Matt and Guy and the third soldier were in the stern and they were unhurt.’
‘That’s the way it happens in war. In life, too. It’s all luck.’ He looks at me. ‘You’re Lizzie, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I’m Lizzie.’
‘I thought so. Well, what happened after that? I’d like to know.’
‘Guy fought in the Battle of Britain and won the DFC. He used to spend some of his leaves at the house in Wimpole Street and we’d sit and talk up in the attic. He always blamed himself for Anna’s death. And I don’t think he ever really got over it. He was a squadron leader when he was killed over France at the time of the D-Day landings.’
He grunts. ‘His luck ran out. I’m sorry. And Matt?’
‘Matt qualified as a doctor at the end of the war and we were married soon after. I served in the WAAF as a code and cypher clerk until then.’
‘And the German?’
‘Otto went on to achieve high rank in the army. He was taken prisoner by the Russians in 1945 and spent ten years in a labour camp in Siberia before he was released. When he came to England to find us he was like an old man. It was sad. He died a few years later.’
‘Huh. Can’t feel too sorry for him myself. Fought for the Nazis, didn’t he, when all’s said and done? What about the cocky one – Stephan?’
‘I don’t know what happened to him.’
‘Nothing good, I’d say. He won’t have enjoyed his war as much as he thought he was going to. Did you find out about Anna’s family? Whether they ever got to Switzerland?’
‘Yes, they did. And after the war they went to join their relatives in America.’
‘So she did save them, after all.’
‘Yes, but they lost Anna.’
‘Another of life’s little tricks,’ he says.
‘The aunt and uncle who were left behind in Vienna died in Auschwitz. So did the friend, Mina, and her family. And all the Fischers. And so did the mother of Daniel. Daniel is a well-known violinist now. You may have heard of him?’ He shakes his head. ‘Never listen to that sort of thing.’
There is another silence. He heaves himself up out of his chair and puts the pipe on the mantelpiece. ‘We’d better take a look at the boat.’
I follow him out of the back door of the bungalow and down the pathway of a neglected garden. ‘Don’t bother much with it these days,’ he tells me. ‘No reason to.’
I can see her mast sticking up at the far end of the garden. She’s lying beside a rubbish dump and smothered by nettles, her open deck covered with a faded green tarpaulin. We trample down the nettles and haul off the tarpaulin. I look at the old boat. The varnish has peeled away, her planking is bleached to silver-grey and in places it has rotted. She has lost her red sails, her oars and what little she had in looks, but none of her dignity. I know at once that it’s the Rose.
‘I told you she was a wreck,’ the old man says defensively. ‘Haven’t looked at her for years.’ I point out where the bullet holes were repaired and the initials carved on the port bow: GR, MR, OvR, AS, EE. He runs his fingers across them. ‘Never noticed them before.’
I take the plunge. ‘Will you sell her to me?’
‘What do you want to do with her? She’s not much use. You can see that.’
‘I don’t want to sail her. I want to give her to a museum. As I said, she’s rather special.’
He is staring at the boat. ‘No, I won’t sell her.’ My heart sinks. ‘I won’t sell her,’ he goes on. ‘I’ll give her to you in exchange for something. Do you still do painting?’
‘Yes. It’s my job.’ I earn quite a lot doing so, but I don’t say so.
‘Then I’d like you to paint me a picture of her the way she was then. I’d like to have that. I’d hang it over the mantelpiece so’s I could look at it when I’m smoking my pipe. That would be the payment.’
We shake hands on the deal and walk back up the path. ‘Otto was quite right, to my way of thinking,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t us that was finished at Dunkirk, it was Hitler. He let us get away and that was the beginning of the end for him. We had time to get back on our feet, we won the Battle of Britain and he lost the chance to invade us. After that, we and the Yanks could get at them with our bombers and plan for D-Day. If we’d lost our army it could have been a very different story.’
He walks with me to the car. ‘Don’t forget about the painting.’ I give him my promise. As I get into my car, he says, ‘I forgot to ask about the dog. What happened to him?’
I smile. ‘Guy kept him. He took him everywhere with him, to all his postings. When Guy was killed, his parents looked after him at first until Matt and I were married and then he came to live with us. The children loved him and he lived to a ripe old age. Guy called him Valiant – from The Pilgrim’s Progress.’
I drive away down the potholed track. In the rear-view mirror I can see Mr Potter still standing by the gate, looking after me. I know exactly how I’m going to paint Rose of England for him. I shall paint her in oils, in all her glory and in her moment of history, rescuing men from the beaches of Dunkirk.