General Montgomery had appeared, standing like a schoolmaster with his baton, pointing out the areas of Britain where the great army was now building, in the south east the British and Canadians, the Americans in the south west. Ports of embarkation were pointed out with the precision of a pedagogue; he embarked into a grumble about the shortage of landing craft due to the demands of the United States Armies in the Pacific. Schorner glanced at Georgeton. Georgeton whispered: ‘Ike’s agreeing with him.’ Eisenhower was nodding his domed head.
‘It is thus imperative,’ said Montgomery with his narrow bark, ‘that mishaps, accidents, casualties to any type of landing craft must be kept to a minimum. Tell your chaps to be careful.’ The stage lights went up and he stood there, lean as a tree, his sharp face pushed aggressively towards them. ‘We will get across the Channel,’ he said slowly, almost mischievously, as if he had some hidden plan they knew nothing of. ‘My father was a great jumper,’ he added suddenly and to their surprise. ‘When he was at Cambridge he jumped the hall steps at King’s College at one bound. Mind you, he had God on his side. He was afterwards a bishop.’ He paused again. ‘That was in 1866,’ he added curiously.
Schorner said: ‘My God,’ under his breath.
Georgeton glanced at him. ‘Sure,’ he whispered. ‘Mine too.’
There had been a slight breeze of laughter at Montgomery’s remarks, almost entirely from the British officers. Now he stalked off to his seat and sat down holding his cane between his legs. The officer like a clergyman then stood and invited questions. They were slow, hesitant, at first, but once the first few had been put, they thickened. ‘Ask about those goddamn escort ships,’ whispered Georgeton. Schorner glanced at him but the general said: ‘You’re worried about them, colonel. You’ll have to tell your boys.’
Schorner waited and when a pause appeared in the questions, he stood. He announced his name and rank and unit. Then he added: ‘Sir, on a recently-conducted exercise, I was surprised, so were my men, when we saw that our escorting naval vessels were two very old destroyers, First War vintage. They had three smoke stacks and were slow and difficult to manoeuvre. Are these escort vessels just temporary or can we expect them during the invasion of France?’
A British naval officer, a vice-admiral, stood to answer. ‘They’re jolly good ships,’ he said bluntly. ‘American I might say, acquired by us in 1940, together with some old aeroplanes and some rifles that looked as if they’d come from the Civil War.’ A puff of laughter quickly died. ‘They may be slow, but they have guns pointing in the right direction. They will add firepower to the naval bombardment which will precede the invasion. The answer, sir, is yes, they will be used.’
‘Thank you,’ said Schorner, sitting down. ‘I’ll tell my boys.’ Several men in the rows before turned about and looked towards him. The vice-admiral had another thought. He stood again. ‘During the assault stage of the invasion there will, of course, be a screen of modern ships, and since the Germans have only a few small warships, E-boats and the like, in the Channel area, we don’t anticipate any trouble from them on D-Day. In 1940 the Germans thought twice about invading this country because we had our Navy, almost intact, and we were jolly well waiting for them. An army is no match for a navy at sea. Never was.’
Bryant went to Euston Station on the underground. He stood all the way, at the end of the shabby compartment, surrounded by silent, weary people. He remembered, in 1940, he had seen, on a tube train like this, an advertisement for Bovril, the beef drink, which showed a family happily taking it down to the shelter in preparation for a night of bombs. There was a certain uppish humour about that; in those times, despite the nightly terror, people had been fighting, buoyant. On that day, he recalled, the tube train had gone through stations where hundreds were already lying beneath their blankets, like corpses on the platforms. They had staked their pitch for the night. Whole communities below the ground. Later, while the Junkers dropped their death, they would be singing Cockney songs deep down in the protecting earth.
But now the war had gone on too long. Even in those days they had been fresh. There were now few air raids, only the long grind of another bleak day, waiting for it all to finish. It had become pitted in the faces of the people, in their skin, like the grime of miners. There were painted slogans on London walls demanding a ‘Second Front Now!’ They were put there at night by Communists and others. The Russians had been fighting alone. But even these slogans had lost their eagerness now. There had been no second front; not unless you thought of the invasion of North Africa or Italy as a second front, and no one did. Even now – while politicians planned for after the war – many people did not think the invasion of Europe was imminent. It had become a time of apathy and disbelief.
Bryant, as he travelled in the underground train, wondered if he would survive the invasion. His life was so changed that he could hardly remember being anything else but a soldier. He wondered about his wife, Margaret. There was a woman about her age and wearing a wedding ring standing a few feet away talking earnestly to an American airman. They were the only people conversing. She held his arm, just below the elbow, firmly.
Now he even found it difficult to imagine what his wife was like. It was only months but it seemed years. Her face, her shape, seemed to have become indistinct, as if she were drifting off into a mist across a field.
The train trembled into Euston. All the escalators were out of order so he joined the patient, trudging people going up the stairs to ground level, people in old humped coats, with scarves and balaclava hats and gloves made in wool of khaki, air-force blue or navy. Thousands of woman hours had gone into knitting for the forces only for the comforts to unerringly find their way back to civilians. Perhaps it was a just law, a proper redistribution. There was very little for the comfort of the common man. Only bread, vegetables, fish and rabbits were not rationed, and it was difficult to get fish and rabbits.
There were posters at Euston calling for yet another effort with National Savings. ‘Lend to Defend His Right to be Free’, it said over the picture of a child. ‘Salute the Soldier’, ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’, ‘Potato Pete Says Potatoes are Good For You’, ‘Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases’, ‘Watch Out in the Black Out’, the incantations were everywhere and everyone knew them. Every pane of glass in the great station roof had been blown out during the bombing and had not been replaced. The evening had turned to a March chill and the cold air fell down on the people waiting dumbly to go home.
Bryant found that the train from Manchester would be an hour late, not an unreasonable delay. He went into the buffet and bought the Evening Standard. He avoided the war news and turned inside. There was to be some cricket in the coming summer. Lord’s would be used. The Oval was still a prisoner-of-war camp with German soldiers walking about the sacred place. Did they ever wonder what the Oval was for?
Middlesex County Council were to start thatching classes, at night school, said a small paragraph. He smiled and wondered how long it took to learn to be a thatcher; years he imagined. Someone must be confident about the outcome of the war. A Dutch soldier was standing a few yards along the buffet, a cup of thin tea before him, a meat pie cold as clay in his hand. His face was without expression. His eyes scarcely blinked. He merely stared from the grimy window, out into the dark, moving, station. Bryant wondered whether he would ever get home to Holland again. Or if he cared now. It must have been a long time.
The hour stretched on. With ten minutes to go, an excitement tightening his chest, he left the buffet and went across the darkened concourse to platform three where the train was due to arrive. He remembered feeling like this when his mother met him from school at the end of term. The steam of the train and the warmth of his mother’s arms. The ticket collector, in his little box, which, Bryant imagined, gave him some private comfort, said that he had no idea whether the train would be only an hour late. He said it, poking his head from his box and with a mean sort of glee. ‘Could be hours, sir,’ he hummed
. ‘Hours and hours.’ The man prepared to pull his head back.
Bryant tried to be good-humoured. ‘I hope not,’ he replied. ‘My wife’s on it.’ He wondered why he had to tell the man that. It had a faint touch of boasting. The ticket collector would be there, looking out like a nosy neighbour, when Margaret came down the platform, through the wafting steam, slim and confident, smiling her stage smile, and she would come forward and they would embrace while the man began to collect tickets all around.
‘Your wife?’ said the collector, pretending to be incredulous. ‘I wouldn’t wait for my wife. Blimey, I’d be glad if the bloody train never got here at all.’
Bryant’s face fell boyishly. The man looked momentarily sorry. ‘That’s what being in the army does for you,’ he advised. ‘Keeps you separate, don’t it. Nothing like being miles away to keep marriage going, I say.’ He leaned confidentially. ‘I was in myself, of course. Time of Dunkirk. Invalided out. Feet. My feet are two of the horrors of this war.’
He shifted his boots backwards slightly, guiltily, as if he thought the officer might want to inspect them. Bryant grinned and then the grin tightened as he looked up and saw the train, like a fussy ghost coming through its own steam, shuddering into the platform. ‘You’re all right now,’ said the ticket collector. ‘Here she is. Must have heard you.’
Bryant pulled his tunic down and felt the edge of his cap was straight across his forehead. At once he thought he saw her coming through the steam, even among all the other ghostly forms. But he was wrong. The first passengers bundled by, the ticket collector taking their tickets and, curiously, watching Bryant from one side of his eye. There were a lot of passengers on the train, as there always were in wartime, and many of them stumbled because they had stood in the corridors, throughout the journey. Bryant was conscious of a cry, a greeting, an embrace from others waiting outside the barrier, but he continued to peer through the steam. She did not come.
He waited, his heart getting colder and more sad, as the seconds went by. The crowd of passengers thinned. He still hoped, thinking she might be having trouble with her suitcase, or she was in the toilet, trapped in there, perhaps. It was the sort of thing she would have had happen to her. The final passenger was a woman, a shape materializing from the vapour. But it was an ATS girl in uniform. She went by, giving him a half-salute which he automatically returned, and walked into the embrace of a man, a civilian, standing behind.
‘Looks like that’s the lot,’ said the ticket collector. He regarded Bryant with something like sympathy. ‘You can never tell with women,’ he said. ‘They always get lost, or something happens, or they change their minds. They’re always bloody changing their minds. Believe me, I know better than most.’
‘There’s nobody else, is there?’ asked Bryant miserably. He realized the ambiguity of the question. ‘Nobody’s likely to be left on the train? Perhaps she fell asleep.’
‘The guard’s checking it,’ said the man. A train guard swinging a torch advanced down the platform. ‘Anybody left, Bertie?’ asked the ticket man.
‘Nobody,’ the man called back. ‘They all got off, no drunks, nothing. Just somebody left a gas mask. Army one. He’ll be in trouble, won’t he.’ He swung the khaki bag from his other hand.
‘Sorry, sir,’ said the ticket collector genuinely. He realized he was watching a small tragedy. ‘Maybe she missed it. Accidentally, I mean.’
‘When is the next one?’ asked Bryant.
‘Five hours, at least, even if it’s not late, which it will be because it always is,’ said the man. He took a timetable from his pocket. ‘Not that this is much to go by,’ he sniffed. He read it carefully in the light of his torch. ‘Midnight,’ he said. ‘Supposed to be. Sometimes that don’t get here until the early hours. Three or four.’
Slowly Bryant turned away and walked back towards the entrance to the underground. He felt chilled with disappointment. His throat and his eyes were salty. Just before the underground stairs there was a rank of telephone boxes. They were all occupied but, all at once resolved, he waited, pacing along the line like a sentry. A woman in a straggling fur coat finished at the end box. She came out crying. Bryant had an odd temptation to put a hand on her shoulder but she hurried away. He replaced her in the box. It took ten minutes to get the operator. Nothing was easy in wartime and so many things were sad. He waited. The phone began to ring at the other end. It was soon picked up. Margaret was laughing before she spoke the number. She stopped when she heard him, said: ‘Oh, excuse me,’ but not to him, and left the phone to return a moment later. Bryant was desperately counting out coins on to the flat black surface of the coinbox.
‘I’m at Euston,’ he said. ‘You didn’t come.’ It was half hurt, half accusation.
‘I wouldn’t be speaking to you on the phone if I had, would I, silly?’ she said lightly. Her voice dropped to a surface, anyway, of seriousness. ‘Honestly, darling, I couldn’t. They can’t spare me. There’s a social tonight and they want me to help. I have to.’
‘But Margaret,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’m damned well waiting here. Christ Almighty, don’t you care … ?’
‘Don’t go crazy,’ she said roughly. ‘I only said I would try and get there. I didn’t promise. I thought I could until this morning. And there was no chance of getting in touch with you then. I’m sorry.’
‘So am I,’ he blurted. ‘Very bloody sorry.’ Crazy was a word she would never have used before.
‘You’ll get some leave soon, won’t you?’ she said petulantly. ‘You always seem to be the last to get leave. You’re too much of a dogsbody, darling.’
‘Perhaps I am,’ he agreed. ‘In all sorts of ways.’
At once she sounded sorry. ‘I would have, if I could,’ she said. ‘Look, I’ll come down tomorrow. How about that? Promise, honest injun.’
‘I don’t think I’ll be here tomorrow,’ said Bryant. ‘Not in London.’
Margaret paused. Then she said: ‘In that case I would have been coming all that terrible journey just for a couple of hours.’
‘At least it would have been a couple of hours,’ muttered Bryant. There was a silence at both ends. Then Bryant said, ‘How is Elizabeth?’
‘Oh, Lizzie’s fine,’ she replied with sharp brightness. ‘Growing up. Changing, like all of us.’
It was enough. He wanted to get out of the phone box. ‘The money is running out,’ he said.
‘Like it always used to,’ she said with a strange laugh. ‘In the old days.’
He ignored it. ‘I’ll telephone next week,’ he said. ‘Wednesday, as usual.’
‘All right, darling, Wednesday. I’m always in on Wednesday.’
He returned to the Officers’ Club by taxi, perplexed and angry. As he walked into the foyer Scarlett came out of the windowed bar and called: ‘Where’s the lady?’
Bryant laughed wryly. ‘Find the lady, more like it,’ he said.
Scarlett’s expression dropped. ‘You couldn’t find her? How so?’
‘She didn’t come,’ shrugged Bryant. ‘She wasn’t on the damned train and I phoned her and she had never even left. She’s busy with the war.’ He paused and said bitterly: ‘Her particular war.’
‘Gee, she didn’t show. I’m sorry. Like hell, I’m sorry. Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.’
Bryant smiled briefly at his concern. ‘Right you are,’ he said. ‘That’s the next best thing, I suppose.’
They walked into the bar. It was not crowded at that time of the evening. A group of American Air Force officers were reliving a raid they had made over Germany, their hands moving around like bombers and puffing noises to imitate anti-aircraft fire. The barman was bald and wise-looking. His braided uniform was dim and baggy, his face thin but bright. They climbed against the bar and Scarlett ordered two double scotches. The barman smiled enthusiastically as if trying to live some memory.
‘So what do you do now?’ asked the American eventually. ‘Sit down and read a good book?’
�
�I suppose so. I’ve left it that I’ll telephone on Wednesday.’ He took the first heavy sip of scotch. ‘God, she sounded miles away, and not just in distance. She’s just completely changed. The bloody war does that to people. It makes lives so different. It’s me too, I’ve changed as well.’
Scarlett grimaced. ‘Nobody is going to come out of this the same as they went in,’ he philosophized. One of the Air Force men was demonstrating a crashing plane, tipping his flat hand one way and another until the fingers struck the bar and he made a sound like an explosion. He picked up a scotch and drained it, then put it down for a refill. ‘Me, I have to go back and look my wife in the eye,’ continued Scarlett. ‘And she’s got to grit her teeth and get on with life with me. After that first Hollywood hug and kiss at the bottom of the gangplank – then the problems are going to start for one hell of a lot of people. No man can get up out of a chair, go away for years, she thinks maybe for ever, and then come back and just sit down in the same goddamn chair like nothing’s happened.’
He leaned suddenly confidingly, and with a short smile, towards Bryant. ‘Listen, why don’t you take a trip with me tonight?’
‘Where?’
‘Aw, it’s just a place. Real nice. It’s for US officers, but I can take a guest. It’s not too far and it’s okay, nice and pleasant, sophisticated I guess you could say. And there’s an English girl I know there. I met her the first night I was in London.’ He shook his head slightly in disbelief. ‘Straight off the plane from the States.’
Bryant grinned drily. ‘The first night?’ he queried. ‘You chaps don’t waste any time.’
‘That’s the reputation we get. But this wasn’t intentional. I was just trying to catch a breath of air, but walking around with no lights in town at all … well, I got good and lost. And then I saw this door and in I went. It was great, believe me, and she was great. A real smart girl. So I went along with it. I didn’t need the excuse of being lonesome. I tried it but it wouldn’t wash.’ He glanced at Bryant. ‘How about it?’
The Magic Army Page 30
