The Magic Army

by Leslie Thomas

  Gilman was conscious of the distance between them. He took her elbow. She did not react. ‘There was nowhere else for him to go?’ he said.

  ‘Nobody would have him,’ she answered. ‘And I don’t blame them. Not grumbling and smelling like he does. And I’m some sort of relative so there was nothing else for it.’ She laughed drily. ‘He thinks he’s going back tomorrow. Back to his cottage.’

  ‘God, that makes it awkward. What will you do, Mary?’

  He was aware that she glanced at him when he used her name. ‘I’ll have to keep lying to the poor old soul, I suppose,’ she said. Then: ‘He might drop down dead.’

  Her flat tone told him she meant it. They had reached her door, halfway up the hill. The dog was panting as if he had walked all the way. ‘Come on in for a minute,’ she said casually, turning the key. ‘The old boy’s probably dozed off now. He’ll have to sleep downstairs anyway. There’s no room otherwise.’

  Gilman followed her into the dark, stuffy hallway, oddly familiar. She waited until the door was closed before she switched on the light in its queasy orange shade. The dog wriggled in his arms. ‘He’s got a sniff of his master,’ said Gilman, putting the animal on the linoleum. It ran towards the back room.

  Mary laughed caustically. ‘I’m not surprised,’ she said. He walked behind her to the sitting-room. The light was on and the fire dawdled low in the grate. Mary stopped and Gilman looked across her shoulder to see the old man, head lolling, asleep in a wooden rocking chair with the youngest child, thumb in mouth, cradled and sleeping in his arms. The dog sat expectantly on the floor. The woman moved forward and took the infant away. It hardly stirred. The dog jumped into the vacant lap and the old man accepted the change, putting his arms around it without opening his eyes. Mary carried the child from the room and went upstairs. He sat in the other armchair and waited. The fire flared for a moment, giving the riven face opposite a brief glow. Mary came back and said without lowering her voice, ‘Would you like a cup of tea? Or there’s some scotch left.’

  ‘I’ll have tea,’ he said, just above a whisper.

  ‘Don’t keep your voice down,’ she told him. ‘He’ll have to fit in. He won’t wake up anyway. When you’re that age you sleep deep.’

  ‘A sort of rehearsal for death,’ commented Gilman.

  She glanced at him sharply. ‘Have you been writing anything?’ she said. ‘You were going to show me some of the things you’ve written.’

  ‘One day I will,’ he replied. He stood up and she suddenly moved forward and stood directly in front of him, her knees touching his. Gilman was looking intently into her face. Her tired eyes were almost closed. Her nose was only inches away. She reached down for his hands and guided them up to her breasts, so that their palms were under the lobes. He could feel the warmth through the wool of her sweater. She held them there; her lids covered her eyes. ‘I’m in need of somebody,’ she said in a matter-of-fact way.

  ‘Me?’ asked Gilman steadily. He wondered if anyone would have done.

  ‘Yes, you’ll do. I feel like I’m living in a sack.’

  He was aware of a moment’s hesitation in himself. Then he moved his face and put his cheek alongside hers. He kissed her mouth hard.

  The old man by the fire wriggled and set the chair rocking. He half woke but seemed unaware of them although they stood only two feet away. Mary said: ‘We could have got down in front of the fire but what with Methuselah here, that’s out. The little boy is sleeping in my bed because his cough keeps the other one awake. The only place left is the air-raid shelter,’ she said.

  ‘Where your husband put the cuckoo clock,’ he remembered with a smile.

  She led him towards the door. ‘His bit towards the war effort,’ she said.

  In the confined hallway she turned down a short passage that he guessed led to the back-garden door. Her hand hung back and touched him to a stop for a moment. She opened a cupboard and, to his surprise, handed him a thin, biscuit-like mattress. Then she took out two blankets. ‘It’s too damp to keep bedding down there,’ she explained in her unexcited, conversational voice.

  She closed the cupboard and led him towards the door. Everything was as routine. He wondered again how many times she had been through it before. Carefully, more for privacy he realized than because of blackout regulations, she turned off the hall light before releasing the bolt on the side door and opening it. A square of night sky showed beyond the aperture. Wet air touched his face. Mary looked sideways at the house next door before moving stealthily into the garden. Gilman followed.

  The corrugated Anderson shelter appeared to fill the garden. His feet squeezed into muddy grass, but quickly they were at the entrance. Taking care she put aside a wooden panel that covered the doorway. The shelter, set half in and half out of the ground, was draped with hanging winter weeds. ‘Don’t break your neck,’ she warned, whispering. ‘There’s some steps.’

  She went first and, awkwardly, he followed her into the hole in the ground. At once he felt the dampness on his skin. There were half a dozen wooden steps before he trod on a firm surface, the texture of coconut matting. Mary remounted the first two steps and groped outside for the wooden frame. He made to help her but she nudged him aside, saying quietly: ‘I know how it fits.’ She eased it across the door, shutting out the oblong of night, and fastened it with four catches on the inside. Now it was deeply dark. Gilman stood not seeing her, feeling her closeness. He put his hands out and laid them against her waist. ‘Let me get some light,’ Mary said, briefly pushing herself against him.

  He remained standing while she moved about in the tight space. Suddenly the single slight beam of a bicycle lamp appeared. ‘There’s an oil lantern, but the wick’s gone,’ she said. She was a few feet away, standing at the foot of a wooden bed with bands of metal criss-crossed to form springs. On the opposite side were two bare wooden bunks. There was a shelf with a couple of china ornaments and a rack of ignored books. The cuckoo clock which had stopped was fixed to the metal wall alongside, the cuckoo quaintly protruding. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, seeing him looking at it. ‘He won’t watch. Put the mattress on.’

  Bemused, Gilman placed the mattress on the rusting metal bands. She patted it in a housewifely way, the first sign of real domesticity he had detected in her, and then spread the blankets on it. ‘You don’t want a pillow, do you?’ she inquired seriously.

  Gilman shook his head: ‘I think I can do without it,’ he mumbled. ‘Doesn’t it get a bit short of air in here? With the front up?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Stuffy as hell!’ Abruptly she sat on the bed and began to pull her jumper from her shoulders. She tugged her head through it. ‘That’s why the oil lamp’s not so good. Suffocation.’ She had a vest under the woolly. She unzipped her slacks and began to pull them down. Gilman had remained standing, watching the performance. ‘Come on,’ she chided. ‘You as well. It’s not a bloody free show, you know.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he apologized. He unbuttoned his battledress top and took it off. He sat on the bed to unlace his boots. She had taken off her slacks and she lay back in her drawers and vest, stretching out the whole length of the narrow bed. Her hands went to her hair and she ran it through her fingers. She yawned and then laughed at him.

  ‘Not very romantic, am I?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘I didn’t know what to expect.’

  ‘Well, it’s not exactly the place for romance, is it? Not an air-raid shelter.’

  His boots were taking some time. He felt he had to make conversation while he untied the knots that he had pulled too tightly in his hurry to go out to her. ‘Do you come down here much?’ he asked. Then added quickly: ‘I mean for air raids.’ It was still awkward. ‘I meant when the raids were on.’

  She did not appear to have sensed any second intent. ‘Sometimes,’ she said. ‘When they were bombing Plymouth and they used to drop whatever they had left around here. Sometimes I don’t reckon they used to bother to g
et as far as Plymouth. They’d just get rid of the bombs and sod off. Can’t say I blame them.’

  She drew the second blanket up to her shoulders. ‘Hurry up with those boots,’ she admonished. ‘I’m freezing.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Gilman. ‘Army boots were not meant for love.’

  She gave a small arid laugh. ‘I bet you’ll make quite a decent writer,’ she said. ‘You come out with some odd things.’

  ‘Nice of you to say so,’ he said. He gave a final heave at the boot. ‘There, they’re off now.’ He took the rest of his clothes off and, shivering, lifted up the blankets and climbed into the bed beside her. There was so little room they were at once forced against each other. He felt her cold skin against his stomach. His arms slid around her shoulders.

  ‘The Germans only came on a few hit-and-run raids, after the real bombing,’ she mentioned. ‘No sooner they’d got here than they were off again.’ She had closed her eyes. She had fine lashes lying long across her tired face. She could have been a beauty. Now she opened her eyes, halfway, and smirked in the timid light of the cycle lamp. ‘I hope there’s nothing hit-and-run about you,’ she said. He kissed her.

  Gilman rolled over on top of her, needing to balance so he did not topple from the bunk.

  ‘That’s only the second time we’ve kissed,’ said Mary. Her voice was less sharp. She watched his face as though requiring confirmation.

  ‘We seem to be putting the cart before the horse,’ he grinned.

  ‘Not one of your better phrases,’ she said. Then, almost briskly, ‘Come on, my soldier, I’m ready for you.’

  They closed against each other. He felt his body warm as she moved strongly beneath his legs and trunk, arching her body and thrusting herself at him. Gilman responded hungrily.

  ‘Wait, wait,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Go easy, sailor. Please.’

  ‘Soldier,’ he corrected. ‘I’m a soldier.’

  She opened her drowsy eyes and said solemnly: ‘So you are. Didn’t recognize you without your uniform.’ She patted his face. ‘Just rest a moment,’ she suggested. ‘You don’t have to be back yet.’

  ‘My ship sails at midnight,’ he said.

  She managed to shrug. ‘You know what I mean.’

  Motionless they lay beneath the chaffing blankets, the sweat cooling their bodies. ‘I enjoy this,’ she said as though speaking to herself. ‘It gives me something I need, you know. It makes up for some of the other things.’

  ‘As for me, I didn’t even realize,’ he confessed with a serious laugh. ‘I’ve not been …’ He hesitated. ‘Well … very active.’

  ‘Well put,’ she approved. Then, ‘Do you mind waiting around like this?’

  ‘No,’ he answered. He kissed her. ‘If it’s what you want to do.’

  ‘I don’t often get it like this. My husband does it by numbers – just like a civil servant.’

  They lay silently for another minute before she said: ‘You can carry on if you like.’ She reached above her and, oddly, put out the bicycle lamp.

  On the same day as General Dwight D. Eisenhower landed in London to become Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces for the invasion of Occupied Europe, George and Naomi Hicks and Sammy, their son, were evacuated from their shabby shop in Devon, one of the final families to go. It was the third week of January.

  George and Sammy put up the shutters on the old windows of the shop at Telcoombe Beach, George defiantly appending a cryptic note: ‘Opening again after Hostilities.’ Mrs Katlin departed the Telcoombe Beach Hotel in tearful splendour, two taxis being required to carry the old lady and her cobwebbed chattels from the room which had been her small home for twelve years. The taxis were paid for by the authorities because she refused to transport either herself or her possessions in anything less dignified, certainly not an army truck. The Hibberts left their farm. Jake Hibbert looked over his shoulder from the back of the horse-drawn wagon carrying the ultimate cargo of muddy mangolds, mutely, bitterly, over the empty fields and buildings. He had purposely left his front door open and the wind was already blowing it, pushing its way in to occupy the house. They could hear the harsh clatter of its latch even after they had turned the bend in the lane and the house was beyond sight.

  Eric Sissons, the vicar of Telcoombe Magna, his stumbling wife and his father were also among the last to go. There was an American tank at the church gate as they left the vicarage and walked with their final hapless suitcases through the unmoved gravestones. Sissons essayed a caustic wave at the soldiers sitting on the tank. ‘There was no need to send that thing,’ he called with icy jauntiness. ‘We were just going.’

  The young Americans, themselves hardly knowing what was taking place, laughed hesitantly at what they felt fairly certain must be a joke. It was the slow old man, the vicar’s father, who replied to the juvenile grins. ‘Let’s see you get that thing across the Channel,’ he grunted. The soldiers looked puzzled.

  ‘You’ll all drown!’ shouted Cecily Sissons, who had taken half her morning bottle even at an early hour. Her husband went red and bundled her into his small, clerical Morris. The Americans did not understand.

  Before the Morris started off, Sissons, on an afterthought, turned back. He approached the tank stonily. ‘Before I leave,’ he intoned ecclesiastically at the sergeant, ‘I want to inform you that this is a very, very, very ancient church. People in this part of England have been worshipping in this church since long before America was discovered. I am charging you with looking after it.’ He let his eyes take in the others. ‘Each one of you.’

  The sergeant regarded him with initial surprise, replaced swiftly with professional coolness. ‘We’ll try, sir,’ he said. ‘We’ll certainly try. But me, I ain’t in charge of the war. Just this tank.’

  Sissons could say nothing more. He could hear Cecily making a fuss with his father in the car. Anxiously he retreated and reached the door. ‘Shut up, will you!’ he bawled, almost in her face. ‘You’re showing us up in front of them.’

  Her tantrums dissolved into a jelly of remorse. ‘You’re ashamed, Eric,’ she sobbed into her stained hands. ‘You’re ashamed of me. You, a Christian priest.’

  ‘Shut up, old dear,’ said the vicar’s father, more kindly. ‘Eric has enough problems as it is. You must realize, girl, that all this has deprived your husband of his living.’

  ‘And his dead,’ she sniffed seriously. ‘It’s the graves I don’t like to leave by themselves. They’re so defenceless, graves. I hope they don’t desecrate them. Are they Christians, do you think?’

  Angrily Sissons had started the little car. It bumped and coughed down the lane. He could hear the American soldiers hooting like children at its antics. ‘They’re heathen!’ he shouted back at his wife. His voice fell to a grunt. ‘Savage to a man. I don’t know what in God’s name they’re doing on our side.’

  On their journey towards the coast road, along which they intended to travel to Wilcoombe, they passed lines of US military vehicles. Sombre tanks, hunchbacked transport trucks and jeeps, busily sliding in and out of the convoys. American faces stared out in wonder as the fragile little Morris clattered by them. Then came howls from behind as the new soldiers laughed and cheered, not unkindly, but because they were childish, as soldiers are childish.

  Standing at the head of the line of trucks, on a promontory of reeds and sand from which he could see both the landing beach and the brackish water of the inland leys, was Colonel Schorner. He recognized Sissons in the car, his clerical collar like a white grin. He waved. The vicar stopped and, with difficulty, wound down the squeaking window. Schorner loped easily down from the dune and saluted the three people in the car. Sissons had a curiously elderly feeling although he was younger than the soldier. Cecily emitted a little whoop of pleasure. The old man examined the American keenly. ‘I see you got rid of the Boy Scouts hats,’ he called over his son’s shoulder, eager to claim the experience. ‘They used to make us laugh in the first war, those hats.’

  Scho
rner smiled agreeably. ‘We just did, sir,’ he said. He pointed back to the troops standing about the military trucks. ‘But see, we still have the gaiters.’

  ‘Ah,’ remarked the old man wisely. ‘But they’re very useful. Very. Keep your legs warm. Stop you bleeding too much when you’ve been hit.’

  The strange logic had never occurred to the American. He laughed unsurely. Sissons gave his father a brief nudge with his shoulder which sent him back into his seat. Sissons sighed: ‘How long do you think all this will take?’

  Schorner shrugged. ‘Wish I knew too,’ he said.

  Sissons said: ‘You can see my church from here.’ He remained in the car, but indicated over his shoulder. ‘Just over to the left, beyond the higher ground. See the steeple? I would be grateful if you could leave it in one piece … Our bishop seems to think it’s expendable, but I don’t.’

  ‘No church is expendable,’ answered Schorner. ‘Nor any man.’

  ‘Churches do seem to suffer more than their fair share in this sort of thing,’ commented Sissons, still sourly.

  ‘And nuns,’ put in the old man in the back seat mischievously. ‘Nuns suffer.’ Sissons ignored him.

  The American colonel nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose churches do, reverend. It’s because they make good artillery observation posts – and great range-finders for guns shooting the other way.’

  ‘In France,’ shouted the vicar’s father, ‘we always shot at the steeples.’

  Sissons regarded the American stonily. ‘I must be going,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to be here when you start your pretend war.’

  ‘No, sir,’ smiled Schorner coolly. ‘It gets noisy.’

  He saluted briefly again and Sissons re-started the car. Schorner watched the quaint vehicle wobble along the road, observing the two white faces set in the back window, watching him as they went.

  Against the breeze Schorner called orders to the men in the leading trucks and they jumped down and began moving down to the beach, tugging at, clearing the old rusted British barbed wire as they went. Off shore were three Royal Navy landing craft, edging shorewards to land their first cargoes of material for the new American army. It was a firmer, finer day now, the nose of spring, with a clearer sky and a cool sun which coloured Start Bay blue and the land bright green. The long sand of the beach was like settled velvet.