by Brian Aldiss
She laughed. ‘I’m sick of this music. They’ll be doing the hokey-cokey next. Let’s go somewhere and have a fag.’
As you left the room, you holding Abby’s delectable smooth hand, she said, ‘Oh, Belle brags about it.’
‘And have you …?’ You could not bring yourself to complete the question.
She dug a sharp elbow into your ribs. ‘I hate the little bastards. They’re so smug. You’re much more my type: a bit apologetic.’
The two of you forged into the darkness of the back regions of Gracefield. Abby led the way. She guided you up the servants’ stairs on to a rear landing, and from there down a long corridor, through a green baize door, to the front of the house. The dance music became fainter as you went. She opened a door at random. You entered a bedroom of a traditional kind, decked out with heavy powder blue swags of curtain, two armchairs of similar hue, an immense wardrobe and a grate in which a coal fire smouldered.
‘A thousand miles from London!’ Abby exclaimed, as if it were the stage direction in italics at the opening of a play.
The double bed was piled with the coats of guests. Abby switched on a bedside lamp and stood it on the floor beside the bed. She crossed to the door and turned the key in the lock.
‘This’ll do,’ she said. ‘Are you game, hero?’
You were enchanted by her. You took firm hold of her and kissed her lingeringly. Your hand went to her breast. Then you took it away and asked, ‘Should we be doing this?’
‘I’ve got a Dutch cap on, if that’s what you mean.’ She lowered a hand to your fly buttons. ‘I hope you are not a prude. You’re not going chicken, are you? We could be killed next week, don’t you know?’
‘Here and now, you mean?’
‘Hitler’s sending his doodlebugs to kill us all off, for God’s sake.’
You peeled off your jacket while Abby pulled your trousers down.
‘I’m not getting into the all-together. It’s so dashed cold in here. Why doesn’t Ben have better fires in his bedrooms?’
‘Get your knickers down.’
She did so and you both collapsed on the bed. Your hand went down to the lively hairy quarters between her legs.
You groaned with delight. ‘Oh, I need this, Abby!’
As the lady said, you might be killed next week. Meanwhile, there was this night, among all the coats, with this willing lady to delight you and to be delighted. She was certainly showing every sign of delight.
Later, as the car headed back to Cadnam, your mother, commenting on the surprises of the evening, said, ‘Fancy Belle being so vocal! I didn’t know she had it in her.’
‘Many a time,’ you said, with your head full of much more gorgeous surprises.
4
‘Please Not to Shoot Us’
You were in Aldershot. It was Sunday. You were due to rejoin your regiment at one-pip-emma. It was ten-thirty of a chilly grey morning. Violet was with you. She had made her excuses and a neighbour was looking after the children. Even as you embraced, she had an apology to make. ‘That awful Walcot business. I should not have worried you with it. I was a bit tiddly, Stevie. They’re not trying to poison your tea, are they, I mean?’
‘If so, I have survived so far.’
‘Golly, isn’t it cold? I must try and buy myself a new coat.’
You put an arm round her. You walked down the street. Every shop was closed. Men in uniform walked here and there, rather aimlessly.
Violet began to talk about her son. ‘He’s quite a problem, but so clever. Do you know, the other day I said something was larger than life. And Dougie asked me how large was life – could you measure it?’
You were thinking about Abby. She was related to the Wades. You knew from the moment you met her that you were in different classes, with different ways of life, whereas with Violet you were the same sort of people; troubled, slightly down-at-heel. There was, you reflected, much comfort in incest.
‘He’ll be a great man when he grows up, I’m sure. Perhaps he’ll be a wireless announcer. Wear a bow tie and all that.’
When you came to a Methodist chapel, you both went in by mutual consent. You huddled together in one of the rear pews, clutching each other.
The service began. The Methodists had removed much of the Church of England’s ceremonials. There was no psalm-singing, few responsories. The parsons in their grey flannel suits pressed briskly on with singing hymns and praying for salvation.
You joined in the hymn-singing, sometimes substituting your own words.
‘Fatherlike he spends and tears us,
‘Well our feeble frame he knows …’
A Rev. Edith Morris ascended the pulpit to deliver a sermon. She was a short lady with short-cut hair, and she delivered a short sermon. The subject of the sermon was the contrast between gunfire and Hellfire. She said that Hellfire was by far the worse of the two: gunfire could miss you; Hellfire never missed.
‘Not much hope for us, then,’ said Violet, as you returned to the windy street. ‘And you’re going abroad, are you?’
‘Yep. Europe. Should be in Berlin by Easter …’
‘Oh golly, Steve, sweetie, do take care of yourself.’ Before she kissed you she added, ‘This is such an awful time to be alive.’
You wore a greatcoat. You also wore a khaki wool scarf, wound round your head as well as your neck. It was freezing in the Ardennes, late in the remorseless January of 1945. With your hands in your pockets you asked the engineer crouching by your tank, ‘So when are you going to get this tank started, Wood?’
The man’s red raw face turned up to you in contempt. ‘Like I said, Sir, the fucking anti-freeze is froze.’
‘How can anti-freeze freeze?’
‘And the petrol is froze in the fucking petrol tank. There’s nowt we can do about it. I’m froze myself.’
‘Get on with it, Wood.’
You looked across the bleak landscape. A platoon of American infantry was trudging doggedly across pristine snowfields, followed by two Jeeps. They were part of the rump of General Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group. The whole country was in suspended animation, colour drained from it. The universal drab white was punctuated only by blackened trees.
‘Those Jeeps are moving,’ you told the engineer. ‘Why aren’t we?’
The man got up and straightened his back, hands on hips, leaning backwards. ‘They was under shelter, most like. That’s the Yankee army.’ He gave you a look of hatred. ‘Some of our blokes was froze to death in the night in our tents. Not like you officers.’
You had sheltered in a room in a ruined farmhouse and managed to sleep for three hours under a blanket. You had no answer for Wood. The Battle of the Bulge was almost won, with heavy Allied losses. Hitler had thrown thirty divisions into the attack, in a last gamble. The severe weather from mid-December onwards had halted the use of Allied air forces. It was discovered later that in the resultant ground battles Germany suffered one hundred thousand casualties, and the Allies almost as many.
‘Get hold of some kindling, Wood,’ you ordered. ‘Light a fire under this bloody tank. We have to get weaving.’
By now the other Churchill tanks under your command were firing, belching acrid blue smoke across the site. Bodies of the men who had died during the night were being shuffled into the back of a fifteen-hundredweight, under the supervision of Sergeant Breeze. Snow began to fall again, carried on a stealthy East wind. You turned to face the wind for a moment, to clear your head. The ground became speckled, as if with dandruff.
An English major drove up in a Jeep, goggles covering his eyes, otherwise almost entirely encased in frost. His driver was in similar state. He pulled up close to you. You saluted as he said, ‘Get your tanks on the move, captain, chop chop. We rendezvous with the main column at 1600 hours, near Erve.’ He gave a map reference.
‘Beastly weather, Sir,’ you said.
‘Could be worse,’ and he was off.
Three minutes later, you thought, ‘Good God, was
that Hilary Montagu? Sounded like him.’
At last the tank was started and you rolled on your way with the rest of the short convoy. It was almost impossible to see where the road was, except when the convoy was travelling through villages. All villages had been ruined in the last desperate advance of the Wehrmacht, or in their retreat, or in the Allied advance. The inhabitants had either fled or been killed, or died of cold and malnutrition. Houses were mere snow-locked shells. You felt you were driving through the end of the world.
‘A fine fucking mess we made of this place,’ your sergeant remarked at every village you passed through. You made no response. Inwardly you could only echo the sergeant’s sentiments. A fine fucking mess indeed.
At one point, where two roads crossed, an American army ambulance had stopped. Two GIs with carbines slung over their shoulders were guarding it, while another man worked by the open doors. A doleful cluster of four inhabitants stood about, as close as they were allowed to get. You ordered the tanks to halt and climbed down to see if help was needed.
A burly corporal with a Red Cross armband greeted you. He pushed through the disconsolate villagers to speak, and tore you off a snappy salute.
‘Good of you to stop, Cap. There’s nothing anyone can do for these poor bastards. They’ll likely starve to death.’
You were casting a glance at the disconsolate quartet of civilians. All wore trousers or slacks, were either hooded or had caps on their heads, and were bundled about by greatcoats or blankets. It became apparent that they were all women; the vagaries of conflict and climate had defeminized them. Snow clung to their garments.
‘Can’t you get them to hospital, Corporal?’
‘No way: it’s not our business. We’re brewing up soup for them; I’m dividing K-rations between them. Best we can do. They don’t speak English. Got to press on. Say, is Europe always like this? This goddamned weather?’
‘Could be worse.’
He looked at you curiously, taking in your drawn features and the dark shadows under your eyes. ‘You’re the first Limey I ever spoke with, man to man. How’s London town these days? Does London look like this motherfucking dump?’
‘Thank God, no. A few doodlebugs coming over, otherwise we’re okay. Where are you from?’ Your breath formed in clouds about you. It was a pain to talk.
‘Little old place called Blackfoot in Idaho. You know it?’
‘’Fraid not.’ You grinned at one another. ‘You ever heard of Walcot?’
The American gave a laugh, shrugging a beefy shoulder.
He said, ‘You Limeys sure did a great job, holding off the Jerries all on your own for years. Mind if I shake your hand?’
You shook hands.
‘What a goddamned fucking mess this war is. These Europeans will never recover.’
‘It’ll be spring some day. So we hope.’
He gave a shuddering laugh. ‘I’ll believe that when I see it.’
You clapped him on the shoulder; then you were on your way again. The villagers, swathed in what covering they could muster, remained where they stood; unmoving, conserving energy, turning into snowmen. The tanks rolled. The ambulance and its miserable cluster of humanity were left behind in the white distance.
There were five of you in Tank Chubby, as the men called it. You were in the lead Churchill with two more tanks making slow progress behind – just the three tanks of the squadron still moving. With your upper body exposed to the elements it was perishingly cold. Again, the snow renewed itself to blow in with an idle mercilessness. You had to keep wiping your goggles clear with a gloved hand.
The freezing wind rose to a howl. You were heading up a slight hill, crowned by a number of broken black poles which had once been trees, when your DR scout came roaring back to you. He slid to a halt by your tracks. A steady Yorkshireman with a boy’s face, his name was Gould.
‘Three Tigers over the hill, Sir. Don’t seem to have any sentries posted.’
You gave the signal to kill engines. German Tiger tanks fired 88mm shells. Your guns fired 77mm shells.
‘Guns pointing this way?’, you asked.
‘Two of them, yes, Sir. Third tank – well, could be burnt out.’
You signalled back to your sergeants in the rear tanks, saying to the despatch rider, ‘We’ll do a recce, Gould. You come with me.’
You trudged up the slope, the DR beside you. A young man with a bony, blistered face, capillary veins picked out in red by the chill; unseasoned, but obeying orders without question.
Around you lay the great ruinous landscape – all that was left of what had been Europe, as if cultivation had never come here, as if no man had ever inhabited the territory. To one side, patches of hedge showed black and grey, like tawdry body hair. Tanks had ploughed down most of the hedge, snow had blown in and covered the tank tracks. Distantly, the side of a barn showed; it too was without colour. It had been burning; now only strands of smoke – you smelt the taint of them – blew from its remains, thin as spiders’ webs, wavering close across the spoilt land.
Yet one thing lived. From a broken branch, a thrush, its feathers torn by gale, uttered pure notes of song. To your mind came a fragment of a poem, to be instantly dismissed in face of the immediate peril:
… some blessed hope whereof he knew
And I was unaware …
And what do you consider caused this desolation?
Well, the rise to power of Hitler. You mean the root causes?
The unfair peace terms forced on Germany at the end of World War I.
‘Root causes’ go much more deeply than that. Down to a fundamental design flaw.
What do you mean by that?
With adventurousness, inventiveness, the will to succeed, goes a deep-seated aggressiveness in humankind. Which is to be regretted.
Now you tell me.
You and the despatch rider flung yourselves down when you got to the dismantled trees. You crawled forward through two inches of snow. Your world was filled with noise, drowning out the song of the thrush. The wind screamed, loose and broken branches clattered above your heads, shaken as if by a gigantic animal.
You peered down at the enemy over the crest of the slope. It was clear the Germans had not heard the approach of your tanks, had not placed any look-outs. They were making a racket in their own right: a man in overalls was swinging a sledge-hammer, evidently trying to realign the shoe of a tank track. A group of men in grey Wehrmacht uniform were standing round, trying to light a fire.
While you were watching, one of the soldiers threw a mug full of what you judged to be petrol on their smouldering pile. Flames sprouted up from splintered wood, momentarily illuminating the faces of the men, then died as quickly as they had arisen, even before the men could warm their hands at the blaze. For a moment there had been colour in the scene.
As the DR had claimed, one of the Tigers was out of action. It had been hit and looked as if it was burnt out. The other two tanks were temporarily unmanned.
Cupping your hands round Gould’s ear, you told him to stay where he was, on the look out, while you brought up the lead tank to the attack. He was to signal if the Germans showed signs of alarm.
Doubled up, you ran back to Tank Chubby. You had a four man crew and told them to prepare to open fire immediately the signal came. You gave the order to move forward. The Churchill crunched up the hill with agonizing sloth, doing under two miles an hour. Dusk was coming on, the snow fell more thickly, almost horizontally. Air was raw in the throat. You gained the crest of the hill and the DR jumped up, afraid of being run over.
The tank being repaired was in your sights: you bellowed the order to fire. The shell exploded on the casing just below the Tiger’s turret. The soldier with the sledgehammer was hit by flying metal, and fell with his face smashed. The other Germans yelled and ran in all directions. You took aim and fired your service revolver repeatedly, almost without thought. Two men went down. Another shell exploded close by the other tank. The soldiers sto
pped running and raised their hands in surrender, faces turned anxiously towards you. Visibility was growing worse by the minute; as you switched on the searchlight, your two accompanying tanks rolled up.
‘Well done, Sir,’ said Sergeant Breeze. He ran up smartly and saluted. ‘They must have been dreaming. Shall I get their guns and round ’em up?’
You told him to do that, and went slowly down to confront the surrendering Germans, your revolver at the ready. Your entire being was focused on the situation. You considered that this encounter had been so simple because some of the Wehrmacht and these Panzer teams had already decided that they were defeated, perhaps understanding that Hitler’s orders for the Battle of the Bulge had proved his final mistake.
Yet many other armed groups fought on to the bitter end, with amazing courage, when all was lost.
You stepped over one of the bodies of the men you had shot, lying face down in the snow. Driving snow was already beginning to cover his body. Five men stood before you apprehensively, hands above their heads. They had bunched together. They seemed not to have any fight left in them. Their faces were thin and drawn. They had not shaved. All appeared to be in their sixties or seventies.
Your detachment stayed by their machines, on the rise, commanding the situation. The stand of mutilated trees, black from the western side, appeared white from this side. Only the DR and now Sgt Breeze stood beside you.
The sergeant said, ‘We can’t take no prisoners, Sir. Better shoot ’em on the spot, right?’ He showed every sign of eagerness, facing the Germans aggressively.
‘We can’t shoot them in cold blood.’ You thought, of course blood is cold in this bloody weather.
‘That’s what they’d sodding well do to us,’ said Sergeant Breeze. ‘No two ways about it, Sir.’
‘Maybe, Sergeant, but we’re not Germans.’ Possibly it crossed your mind that you were fighting to preserve your way of life against the brutish Nazi way of life. It was certainly clear, as your sergeant had said, that it was impossible for you to take prisoners.
One of the Germans, a man with sharp grey eyes and cadaverous cheeks that were almost as grey, said, in English, in a faint voice, ‘We surrender, good Sir. Please not to shoot us.’