Charlie's War

by David Fiddimore

  ‘No zoo in Berlin,’ I told him. ‘We bombed the fuck out of it.’

  ‘That’s good. They got Russians in Berlin soon. I don’t want to be around no Russians; they won’t like fellows like me.’

  The Major asked, ‘Tell me about Les’s house: this buying and selling lark. Anything in it for me? Some bijou gingerbread house on the edge of a Bavarian forest would do; somewhere to take the girlfriend for a dirty weekend.’

  Tommo took him at his word.

  ‘I expect that I could fix you up, sir, given a few days. Furnished or unfurnished?’

  ‘The former, I expect. Is this quite legal?’

  ‘Why does everyone ask me that?’ Tommo bleated.

  ‘Your reputation precedeth you, I expect,’ I told him. ‘Why did you stop us?’

  ‘To bring you the news, courtesy of the new Polish American Forces radio network.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Me and Pete. The real estate business is too easy: too tame. We’re going to start a commercial radio station.’

  ‘I’m interested in business,’ the Major told them. ‘But what does commercial mean in that context?’

  ‘It’s financed from its own income.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘Small-ads – like the front page of the London Times: that and the accumulating values of its registered assets.’

  ‘It has a lot of those, does it?’ From Les.

  ‘Mainly properties in Germany and England. It’s all tied up. I’m not as well off as people imagine. Not like Pete here.’

  The Major asked Tommo, ‘How much would it cost for me to catch up with the rest of you?’

  ‘Five hundred quid.’

  ‘Is that what you charged Private Raffles here?’

  ‘And Charlie,’ said Les. ‘He’s bought a small estate near Frankfurt.’

  James didn’t say anything to me, just gave me a big reproachful look. All wet eyes and turned-down mug. It didn’t move me, but I told him, ‘Didn’t think you’d be interested, sir.’

  Tommo told him, ‘Les paid a lot less, and Charlie a lot more. Charlie bought a lot more. He’s got an estate as big as your Hampstead Heath. But to answer your question properly: no, they didn’t pay the same pro-rata I’m offering you; they paid less. There’s different rates for officers: higher rates.’

  ‘Charlie’s an officer.’

  ‘Wasn’t when I met him; an’ he don’t look like one now. Looks like some sort o’ gypsy.’

  ‘Thanks, Tommo.’

  ‘Don’t mensh. I don’t suppose you want a snake?’

  ‘Thank you, but no. Why did you flag us down?’

  And: ‘How did you know we were on this road?’ That was Les.

  ‘A clever friend with friends, who owed me. They triangulated on your last broadcast, and we worked it out from there. We been waiting here a couple of hours. I fill my pants every time I hear a plane go over. I was never meant to be this close to a real war . . . and I told you, we flagged you down to give you the news.’

  ‘What news?’

  ‘That you’re hot. Someone in the dirty circle has put the word round. There’s a price on you. Three grand no questions to the man who brings home your head. All the seriously bad guys are talking about it. A year ago I would have thought about it myself.’

  ‘Thanks again, Tommo.’

  ‘You know some scruffy Lieutenant called David Clifford? A bit of an older guy?’ Pete asked me.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good guy or bad guy?’

  I had to think about it. Les answered, ‘Good guy, we think. It’s difficult to be sure. Why?’

  ‘Arrived at the ’Hoek a few hours after you left. He was asking. I think he’s good: he’ll catch up with you eventually if he wants to.’

  ‘What was he saying?’

  ‘He asked me to tell you he had arranged a plane to get you out. All he needed was for you to tell him where from. He said to forget everything else; it’s time to go home and save your skin. I think I believed him. Maybe.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘That I never heard of you. But that I would be sure to pass the message on if I ever met you. Then he starts buying drinks for the black fellow they call the Cutter. I think that they also call him Keck, which is something like his name.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘They got drunk together, and Keck offered to circumcise your Lieutenant for free. I heard that bit. I missed what Clifford said back to him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he was running too fast. He knocked down Alice’s Restaurant, the snake bit the pianist, an’ you know the rest.’

  Les asked, ‘Where did she bite the pianist?’

  Tommo replied for himself this time, ‘Behind the piano, where he was hiding.’

  ‘No; I mean, where on his body?’

  ‘Oh Christ; on his bum. You know that snake’s got a thing about arses?’

  ‘Sounds like some fellows I went to school with,’ James told us. It seemed to kill that line of conversation, if you’ll forgive the pun, and anyway he’d made that joke before.

  Tommo pushed a couple of old oiled-cloth envelopes at me. He said, ‘These are the deeds to your place, an’ Les’s too. Don’t lose them.’

  Les asked, ‘These are legal?’ again.

  ‘They are deeds of sale and possession, made out by the best surviving Jerry lawyer in Frankfurt. Transfer entries in your names have been made in the property and land registers. Now: do I have to say it again, or would you like it set to music? You’re landowners now. Legally. God loves you after all.’

  ‘God, and Tommo Thomsett. Thank you,’ I told him, and asked, ‘Where’s Grace?’

  ‘Up beyond Löningen somewhere, I heard. They were slowed down because of a fight over the other bird they got with them. One of the Eyetie medics ended up in hospital . . . and then we shanghaied him to work on the wounded. Apparently he says he’s only going to sew Krauts back together again, so they beat him up a bit and slung him in the can. Lucky he wasn’t whacked. Some politician had to intervene to get him out again . . . you believe that?’

  ‘Why not? Anything else I should know?’

  ‘Lee Miller’s up here somewhere. She took pictures of one of those concentration camps, and the Army’s trying to get them back off her to prevent them being published.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You seen one of those camps?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘You will, an’ then you’ll know why. I ain’t being coy; it’s jest best you see for yourself.’

  ‘What’s Lee doing about it?’

  ‘She’s on the run; heading for Munich – the Army ain’t got a chance.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Cliff’s in zone, an’ worried about you.’

  ‘I know: Pete just told me.’

  ‘He’s using the call sign Ratking, an’ listening in to the Major’s daily callover. He won’t butt in until you call him to get you out. If I had to trust him on a scale one to ten, I’d rate him at six or seven, I think.’

  ‘Pete didn’t tell me all that. Thanks. Who put a price on my head?’

  ‘Us Yanks,’ Tommo told me. ‘ ’s funny: I always thought you was on our side, Charlie.’

  ‘So did I.’

  ‘So someone must have told us to do it.’

  ‘We figured that out for ourselves. Who?’

  ‘Someone who don’t want you finding Grace, nor her kid maybe.’

  There it was at last. I had needed someone to say it out loud before I could believe it myself.

  ‘It would have to be someone close,’ I told him.

  ‘So why don’t you give up and go home?’

  ‘I have another appointment to keep in Bremen now; and Grace is the excuse I need to keep going.’

  ‘I could arrange an escort for you. People I trust, with a lot of firepower.’

  The Major butted in. They call his sort of butting in an interjection.
>
  ‘Very kind, but no. Anyway, I ask myself, why should you help our Charlie here? In my country we use this proverb about not trusting Greeks bearing gifts.’

  ‘Point taken, Major. I don’t like Greeks either. I like the Eyeties though: good sound criminal stock. I look after Charlie because he’s part a my family. Like the other guys I mentioned. He does me favours, an’ I do him favours. Favour for favour.’

  ‘And they’re all strictly legal.’

  ‘Naturally. So is this where I have to start to get humpy, and ask you what the fuck your problem is . . . sir?’

  ‘I don’t have one, Master Sergeant. Take no offence.’

  ‘And you still want a cottage in . . . Bavaria, you said?’ He pronounced it Barr varr ey . . . ah. It sounded very exotic.

  ‘If that’s not too much trouble, old boy.’

  ‘Nothing’s ever too much trouble for me to do; for people in my family, that is . . .’ At least he spelled it out clearer to James than ever he’d bother to do for me.

  Les asked Tommo and Pete, ‘Is there anything else we need to know before we push on?’

  ‘I heard that every Snowdrop who had contact with Charlie in Paris has done a runner: AWOL. Probably an exaggeration. I think that that is making us Allies a bit unhappy about you.’ When I didn’t respond he added, ‘That’s a black Sergeant you call the Cutter, a PFC named Bassett – the same as Charlie – and some Lieutenant. I think his name was Kilduff, or something like that. I know all about the Cutter, of course – in fact I rather like the guy – but I don’t suppose you know anything about the other two, do you? They were supposed to be on your trail. That Snowdrop Oliver at the ’Hoek is all fired up about them. First they come into his patch without a say-so. Then they start missing their radio schedule. You have a bad effect on policemen, Charlie.’

  Les said, ‘If we come across them alive we’ll let you know.’

  Pete always thought the worst of me. He smiled across a tiger smile that meant, I don’t believe a word that any one of you has said so far, and said out loud, ‘Your pal Albie Grayling: the tank commander. He’s up in Löningen now, and laid up for a couple of days. He’d like you to look him up when you get there.’

  ‘How’d he get there already? How’d he get past us?’

  ‘He didn’t stop to hobnob with the enemy at Goch, like you did.’

  See what I mean?

  Ten minutes later James asked Les to stop the car.

  ‘Get in the back with Charlie. I need to think. So I’ll drive.’

  Les tucked himself into a corner, and closed his eyes. He asked me, ‘We all just joined the Mafia, didn’t we?’ but it wasn’t a question.

  Nineteen

  When you get to hell it will be on your right. And from a distance it might look like any other Army camp. It was on our right, off one of those arrow-straight Kraut roads. On our left – the west – there was a wide canal, its surface rippled by a persistent wind. When the sun was on it, it glinted like cheap diamonds. The ground had been cleared on our right for about a mile. Behind that the black forest started: it was as long and as deep as you could see. Kate’s tyres hissed on the tarmac. I opened my eyes as I sensed the Major slowing us, and asked, ‘Where are we?’

  ‘The last place was named Lunner or Lune something. It was knocked about a bit.’

  ‘Why are you slowing?’

  ‘Tanks . . . and something a bit odd over there on the right. What do you think?’

  I could see an enormous fenced-off area, high wire and dark wooden huts. It looked a bit like the R&R area at Blijenhoek. As we cruised slowly past the parked-up tanks no one tried to stop us. James pulled up at a place where a well-used earthen track left our road at right angles. They weren’t tanks, by the way, but Priests or Sextons – self-propelled guns: that is 25-pounder guns mounted on a Sherman tank chassis. Canadian jobs, crewed by artillerymen, not tankies. There was one young soldier sitting by the side of the road crying his eyes out. A Captain with a wall eye was bending down to put an arm around the kid’s shoulders. I could see a couple of the Sextons up at a big wired gate: where the track met the wire fence. There were knots of people moving about. I saw the first guard tower. I said, ‘It must be a POW camp.’

  James shook his head and said, ‘I don’t think so. Hop out, Charlie, and find out what’s going on.’

  The gunner Captain looked up as I approached. He looked ashen; shaken, but I couldn’t see any casualties. I didn’t salute, and he didn’t care. He held out his hand for a shake, as if he needed the reassurance of touch. He scanned my ragged kit, and lingered for a second over the small gold crosses in my lapels. The sun caught them from a break between the heavy white clouds, and for a moment they gleamed. He said, ‘I’m glad you stopped, Padre. We need your help.’

  Les had left Kate by then: his nose always troubled him. He and I walked up the track to the camp.

  What they tell you about birds and animals staying away from those places is not true. There were crows. Hundreds of black crows. Maybe a thousand. When they were disturbed from what they were fighting over, they made a wheeling shadow in the sky. I won’t tell you anything much about the place. What I will tell you is this.

  *

  Les was forty-four when he died in 1958. His war had caught up with him. One of his groups of wounds was shrapnel he picked up from a shell-burst at Dunkirk. He used to laugh that he was wounded three times, and that each time was in the arse. He once told me that the only thing he deserved a medal for was being in every retreat the Eighth Army ever made. It accounted for most of the arse wounds. The shell pieces were in his backside, his back and shoulders, and in his head. They never dug out a piece in his head, and when he was forty-four it killed him.

  We’d stayed in touch; more or less. I was living in South Hampstead in London by then, and Les had been reclaimed by his tribe in Belmont, just to the south of smoky London. I visited him the day before he died, but the timing was accidental. The brain tumour and the strokes had smashed up his mind by then. Kate gave me a peck on the cheek, and said that he was upstairs; that he hadn’t got up yet. When I approached the bedroom door I could hear him weeping and moaning, and mumbling to himself. I couldn’t help remembering the able and funny man I had once known. When my time comes I hope that it’s quick; not dirty, like that.

  I went into their bedroom – the small double bedroom overlooking the back garden he had begun to love. He was sitting on the edge of their high bed, in his striped flannel pyjamas, staring at the full-length mirror on the door of the dark wood wardrobe. He was gibbering. I sat beside him, and hugged him; realizing for the first time how pitifully thin and wasted he had become. Eventually he calmed down enough to tell me that the sick and emaciated people we had seen in the camp were there in the mirror; calling and beckoning to him. They were calling him to join them, and for the first time in his life he was truly afraid. He had seen his own reflection, and his scrambled brain, doing its best to make sense of what it saw, gave him back the memory of 1945, and that bloody horrible camp. Corpses and living corpses, wearing striped prison suits like pyjamas. Those, and the black crows. That’s enough. What we saw in that camp, he saw again on the last full day of his life. I’ve always thought that unfair.

  James stopped Kate again a few miles further on, and turfed us out of the back so he could radio. A jeep was on its back less than ten yards away. It had lost three wheels and its sump guard was blackened by fire.

  Les said, ‘It wasn’t a mine: there’s no hole in the road: just that black flash mark. I reckon some kids got him with a panzerfaust.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Like an AP grenade with a rocket up its arse. One-shot jobs. You fire it and chuck it away. In France we found a couple of sixteen-year-old kids who had cycled from Germany with them strapped to their crossbars. They had been captured by the Paras.’

  There were three wooden crosses at a field boundary near it. One had an American helmet on it. Les leaned against Kat
e’s bonnet; I sat on the running board. He smoked about five of his cigarettes; one after the other. I smoked my pipe. Its smoke was sweet and cool. It cleaned my mouth. The sun broke through, and stayed. Light danced on the rippling water of the canal, moving around a partly submerged barge. There was a floating bundle lodged up under the barge’s counter. It may have once been a man in a grey uniform.

  Inside Kate, James rattled and rattled at the Morse key: you could sense his change of style. You could sense the urgency and the frustration. When he finished and backed out, Les asked him, ‘You got through, sir?’

  ‘Yes. I told them. I asked for Medics and food and clothes. They said they’d send a bulldozer.’

  ‘What for?’ I asked him, and immediately thought, I’ve done it again.

  Les said, ‘Don’t be a prick, Charlie. It’s for digging the graves.’

  I asked, ‘Will we get to Löningen tonight?’

  Neither answered me. James scuffed the toe of his boot in some dirt on the road, deliberately dirtying it. Eventually he sighed, and asked, ‘Sorry, Charlie. What was that?’

  ‘Löningen. Will we be there tonight?’

  ‘I doubt it. I don’t know how far the fighting’s gone.’

  Les said, ‘We could sleep in Kate tonight: I suddenly don’t fancy any company.’

  James once had this theory that all three of us died out there, but that our bodies kept going somehow, until God could be bothered to pick us off one by one.

  Twenty

  The first thing I said to Albie was, ‘Where the bloody hell is your hand?’

  He was sitting in a conservatory in a sanatorium that had been taken over by the Medical Corps. It was just outside of Löningen. There was glass missing, but Albie was out of the wind, with his faded canvas collar turned up. He looked pale: his face was a sort of white waxy colour. The end of the sleeve of his jacket right arm was pinned closed.

  ‘Caught my sleeve in the turret ring, and tore my hand off when we traversed. You should have seen the inside of Marlene: she looked like Custer’s Last Stand. Every time I moved my arm the blood sprayed like a fountain. I got Donny all over his face.’