Charlie's War

by David Fiddimore

  ‘Keep the kid’s head down. If it goes wrong and you get hit, try to fall on him.’ I think that Les always had this urge to action. No matter how low he got, anticipation of loosing off a mag or two from his Sten always lifted his spirits.

  James asked, ‘What about me?’

  Les said, ‘I was thinking of an open-order advance, if that’s all right with you, sir? Give me about twenty yards on the left; then give me ten yards start, and watch where yer step. You move off to their right. If you hear me yell, hit the deck; I’ve better long sight than the pair o’ you.’ And, ‘. . . and you look after your new son,’ he told me. His grin told me something else. It told me that he suddenly found my situation amusing.

  He asked the Major, ‘Time to go?’

  James nodded, and Les lifted up and took a step to the left. He was correct. I wasn’t as long-sighted as he was. I could see something small up Kate’s derrière, and maybe a dark figure on the road. Maybe the figure waved. I had about five minutes during which to watch them as they worked their way carefully down, moving further apart: they had done this before. It showed. The further they were from where I crouched, the deeper in grass they seemed to sink, until eventually they appeared to be wading waist-deep. All that time I reflected on the decision I had made about the boy who was hugging deep into my neck: if I hadn’t stuck my oar in, there would have been three men moving down to Kate: not two. Anyway, it was sweat for nothing. As Les passed the halfway point he suddenly rose up and waved to the Major, and waved to me. It was clear that he was calling us down. By the time I got down to him with the kid it was clear to me why. I still hate those bloody awful little Volkswagens. It was the maths teacher who’d given Les a speeding ticket, days before. His uniform was still immaculate. The shiny black peak of his Toy Town helmet was still shiny black. I don’t know what had passed between them before I was up to them, but I heard the policeman say, in his clipped English, ‘I do not suppose that you have paid your penalty yet?’

  Les told him, ‘I don’t suppose I have. We haven’t been anywhere near a manned Police Office. We were at a place named Korne, but your Panzers chased us out again.’

  ‘Korne was ever a lawless place. Anyway, the Panzers have gone away – before they ran out of gas. Are you going on to Bremen, sir?’

  I don’t know why Les answered him. Force of habit, I suppose.

  ‘Yes. Eventually.’

  ‘You will probably find a Police Office there.’

  ‘I suppose that we will. What about you?’

  ‘I suppose that I will stay here. At present the people need a policeman; and when they no longer need a policeman, they may need a teacher of arithmetic.’

  The Major asked him, ‘Am I allowed to wish you good luck?’

  ‘Only after you have told me why you are stealing that child.’ He nodded my way.

  It was my turn, ‘I’m not. We found him. There are loads more of them over the hill, but they are all dead. How many more fourteen-year-old soldiers do you have left to fight your war for you?’

  There was a flash of something behind his eyes. He said, ‘How many do you need?’ Then, ‘I wondered what had happened to them.’

  ‘They fought our Panzers. It looks as if they did very well.’

  ‘Some of them were once my students.’

  Les sniffed. He said, ‘So maybe they won’t need a maths teacher after all.’

  The copper didn’t seem to have much more to say. He came to attention, and gave a terribly smart salute. His vehicle left a trail of thin, blue smoke which was blown away on the breeze.

  Les told me, ‘You missed your chance. You could have given him the kid.’

  ‘He didn’t want him, did he? Otherwise he would have asked. Do you think the kid’ll mind if I put him down? He’s getting a weight.’

  I put the child down. He stayed by me, but shuffled from foot to foot, looking very uncomfortable. I tried again: I asked Les, ‘What’s the matter with him? Can’t he stand still?’

  Les laughed. He took the kid’s hand, and walked with him to the edge of the road. The first dandelions were beginning to show in the margins. Les unbuttoned himself, and pissed on them. The kid looked on with obvious interest, then pulled up his short trouser leg and did the same. The stream was so long and so strong that I wondered how long he’d been holding himself in. When Les walked him back to me the kid studied me for a couple of minutes. There was no malice in that look, but nevertheless he went back over to Les, and held his hand up. Les had no choice. He asked James, ‘ ’ow far to our next stop, sir?’

  ‘Don’t quite know, old chap. Twenty miles or more. I seem to have made a bit of a mess of today, haven’t I?’

  ‘ ’ow far back to Korne, then; for the third time?’

  ‘Ditto. But about ten miles I’d guess. Why?’

  ‘That publican and his missus. They seemed like good people: we could leave the kid with them.’

  ‘Good thinking that man. Your Mr Kipling always said that the NCO was the backbone of the British Army.’

  ‘I’m not one, Major. I’m a humble private soldier.’

  ‘I could always promote you.’

  Les positively twinkled. He said, ‘And I would turn you down. I can do without extra responsibility.’

  Les said, ‘Have you ever had one of them nightmares where you’re stuck in a maze, and can’t get out: every time you reach the way out you’re back where you started?’

  I was driving, and the kid was cuddled up asleep on Les’s lap, which would be a problem if he needed to go for his Sten in a hurry. James was in the back working on his lists: occasionally he’d give a snort as if he had discovered something.

  ‘Yes, Les. I think so.’

  ‘I think that this is one of them. Every time we head away from Korne we end up coming back. Like bloody yo-yos.’

  ‘Or boomerangs.’

  ‘Yeah. Do you think that we died a couple of days ago, and this is some kind of Never Never Land we’ll never never escape from?’

  Cliff had used similar words months ago. Never Never Land was always close to your tongue in ’45. It was one of those puns that meant anything. James looked up and grunted. Time for an upper-ranks contribution.

  ‘I can think of people I’d less like to get stuck there with.’

  Les told him, ‘There was something the matter with the grammar of your last sentence, sir. Not up to your usual standard. Try again please.’ Then he said to me, ‘Slow her down, Charlie; Korne’s over the next hump.’

  We had climbed up again, out of the valley that time forgot, and for the second time in several days arrived at precisely the point from which we had set off. James hugged the publican, and called him Otto as if they were old friends. Otto’s wife hugged Les, and then hugged the kid and hoisted him over her shoulder, and the kid hugged her back, so all was going more or less to plan. James began to explain to them what was going on. They were speaking Kraut, and too fast and too gutturally for my expanding vocabulary. Occasionally I picked out the word Charlie, and whenever I did they all stopped talking, and looked at me. A couple of times the looks were soft and emotional, and a couple of times they were stern and hard. What the fuck had I done this time?

  I asked James, ‘What’s going on?’

  He said, ‘Frieda will tell you.’

  The woman gave the kid over to Otto as if she was tossing over a small sack of vegetables. Then she came up to me and hugged me. We were more or less the same height, so that was all right. Then she kissed me on both cheeks and on the mouth. Then she stood and gobbled at me like a turkey for five minutes. I couldn’t work out if I was receiving a benediction, or being ticked off. I would describe her as a fluid speaker rather than a fluent one. The fluid was a haze of spittle droplets that seemed to hang in the air between us. Halfway through she suddenly fished down the front of my shirt, and pulled out my worn RAF identity discs, and paused to copy my name and service number onto a small order pad, with a stubby licked pencil. Eventual
ly I got the kisses on the cheeks again, before she curtsied, and stepped back to stand alongside her husband.

  ‘Didn’t understand a word of it,’ I said to her, and smiled. What else was I supposed to say?

  James looked very shifty. He said, ‘Had to come to a compromise, you know?’

  ‘No I don’t. What have you let me in for?’

  ‘She’ll take the kid for the time being,’ he said, ‘providing we pay for its upkeep.’

  ‘That’s OK.’

  ‘There’s more.’

  ‘Tell me the worst,’ I asked him.

  ‘For some reason she thinks the kid’s from somewhere called Brittel. I think that’s about a hundred miles away; further to the east. She says they’ll contact someone they know in Brittel. If they find one of his relations they’ll pass him back.’

  ‘That sounds OK, too.’

  ‘They don’t want an extra mouth to feed permanently.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘If they can’t find anybody, they are going to dump him outside the nearest Army base, with a label around his neck bearing the service number and name of one of us. We’ll get him back.’

  ‘And you said she could have mine?’

  ‘That seems fair.’ That was Les putting his oar in. ‘It was you that talked us into lifting the little bugger in the first place. No point giving him to me. I’ve plenty of my own.’

  ‘What about James?’

  ‘The Major’s a confirmed bachelor. He’d never manage. Nah; if it comes down to it Charlie, he’ll be much better off with you.’

  ‘He’ll have to find me first.’

  ‘Isn’t that what your girl Grace said to you? Isn’t that how you ended up here in the first place?’

  I said, ‘Fuck the lot of you.’

  I broke my golden rule. When we walked back to Kate I couldn’t resist having a quick look over my shoulder. Frieda had the boy again. She raised his arm to make him wave to me. I waved half-heartedly back. I heard her spit out a stream of Kraut, and picked up Papa and Englander. I asked, ‘What was that all about?’

  Les said, ‘She told him that you may be his new English father, and come back for him soon.’

  I looked again. The little bugger was smiling at me. What else could I do? I grinned back at him. Les told me, ‘He’s got a little dark patch under his nose. That’s where the moustache will grow. Just like Hitler. What will the people down your street think when you get ’ome and bring ’im wiv you?’

  I didn’t answer him because there were tears in my eyes. There were tears in my eyes because I had imagined taking him home to my little sister Francie. She would have adored him. So I suppose that I did what Francie would have done anyway. I was almost at Kate’s door when I grunted, ‘Forgot something,’ to them, and, ‘Won’t be a min.’

  I hurried back to Otto, Frieda and the kid. I fished out my tags, and pulled off the spare. We always had to wear the two. One was to be tacked on to your grave marker, and the other sent back to your unit. It was nice to find something useful to do with them instead. I put the spare in my jacket pocket – I’d find a string to wear it on later – and hung the other around young Adolf’s neck. I got another slobbery kiss from the woman for the gesture. This time I didn’t look back; that was too difficult. Les put an arm around my shoulder and squeezed, avoiding the tender part. I don’t think that that sort of thing came too easily to him. He said, ‘Proud of you, Charlie. That was nice,’ and, ‘I’ll drive.’

  James was already in the back with his notebook open. I don’t think that he even noticed. I reflected on what Les had been willing to do a few hours ago.

  Twenty-Four

  We made it through the valley in a oner this time. At a Y junction at the end of our valley there was no village smithy under the spreading chestnut tree. It was spreading its new green mantle over an ageing AEC Matador lorry instead – the four-wheeled type, with the soft back. The lorry had that unmistakable sulky look that machinery adopts when it breaks down. The driver, old RASC like Les, was standing beside his cab looking perplexed. He had a fag behind his ear. I waved to him. He nodded back. In the ditch about thirty yards away – up the road we weren’t meant to take – one of those little Jerry jeeps was on its side. It looked otherwise unharmed. The driver caught my glance, nodded towards the wreck, and said, ‘Don’t. It’s wired.’

  I never argue with Yorkshiremen: they get too much pleasure from usually being right. I said, ‘Thanks,’ as Les and I walked over to him.

  James stayed put in Kate. Les must have felt secure: he left his Sten on Kate’s driving seat. It was National Nodding Day because he nodded too: up at the lorry. It had the name Obadiah lettered neatly in Gothic on a plate above the wind-screen. Les asked, ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Iffy diffy. That’s the third I’ve run this war. I dunno what he does wi’ ’em.’

  ‘Why don’t you get rid of it? There’s some good new Bedfords coming in.’

  ‘Naw. Obi’s taken me up over Italy. Might as well finish it with him.’

  Our own esteemed driver poked one of his big pink fingers into the soft canvas canopy covering the lorry’s load.

  ‘What you got?’

  ‘Socks. Winter woollen socks, and coffee, tea and some boxes of medicines.’

  ‘Bremen?’

  ‘Yeah. You?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Les pulled at his lower lip. Then he asked, ‘When did you get your orders?’

  ‘Yesterday. I understand that there’s a foreign gentleman riding up at the front end, with one of the armoured divisions. Fielden, our gaffer, says he’s an RAF pilot who was shot down and evading. Somehow he established contact with the QM’s base area, and is calling forward the needful. He coulda gone ’ome before now, but he’s riding the back of a tank all the way to Berlin.’

  Les grunted. Then he said, ‘Some fellah.’ The way he said it made you glance quickly at him.

  ‘Good job he took it on.’ That was the driver again. ‘There’s supposed to be an intelligence officer up here somewhere, but it looks as if he got lost.’

  ‘Did he now?’ Then Les asked, ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yeah. We were in a convoy of six. The Master called through for us from his jeep. Recovery’s on the way.’

  A mile or so further on we pulled over, and chinned it all out to the Major. He said, ‘Your bloody Pole, I suppose, Charlie?’

  ‘We don’t know that, but if it is, it looks like he’s got your job, sir. I wonder why they think you’re lost? I know that your signals are getting out. Do you want me to check the suitcase again?’

  ‘No. I’m getting acknowledgements and sign-offs back.’

  Les mumbled something. I didn’t catch it. James explained, ‘If some bent bastard has paid off the soldier receiving my call-over not to pass it on to anyone else, then I am lost, aren’t I? Who else knows where I am?’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t keep calling him my Pole.’

  ‘Then bloody do something about him. Get him off our backs. It’s more than my job he’s stealing. Look at the bloody silly load that wagon was carrying. Why had it got socks and beverages, when today’s urgent need is probably flour, potatoes, powdered milk and blankets?’

  ‘I don’t know, James, but I suspect you’re going to tell me.’

  ‘Because they all command best prices on the black market today, you silly little man. It’s just like the stock market: different products command different premiums in different places at different times. The laws of supply and demand.’ He thought that Pete was substituting his own stores requests for ours, and then hijacking them. After that he went into a sulk, and wouldn’t say any more until we had put another ten miles on the clock.

  We stopped for a brew. Les said, ‘Major,’ with deliberate gravity. ‘Do you think we should go back for him? He won’t have an effing chance if the wolves fall on him.’

  ‘Too late, I suspect. Not our business anyway. Police stuff.’

  ‘Pete would
n’t do this,’ I offered. ‘It’s too sloppy. He wouldn’t do anything he’d get caught for.’

  ‘That’s all right then. No point in going back and getting into trouble, is there?’ Then Les said to me, ‘Five bob. Five bob says that he nicks the lorry, and kills the Tyke.’

  We shook on it. We were bloody well going to retrace our tracks again, weren’t we? Conscience is like being attached to life by a bit of elastic: it always pulls you back to somewhere you’d rather not be.

  Back at the Matador we found Pete, of course, but with a couple of blokes and a great Thornicroft tank-recovery vehicle. That’s a six-wheeled crane with all-wheel drive, big enough to lift and tow a tank. In the Army’s world, big is big.

  Les said, ‘I wonder if I keep Kate long enough if she’ll grow into one of them?’

  I said, ‘There’s Pete.’

  ‘Glad you’re awake, Charlie.’ That was James again. He sounded bitter. ‘Are you going to get him to go home and leave us in peace, or shall I simply shoot him?’

  I said, ‘Hi, Pete. Fancy meeting you again. I thought you were away with Tommo, printing money.’

  ‘Tommo’s met another Mädchen. One with legs as long as the Suez Canal, and tits like pyramids. I can’t get him out of bed.’

  ‘What are you doing then? The Major thinks you’re back in the black market, and stealing his stores.’

  ‘I told you I’d be OK: they’ve joined me up in the police to keep me out of trouble until the war in Europe is over: can’t be long now.’

  ‘You gotta be joking.’

  But he wasn’t. He pulled out one of those little cards with the red stripes on it to prove it. James butted in, ‘I was going to arrest you, but changed my mind when I remembered that your partner might still come up with a nice little German property investment for me.’ He nodded at Pete’s pass, and asked, ‘That thing genuine?’

  ‘Yes, Major, it is.’

  ‘Explain. Make me believe you.’

  Pete shrugged. He said, ‘OK.’ It sounded like ho-kay. ‘I try. Poles in exile congregate with other Poles in exile, so for several years I associate freely with my country’s political representatives in Britain. That also involved me with your black market, because most of them were up to our necks in it. You say it like that?’