Charlie's War

by David Fiddimore

‘. . . that sort of thing?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘ ’fraid we don’t, old son.’

  ‘Look, I don’t want you to think I was a ladies’ man, because I wasn’t. It’s just that I’ve had a few girlfriends – mainly in the last six months. And got used to . . .’

  ‘. . . a bit of a poke when you felt like it . . .’ That was Les.

  I told them, ‘It doesn’t feel like being in love. It doesn’t feel like any sort of emotion, except maybe a little sadness that things can’t stay as they are.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Like I said, sir. Nothing luvvy duvvy. I looked at Ingrid just now, and had this overwhelming . . . knowledge, I suppose . . . I just knew I had met the woman I was going to spend the rest of my life with. All over. No choice. Not any more. Sad really.’

  Les said, ‘ ’strewth.’ That was a word we used at the time. ‘The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.’

  James said, ‘Stop showing off. The boy’s stricken.’

  ‘That’s what I meant, sir. Shall us get moving?’

  Twenty-Nine

  Lee Miller’s jeep had had the word Hussar painted on the bottom frame of the windscreen; remember? Our new one had the word Chasseur. I wondered if they’d once been stable mates. Les drove, and the Major sat alongside him, his faded trench coat blowing out in the slipstream. Not that there was much of that; Les had to pick his way around bomb and shell holes, collapsed buildings and exposed, ruptured water mains. One of them plumed about twenty feet into the air, and a group of kids danced and played around it. They ignored us. The high brick wall of an area of dockyard had been laid flat by blast for a length of about two hundred yards. It still looked like a perfect brick wall, but built horizontally rather than vertically. Those odd French painters would have liked that. Submarines on cradles had become scattered pieces of scrap. One of the pieces was a more or less complete submarine conning tower, marooned on dry land. A red flag bearing a huge maple leaf flew from the periscope housing.

  We had to turn inland again. Les knew what he was up to. The old Hanseatic Hotel was in a district of warehouses and dock workers’ homes. At the end of one street of small houses there was a bomb site comprising a near perfect pyramid of bricks. Les stopped to let us see that as well: I wished he hadn’t. It was topped by half a dead woman with an outstretched arm, like a bizarre signpost pointing east. Some wag had hung a notice on it. It read, Berlin 200 miles. There’s no such thing as a joke in bad taste in the middle of a war. The radio warbled ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’: at least it wasn’t that bloody Vera Lynn woman. Les grunted. He said, ‘Someone should bury that before it begins to stink.’

  He was right, really. It was just so much meat. I wondered if the kids we’d passed, playing in the water, had seen it. I wondered if some of them wondered where their mother was. Les took us perhaps another quarter-mile. Then he stopped and switched off.

  The Hanseatic Hotel towered above low warehouses – one had burned; its roof was gone. The hotel was an ornate, four-storey, square building made from pale red brick. Its cornerstones, lintels and window surrounds were of a fine light-grey ashlar. Flagposts jutting out over the road carried Red Cross flags. They occasionally cracked in the breeze. In the yard between it and a warehouse painted with tarred black paint I could see a dozen ambulances parked randomly, whilst their crews stood around with cigarettes. A large seagull paced up and down the rain channel at the edge of the warehouse roof. It had a piece of blood-stained bandage in its beak, which it shook periodically. It was like one of those civilians they showed you on the newsreels, waving small flags as their liberators drove past.

  As we waited, a driver in olive-green pants and vest got into a US ambulance – one of those new Dodges – drove out, and turned away from us. He was as small as a boy; I saw his pale arm as he waved. Les waved back. I didn’t have it in me to do the same. Three wide grey steps, a double iron door, painted black, but now chipped and shrapnel-scarred, framed by two square columns of grey ashlar. Both door halves stood open. There were people on stretcher trolleys in what had been the lobby in better days, and a bustle of activity in any direction you looked. Three men in different-coloured fatigues sat behind what had been a reception desk. They looked dog-tired. One, in surgical green, asked me, ‘Is it all over out there? They stopped fighting?’ He was American.

  ‘Yesterday. Didn’t they tell you?’

  ‘No time. The people just keep on coming. The Krauts equipped this place for five hundred patients; we got a thousand. They just keep on coming.’

  ‘I think that the city actually fell two days ago.’

  ‘No one told us. They never do.’

  There was a tug at my sleeve. When I looked round there was a small woman standing alongside me. I know what you’re thinking, but you’d be wrong. It wasn’t Grace. It was a nun; one of the nursing orders. Her white pinafore gleamed like a light in the dark. She said, ‘This way,’ and tugged me gently again. When I didn’t move she repeated, ‘This way. They are waiting for you.’

  James didn’t play the officer any more. He gave me an encouraging smile and a nudge. Les had turned to look at me. He gave me a curt nod. I left them there, and followed her. We walked. The stairs were polished white-grey stone, as were the corridors. I could do hospitals; this was my fifth since leaving the squadron. Two wide corridors crossed each floor like a crucifix. They had opened up the top floor to four large wards and slipping between them along the corridor was like walking a cloister. Following the nun was like experiencing that sinking feeling you had when you were summoned to the Beak’s study at school, without knowing what you were supposed to have done. Grace was somewhere along here, and instead of skipping my feet felt heavier with each step. How to start? Sorry for chasing you? or Did you know it was me? Don’t be an arse, Charlie, of course she did. Do you still love me? Did she ever?

  Grace me no grace. No Grace.

  The room I followed the nun into was thirty feet across. I’d already began to think of her as a large white bird, and myself as a scarecrow flapping in her wake.

  No Grace.

  The lighting was subdued. Fifteen or so people: maybe more. Chairs arranged in rows of about ten facing a makeshift altar. A crucifix had been painted on the wall above it. Close to it an RAF Sergeant lay on a stretcher trolley: the thing the Americans call a gurney, I think. He was propped up on his elbows, smiled, and gave me a nod. The nun turned round, gave both the tarnished crosses on my blouse collars a polish with the balls of her thumbs, then surprised me by giving me a brief kiss on the lips. I don’t know what order of nuns she came from. The quick pressure from her body told me it might have been the Mary Magdalenes. Unworthy thought, Charlie. I regretted it immediately.

  She said, ‘You are the first.’

  ‘The first what?’

  ‘The first priest here since the others ran away. That was two weeks ago. Bless you.’

  ‘. . . and you, Sister.’

  I went to the guy on the trolley. He lay back, and stretched out a hand for shaking. I think that the British took the handshake around the world. I noticed that he hadn’t shaved for a few days. He noticed me noticing, and rubbed the back of one hand over his dark chin: it made an odd rasping noise. He said, ‘Not much water for the last few days, Padre,’ and, ‘My name is Ross. I’m from Fife.’

  ‘Charles Bassett. I’m English, although my father lives in Glasgow now. I’ve never been to Fife.’

  ‘I’ve been to England,’ he said. ‘You’d like Fife. In places it’s just like Sussex: good farming country, and big broad-leafed trees. The girls are all good-tempered, and even the kirks have that English look to them.’

  ‘The churches?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Stupid. Flew into a factory chimney. It was probably the last one standing in Bremerhaven. That took enough off my wingtip to upset Old Lady Gravity. I broke my ankles in the crash.’

  ‘Wha
t were you in?’

  ‘Tiffie. Typhoon. Popping rockets into Jerry merchantmen trying to slip out of harbour for neutral countries. They’ve only got small old ships left now: our rockets turn them inside out.’

  ‘I’ll bet they do. Who’s this lot?’ As I asked him I looked around the room for the first time. I guess they were pretty representative of what we found in each newly captured German city. More than I had first thought. Maybe thirty people. They didn’t say much. The kids watched me with big reproachful eyes. Men and women; young and old; civilians and soldiers. Soldiers. I studied them. There were maybe five scattered around the room, all with oddly prominent bandaged injuries. Ross said, ‘Don’t worry about them, Padre. They’re out of it. If the truth’s told they’re shitting themselves because they don’t know what happens next.’

  I realized that there was something he needed to know.

  ‘Sergeant Ross . . .’

  ‘Yes, Padre?’

  ‘You do realize that you’re going to be OK now? The fighting has stopped. The good Jerries have surrendered, and bad ones fled. The city is full of Canadians, and Scots like yourself. I’ve just left a man from Easter Ross feeding two hundred civilian refugees in a cellar about a mile from here.’

  He lay back and looked at the ceiling, a forearm resting on his forehead. He smiled. It was like the sun coming from behind a cloud.

  ‘I wasn’t sure. I think I’ve been here about five or six days. The shooting died away yesterday I think. Nobody tells you much, except Grace.’

  ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘An English nurse. She’s working with the French and the Italians. Does that make her a traitor, like Haw-Haw, do you think?’

  ‘I’m sure it doesn’t. Aren’t doctors and nurses exempt from that sort of thing? What sort of woman is she?’

  ‘The sort you fall for.’

  He grinned. He didn’t seem to mind. I stood at the nearest window. The hospital stood at the very edge of a one-mile destruction zone. This part of Bremen looked like a gigantic, smashed-up building site. You start with one of the most elegant skylines in northern Europe and a couple of thousand bombs, and work your way backwards to heaps of scattered bricks and stone, a couple of thousand large holes in the ground, and cap it with the stink of unburied bodies. They’d call that reverse engineering these days, I suspect. I did something stupid. Still looking out of the window I spoke what was on my mind: never a good idea.

  ‘Mankind is very young,’ I said. ‘Scarcely out of the caves.’ It sounded like just the sort of platitude an unimaginative priest might have used: as profound as last week’s Yorkshire pudding. Maybe Ross thought so too. He asked me, ‘Will you take a service, Padre?’

  Bollocks! Funnily enough it was an easier prospect than facing Grace. I asked him, ‘Do you think they’ll want it?’

  ‘Of course, Padre. Didn’t Anna tell you?’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  The nursing sister told me herself. ‘We moved all of the Christians in here,’ she said. ‘If anything bad had happened they would have all been together.’

  Anything bad. For once I didn’t ask a silly question.

  ‘All the Christian denominations under the sun,’ the Sergeant said cheerfully.

  ‘So they won’t mind me, then?’ I asked him. ‘I’m an independent hedonist.’

  He made a whistling sound, and said, ‘Don’t get me wrong, Padre, but in my mob we would have said that that sounds very painful.’

  ‘And I haven’t any of my things . . .’

  ‘We have a Book of Common Prayer, and a couple of hymnbooks. Theirs are in German, of course, but mine’s English. It always flew with me.’

  I don’t know why I wanted to do it. I asked, ‘Would you be satisfied with a short informal service? I say a prayer, and you could sing a few of the good old ones?’

  It’s the silly little things that sometimes get to people.

  The nun asked, ‘Can I say that the war is over?’

  ‘For Bremen,’ I told her, ‘the war is over. Tell everyone you like.’ After that they all began to speak to each other. In low voices, murmuring. No one used loud voices any more.

  It felt oddly natural turning to face them with Ross’s book in my hand. I should have felt ridiculous, but I didn’t. I gave them three prayers, including a long one for peace on Earth, and good will to all men. Looking back on that, it may have been a bit hypocritical, but it seemed appropriate to the times. They gave me three hymns back, singing lustily at first. Everything went well until the last one: I chose it from among my memories of a whitewashed, corrugated iron Sunday school alongside our parish church . . . and all of a sudden the Germans couldn’t sing because they were crying. Sister Anna’s voice, and mine, and Ross’s rang out in the little room, whilst all the rest of them mumbled. One of the soldiers came up and hugged me afterwards; tears were streaming down his face. I know that he wanted to speak, but something was stopping him. I didn’t know what the hell was going on until James asked me, ‘Did you plan that, Charlie, or did it just happen? Part of your magic?’

  He had been standing at the doorway, and must have seen the end of my performance.

  ‘Hello, James. I am afraid I don’t know what’s happened. They suddenly got very emotional.’

  ‘It’s you, you silly bugger, and the last hymn. Don’t you realize that you’ve just had them sing the tune of an old German national anthem?’ Then he said, ‘Les wants you. You’d better come downstairs. You didn’t meet your Grace?’

  ‘No, but she’s here somewhere. That pilot talked about her . . .’

  As we walked down the marble stairs he said, ‘You’re getting awfully good with the bell, book and candle, you know.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Maybe it should be your line in Civvy Street.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Better than being one of Cliff’s bloody spies for the rest of your life.’

  ‘Fat chance of that either, sir.’

  ‘Yes. Didn’t you tell us you were off to Australia to be a sports writer?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. That’s what I’d like. What’s the matter, don’t you believe me?’

  All he did was give his strange whinnying laugh. Now what was so bloody funny?

  There was a different atmosphere in the hospital: some cloud had lifted. Alongside the pain and the scrambling of medics and nurses from ward to ward there were some smiles too. I saw the back of Hendriks’s head. He was dashing down one of the corridors like a sprinter: he didn’t notice me. They must have had a radio in one of the wards, and it was that fellow Sinatra expiring over ‘When Your Lover Has Gone’ with Tommy Dorsey’s band. I’ve loved that performance ever since. God sends you all these little messages, and you never pick up on them; you’re always tuned to another station.

  Les was sitting on a small marble bench in what had been the hotel lobby, oblivious to the noise and bustle. He had some people around him. One was a plump nurse with long wavy blonde hair like a film star. I knew immediately that this was the woman they had told me about. The German nurse on Grace’s team who the men had argued over. If I hadn’t just met Ingrid I could have seen why. Her uniform was white, clean and a little too tight. That’s what my mother would have said, anyway. She looked startlingly well fed. Even the heavier Germans I had seen had had their skins hanging off them. I knew that it was the woman because she sat alongside Les, and was cooing at the tiny swaddled child he held in his arms. The Scottie, Alan, stood by them. When he spotted me he said, ‘Hello, sir. I brought your German bird over. She’s outside.’

  Great.

  Les said, ‘Meet Carlo.’ He held up the baby for me to inspect. ‘I think he looks like you.’

  The baby was asleep. He had round red cheeks and pale eyelashes. I could see one perfect hand, and tiny fingernails.

  ‘I’ve already told you. It’s not mine. Where’s Grace?’

  ‘Gone, according to the abandoned Fräulein here. Gone off wi
th some Eyetie, heading for Eyetie Land. She left you a baby and a letter. Congratulations. The baby’s a good ’un, but I haven’t read the letter yet.’

  ‘Can I have it please?’

  Les spoke Kraut to the Kraut. He told me, ‘She has a name: Gretchen. Sounds like a fairy tale.’

  She popped open a button on her top, and fished a creased envelope from her bra. The letter smelled of soap. It was a cheap envelope of coarse grey-white paper. It had Charlie on it, in Grace’s big flowing handwriting. I walked away from them to read it.

  Charlie

  Enough. Stop following me, please. That’s what we agreed the last time we met. When I said before, that I’d marry you if you caught up with me after the war, I didn’t expect you to. I meant it at the time, but don’t any longer; if that makes sense. Sorry. What do you think of Carlo? Having him was a bad decision I made after seeing a bombed-out school in London. That’s what our bombs did in Germany when I flew with you. Everything else followed on from that. No one wanted me to have Carlo: not even you. Until Grayling told me you were looking for me, I had good memories of you. After that I was running away from you too. I’m leaving Carlo, which really puts you on the spot. You can walk away from him here, where he’ll die unless someone takes him on, you can go home and give him to Adelaide, and tell her that you did half the job, which is better than none of it . . . or you can keep him yourself. A load of old garbage, of course; I would never leave him if I believed that you wouldn’t do the right thing. Grech has something for him. Bye,

  Grace.

  Bye, Grace.

  Just like that. I read it through twice before I handed it to James. He read it, and gave it to Les. Les had the child balanced over one shoulder. It belched. A soft, damp sound. I took the baby from him, and asked, ‘Where did that German girl go? The one who had the letter?’

  ‘There.’ She was talking to Alan.

  ‘Ask her if she has anything else from Grace.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask her yourself?’

  It was Les she smiled at when she popped another button, and went fishing again. It was the other tit this time. Grace’s fibre tags with her name and number, on a leather cord. I didn’t know that the ATAs had tags: I’d never seen Grace with hers, naked or dressed. Les gave me back the letter. I folded it into its envelope, and buttoned it into the breast pocket of my khaki blouse alongside Grace’s tags. The baby felt comfortable on my shoulder, and there was a curious tension in the air. It was as if I was supposed to know what to do next.