The monotony of our labours was relieved from time to time with the discovery of one in any number of a wide variety of massive snakes, which slithered suddenly out from beneath the undergrowth. Startled cries of alarm from whichever poor unfortunate had inadvertently disturbed its rest would compel even the slow blinking guards to action and, get ing up wearily to investigate, more often than not they would conclude that the snake was dangerous, and so proceed to batter it to death with the butt end of their guns.
If nothing else, our limited excursions into the wilderness, the vast endlessness of which reduced the compound to a tiny blot of insignificance on the landscape, convinced us of the truth in the Commandant’s assertion that escape was hardly possible. Standing up straight to crick our aching backs and wipe away persistent sweat, we gazed into the distance, in all directions, at mile on mile of savage wasteland, dry and hard and unforgiving. Any attempt to slip away would surely result in a slow, burning death somewhere out there in sun-baked scrub, while the prospect of voluntary return or recapture brought with it images of beatings equal to those we witnessed almost every morning. Our bodies, emaciated and already broken, could not long have borne either.
The difference between one interminable day and the next, from each yawning week to the one that followed as they rolled unvaryingly towards a month, then nearly two, might not have been discernible had it not been for the arrival, one morning, of a Mr Latimer from the American Consulate in Dakar. It was heralded by the appearance of a boiled egg, with the macaroni, in our breakfast tins. The Commandant was apparently eager to show his American visitor that the prisoners in his camp were being well treated, and though Latimer’s presence was clearly inconvenient, the Commandant seemed keen to demonstrate his prowess as officer in charge.
The long-suffering Mr Latimer stood politely by the Commandant’s podium and watched the Senegalese perform their morning pantomime while the Commandant, in his turn, refrained from displaying quite his usual range of furious agitation. The beatings were dispensed with that particular morning.
Afterwards, Latimer made his way across the dusty square to greet us, arms out wide and face positively glowing not just with curiosity, but more patently, with frank and cheerful admiration. The Commandant stuck by his shoulder, nipping along neatly beside the American’s generous strides.
‘Well, you boys’ve certainly been through the wringer! Jeez, you look like a bunch of skeletons! Betcha thought for a while there that you’d never make it.’ He stuck out one hand well before he’d reached us. ‘Harold J Latimer. Clerk to the American Consul. Based at the British Residence in Dakar.’
He grabbed Big Sam’s hand, taking it between both of his and pumped it up and down enthusiastically. ‘Good to see you, good to see you.’ By the time he’d shaken hands with every one of us, the Commandant was already beginning to huff and stamp his heels impatiently.
‘Got word through you’d been sent up here. Doin’ what we can to look out for British prisoners who get picked up and dumped in camps from Dakar. Heard about your lifeboat landing. One helluva lucky break, I’d say.’
‘I’d’ve said it was a lot of things,’ Fraser muttered grimly, ‘but lucky wouldn’t’ve been one of ’em.’
‘Ah, I’d say it was lucky,’ said Latimer, glancing quickly across at him, before suddenly squatting down in the dust and opening up his briefcase. ‘If you’d’ve hit the coast a mile or two further up or down, might not have come across anyone. Nothing but desert for miles that stretch of coast.’ His eyes flicked from Fraser to the skipper, before coming to rest on me as he added wryly, ‘And by the look of you, you wouldn’t’ve lasted long.’
He began to rummage within his case, finally coming up with a wad of papers and half a dozen pens. Bobbing up again, he thrust them all into the skipper’s hands. ‘I’ve come to take your names, details… get word home that you’re alive. Brought you pens and paper so you all could write. I’ll take your mail back with me. Get it to them.’
‘Why ain’t it a British Consul then, lookin’ after the British here?’ Billy asked him, moving in to take paper from the captain.
‘Mmm… ahh. Hasn’t been one down here for a couple of years now. We’re all the eyes and ears you guys have got down here. Still, mayn’t be for long. Hopin’ Boisson’ll maybe change his tune when the Allies reach North Africa.’
‘Who?’
‘Boisson. Governor General of French West Africa. If he’d come over to de Gaulle, shouldn’t be too long before they start sendin’ all you fellas on home.’
‘All?’ queried Clarie.
‘Must have about four hundred of you guys on record now. Most are picked up in the ocean by the French. Put in camps all over.’ Latimer shrugged. ‘Like I said, we’re doin’ what we can.’
‘Mr Latimer.’ The Commandant, clearly irritated by his exclusion, suddenly rapped his guest officiously on the shoulder. ‘We have business to attend to. Time is getting on.’ He tapped at his watch lightly and then put out an open palm to indicate the way back towards his office. The easy smile faded from Latimer’s eyes.
‘If you don’t mind, Commandant, I’d like to take some time to talk with these boys, ah, alone. Find out how they’re doing. Might not feel so free to talk while you’re… you understand? You go on. I’ll be along in just a couple of minutes. Just need their names, a few details… so we can inform their families. Let them know just how’re they’re getting along, that they’re being treated well, that sort of thing. You won’t mind?’ The reassuring complicity of his tone suggested to the Commandant that both of them were reasonable and moderate men, and seemed halfway to persuading him that there could be no possible harm in the request.
‘I am sure you have so many things to do. You must be a very busy man. You go on. I’ll be fine.’ Having wavered, the Commandant was instantly won over by the American’s flagrant flattery. Nodding a taciturn assent, more in agreement perhaps with the reference to his assiduity than with Latimer’s appeal, he turned on his heel and headed back across the square.
Latimer watched him go and then turned back to us. ‘So. You guys look pretty rough. You been here what? A month already?’
‘Thereabouts. You think we’re looking bad just now. You should’ve seen us when we landed up the coast,’ Mick told him. ‘Least we got water here. And food.’
‘I was gonna ask you that. You boys doin’ all right? For food?’ His hand hovered, perhaps for unconscious reassurance, about his own fairly ample girth. ‘They lookin’ after you?’
‘All right if you don’t mind macaroni every single meal. And sleeping with scorpions and spiders. We’re not so bad.’
‘Not so bad! Jesus Christ!’ Mac shook his head and spat into the dust.
‘So, anyway,’ Mr Latimer continued, ignoring him, ‘the word is, you boys are being moved up country. To Timbuktu. There’s a POW camp up there. Quite a big one. Thing is…’ he leaned down and, turning his back quite deliberately on the direction of the Commandant’s office, picked up his briefcase. He snapped it open once again, but this time half pulled out a large, green, folded piece of paper, far enough so that we all could see quite clearly what was on it.
‘Train you’re goin’ on, it’s pretty slow up the hills. If someone were to know the area, and had a mind to it, train’s slow enough to jump off in places. If a guy were to have a map, got some provisions ready, well, it might be quite an easy thing to do.’ He looked at the captain and then at Mick meaningfully. ‘Escape, I mean.’
He cleared his throat and then putting the briefcase back down on the ground, left it open with the folded map still protruding. He began to walk backwards away from us.
‘You write them letters now, for home. I’ll take ’em with me. Be here till after lunch. Now, I expect the Commandant is waiting.’ He turned abruptly then and strode quickly back across the square.
We studied the map carefully that evening when the guard had left us. Mick had shoved it up beneath his shirt and Latimer, h
aving rejoined us in the square for an unprecedented lunch of goat’s meat and macaroni, had taken back his briefcase and, winking, wished us luck. He had marked the map in various places on the railway line up country, highlighting obvious areas where the inclines were the steepest and which therefore provided the greatest opportunity for escape.
‘We can’t all go,’ Mick said, glancing up across the map at Fraser. He had laid it on the floor directly beneath the cheerless cone of light cast by the meagre bulb in our room and as the captain, he and Clarie knelt to pore over it, the rest of us stood about, unable to see and restless, waiting for their verdict. ‘We’ll have to decide who’s got a real chance of making it. Who’s fit for it. Won’t be easy.’
‘He’ll have to go,’ Clarie jerked his head up in Fraser’s direction. ‘He’s the only one who can speak any French.’
‘I can try it,’ Fraser said, putting a hand up to his chin and rubbing thoughtfully. ‘With a couple of others. Big Sam? You strong enough? You and Wallace fit in well enough out here.’
‘Yeah, I’ll go,’ replied Big Sam slowly, nodding a relatively cautious assent, though Wallace threw up his hands, shooting Fraser a look that twitched with blatant fear. ‘I’m not jumpin’ off a bloody train. No fucking way. Get caught, you bloody well get shot. You try it if you want to but count me bloody out.’
‘I’ll go,’ I said. All eyes in the room swung round to me. I meant it. An escape attempt might well be dangerous, and given our physical condition and the uncompromising nature of the desert, even foolhardy. But the chance to take some action, to reassert my own sense of control, however insignificant, on the outcome of my fate, was one I had learned through pained experience should not be passed up. The reluctance to countenance change, no matter how risky the attendant consequences might seem, simply to avoid having to make a choice, felt somehow acquiescent. On the lifeboat, to have lain down and waited for the passing of ineluctable time to provide some let-out, would, as it had turned out, have proved fatal. In insisting on throwing out the engine, in carving up the boat, Fraser, Joe and I had fought against the acceptance of inevitable circumstance. We had chosen action and I had learnt then, when I had taken momentary pride in Joe’s admiration for my part in it, the hard-won self-respect that comes of being strong enough to act.
But to my surprise and annoyance, Fraser shook his head. ‘You’re not fit for it, Cub. Look at you. You’ve hardly put on weight. You don’t sleep well. Besides,’ he offered as consolation, ‘we’ll need some people on the train to distract the guards while we make the break.’ Though I was standing in the dim periphery of the light, he must have seen the frustration flush across my face for he cut me off quickly as I opened my mouth to protest and, depriving me of the chance to argue further, turned to Tomas and enlisted him, along with Slim, on the grounds of their willingness and more obvious physical rehabilitation. Later, when I approached to tax him again in private, he waved me off, saying quietly, ‘I know that you are brave, Cub, but you know that I am right.’
In preparation, we began to steal the tin water bottles the soldiers left on the ground after morning parade, and to pick up the odd pieces of useful clothing they left lying about the compound. Being so loosely guarded, we took turns to keep watch as Big Sam, who had been transferred to work in the kitchens after the Commandant had discovered his trade, passed out rice and tins of meat he purloined from the stores. We stored our ill-gotten gains in a pit in the undergrowth at the back of our dormitory and settled down to bide the time until the orders came through for us to go up country.
The blank monotony of the endless hours, which gradually effaced the passing of the days, was interrupted late one hot and heavy afternoon when a cry from our guard startled us up from our struggles against the scratchy undergrowth. He pointed across the vast, browning listlessness of the landscape at a cloud of dust travelling quickly through the scrub. As Latimer had been the only visitor we had seen at any time in the camp during our confinement, we presumed that he was now returning, possibly with some news from home. Ignoring the cries of protest from the guard, we dropped what we were doing and rushed with rising hope towards the square. We arrived in time to see a truck swing in and shudder to an abrupt halt, as ours had done only a couple of months before.
Six RAF men, looking dazed and shaken, dropped down from the back of it into the dust, and the Commandant, after treating them to the same address as he had given us, called Captain Edwards over to entrust him with the responsibility for their conduct. They’d ditched their Catalina somewhere off the coast near Dakar and had been picked up three days ago. They were to room with us, work with us, attend breakfast and parade with us. They would not be with us long. They would be transferred to the camp at Timbuktu within the next few days but while they were in his compound, Captain Edwards would please see to it, they would cause the Commandant not a moment’s trouble.
That night, beneath the dingy glow of our solitary bulb, we pulled out Latimer’s map from beneath the skipper’s mattress, to show them how we’d planned escape and told them of the cache of stolen rations we’d hidden away for our chosen four.
‘We’re still waiting for the order to move us up country,’ Mick finished restlessly, pacing about in front of them. ‘Been waiting near a month. Even Latimer couldn’t tell us when.’
‘So who’s going?’ their Flight Lieutenant asked, casting a doubtful eye over the motley crew of thin and ravaged figures, who stood about, shrouded in the dim half-light of the shadows.
‘I am,’ Fraser said, stepping forward. ‘Big Sam. Tomas, over there. Slim.’ The others nodded their commitment as Fraser pointed each one out, but the Flight Lieutenant, a young, muscular-looking man named Taylor, had already begun to shake his head.
‘It’s madness! You know it is,’ he said, staring incredulously from one straining, hollowed face to the next. He got up from the mattress where he’d been sitting and moved confidently to stand directly beneath the light bulb and, with one hand on his hip and the other held out in conciliatory appeal, he proceeded to point out the most obvious flaws in our carefully constructed plan. ‘With all due respect, none of you look as though you wouldn’t break in two with the jump, never mind the days of hard travel, rationing, hiding out in the desert. You just don’t really look as if you’re strong enough. Any of you.’ When no one made to contradict him, he tutted into the silence, ‘Well, to be honest, are you?’
‘We’ve not been doin’ so bad,’ Big Sam mumbled down into his chest.
‘But not really doing so bad isn’t really good enough for the kind of journey you’re proposing. Do any of you even speak a bit of French?’
‘Fraser does,’ Clarie put in defensively.
‘Only a little,’ admitted Fraser, looking wryly in the Lieutenant’s direction. He put his hand up to the back of his neck as I’d seen him do, in uncertainty, so many times before and shifted uncomfortably on his feet.
Taylor, apparently satisfied, turned to Captain Edwards. ‘Look. The way I see it, we were picked up three days ago. We’ve eaten well, been looked after. We’re fit. Wilson there, and Gilbert,’ he waved a hand vaguely at two of his men who sat with their companions along one side of the hitherto superfluous pile of mattresses left in the corner, ‘both of them speak fluent French. We’re going up to Timbuktu within the next few days. Let us take the map. Your supplies. We’ve got a much better chance, surely, than any of you, of making it.’
‘Purh! Fucking cheek!’ Billy muttered. He had been sitting crosslegged with his back against the wall, listening to the persuasive tones of Taylor with increasingly belligerent mistrust and as he exclaimed, furious now, at this last suggestion, he leaned forward, shaking his head in scoffing disbelief.
‘But we’ve been planning it for weeks. Stealing. Risking our necks,’ Mick cried. ‘You can’t just come on in here and take our plan. Our boys think as they can do it, don’t you, lads?’
‘Steady, Mick, steady on,’ the skipper said. ‘He has a p
oint. They’re in good shape.’ He nodded towards the aircrew in the corner. ‘Our boys are still so thin. Might very well never get through the desert, shape they’re in. And we don’t even know yet when we might be sent up country, if we’re sent at all. We know these fellas are going within the next few days.’
‘After all,’ Taylor said, smiling, ‘we’re on the same side, aren’t we? Mick, is it?’ He moved suddenly in Mick’s direction and held out his hand for Mick to shake. ‘Doesn’t matter who causes the Jerries strife, does it, so long as someone does?’
Cornered by Taylor’s courtesy, Mick wavered. ‘Well, I suppose not. When you put it like that… Fraser?’
‘I think we should give them what we’ve got,’ Fraser said, looking, I thought, quietly relieved.
Taylor and his men left two days later with the map and the prized provisions we had so painstakingly collected, concealed about their bodies. And three weeks after that, the Commandant ordered us at morning parade to return to our dormitory and collect up our belongings. The orders we had been waiting for had finally come through and we were to be taken by truck to the railway station to be transferred to Timbuktu.
Timbuktu. Reputedly, the end of the earth. The nebulous never land that existed just beyond the realms of reality. One place too far. I remembered what Joe had once laughed up at Mick who’d yelled at Tomas for failing to keep the lifeboat’s course, bellowing that he’d have us all in bloody Timbuktu if Joe did not get up to guide him with the compass.
‘Better there than here,’ Joe’d laughed. I hoped that he was right.
CHAPTER 14
LAST PLACE ON EARTH
It took three days. Cramped up, side by side, along the hard, wooden slats running across the dusty, bare compartment, we squirmed against the heat and harsh discomfort, for space. Our skinny backs and buttocks ached and numbed as the train straggled a weary, ragged course up through the barren countryside, which lay endlessly bland and brown and featureless on every side. Our bones, unprotected by any flesh, flinched and rattled with every jolt, as the wood-fed engine creaked and crawled along the unequal camber, unhurried, pushing slowly, relentlessly, on beneath the stark inflexibility of the sun.
Making Shore Page 24
