Charlie's War

by David Fiddimore

  ‘Is he a good man?’

  ‘Fuck knows. He must have been a Nazi to have held down the job in the first place. Don’t worry: we’ve been dealing with Nazi Froggies and Cloggies for the last few months. The bottom line is we only appoint the ones who know how to run things. I’m going to give Kate the once-over.’

  I stowed the radio. While I was doing it the boy came in and sat at the table and watched me with his owlish eyes. I noticed for the first time that his spectacles had been broken at the bridge, and repaired with copper wire wrapped in a tiny coil.

  He said, ‘It was an honour to meet you, Mister Charlie.’

  ‘It has been my honour, too.’ I decided to try something. ‘Not long ago we heard that Jewish people were being rounded up and placed into camps. Is that true?’

  ‘Yes. My mother was one. The Bürgermeister saved me from the camp. My family were there.’

  ‘Where was that?’

  ‘Here. Just outside of the town. It’s empty now.’

  ‘Are there many camps?’

  Maybe I’d learned a thing or two from the Major after all. I began to sense that my single questions were wearing him down; showing me something under the skin. He looked at the table. His fists clenched and unclenched. I did it again.

  ‘Are there many camps?’

  ‘Yes, many. Every town this size has a camp. There are more than a thousand of them.’

  ‘That means . . .’

  ‘Yes, sir . . . tens of thousands of Jews; hundreds of thousands . . . maybe millions. And not only Jews . . .’

  ‘I wasn’t sure I could believe what was in the newspapers.’

  ‘You may believe,’ he told me, and looked up. The eye contact scalded me. ‘You have our permission.’

  ‘Why did they take you in?’ I asked him a little later.

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask them.’

  When I recounted the conversation to Les he said, ‘Effing obvious isn’t it? Effing insurance policy.’

  *

  That depressed me. Les’s occasional cynicism sometimes got to you that way. Kate was parked about twenty yards along the road, on the Greater Germany side of town. We were all stowed and ready to go. The boy was standing on the passenger-side running board, set to guide us out through the ruined streets. Time for goodbyes. I felt strangely older than when I’d arrived, and couldn’t get used to the idea that that was less than two days ago. We stood near to the heavy pavement door to Kilduff’s cellar. Mrs Bürgermeister gave me a hug: women have always found it easy to hug me – it’s because I’m small, I think. Her husband shook my hand; firmly, but for too long. Les and the Major had already been through the formalities.

  Les then grinned at us, and taking the woman’s arm walked her to the cellar door. He handed her something. I didn’t see what. Then he bent and lifted the door about a foot. I heard Kilduff immediately. He must have regained his cockiness, because whatever he said ended in fucker. The Bürgermeister’s wife had two small American Mills bombs in her hands. It was what Les must have given to her to hold. Women don’t waste time when something unpleasant has to be done: have you noticed that? She didn’t give Les the grenades back: she pulled the pins on both of them, and dropped them in. Les dropped the big trapdoor with a bang. The woman turned and smiled at us, as if she had done something very naughty. We hot-footed it to the other side of the road, Les dragging the woman behind him.

  There are two things from the Forties that I will remember all my life. One is burning Lancaster bombers at night. I have seen those at every firework display I have ever attended: I try to avoid them these days. The other is the noise that Kilduff made then. Even though I can remember it exactly, I still can’t tell if it was anger or anguish. It was a screaming howl that began before the bombs exploded, carried on afterwards, turning into a higher and higher-pitched screech, like a noise I have described before. Like the sound of a cat drawing open claws down a glass window pane. Higher and higher. He went on and on. The cellar door lifted momentarily with the force of the blasts, giving me a glimpse of hell. There was a gout of smoke before it thumped back into place . . . Kilduff’s voice was still there, making a noise no human being should be capable of. Then the building above suddenly collapsed, filling the cellar beneath. We got further back, quickly, in order to escape the choking cloud of stone and plaster dust. Kilduff had stopped. There were rumbling and creaking sounds as the rubble found its level. Finally that stopped too.

  ‘Told you, sir.’ That was Les to James.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bad job, that house; jerry-built.’

  He didn’t even laugh at his own joke. Neither did we.

  As we drove away I asked them, ‘Two things. Was Kilduff going to kill me, and if so, why?’

  England said, ‘Yes and no and money.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Yes he was going to kill you, but not necessarily alone – he was prepared to bury the three of us if he had to – that’s what really teed me off.’

  ‘. . . and the money?’

  ‘He expected to pick up three thousand dollars for it. Someone really wants you off the job, old socks.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Do you care?’

  The bastard was right. He usually was.

  Eighteen

  We crossed the Rhine near a place called Emmerich. Don’t even ask me what bloody day it was. What I disliked was the number of knocked-up Sherman tanks standing forlornly in the fields. I wondered if any of them was Albie’s, and what chance he had had of even making it that far. The bridge was prefabricated of metal, and swayed with the water streaming beneath it. The water looked an ugly brown, and moved fast: we seemed to be too close to it. Kate’s wheels fitted into parallel tracks, like tram rails that dragged us into Germany. A sign on the far bank read Welcome to the 1000 year Reich, and you didn’t even get your feet wet! Courtesy of the HD. The D was formed on the last upright stroke of the H . . . the letters ran into each other.

  I asked Les, ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Bloody Highway Decorators. Highland Division. The HD. Pushy Jocks who can’t resist leaving their mark on every place they get to first, just to tell you.’

  ‘Like cats or foxes pissing on trees, I expect,’ James told us, and that was that. I thought that they were being a bit hard on them. The cats, I mean.

  The Rhine had loomed large in my imagination. Now it was just brown and brutish, had the consistency of an open sewer, and was behind us. The next town we got to was like many I saw in Germany: houses reduced to their component parts. The number of straight roads away from the ruined towns was unnerving: it was as if the road-builders couldn’t think in curved lines. The up side was that Les could work up to a fair old gallop, provided we stuck to roads that showed signs of having recently been visited by the Army, and pretended that no one had invented the landmine yet. The down side was that if a fighter or a Jabo caught us in the open, and decided to invite us to tea, there was nowhere to hide.

  I saw a couple of American Thunderbolts in shiny unpainted livery and invasion stripes – we weren’t even bothering to paint the damn things any more, there was so little opposition. They were low to the ground and looked pregnant, with a bomb apiece, drop tanks and wing-mounted rockets. When they saw us they canted over in a flat circle that brought them behind us again, and about two hundred yards over to the left. Then they flew alongside for a few seconds. I could feel the hairs on my neck lifting, but the nearest pilot gave me a dazzling grin full of teeth, and a wave. Then they streaked off into Germany.

  Les said, ‘Those things do almost four hundred miles an hour.’

  I said, ‘I think that one of McKechnie’s brothers just waved to us.’

  ‘Black boy, was he?’ That was the Boss. ‘I’ve heard that they have some of those. Good job, really: much steadier under fire.’

  Les asked, ‘Why’s that, Boss?’

  ‘Fuck knows. Maybe they got a bigger dollop of raw courage tha
n the rest of us when God was handing round the sweeties.’

  ‘You believe that?’

  ‘No. They’re the same as the rest of us, only maybe they’ve been so badly done to they have something to prove. Turn left at the next major crossroads.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Bremen’s north of us. At the moment you’re pointed towards Berlin. The Reds would be awfully peeved if you reached it first. Not to mention the fact that we must be catching up the front echelons pretty quickly: another few miles and we’ll be somewhere where the Jerry will want to have a pop at us.’

  I turned back to look at him as I spoke. ‘We are in their country after all, Major. Maybe they feel they have cause.’

  ‘I expect you’re right. I expect that that’s what that policeman thinks.’

  Les was already slowing up as I turned back, still asking, ‘What policeman?’

  ‘That one there,’ Les said. ‘I think he wants us to stop.’

  There was a man standing in the centre of the arrow-straight road with his left hand extended palm forward to us. He wore a dark blue uniform with silver buttons, and white gloves. Apart from the silly hat he could have been a London copper. His hat looked a bit like an infantryman’s helmet from the Napoleonic Wars: it was tall and black and shiny, with a gleaming silver badge on the front. It had a narrow black shiny peak, but the effect was spoilt by its crown, which sloped from back to front. It made him look as if he’d stepped from the pages of Toy Town. His car didn’t help. It was one of those funny black VW things that look as if an elephant has sat on the boot and then wandered round to sit on the bonnet.

  Before we stopped completely I heard the nasty little ratchet sound of the Major cocking his revolver. He asked, ‘Les. Why are you stopping?’

  ‘I wish I could give you a sensible reason, Major, but the truth is, out of curiosity.’

  ‘Fair enough. But if I have to kill the bastard, on your head be it.’

  By then we had pulled up a few yards short of the man and his little car. I couldn’t see the copper’s reinforcements either; there was just this dead-straight road, the copper and his car. He walked to Les’s side of the car, taking his time. Les had to open the door in order to speak to him. His Sten must have been in plain view.

  The policeman said, ‘You are English?’

  Les replied, ‘Yes. Support troops. We bring food and medicines to the civilians after the Army has moved through.’

  ‘That does not concern me.’

  Did all the bastards in Germany speak perfect English? And if so, had they done so for years, or was it a fairly recent phenomenon practised in the face of the inevitable?

  ‘How can we help you?’

  ‘By paying your fine at the next functioning police office you encounter. I will not insist on this occasion that you divert from your route to pay it in the nearest police office: you must be in a hurry – invaders usually are.’

  He was a man in his late forties. His respectable moustache was laced with grey. His eyes twinkled. Either he was as scared as I was, or he found the whole thing amusing.

  Les grunted, and asked, ‘What fine?’

  ‘For driving at over the permitted speed. You passed a large black and white circular road sign a kilometre back. What was on it?’

  ‘The number forty,’ I told him, leaning over Les, who gently pushed me back, ‘and a lot of bullet holes.’

  ‘The bullet holes do not concern me. The numbers do: they state the maximum permitted speed at which a vehicle may travel. I am glad it is still there. You were travelling much faster than that. I calculate that you were exceeding seventy kilometres an hour. I will not permit that.’

  Les was one of those guys who loved arguing with coppers, no matter where, and no matter about what.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘If you look behind you will see seven trees alongside the road. I have measured the distance between them. I start my stopwatch as you pass the first, and stop it as you pass the seventh. From that, and the distance covered, I calculate your speed.’

  ‘Have you always been a policeman?’ I asked him.

  ‘No. Only since the war was declared. Before that I was a teacher of mathematics.’

  Les gave a deep sigh, and said to nobody in particular, ‘Fuck it. He’s jobbing me for speeding.’

  ‘His calculation is likely to be correct, Les,’ I told him. ‘He’s a maths teacher.’

  ‘Too right!’ That was the Major. ‘Guilty as bloody charged, if you want my opinion.’

  The policeman’s face would crack if he ever smiled.

  ‘Fined many people for speeding this morning, have you?’ Les again.

  ‘Three vehicles . . . and one for driving on the incorrect side of the road.’

  ‘I suppose that you have measured the width of the road as well?’

  ‘Yes, I have. The road is seven metres at this point. There were also two Americans in fighter aircraft,’ the policeman said, ‘but they would not stop when I signalled them.’

  ‘I wonder why.’

  ‘Les,’ the Major said, ‘cut to the fucking chase, and ask him how much the fine is.’

  Les gave him the You must be kidding me look, but before he could open his mouth the policeman told James, ‘It will not be necessary for your driver to ask me again, Herr Major. I heard you the first time, and, unlike our glorious leader, I am neither deaf nor a fucking idiot. The fine is ten DM.’

  ‘Right.’ That was James. ‘May we pay you instead?’

  ‘No; you would pay in forged notes. I am not an expert, Herr Major.’

  ‘What about English money?’

  ‘English no; Scottish, maybe. I was informed that Scottish moneys are difficult to forge.’

  ‘Give him a bloody dollar, anyway, Charlie. He’s earned it.’

  It wasn’t quite as simple as that. We had to wait until he had walked back to his car, had written out a speeding summons for Les, and brought it back. When he reached over Les to hand it to me he gave me our first smile. Then he said to Les, ‘Please be careful, driver. Now the war here is over, there are policemen with nothing to do, and many small townships that will feed their people from the proceeds of court fines. Do not get caught again.’

  Les put on the wisecrack face. He said, ‘Look, Jerry. I don’t know how to say this best; but in case you didn’t notice, you’ve just been invaded. There won’t be any courts, except Allied ones, and they’ll be fully tied up trying Jerries like you for crimes against people an’ dumb animals.’

  Our Jerry wiped his smile off, and went dead serious on us.

  ‘You are very wrong, Private. No matter what is lost in Germany, we will not lose our courts of justice. The spirit of Germany lives in its courts, and we Germans are the most litigious race in the world.’

  ‘You haven’t met the Americans yet,’ James told him.

  ‘I’m sure that we will get along well with the Americans.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ James said.

  Nobody seemed to know how to finish the encounter. Les did it. He’d kept Kate ticking over. Now he did it: bang neutral, bang first gear, and let her roll. The policeman stepped back and saluted.

  ‘That man had balls,’ James told us.

  ‘Yeah, but they were between his ears.’ That was Les. ‘He won’t last the week.’

  *

  ‘Charlie, I’m not going to stop for another of those bastards. Lean out the window an’ wave your gun at him, and don’t drop it. Maybe he’ll get out of the way.’

  Another day, another dollar, isn’t that what the Yanks say? In our case it was the same bleeding day, and likely to cost us another bleeding dollar. There was another vehicle parked on the roadside, and I could see someone in the road trying to wave us down. I couldn’t make out if they were civvy or military. When I could see I told him, ‘No. We know this guy. It’s Tommo, remember? He sold you that house in Stuttgart.’

  Les gave me a warning look as we slowe
d, but it was too late. James had already picked it up.

  ‘What’s that, Les? Are you buying a bit of old Germany? Fallen in love with the place so quickly that you’re already planning to move in as soon as the shooting stops?’

  It was the only time I saw Les properly embarrassed.

  ‘Just a little free enterprise, Major. Someone like me doesn’t get that many chances.’

  ‘No offence meant.’

  ‘None taken, sir.’

  But you didn’t have to be a mind-reader to work out that some moral judging had gone on there, and Les hadn’t come out of it as clean as he’d like.

  ‘My cousin used to have a place in Stuttgart before the war, but he was bombed out of it. Perhaps you’d rent yours out to him afterwards, if he wanted to come back.’

  ‘I’ll think about it, sir,’ Les told him. It was a way of saying No ruddy fear, without face being lost all round.

  ‘Thank you, Raffles.’

  Tommo strolled over. He looked far from comfortable himself. I expect it was something about being out in the daylight. What made it worse was that Pete lounged nonchalantly in the front passenger seat of their jeep, and that Alice’s Restaurant was on the back seat. We drew up alongside them. I opened the door. Pete grinned wickedly at me. Alice’s head was buried in her coils; I don’t know whether she was looking at me and grinning, or no. The Major stuck his head between ours. That made it a five-way conversation, which didn’t always make complete sense.

  I asked Pete, ‘Why have you got the snake with you?’

  ‘Someone knocked the case over at Blijenhoek. She escaped and bit the pianist halfway through “Moonlight in Vermont”. Everyone was very pissed off.’

  ‘Pianist pissed off?’

  ‘I expect so. Dead, also. This snake doesn’t goddam miss. Should have been a goddam sniper. Either snake goes, or snake dies. Tommo made some promise to some dead Major in England that he looks out for the snake. We’re looking for what’s left of a zoo. They got them in Bremen, Hamburg and Berlin.’