‘I’m afraid we’re divorced, George. But, yes, I’ll need to speak to him at some point. Depending on - you know.’
‘We’ll sort you out, don’t you worry.’
‘You’re being very kind.’
III
At the hospital entrance ambulances pulled up and drove off, and there was a steady stream of stretcher parties. Nurses fussed around, and a doctor seemed to be on hand to greet every arrival. Green Army blankets were spread over the stretchers. The staff looked strained, the doctors’ white coats ominously stained with old blood.
At a desk inside the entrance an ATS volunteer, a woman of about sixty with a helmet of steel-grey hair, was doing her best to block the way to all non-essential visitors. But George the copper, big and bluff and authoritative, easily talked his way past her. Further in they found an information desk manned by a Wren, who was able to give them the number of the ward they needed. The hospital was busy, and there were soldiers everywhere, in grimy uniforms and bandages. But even so there were a lot of staff and arm-banded volunteers standing around, looking fretful, with nothing to do.
There was a dreadful smell, a heavy iron stink. George saw Mary react, and he touched her arm, and Hilda’s. ‘That’s dried blood. I remember it from the last lot, the first war. The men are turning up here with old wounds, days old some of them. You never forget the smell. But you just have to put it aside and get on with things. All right?’
They both nodded, and went on. To Mary, knowing that Gary was close, somewhere in this crowded, busy building, these last moments, this walk down the corridors with their shining floors, seemed endless, as if time was stretching.
At last they came to Ward Twenty-Three. There were two rows of beds before a big sash window that had been flung open to allow in the light and air of a garden. The beds were all full of broken-looking bodies, lying still. Mary couldn’t bear to look at their faces. She marched forward, looking at the names on the medical notes fixed to the iron bed frames.
And here was his name, WOOLER, GARY P., with his British army serial number. He lay on his back covered by a thick white blanket, his eyes closed. A skinny young man with thick black hair and wearing a white coat sat on a hard upright chair beside the bed, eyeing them.
Gary looked asleep. His face was clean, though Mary could see some bruising, but his blond hair, scattered over the pillow, was matted and filthy. A drip stand stood beside him; a clear tube snaked into a vein in his arm, the needle covered by a bit of bandage. Mary was hugely relieved that at first glance he looked whole: two arms, two legs, no hideous medical apparatus strapped to his body.
But Hilda was crying, with great silent heaving sobs. Mary felt her own tears come, and she buried her face in the girl’s neck, smelling the starch of her uniform.
When they broke, Mary turned to the young man on the chair. She whispered, ‘Nurse? When will he wake up? Can we speak to him?’
He stood. ‘Well, I’m not a nurse. Just a volunteer.’ He grinned, and showed her an armband with a red cross. ‘My name’s Benjamin Kamen.’
Both Hilda and George stiffened at hearing his accent. ‘You sound German,’ Hilda said, wondering.
‘I’m Austrian,’ said Kamen. ‘An Austrian Jew, in fact. I came to Britain to fight. They wouldn’t let me join up. Flat feet! So I’m doing this instead.’
‘And why are you here?’ George asked, still sounding suspicious.
‘Because I’ve got this accent,’ Kamen said simply. ‘Makes the English uncomfortable. So I try to help out with the international brigades. Half of them don’t recognise my accent, or if they do they feel like outsiders anyhow. And when I got to know Gary, when he was brought in - he spoke about you, Mrs Wooler.’ He faced Mary. ‘I recognised your name. I used to read your pieces in the Traveller, and I know about your work before the war. I’ve been waiting here to meet you.’
Mary was bewildered. ‘Thank you—’
‘Mrs Wooler, there’s something I need to talk to you about. You might be able to help me. It could be urgent.’
George snorted. ‘More urgent than this? For God’s sake, man.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Kamen backed off, hands raised.
‘But is he all right?’ Hilda asked.
Gary stirred. ‘You could try asking him yourself.’ His head turned, and his eyes flickered open.
Mary grabbed her son’s hand and squeezed it, pressing it to her face. ‘Oh, Gary, my God. What a day you’ve given me!’
‘I’m sorry.’ His voice was very dry, cracking. ‘Mind you, I’ve not been at a picnic myself, I can tell you that.’ He turned his head to Hilda, who was suffering that odd silent sobbing again, and he stroked her face. George, standing massively, rested a hand on his daughter’s shoulder.
‘He got off lightly,’ Ben Kamen murmured. ‘Believe it or not. The troops are turning up raw off the beaches of France. When they come in it’s more like a battlefield dressing station here than a hospital.’
‘And you,’ Hilda said, stroking Gary’s brow, ‘look as if you need more sleep.’
‘Yeah.’ But he faced his mother, wanting to tell her. ‘Listen, Mom. They tore across the country in those tanks of theirs. There was nothing to stop them. We did nothing but retreat - a fighting retreat, but a retreat. The Brits just weren’t prepared for what hit them. I heard some of them bitching that it wasn’t like this in India. And, Christ, the things we saw. Women and kids mown down from the air—’
‘It’s all right,’ Mary said.
‘Well, we got to the coast. The Germans had us pinned. And then we heard that Guderian was coming, with his First Panzers. We all knew what that bastard had done in Poland. They say he reached Gravelines, and secured bridgeheads over the river there. He waited one day. This was last Friday. I don’t know why he paused. It let us start the evacuation. But then, on the Saturday, he came for us.
‘Mom, we set up a perimeter. We fought back. But it was a slaughter. You had the Panzers ripping into our flanks, and the damn Luftwaffe coming at us from overhead, and we just couldn’t get on those ships fast enough. I was in a line for three days, a typical goddamn English queue, waiting for a place on a destroyer. No food, no water, nothing.
‘I got away. I was lucky. The scuttlebutt here is that ten per cent might make it home, out of four hundred thousand on those beaches. That’s half the damn English army, Mom. I can’t see how much of a fight they can put up after that.’
‘Hush,’ Mary said, for he was becoming agitated; she tried to calm him, smoothing his brow.
‘He didn’t sleep for five nights, I think,’ Kamen murmured. ‘He has a lot of healing to do.’
But Gary was still distressed. ‘I think maybe the English have lost their war already, Mom. Lost it, on the beaches of France. Next thing you know they will be here. The Nazis.’
George shook his head. ‘They won’t come. Hitler wants an armistice. That’s what they say.’
Gary actually laughed, though it hurt him. ‘An armistice? After all this?’
A nurse came then, and a doctor; they administered a sedative. Mary sat with her son until he slept.
The strange medical volunteer, Ben Kamen, waited for his chance to speak to her.
IV
17 July
It was another glorious day in this long, glorious summer. And in occupied France there was nothing more glorious than to be a soldier of the Reich.
Ernst Trojan was on a rest day, and he wanted to use it well. He would have come here to Claudine’s little apartment even if not for the sex; sooner the sweet breath of Claudine than the gusty farts of some fat Bavarian pig of an obergefreiter in the Wehrmacht’s tent city - or, worse, a few more hours of drunken mockery by his elder brother and his drinking partners in the SS. And yet, as the heat climbed in the middle of the day, as he lay naked with Claudine on her bed and the light slanted through the shutter slats into the dusty, scented room, he longed to be out in the world.
‘Get dressed,’ he told Claudin
e with a grin. He threw a bundle of clothes at her, and hunted for his pants.
She lay there watching him. Claudine Rimmer was tall, taller than he was in fact, her limbs long and her torso slim; she lay naked on her bed, her legs parted slightly in unconscious, unafraid invitation. Her dusky complexion and rich black hair would have made him think more of a girl of the Mediterranean than of Boulogne, of the northern coast. That was how he would have thought two or three months ago anyhow, but he had never even left Germany back then, and now he was learning fast. And when they made love, he had learned that she was not as delicate as she looked.
When she saw he was serious she sat up with a sigh, hunted through her clothes, and found a bra of impossible delicacy. ‘Getting bored with me, are you, Gefreiter Trojan? We’re not running out of sheaths, not yet.’ She brushed her hand over a pile of the things on her bedside table. They were actually English army issue, the spoils of war, far better quality than the standard Wehrmacht supply.
‘Of course not. It’s just that it’s such a beautiful day - here we are in the middle of history - even love can wait!’
She pulled her blouse over her head, but she kept arguing. ‘Are the hours unsuitable for you? I can be flexible.’ Her German was good, though her accent sometimes made him pause. ‘I am a teacher, but quite junior, Ernst. I can find cover. It’s not as if there is any great enthusiasm for education just now, and soon the summer vacation will come. My timetable is subordinate to yours.’
She always spoke to him briskly, challengingly, with no hint of weakness or dependency in her voice. He told himself that he would not have chosen any girl if he could not have had that. But was this some subtle rejection? His old inadequacies bubbled up inside him. Suddenly he was no longer a soldier of the all-conquering German army, but just poor foolish Ernst Trojan from Munich, he of the spiky hair and sticking-out ears. ‘You seem troubled,’ he said. ‘Do you think I would be ashamed to be seen out with you?’
‘Not that. It’s just that what we have - whatever that is - others might not see it the same way, Ernst.’
‘If others judge us, into the sea with them! All that matters is us, and what we have together. And we know what that is, do we not, Claudine?’
‘If you say so,’ she said evenly. She pulled on the stockings he had given her, and rummaged for the cosmetics he had bought her, and tucked the pile of marks he had given her into her purse.
They walked through the old town, heading towards the sea. The district was surrounded by walls left by the Romans. Ernst had grown up in a place the empire had never reached; his imagination was caught by such antiquity. And today there were Party flags everywhere, red with a bold black swastika on a circle of white. He commented on the splashes of colour they lent to the buildings from which they were draped, the Hotel de Ville, the wall gates. Claudine said nothing. Ernst held Claudine’s hand, and as they walked her body swayed against his, brushing easily. She was so beautiful, he thought, suffused with the summer light that shone through the fabric of her blouse. He felt proud to be walking with her, he in his Wehrmacht uniform, his cap on his head. Yet he could never forget, even on this beautiful morning, that she was taller than he was, taller and older.
They walked down to the coast road, the Quai Gambetta, and set off north, heading towards the harbour and ultimately the road to Calais. And here they saw the most remarkable sight in town: the invasion fleet.
The harbour was full of river and canal barges, drafted for the purpose and floated down the Seine and the Rhine. They were lined up like logs on a river, jammed so close that you could have walked across the harbour from one sea wall to the other without getting your feet wet. These clumsy vessels would not provide a comfortable ride across the Channel; they would have to be towed, and looked horribly vulnerable to attack. But the crossing would be short, he had been assured by his superiors, over in less than half a day. Out at sea heavier craft, motor transports and others, stood at anchor, grey shadows on the bright water.
They walked further, reaching the beaches north of the town, where the men were going through landing exercises. The landing boats ran onto the beach, one after another, and the infantrymen jumped out into the shallow water and waded to the shore, laden with packs and weapons. One squad of men was struggling to haul a field gun up the beach. Elsewhere unhappy horses were being led through the shallow water. Despite the sudden fame of the Panzers, the German Army was basically horse-drawn; there would be one horse for every four men, so that twenty-four thousand of the animals would be shipped across the Channel in the first three days alone.
A boat-load of soldiers tipped over, leaving the men splashing in the surf, laughing like children.
Claudine laughed too. ‘I’ll tell you something. You Germans are hopeless on the ocean! All summer I’ve seen you flounder around like this. Your commanders even seem to be baffled by the tides!’
He shrugged. ‘We’re not a nation of sea dogs, not like the British. But we have mounted one successful seaborne invasion before, when we took Norway. Why can’t we do it again?’ He gestured at the Channel. ‘It will be an unlucky man who loses his life to that miserable ditch.’
She pulled a face, and he saw age lines around her eyes and mouth, caught by the sun. At twenty-eight, she was five years older than him. ‘But that “miserable ditch held back Napoleon. Well, good luck. And if you Germans know so little of the sea, what on earth will you make of England when you get there?’
He snorted. ‘We know all we need to know of England. It is a land of plutocrats in fine houses, who leave the defence of the nation to the shambolic old men of the Home Guard, while the working people cower in fear of our parachutists.’ He rummaged in his jacket and produced a picture book. ‘This bildheft has been given to every man.’
She flicked through the book. It showed pretty little harbours, country houses, romantic ruins. ‘How attractive,’ she said drily. ‘Does England have no factories, then? No major roadways, no big cities? Well, I suppose you’re going to find out.’ She looked at him. ‘But why do you do this, Ernst? Not Germany - you. You are a clever man, I know that much.’
He shrugged. ‘I hoped to be a teacher, like you, or a scholar. I studied mathematics, though when I was drafted I was not advanced enough for my skills to be useful to the war effort.’
‘But why do you fight?’
‘For my father,’ Ernst said simply. ‘My brother might tell you differently, but he joined the SS. My father fought in the first war. He saw the ruin of the country after the unjust Versailles settlement. And he nursed an old wound that made it impossible for him to work. We were impoverished. He was a proud man, my father. He died bitter. I was pleased when the war came. I fight for my country, for my father.’
‘But the soldiers in England have fathers too.’ Claudine found one image in the book, of a place called Hastings. It was evidently taken from a postcard; it showed a shingle beach crowded with families. ‘I wonder if children will ever play on these beaches again.’
‘There is no reason why not,’ Ernst said primly. ‘Provided that such play does not conflict with the goals of the occupation.’
She laughed again. ‘Ah, Ernst. Perhaps it will be mockery that defeats you Germans in the end, not guns.’
They were distracted by a new noise from the sea, a throaty roar. A different sort of boat ripped across the water, running parallel to the shore; jet black and sleek, it created a wake that sent lesser craft bobbing. The men on the beaches whooped and applauded.
Claudine swore softly. ‘And what is that?’
Ernst’s heart sank. ‘It is a schnelleboote. Powered by an aircraft engine. Designed to roar across the Channel and dance up the beaches of England. More noise than performance ...’
‘It’s stopping,’ Claudine said. ‘Look. Somebody’s waving at us!’ She waved back.
‘And that,’ said Ernst, his gloom deepening, ‘is my older brother. Who can’t leave me alone for one day.’
‘Oh, do
n’t be so grumpy. How exciting, a brother in the SS!’
The schnelleboote turned and made for the shore.
And a flight of planes, the bombers and fighters of the Luftwaffe, poured suddenly over their heads, making them duck. It had been going on since the beginning of the month, assaults on English ports and railways and aerodromes and factories, all part of the great softening-up. The planes roared on, wave after wave, a three-dimensional armada that towered thrillingly into the sky.
V
Josef, in the crisp black uniform of the Waffen SS, was nothing but good manners. ‘Mademoiselle,’ he said correctly, in German. ‘How you must illuminate the shadowy life of my stunted brother!’ He bowed and kissed Claudine’s hand, holding it just a little too long, Ernst thought.
Claudine laughed in her pretty way, laughed with Josef. Of course Ernst knew they were laughing at him. His brother was ten years older than Ernst, that bit taller, that bit better looking; he and Claudine, side by side, looked as if they belonged together much more than Ernst and Claudine ever did.
It made it worse that Josef had turned up with a girl still more stunning than Claudine. Tall, blonde, she too was in uniform, that of an SS-unterscharfuhrer; she carried a small canvas bag. Her name was Julia Fiveash, and she was, surprisingly, English. She was in an SS unit called the Legion of St George, made up of British subjects. She barely seemed to notice Claudine, and she looked at Ernst haughtily. But she made the black SS uniform she wore almost unbearably glamorous.
Josef brought them to a bar near the harbour. They sat in the open air, at a polished table with a pretty lace covering, and Josef ordered coffee and cognac for them all. The servile barkeeper insisted he would take no payment from an officer of the SS; Josef, just as politely, insisted that he would, and handed over crisp mark notes.
When Julia spoke to Ernst her German was crisp and precise, with barely a trace of an English accent. ‘Josef is an SS-standartenfuhrer, which I believe corresponds roughly to colonel in the English army,’ she said. ‘Whereas you, Ernst?’
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