by John Harris
More groups of Frenchmen appeared, also heading north, but Noble gave them a wide berth. Then, as the light began to fade, he passed through a deserted hamlet off the route of the retreat that had been bombed and set on fire. There didn’t seem to be a living soul left in it but there was a small farmhouse on the outskirts where he decided to look for food.
It was an old building, ugly, with bleached doors and window sashes, and a chicken scratching in the dirt fled noisily as he approached. There was no wind and the cobbled yard stank of manure. As he cautiously pushed open the door, it reminded him sickeningly of the Kent farms where his parents had taken him as a child when they’d gone hop-picking.
There might even be a bird, he thought, the farmer’s daughter, left behind and eager to oblige a man like Kiss of Death Noble, the original Hearts and Flowers Kid, in return for his protection. His jaw hung open with the first pleasurable thoughts he’d had for days as he saw her in his mind’s eye lifting soft white fingers to pull the last strap down and let the final garment fall to her ankles. She’d be slender as a wraith, with soft eyes like a gazelle’s and pink-tipped breasts, as innocent as a child and just waiting for Lije Noble to show her how to go about things. Despite his numerous amorous adventures, Noble had always been very correct with young girls and had pursued only older experienced women whom he couldn’t harm. Yet the idea of possessing an innocent but eager country virgin had always been one of his fantasies, and he was in a soporific daydream compounded of tiredness and a yearning to be safe when, from somewhere inside the house, he heard something metallic like an enamel bowl fall and start to spin.
He froze, the picture vanishing, his heart pounding in his throat. ‘Who’s there?’ It was an English voice and he almost fainted with relief.
The movement came again and he saw a tall figure against the light from a window. It carried a Bren gun and the pouches on its breast contained magazines of ammunition. But the figure moved slowly and awkwardly, and as it passed the window Noble saw its face was covered with blood.
‘What happened, mate?’ he asked. ‘Get you in the head?’
The other man nodded. He was a Guardsman, he saw now, a tall, gingerish-haired man with a bone-white face masked with stubble and sweat-caked dust. His hair was matted with blood that had run across his eyes and dried into hard brown crusts, and as he moved he stumbled badly, his hand in front of him pawing the air.
Noble’s mouth hung open in horror and pity. ‘You blind, mate?’ he whispered.
‘I dunno,’ the Guardsman said briskly. ‘I cannae open ma een.’
Noble came to life with a jerk. There was a pump by the sink and he sloshed water into a tin basin and carried it back to the Guardsman who still clutched the Bren to his chest.
‘For God’s sake, mate,’ Noble said. ‘Put your gun down. I can’t get at you.
The Guardsman stiffened. ‘I carried this bluidy gun all the way from Belgium,’ he said. ‘It fell in the water. I had to get it oot.’
Noble stared at the gun. ‘That’s never been in no water,’ he said.
‘Aye. I cleaned it. I was taught tae strip and clean one of these things blindfold.’
Noble swallowed again. Having been tempted several times during the day to throw even his rifle away, he was impressed by a devotion that could carry a 23lb Bren and full magazines as far as this one had been carried. ‘Don’t make no difference,’ he said. ‘I can’t clean you up with it sticking up me nostrils.’
The Guardsman laid down the Bren at last, not very willingly, and handed Noble a grubby handkerchief. ‘Here,’ he said.
After a few minutes scrubbing and with the loss of most of the lashes, they got the eye open and Noble found himself staring into a cold pale-blue eye. The Guardsman gave a relieved sigh. ‘How aboot the other?’ he said.
After a while that eye opened, too, and the Guardsman’s hand went to the top of his head. ‘It’s all right now,’ he said.
It didn’t seem to Noble that anything was all right. He was still a long way from his friends and he’d already seen too many men die. ‘What are you goin’ to do?’ he asked.
‘Rejoin ma unit.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Coldstream. Senior regiment of the British army. What’s yours?’
Noble’s reply was received in silence. ‘The Royal Welsh I’ve haird of,’ the Guardsman said after a while. ‘The Black Watch I know exists. But what the hell is yon bluidy outfit?’
Noble told him and he pondered, a silent six-foot-three, so lean, Noble thought, a folded pound note would have shown in his pocket. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Noble. Lije Noble.’
The Guardsman ran his fingers over his chin. ‘Mine’s Gow. John Gow. Ma mates call me Jock. You can.’
He made the offer as though bestowing an accolade and Noble was flattered. Gow’s white granite face seemed to suggest that having friends might be considered effeminate in his circle, and Noble felt he was in the presence of glory and that a little bit of it was reflected on him.
‘What are you going to do when you get back to your pals?’ he asked.
‘Fight, mon. What do you think?’
‘With a bonce like that? Even the bloody Brigade of Guards aren’t that clever?’
‘I always thought they were. And I’ll thank you not to swear when you refer to the fucken Brigade of Guards.’ The Guardsman seemed to have recovered his aplomb completely, in a way that left Noble slightly awed. ‘You got any kit, mon?’ he asked. ‘Razor? Brush and polish?’
Noble’s jaw hung open. ‘What for?’
Gow’s voice rose. ‘To polish ma boots, o’ course,’ he said.
Noble came to life. ‘Listen, mon fils,’ he said, ‘I’ve lost me kit so often I have to go into bloody battle these days with a retriever.’
Gow frowned. ‘That’s bad,’ he intoned severely. ‘Dirty flesh’s a serious offence. You can tell a Guardsman anywhere. Not only do we fight better. We look better, too. We’re the Coalies. The Lilywhites. The Coldstream. They been working on us for hundreds of years. At Inkerman we picked up rocks when our guns was empty and beat the Russians’ heads flat wi’ ’em. At Fontenoy we held our volley until one man in three had gone down. And why? Because we’re clean, mon. Because we’re clean.’
To Noble it didn’t seem to follow, but clearly Gow thought it did. He had an unmistakable Guardsman’s walk, stiff as a ramrod arrogant with confidence, and he looked the sort of man who, if, he put his mind to it, could destroy a battleship with a jack-knife.
‘Och, well,’ he said. ‘Ah’ll have tae save it.’ He took a small notebook from his blouse pocket and began to write with a stub of pencil which he held in his big white fist as though it were a sledge-hammer. Noble watched him curiously, wondering what was so important that it had to be entered so precisely and at such a moment. Then Gow put his pencil away and buttoned the blouse pocket carefully. ‘Mebbe we’d better find somethin’ tae eat,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll try to round up a few of yon bluidy Frogs and see if we cannae make ’em into soldiers.’
Noble stared. His own impression of the Frenchmen he’d seen was that they wouldn’t stop for anyone, and he had no wish to be left at the side of the road like the colonel he’d passed, with a bullet through his back.
‘Those sods wouldn’t stop for anybody,’ he said.
‘They might. For me.’ Gow didn’t seem to consider the problem a difficult one but, as he headed for the road, his step was not quite firm. Noble guessed he was still dizzy, and could see his eyes were squinting as though he had a splitting headache. When he swayed on his feet Noble decided it was time he protested.
‘Listen, when was it you copped it?’
Gow frowned. ‘This morning. Fairst light.’
Noble gestured. ‘Eighteen hours ago, mate. Things are changing all the time. You pals are miles away now.’
‘Is that a fact?’
‘Yes, it is. With that bonce of yours you’re in no state
to put up a solo rear-guard action.’
‘Discipline’s the thing, mon.’
‘Discipline me arse,’ Noble said and Gow stiffened.
‘Hae ye no haird how the Scots Guards were on parade when a One-one-oh came down at low level wi’ its guns going? Not a heid turned tae see what was goin’ on.’
Noble stared at Gow as though he were a prehistoric animal. He held up one finger. ‘How many?’ he asked.
‘Two. No, be Christ, one! Ma een must be a bit bolo still.’
‘See what I mean?’ Noble grasped Gow’s arm, feeling for the first time that he was in command of the situation. ‘Could you do with a swallow of brandy, mon fils?’
Gow’s bony white face turned. ‘You got some?’
Noble fished into his side-pack and produced what was left of the bottle.
‘Try a swig of that,’ he said.
Watching all the drab, dusty, shabby figures filing past, Private Angelet was overwhelmed by an incredible sadness. This was France he was watching pass in front of him. Not the France he’d been brought up to believe in – the France of Louis XIV and Napoleon, not the France of Verdun and the Marne. This was the France of 1870, effete, decadent, its soul eaten by corruption and treachery, defeated, shamed, no longer with the pride to hold up its head.
The men stumbling past were the ruin of an army. Their commanders had thrown in their hands and only occasional units tramped past with their weapons in their hands, their heads up, unshaven like the rest because the French army had never set much store by smartness, but with something in their eyes that showed they were undefeated. Angelet’s shy soul reached out to these men as he wished he belonged among them.
‘What will happen to France, Chouteau?’ he asked.
Sitting alongside him on the bank, cutting slices from a huge sausage he’d found in the last village they’d passed through, Chouteau considered. His hands were working under his greatcoat because if any of the hungry men shuffling past had seen the sausage they’d have demanded a share and in Chouteau’s mind the time had come when survival was more important than charity.
He shrugged and slipped a slice to Angelet with a piece of stale bread.
‘She will surrender,’ he said. ‘And they will dig out some useless old fool who’s not been involved and get him to ask for terms.’
‘And then?’
Chouteau’s hands stopped moving under the greatcoat and he sat for a moment, silent, staring in front of hlm, his expression blank, his eyes empty.
‘And then?’ he said. ‘And then, mon vieux, we shall get the SS and the torture chambers, and the Germans will march through the Arc de Triomphe and down the Champs Elysées as they did in 1871. They will bring their gauleiters and they will occupy all the best hotels, and the opera will play Wagner instead of Bizet.’
‘French people would never permit that.’
Chouteau’s hands were still motionless and his eyes were faraway. ‘No?’ he said. ‘Perhaps not you or I. Perhaps not the inhabitants of Belleville and St Denis and the villages in the Pas de Calais and the Jura and the South. They would fight. But there are also people with apartments in the Avenue Foch who have fat bank accounts and expensive mistresses and spoilt children. They will make terms. You and I, mon brave, are going to witness the sight of France on her knees.’
He became silent and Angelet stared with him into the road. He thought of the department store where he’d worked, and tried to imagine fat German hausfraus buying the underwear that he used to sell to the midinettes. Then he thought of his girlfriend and wondered how she’d face defeat.
Already, on the roads north, he’d seen Frenchwomen and girls standing on crossroads as they’d passed. Their eyes had been full of contempt for the men shuffling northwards and some had already been staring towards that point on the horizon where the Germans would first appear. He was old enough to know that some of them might not even find the Germans unwelcome.
‘My God,’ he exploded. ‘It’s too much!’
Chouteau’s head turned. ‘What, mon brave?’
But Angelet had expended his fury, and was back again with his girlfriend. On his last leave they’d gone to a hotel. It had been mid-afternoon but, being France, no one had thought it odd. Angelet had not done the paying because the French army didn’t allow for such luxuries, and all he could remember about it now was that it had had a big Norman bed and a tin bidet. His girlfriend had taken off the bolero jacket she’d been wearing and flung it on a chair, and somehow he’d felt she was completely mistress of the situation.
She’d begun to unfasten the buttons of her dress and as she’d stepped out of it, Angelet had sat on the bed and watched her, shy and entranced. ‘How beautiful you are,’ he’d said breathlessly, half-blinded by badly suppressed adoration and dizzy with the sight of something he felt was pure and untouched. Her eyes had been dark and liquid and, even as the excitement ran through his body, he’d felt that she was too beautiful for him.
She’d smiled at him, unashamed at her nakedness. ‘Well,’ she’d said. ‘What are you waiting for, imbecile?’ And as she’d pushed him back on to the bed, reaching with a sure hand for the buttons of his clothes, he’d realised that, despite what he thought, she was not a virgin.
It hadn’t worried him then that he wasn’t the first, but he decided now that she was foolish and in need of love and that without him she’d turn to the first man to offer it to her. And with the Germans everywhere and Frenchmen forced into the shadows where it was safe, she could well be one of the first to fall.
‘What will become of us?’ he asked ‘You and I, Chouteau?’
Chouteau took a deep breath. ‘Doubtless the British will let us fight for them as usual,’ he said dryly. ‘Sometimes, in fact, I wonder which are the worst – the British or the Germans. Neither of them have much regard for France, but at least the British are not Nazis and they will not stop fighting.’
‘How can they fight? There’s nothing to stop the Germans now.’
Chouteau smiled. ‘Only the sea, mon brave, and that is the best tank trap in the world. Behind it the British will build their armies. Just as they did in 1915. From then, that war was their war – until the Americans took it from both of us.’
While they were talking, they hadn’t noticed the two khaki figures approaching. The road had emptied for the moment and Chouteau looked up, surprised to see the two Englishmen, one of them small and red-faced with a black pencil-line moustache and a sly expression, holding the arm of a tall, lean, man with a bone-white face streaked with blood which had dried in runnels as it oozed from his stiff matted hair.
‘Speak English, mon fils?’ the small one asked.
‘Un peu,’ Chouteau said. ‘A little.’
‘Food,’ the small man said. ‘You have food.’
Chouteau looked up and realised that the little Englishman’s sly eyes had noticed something no one else had noticed – the crumbs on his greatcoat. His hand moved slowly towards his rifle.
‘So?’
‘I’ve got cognac. My cognac for your food.’
Chouteau stared then he licked his lips. ‘I am hungry also,’ he said. ‘Let us say a little of my food for a little of your cognac.’
As Noble and Gow exchanged food with Chouteau and Angelet, Heinrich-Robert Hinze stood near Mardyck staring at the Channel and feeling as Napoleon and Caesar must have felt when they, too, had stared at its dark waters.
Behind him the battery was constructing gun pits – eighteen inches deep and sandbagged five feet high in front – and the circular steel platforms had been hoisted from the trailers and were now being embedded in the earth. Already one gun had been mounted, its wheels on the outer rim of the platform so it could easily be slewed round. Trenches had been dug behind in case of counter-fire. Parked nearby were the tractors, the light and heavy trucks from the stores, the trailer racked for ammunition, the officers’ mess vehicle, the cook’s lorry with the men’s mess apparatus and, stacked ready for us
e, the growing piles of shells and charges.
Hinze drew a deep breath. He could smell the sea and feel the breeze on his face, and beyond the dunes he could see the last of the light on the flat stretch of water to the north. The men behind him were cursing as they always did when there was work to be done but there was no real annoyance. They could all see the end of the war in sight and they all felt they’d soon be home.
He turned and moved back to the lorry where he worked. The major was there. ‘I hope to be ready for action at first light tomorrow, he said.
‘We shall be, Herr Major.’
‘They’ll be making a big effort. They’ll send in everything they’ve got.’
‘Yes.’ Hinze smiled. ‘The shooting season will be opening early.’
One of the targets was still waiting in Dover. She seemed to have been forgotten but it didn’t worry Tremenheere greatly. There were rations on board, and he was quite content to stay where he was.
All day the boat had bobbed and bumped alongside the pier, the passing ships setting the mat of small craft that surrounded her weaving and dancing. The destroyers were still doing the bulk of the work. They were not built to carry troops and it was incredible that they could carry as many as they did on decks crowded with guns, torpedo tubes and depth charges. But they were experimenting now with larger and larger numbers and were growing so top-heavy that when they swung to enter harbour they heeled at incredible angles. The men aboard held their breath, certain they were going over.
Some of the smaller vessels were limping badly, their decks splintered by bullets and the dead lying sprawled in corners. The cheering and excitement that had existed when Athelstan had first arrived had died away as the day wore grimly on.
Watching the women pinning labels to the clothing of the injured with their names, ranks and numbers, their units and their home addresses, Tremenheere had one whisky too many from Knevett’s bottle. There was a woman working nearby and as she bent he could see the backs of her thighs, and in the end the salacious thoughts that persisted in running through his head drove him to help her. She was so busy, however, she never even noticed him and in the end he went back in disgust to Athelstan and fell asleep in the wheelhouse.
