by John Harris
‘But there’s nothing wrong with it,’ she kept saying. ‘It’s all right.’
‘I should bandage it all the same,’ Hatton suggested. ‘Saves time.’
More women were working at a mobile canteen with cups borrowed from local catering businesses, handing out food they’d scoured from the town shops. Incredibly they kept their heads, despite the continuous harassment from the men pouring from Vital’s lower decks – senior officers mixed with private soldiers, French and Belgian refugees, an alien under arrest, a few German prisoners, even a French postal worker who’d been swept up in the chaos. None of them had time to notice Hatton, and his day was filled with clearing the ship of abandoned equipment as the troops disappeared, and with setting squads of men to clear up the dirt, the fuel oil and the pools of blood.
He was on the quay when a petty officer called down that the deck was clear. As the quayside emptied of men, near the railway lines he saw several rows of stretchers which sweating men were picking up and carrying to ambulances, while women and girls bent over the wounded who remained, fixing labels with names and addresses to their blouses. As he turned to head for the gangway, his eyes rested on one of the girls. She was giving a soldier a mug of tea, holding it for him while he drank because both his hands were bandaged. When she’d finished, she placed a cigarette in his mouth and Hatton leaned forward to light it.
The soldier’s eyes looked up at them like a lost dog’s. ‘Thanks, miss. Thanks, sir.’
As the stretcher disappeared, the girl turned.
‘Hello, Nora,’ Hatton said.
At first she frowned, then recognition came, but she showed no sign of pleasure or displeasure.
‘Oh, Barry!’ was all she said.
There was blood on the front of her dress, a line of moist red splashes, and she brushed at them unhappily with her handkerchief. ‘They sent me down to get the story,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘But there were so many. It seemed to need more than stories.’
Vital’s springs were going aboard now and the gangways were being hauled ashore.
‘Sir!’ One of the sailors called to Hatton.
Her eyes widened and she looked terribly concerned. ‘Are you going back?’
‘Sir! Mr Hatton!’ The sailor called again and, as Hatton turned, he felt her grasp his hand, then she put her arms round his neck and kissed him impulsively on the mouth.
‘Girlfriend, Hatton?’ Hough asked as he made his way through the grinning sailors to the bridge.
‘Old flame, sir. Just happened to be helping here.’
‘Enthusiastic for an old flame.’ The navigating officer said. ‘Still a spark in the embers, perhaps.’
As Vital headed out to sea again, with her went other ships – and from Ramsgate, Margate, Folkestone, Portsmouth, Sheerness and all the rivers in the south of England as well – mud-hoppers, coal barges still thick with black dust, yachts, trawlers stinking of fish, gunboats and Dutch schuits reeking of onions and decorated with geraniums. The crews included old soldiers rejected for the army, men from the isles of Scotland to whom Gaelic came more naturally than English, Chinese stewards, lascars, a few Americans, a nobleman or two, a Dominican friar still in his habit. Not all of them had signed the form which made them naval volunteers for a month. Some wore yachting caps and blazers, others flat caps and jerseys. Some had managed to stow a few rations aboard, others had little but tea, bread and milk. Some didn’t even have steel helmets and were seeking out balers and enamel bowls to hold over their heads. Some of their boats weren’t even fit for sea and went out still leaking from the long winter lay-up, and in the confusion some carried spare petrol cans filled by mistake with water which stopped their engines as soon as it was emptied into the tanks. Some had charts, some were simply told to steam for the sound of the guns. ‘The need to get trained men back to train others is paramount,’ they were told. ‘Remember that above all.’
As they left, Athelstan moved alongside the pier where they’d been moored, and from her deck Tremenheere watched the lifting of the pale, oil-slicked sea, while he sucked at his pipe and drank mugs of strong tea, picking up the news in snatches from ashore. Outside Athelstan was an RNLI lifeboat, and just ahead of her a fishing vessel called Daisy which mounted an ancient Lewis. There were two men on her decks, one of them dark and swarthy with a wild wall eye, who was sitting on a hatch-cover finishing a fender he was making from old grass line, the other a large fat man whose white flesh bulged through the holes in his singlet. They were arguing steadily in a stream of obscenity which, even to Tremenheere, who was well used to bad language, was growing boring.
During the afternoon a naval launch came alongside and Tremenheere passed over loaves and tins of bully beef and shoe boxes full of tea and sugar, while the launch’s exhausted crew dragged at cigarettes and sank mugs of tea. As the launch left, a man ran down the quay to the fishing boat. The wall-eyed man sitting on the hatch-cover had just finished the fender and he jumped to his feet, holding it in his hand. The man in the singlet had vanished.
‘What’s up, Gil?’
‘We’ve got to go across, Ern,’ the newcomer panted. ‘Where’s Brundrett?’
‘In the engine room. He says the sodden pump’s packed up.’
The newcomer glared about him as if he might find the offending Brundrett floating about in mid-air. ‘It was all right yesterday,’ he shouted.
‘Well, it isn’t now. It’s stripped down.’
The man called Gil looked furious. His face went red and spit flew as he shouted his rage. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the bloody pump!’ he snarled. ‘What’s he want to strip it down for?’
Tremenheere watched as the two men disappeared. By this time he’d worked out a plan that when it was all over, he’d send a telegram from Dover to say he’d failed to return. There’d be no need to say who it came from, so long as it looked official. Nell Noone would assume it had come from someone in authority and wouldn’t ask questions. Athelstan was his for the moment and he intended to use her to good advantage.
Knevett had been picked up long since and had disappeared with his medical bag. No one had bothered to pick up Collings and on the jetty he’d turned to glance questioningly at Tremenheere.
‘I’m not going ashore, me dear,’ Tremenheere said. Ashore was where Nell Noone was.
Collings had drifted off disconsolately, lugging a canvas bag full of the sailing equipment, oilskins and charts he’d brought. His greying hair had hung down in straggling curls because he was a little drunk and had misplaced his yachting cap.
Tremenheere found it later hanging in the lavatory and helped himself to it. It gave him a rakish authority and naval ratings he questioned for news called him ‘sir’. It was a new experience which he found he enjoyed and, fishing in his pocket, he took out the two tarnished medals from the other war and pinned them on his chest.
They clinked as he moved and he decided he liked the sound.
The rumble of the firing to the east and south came like the dull roll of thunder on the hot air, and Scharroo moved cautiously to avoid waking Marie-Josephine.
He turned his head to look at her. Her face was desperately young and unlined, and long curling lashes rested on her pale cheeks. He wondered who the hell she was and how in God’s name she’d got herself into this mess.
They’d met a group of British soldiers brewing tea by the roadside near Praven and, as they’d stopped to rest their feet, one of them had offered Marie-Josephine a drink from his mess-tin. She’d frowned, certain in her straight-faced, stiff-backed way that it was the British who had brought disaster to France, and she’d taken the mess-tin unwillingly, her eyes on the soldier’s face all the time. He was a squarely built youngish man with a rough accent, thick legs and large strong hands – the product of some northern farmland, Scharroo supposed – but there was a dignity and a gentleness about him that puzzled the American. He’d made no attempt to get Marie-Josephine into conversation, no attempt to take advantag
e of the fact that he had something to offer, merely holding out the tea because he had some and she looked tired.
When Marie-Josephine had finished, she rose and the men’s faces turned as she approached. She was still wearing the cream coat with the dried blood along the edges, and she looked small, neat and very feminine, so that they grinned at her appreciatively.
‘You are very kind,’ she said in her stilted English.
‘That’s all right, miss,’ the man who’d offered the tea said. ‘It was spare and you looked a bit like my missis for a minute.’
‘Missis? Please?’
Scharroo explained and the soldier gave a shy grin. ‘You going north?’ he asked.
Marie-Josephine nodded. ‘I wish to go to La Panne.’
The soldier frowned. ‘La Panne’s no place to go just now, miss.’
She shrugged. ‘Here is no place to stay,’ she said, and the soldiers laughed.
They turned their heads together, muttering, and then the man who’d offered the tea gestured at the lorry alongside the road. ‘We could give you a lift if you keep your heads down,’ he said. ‘Part of the way, anyway. We’ve been told to head for the smoke.’ He indicated the dark pall on the horizon.
As they jogged north through the hot afternoon, Marie-Josephine’s head had sagged and finally lolled against Scharroo’s shoulder. They passed Hoegstade where the crowds of marching men grew thicker, but no one tried to stop the lorry and no one seemed worried when it passed them. At a village near Furnes, the lorry halted and the soldiers climbed out. The place was an extraordinary sight. From every house, from the church steeple, farms, cottages and stables, white flags were hanging, tablecloths, sheets, towels or handkerchiefs. Most of the houses were heavily shuttered and here and there little knots of people stood silently by the road watching, their expressions a mixture of relief that the tide of war was moving on and apprehension of what the arrival of the Germans might bring.
‘This is as far as we go, miss,’ the soldier who had offered the tea said. ‘We’ve got orders to dump the lorry here.’
Scharroo climbed out and lifted Marie-Josephine down. She was feather-light and slim in his arms and, as he set her on the ground, she held out her hand to the soldier who’d offered them the lift. He stared at it, a little bewildered by the French habit of handshaking, then he wiped his great fist on his trousers and took her small paw.
‘I hope you will go home to your missis,’ she said solemnly, raising her voice over the grind of engines and the thump of heavy boots.
The soldiers moved off, joining the other men tramping past. There was no order among them, yet there was no disorder. Officers and men were mixed together and different units were intermingled. Many of them had cut branches from trees and were using them as walking sticks and, because they wore their helmets on the backs of their heads and their rifles slung, it looked as though they were on some vast hike.
Through them, ambulances full of wounded threaded their slow way, their sides riddled with bullet holes, their windscreens shattered. Apart from them the only wheeled traffic now consisted of motor-cyclists, French lorries and the transport of regiments moving south towards the rear-guard. The road ran between two unbroken walls of stranded vehicles.
The scale of the destruction was monumental and Scharroo could see it was worrying Marie-Josephine.
He touched her arm and suggested they start walking. She didn’t move, remaining motionless, staring at the black cloud hanging over the coast, then her head turned, the big frank eyes wide and worried.
‘Walter,’ she said. ‘I think I am frightened.’
Lije Noble was another who was frightened. He’d been frightened so often in the last few days, in fact, he was now wearing his fear like a clammy second skin.
He was still alone, tramping along among a large group of Frenchmen, when he was stopped at a crossroads by a British officer staring at a map spread on the bonnet of a car.
‘You’ll do,’ he said to Noble. ‘My battery’ll be along in a minute. I want you to wait here and direct them down that road there. We were shelled by French 75s by mistake and what’s left’ll be coming through in dribs and drabs and I can’t wait. Okay?’
It wasn’t okay at all but he’d climbed into the car and driven off, leaving Noble staring after him indignantly. Most of the men approaching the crossroads were French and he could see no sign of any British artillery, so he’d grabbed a French corporal and gestured. ‘Carry on,’ he’d said imperiously and walked off quickly before anyone could ask questions. What happened at the crossroads, he decided, was somebody else’s bun-fight, not Lije Noble’s.
He was still brooding on the injustice when he reached a small group of houses by a railway station where there were burned-out Renault tanks, smashed guns and still figures lying sprawled in the fields. One was a British colonel who was said to have been shot in the back by the French for giving them the length of his tongue while trying to halt their retreat. Among the houses there was a Red Cross train on a track running beside the road, and the men from it were rapidly transferring cans of bully beef and biscuits from a string of trucks that lay in a siding nearby. The Red Cross train was pointed north and Noble considered it would be a good idea to join it as a passenger.
The medical officer had no objections but he insisted that Noble throw away his rifle. ‘The Geneva Convention expressly forbids firearms,’ he said, and Noble was suddenly not quite so sure that his idea was a good one.
‘Cut me head off if you like, sir,’ he said. ‘But don’t take me rifle.’
The doctor was adamant and Noble was just wondering what to do when someone shouted, and as he turned he saw an arm pointing at an approaching convoy of tanks.
‘Big bastards,’ Noble said enthusiastically. ‘They’ll scare the shit out of Jerry.’
The monsters came on steadily, their turrets traversing slowly like an insect’s antennae, dwarfing the drab buildings by the side of the road, and it wasn’t until the first one had rumbled past and he saw an open staff car with an officer standing up in it, his grey-gloved hand on the windscreen, that it dawned on Noble he’d seen it all before at the cinema.
‘They’re Jerries!’ he yelled and bolted for the door on the other side of the train just as machine-gun fire shattered the windows and left the medical officer hanging head-down through the broken glass.
There was a huge wheatfield on the far side of the train and he dived into it and didn’t stop until he was half-way across. The tanks sent a few shots after him but they didn’t worry much and he crossed the rest of the field on hands and knees. At the far side he lifted his head. The train staff were standing with their hands in the air, looking as though they’d been there for centuries, petrified into some strange monument, and though Lije Noble felt sorry for them, he was too busy looking after Lije Noble to dwell on them for long.
Beyond the wheat there was a main road, and he was just on the point of crossing it when another tank swung round the corner, blazing away with a machine-gun so that he had to dive back into the wheat. By the Grace of God he wasn’t hit and the tank commander ignored him and rattled on, clearly deciding he wasn’t worth rounding up.
Straggling alongside the road was a small village. It was full of abandoned French rifles, packs and helmets, but seemed empty of humans except for two old men standing by a bar.
‘Which way must we go?’ one of them asked in English.
‘Christ knows,’ Noble said. ‘I wish I did.’
Almost immediately, he heard the tanks again and the old men vanished in a flash. There was a grocery store nearby and Noble dived inside, but then he decided some rotten bastard like Lije Noble might decide to loot it for food, and he shot out again. Further down the street was a carpenter’s shop and he decided that there at least he ought to be safe. He plunged inside and slammed the door.
A few minutes later he heard the clatter of treads and crouched against the wall, panting. The tanks didn’t stop but when
the noise died down he hadn’t the courage to return to the road and, moving on hands and knees, he found a window that looked out on to what appeared to be a farmyard. He forced it open and scrambled through to dive among the haystacks.
By this time he was so edgy he was quite ready to throw his hand in. He was bloody annoyed with the Germans and even more so with the British colonels, brigadiers and generals who’d left him naked and stranded while they mucked about in the immunity of the confusion. Gradually, however, his natural Cockney high spirits took over, and as his sharp slum-dweller’s eye roved round looking for the main chance, he found he was filled with an intense curiosity about what would happen next. Because he’d escaped several times already, he was beginning to think he might do so once more.
The light was going as he joined a battery of 25-pounders in a field backed by a clump of trees. The gunners were dragging the guns from their pits and hooking them to trailers, their eyes towards the south where a Scottish regiment was approaching, all battledress and bayonets, led by a piper.
They were grim-faced and staggering with weariness, and it was an unnerving experience to see them passing because, like the gunners, Noble knew that now there was nothing else in front.
‘The tanks are just behind us,’ the infantrymen said.
‘They can’t be that close,’ one of the gunners growled.
‘That’s what you think,’ Noble said with feeling, then three fields away he saw low humps appearing from behind a burning farmhouse and he began to run as the battery started to fire over open sights.
Two or three miles further on he stopped to get his breath. By this time he’d finished his last fag, he was hot and half-starved and, because he’d smoked several of the cigars from the haversack and helped himself to nips of cognac to keep his nerves steady, he also had a raging thirst.
