by Brian Aldiss
Palfrey said, ‘We don’t speak the local lingo, Sir.’
‘Use gestures,’ you replied. ‘Go!’
You were feeling shocked beyond words. You could not rid your mind of the images of carnage on the road, of bodies stripped of clothing and skin, blood-red and glistening, like something in a butcher’s window. The horror of it would not leave you. Yet you feared it would one day leave you. It was your new knowledge – knowledge that in fact you had known all along – that scared you; that there were madmen loose in the world, that people were meat. You were disgusted with … well, with everything, including yourself. You vowed you would be a vegetarian from now on. Nevertheless, you were feeling hungry.
Furbank and Palfrey came back with a big, red-faced man, his face fringed by a line of beard. He wore a striped sweater and a pair of old corduroy trousers.
You opened the ghari door to him. He put out a beefy hand in welcome. You shook it. He said he understood you were English. You agreed, in your graduate French. He declared that he knew only two words of English, ‘coffee’ and ‘wine’. He laughed at his own shortcomings. You followed suit. He said that if you and your men would do him the honour, he and his wife would like to give you some supper.
You were grateful and accepted.
He asked you what your vehicle was called. You answered ‘Ghari’, for you had taken to Major Montagu’s Urdu for ‘lorry’. The Frenchman said he now knew three words of English. ‘Ghari!’ he said. You had to drive the ghari off the road to his orchard.
The man’s wife was a kindly woman who, directly she saw your pallor, brought you and your companions glasses of calvados. You felt slightly better. She provided you with a good solid meal and a rich red local wine to go with it. You were given cushions on which to lay your heads in the ghari; you already had blankets. You were parked in the man’s orchard, surrounded by blossom. After that generous meal, you all slept well. Your sleep was mercifully dreamless.
The French couple were up even earlier than you in the morning. They gave you croissants and cups of strong coffee for breakfast. You thanked them for their kindness. You would come and see them and repay their hospitality when the war was over.
They stood and waved in the road until you were a good quarter kilometre away. You feared for them when les Boches arrived.
You made good time. Sometimes the roads seemed almost deserted, apart from the odd farm cart; at other times they were busy and you had to pull over to the right-hand side of the road. At one point, on a road lined thickly with trees, you encountered a considerable body of French motorized troops, heading towards the north-east. The commander of the troop was suspicious. He halted the column and came to inspect you.
You climbed slowly from the ghari and saluted him. He was a tall man with a withered face and a black military moustache. He returned your salute and asked who the devil you were. You replied in French that you were a British detachment on a mission to Rennes. He told you you were going the wrong way to meet the Boche.
You explained your mission. He said that the Germans would never get as far as Rennes. But there was a whisper of doubt in his voice. You exchanged a few remarks about the enemy, and you stressed the fact that the British were fighting alongside their allies. He became more cordial. His name was Capitaine Philippe de la Tour, commander of a Breton battalion advancing to engage the enemy. He offered you a Gaulois. You stood together in the road, smoking. He remarked on how young you were. He was thirty-two.
The trees branching overhead were still. Everyone waited for you. Except the Boche.
The capitaine was friendly and curious. He inspected the interior of the five-tonner. Finally, he asked if there was anything he could do to assist you. You mentioned petrol. He had two men bring up two full jerry cans to stow in the rear of the ghari. He enquired if you had French money. You were forced to admit you had none. He tut-tutted and summoned his paymaster, who was made to pay out five hundred francs, which he did with a bad grace.
You were most grateful. You shook hands. The capitaine embraced you, for you were comrades-in-arms. You saluted smartly before he turned away and marched briskly back to his vehicle. It seemed as if your heart rose to your throat and almost choked you.
That night, you were somewhere near Fougères. You did not know where anywhere was, or how far it was, for all signposts had been removed – an indication that someone, if not the capitaine, must believe the Germans might get this far. The countryside was broken and wooded. You pulled into a firebreak between tall beeches. You ate Army iron rations and settled down to sleep on the boards of the ghari.
The sound of distant explosions roused you from sleep. You climbed out quietly, so as not to awaken Palfrey and Furbank, to see what was to be seen. The trees cut off all distant vision. They stirred uneasily in an increasingly strong breeze. Planes were flying overhead. A town further along the road was getting strafed, presumably Fougères. You were sleepy and climbed back to your blanket.
Suddenly Palfrey was shaking you.
‘Wake up, Sir! There’s a dogfight going on. Wake up!’
You were cold and heavy. Only gradually did you become properly alert. The roar of aero engines brought you to your senses. You climbed out after Palfrey. Furbank was standing with his back against the ghari, looking up at the dull dawn sky. His face was grey and drawn, as if he had aged twenty years overnight.
One flickering searchlight was probing the air. A number of planes were manoeuvring, spurting paths of tracer. Slow French fighters were taking on the speedier Messerschmitts. From the ground, it all looked harmless.
You watched in fascination as a plane was hit. It began to spiral earthwards, with a tail of flame.
‘It’s one of ours,’ you said, almost to yourself.
The burning plane flattened out, as if the pilot were recovering control. Still it flew lower and lower.
‘Look out!’ yelled Furbank.
The plane crashed through the tops of nearby trees at great speed, flaming, flaming, as it rushed towards where you stood.
Did you run? Who could remember in that moment of extreme terror? – All you recall is that gigantic fiery thing, like vengeance itself, disintegrating as it sped through saplings, smashing into your lorry, spewing flame and metal all about.
You were hit by a fragment of metal. You went down. Terrible noise. Then the crackle and crash of everything burning.
Into the silence and blackness came strange dreams, incoherent, confused and confusing. Gradually you realized you were recovering consciousness. You could not move.
There was a roof overhead. You were lying in a hut of some kind. You thought you were at home. You could hear the sound of water. You believed you were a boy again, back at Walcot.
You passed out.
When consciousness closes down, all manner of other senses occupy the darkened stage of your mind. These are, in many cases, deeply rooted myth figures, inherited from a long phylogeny, the roots of which precede the human. If only you could examine them! But the net of consciousness is not there to effect a capture.
Slowly the dark tide receded. You sprawled on the very shores of awareness, taking in little or nothing.
You found that someone – and this was real – was lifting your head in order to give you a drink. It was not always water he presented you with. Sometimes it was milk.
You became more able to take in your surroundings. It was not unlike a baby being born. You were conscious of pain. You struggled to sit up. You were alone in something much like a cowshed, covered with an old army greatcoat. Beyond the open shed door lay woodland, where sunshine was visible in slices amid the dense foliage.
When you made an attempt to get to your feet, you groaned with the pain. In response, a figure appeared in the doorway, an unkempt figure in ragged khaki uniform.
‘Christ, I thought you’d never come fucking round,’ it said, in tones of relief.
You seemed to recognize the man but could not recall his name. He cam
e and squatted by you.
‘I wouldn’t try to get up. You’ve got a nasty gash in your leg.’
You lay back, exhausted. You managed to gasp a question, asking how long you had been unconscious.
‘It’s been ten or more days, I reckon.’ He gave a laugh. ‘I started carving notches in a tree. If you’d have died, I’d have been stuck here alone. I’ve not a fucking clue where we are.’
When you apologized and said you had forgotten his name, he told you he was Pete Palfrey. ‘You’re Steve Fielding. We don’t have no ranks, you savvy. Not here in this bloody forest.’
You had no wish to dispute the matter with him.
Memory was returning. ‘A bomb hit our ghari! My God!’
‘Only it weren’t a bomb. It were a bloody French fighter plane, full of fuel. A Morane 445.’
You were astonished by his knowledge.
‘We done aircraft recognition at school. Moranes were never a match for the Messerschmitts.’
‘Moraine? A funny thing to call an aircraft. A moraine is a heap of debris left by a retreating glacier.’
He made nothing of that. ‘Well, it’s just a heap of debris now.’
Pete Palfrey was a little younger than you, with a lad’s slenderness. His unshaven whiskery state made him look older. He had attended a grammar school in Leeds.
‘How’s the ghari?’
‘The ghari, as you call it, were blown into little bits.’
‘And Private Furbank?’
‘Him likewise, poor sod! His name were Gary too.’ He paused meditatively. ‘I heard as he was a bit of a one for Navy Cake.’
He added that when you were able to walk, you two could go and inspect the remains of the crash. They were not far away.
You learnt to hobble about with an improvised crutch. Your surroundings narrowed your consciousness. You marvelled at the resourcefulness of Palfrey. He had reconnoitred the area and had discovered a nearby farmhouse. Careful observation confirmed that it had been deserted. The back door was unlocked, had, in fact, no lock on it. The occupants had left in a hurry, leaving utensils and clothes and various other belongings behind. Palfrey had carried a mattress out to the cattle shed for you to lie on.
Two cows had been left in a field. Palfrey had milked them.
Desperate for food, he had found some flour and had baked a kind of bun, flavoured with sultanas from a pottery jar. He had found an old wireless in a downstairs room, and listened in, but could not get an English-speaking station.
You stood in a small clearing. You asked him if there was a bicycle at the house; he could cycle into Fougères and get help. He had thought of that, he said dismissively. There was no bike. Nor did he intend to leave you.
As you were talking, a heavy bird fluttered overhead, battering its way through light twigs. You exclaimed in surprise.
‘What the hell is that?’
‘It’s a feral hen,’ Palfrey said. He dug into his pocket and produced some grains of corn which he scattered on the path. The hen landed and pecked at the grain. It was a gaunt bird, clucking to itself, darting swift, suspicious glances here and there as it ate.
When you raised your crutch to kill it, Palfrey stopped you.
‘Don’t be a daft bugger! These chickens lay eggs. We need eggs. I’m hoping to get them to settle here, to save me having to traipse up to the house where they roost all the time. Someone might spot us.’
It appeared that a number of hens had been left behind when the farm was evacuated. Left to run free, they had regrown their wings and rediscovered the art of flight. They were not your only source of food. Palfrey had made a catapult, which he used with deadly accuracy to stun and then kill squirrels and, on one occasion, a rabbit. These morsels you cooked on spits over small fires. Palfrey was expert at skinning the animals, and at building fires.
Your admiration for his resourcefulness grew. You thought of a play in which you had acted in the days of the Sixth Form, entitled The Admirable Crichton, written by a then popular playwright. The play concerned a wealthy family who had a butler named Crichton; the butler went with the family on a cruise, to serve them as usual. When the family were shipwrecked, the butler proved himself the superior man and saved the family from starvation. You had known the play well, for you had played the role of the admirable Crichton yourself. Sonia had come to see you acting. Now here was Private Palfrey, rejoicing in a similar role. While you had lain unconscious, this city lad had learnt the arts of survival in the wilds.
Slowly your leg healed, at least in part, for it continued to trouble you. You followed Palfrey along a faint woodland path and came to a place where the trees were blackened by fire. They surrounded the burnt-out remains of the crashed plane and your lorry. Both machines were skeletal. A dog was chewing something. It threw you a guilty glance over one shoulder and slunk away into the undergrowth.
The two of you stood there, silenced by the grim spectacle. Of Gary Furbank and the French pilot there was no sign. They had either been consumed in the fire or feral dogs had devoured their remains.
‘Seen enough?’ Palfrey asked, with a sneer.
But you rooted about to see what could be retrieved. Not everything had been consumed by the blaze. You found a box of ammunition, still sealed, miraculously intact, overturned in rough grass. You insisted that Palfrey and you dragged it back to your lair.
There was still, you considered, a war to be fought.
12
‘War or No War …’
There was some mercy in the restriction of your awareness to your immediate circumstances. You never thought of your home. I will tell you briefly of something going on there. Are you prepared?
Yes.
Mary Fielding was having the room she called her lounge redecorated. Two decorators in overalls were hanging the new wallpaper. She stood watching them. She had moved her goldfish into the kitchen for safety.
‘War or no war, we’ve got to have the place looking smart,’ she said. ‘People may call.’ The men agreed. They had voted for Martin Fielding in the previous by-election.
Mary was restless. She looked out into the garden. Unable to think of anything else to say, she retreated and went into the kitchen. Martin had left the house early for a meeting at work. Theirs was hardly a marriage, she told herself. Steve was gone. Of course, there was Sonia … but Sonia was away at acting school. The home was so dull without Sonia.
She retreated to Valerie, the ghost eternally at her side. Valerie would have stayed with her, would have found her interesting. Valerie. She would be quite a big girl by now. She wore little frilly dresses, with frilly petticoats beneath. She had ribbons in her hair. She was always smiling and happy – as good as gold.
Mary acknowledged to herself now that Valerie was dead, had never lived, was a fantasy; yet it was a fantasy that consoled her, as far as she could be consoled. Not just dead even, but had never had life, except in the shelter of her womb. Perhaps, after all, Valerie was better out of it, out of the world.
She went back to watch the men working. Valerie followed, meek, but faint.
Someone was ringing the front door bell.
As Mary left the room, the older decorator straightened up and eased his back. He worked with his son. This youth was a poor droopy thing with a bad case of acne. He was due to be called up; he had a verruca, which might save him from the infantry. When he was gone, the old man would be alone. But perhaps interior decorating would not be needed any more in wartime.
He lit up a Wild Woodbine and gave one to his son.
‘Take a break,’ he said. He sat himself down on a sofa covered by dust sheets. He drew the smoke into his lungs.
His father had been a general carrier, and had died at the age of fifty-one, of drink and misery. This son of his, now puffing away at his cigarette, one of five children, often daydreamed of a wise old man with long white hair and a white beard, dressed in a trailing hessian garb – a very kindly, wise man. Perhaps he had seen a picture of such
a sage, perhaps in the pages of Everybody’s. He knew he could never be, or even meet, such an ancient. Like his father, he sucked at the Woodbine.
Mary went slowly to see who it was at the door. She knew the decorators stopped work directly she was not present. A messenger boy stood on the doorstep; he apologetically offered her a telegram in a buff envelope.
‘What is it?’ she asked, drawing back from it.
‘Dunno, ma’am. It’s a telegram.’
Mary accepted it with a word of thanks. She was sure it was bad news.
She turned away, closing the door, and ripped the envelope open. The message had come from the War Office. It announced that Second Lieutenant Stephen Fielding was missing in action, presumed killed.
‘Oh, dear.’ Mary bit her lip. How could they hide the bad news from Sonia? The poor girl would be so upset.
She stood there, crying a little, telegram in hand. Valerie watched. Of course it was typical of Martin to be away when he was needed.
13
‘We’re Okay Here …’
Palfrey was squatting, engaged in scooping out a hole in the ground. He was barefoot and half-naked. He worked with concentration, biting his lower lip. When the hole was about the size and depth of a washbasin, he placed a piece of tarpaulin in the bottom of it, smoothing it out carefully. From a cup standing beside him, he poured water into the improvised bowl.
You were curious and watched the operation with interest. You asked Palfrey what he was doing. The explanation, curtly delivered, was that insects would fall into the cavity and drown. They could then be fed to the hens, or possibly eaten by the two of them.
‘I can hobble,’ you said. ‘If we take it easy, we can walk into Fougères and get help.’
‘We’re okay here,’ said Palfrey, without looking up.
You were astonished by his reply, and repeated that you both needed to get into Fougères, to rejoin your unit.
