He moved into the Amiens Road, slid into the shelter of a deep doorway and stopped.
Good God! Is this the fearsome German army?
The whole street was in chaos. Soldiers from half a dozen different German units were roaming around, laden with items looted from shops and houses. One man was wearing a woman’s dress and giggling drunkenly; another had smashed the neck of a champagne bottle and was swallowing the contents in huge gulps; a third had dragged a chest of drawers into the street and was systematically emptying them one by one.
The more Ramsay looked, the more chaos he could see. A group of Bavarians sat cross-legged around a table, laughing as they wolfed down bread and what looked like old cheese. A mob of Saxons, led by a fierce-looking sergeant, passed around a bottle of brandy, taking a swallow each and singing songs. There were a number of young private soldiers sprawled in various positions along the street, drunk, fatigued or having just decided that they needed a break from the business of killing and being killed.
The German Army has broken down. If only I had sufficient men I could counter attack now and push them right back to their starting line
Ramsay heard the snarl of a motor vehicle and shrunk further into the doorway. He took the revolver from its holster and waited. That was a lighter sound than a lorry, it had sounded like a car.
Only staff officers drive cars. If the German higher command is coming here, they must think that this area is secure.
Ramsay inched forward with his revolver extended. He saw the staff car drive into the Amiens Road and halt. The driver got out, stepped to the rear and opened the door. Three tall men, obviously high-ranking officers by their splendid uniforms and mud-free boots, emerged and looked at the shambolic scenes around them.
Oh, God. You boys are in trouble. Do the Germans still have the firing squad for neglect of duty and looting? If so, there will be many customers later when this lot get arrested.
The staff officers looked around them and then had a hurried conversation. Ramsay expected an explosion of wrath, but instead they ignored the scattered soldiers and dashed into the nearest shop, to emerge a few moments later laden with bottles and fancy foodstuff.
Dear God! Even the staff are at it!
While one officer opened the boot, the other two ran back and forward to the shops, bringing out a selection of items, from bottles of wine to fripperies for their female friends.
Ramsay holstered his pistol and withdrew slowly, then hurried back to the house.
“Out, lads. Out you come. We’re getting out of Albert.”
McKim raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
“The Germans are looting Albert from Monday to Christmas. Even the staff are going crazy. The advance has stalled and we can get away.”
McKim was too experienced to rush into danger. He sent Cruickshank and a Durham man named Hedge to guard either end of the alley while he organised the removal of the remainder of the men.
“Don’t dawdle!” Now that he was committed, Ramsay was anxious to get away before the German officers took control of their infantry and the advance continued. He shoved Timms forward, “Come on, keep moving. Keep your heads down, try and keep out of sight and move as fast as you can. And keep your rifles ready!”
Ramsay led them at a steady trot, keeping behind houses as much as possible and dropping low whenever a party of German soldiers appeared.
“They must be blind today,” Timms said, “we’ve passed dozens of them.” He crouched behind a shattered wall a dozen yards from the Amiens Road and indicated a group of grey-clad soldiers who laughed around a barrel of cognac.
“They’re not blind,” McKim told him, “but they are preoccupied.”
Timms looked blank. “What do you mean? Preoccupied with what?” He struggled to find a more comfortable position.
McKim pushed him further down. “Keep your bloody head down, Timms! Do you know Kipling?”
“Kipling? What’s he got to do with anything?” Timms obediently put his head down, but left a leg trailing.
McKim pushed that down as well. “Don’t make it easy for Fritz, Timmy. There’s nothing their snipers like more than a nice juicy target.” He waited until Timms had settled down. “Kipling wrote about loot, Timms, loot. That’s what the Huns are after.”
“Could we not booby trap something and kill some of them?”
“You bloodthirsty bastard,” McKim shook his head. “And you look so innocent, too!”
“The street ahead is clear,” Ramsay said. “We can make it to that estaminet across the road, it will hold us all. McKim, you take the rearguard and send me the boys over in groups of three.”
The estaminet sat in the middle of a short street of five or six houses. Shellfire had shattered the window and blown in the door, but the Germans had not found it yet. Ramsay estimated the distance as twenty yards, across a cobbled street littered with debris and two dead civilians. The day was bright, with the sun not long past its zenith so there were few shadows for shelter. It all depended whether the Germans were looking in his direction or not.
“Cruickshank, keep me covered.”
Once again Ramsay felt that surge of insanity. There was a part of him that welcomed this encounter with danger, this pitting himself against the professionalism of the German army. It was a new sensation with which he was not yet fully comfortable, but it excited him in some unfathomable way.
He grinned. “Good luck, McKim,” and stepped into the road.
His boots clattered on the cobbles, raising echoes in the bright street. He moved quickly, counting his steps; twelve, fourteen, eighteen and he was at the door of the estaminet. He dived in. If any German had seen him, they had not reacted.
McKim was watching from a shaded doorway. He looked as efficient as any Prussian. Ramsay waved and a moment later two British soldiers dashed across. The sound of their studded boots on the cobbles sounded like cymbals crashing to Ramsay, but they also crossed without trouble and he began to breathe more easily.
He signalled for the next group and watched as the two shoemakers and Turnbull left the shelter for the perils of the road. Turnbull ran awkwardly, his rifle in his left hand and his right bouncing in its sling, but he was still faster than the shoemakers, who hesitated halfway. The smaller man stopped to peer up the street.
“Come on man!” Ramsay signalled urgently to him. “Get over here!”
The shoemaker looked at him uncertainly, and then decided to obey. He ran across in an ungainly fashion and entered the estaminet slowly.
“Keep out of the way,” Ramsay ordered, “and see if you can find some food in here, the boys need to keep their strength up.”
The British crossed in pairs and threes; McKim was the last man over. His pipe was still firmly clenched between his teeth when he entered the estaminet.
“That was easy enough, sir,” he said. “Old Fritz is far too busy robbing Albert blind. It’s as if he has not seen food for years, the way he’s carrying on.”
Ramsay nodded. He did not really care how long the Germans had been without food; he only cared that they would concentrate on other things while he led his men out of Albert.
“We are not far from the edge of town,” Ramsay said. “So maybe another couple of hops would see us safe.”
Safe! We are in the middle of the worst war the world has ever known, with millions of men killed and wounded. There is nothing and nobody safe here.
But I am safer now; Flockhart is dead. I only have to survive this war and life will be sweet, whoever wins.
Ramsay checked the road outside the estaminet. He could hear the Germans singing and shouting but there were none in sight from this spot. He estimated that it was about two hundred yards to the edge of town and then there was open countryside stretching up to a ridge. If the British high command had any sense that ridge was where they would make their stand.
When the Germans left Albert they would have to advance up the slope to face the British, who would have
all the advantage of height. Ramsay grimaced; he remembered how hard it had been to move up towards the German positions at the Somme. Now it would be the German’s turn to try that particular nightmare.
“Next step, boys, is diagonal, up the street and to the end house,” Ramsay indicated the building he had in mind. “From there we should be able to leave the town and hot-foot it up the ridge to our own lines.” He ducked as a shell landed in the town behind him. The crash shook the estaminet and a few tiles slipped from the roof to shatter amidst the general debris in the street.
“I see it.” McKim had not flinched. “The house with the open door?”
“That’s the one.” Ramsay ducked again as a trio of shells exploded near the town centre; tall towers of smoke and pieces of rubble rose skyward, the fragments descending and the smoke gradually dispersing in the breeze.
“We’ll use the same system,” Ramsay said. “I’ll go first and ensure it’s safe and you send the boys over in small groups.” He looked up as a 5.9 inch exploded high above. “We’d better hurry. Our own lot seem to be angry with Albert.”
McKim smiled and sang softly:
“Après la guerre finie
Soldat Ecosse parti
Mademoiselle in the family way”
He shrugged. “The war will be over by Christmas, sir, and then we can all go home.”
A few weeks back Ramsay would have torn to shreds any ranker who dared be so familiar with him. Now he smiled back. “Let’s hope so, McKim; let’s hope so.”
He surveyed the ground he had to cross. About forty yards this time and over open ground, but the end result would be worth the effort and danger. He took a deep breath, opened the door and stepped out.
Once again he experienced the feeling of exhilaration and heightened fear that jangled all his nerve endings. He was almost tempted to stop in the middle of the road and look around him, but common sense drove him forward, one long stride after another. There was the familiar whoosh of a large calibre shell passing overhead, but he was experienced enough to know that the shell would explode well beyond him so he did not look up.
Thirty yards to go. The cobbles were uneven under his feet; he spotted a child’s doll lying on its back. Some small person would be crying sore at its loss. That’s if it was still alive; children were so vulnerable even in peacetime.
She was blooming, carrying the new child within her, smiling to everybody as she walked between the uniform streets of brick houses. Ramsay watched her for a full five minutes before he let his presence be known.
“Grace,” he said, and saw the genuine pleasure cross her face. If only circumstances were different, he thought, he might be quite attracted to this girl. She was pretty enough, in a plump and coarse way, and he would have no problems with her faithfulness. Grace was as straightforward a girl as he had ever met. Even as things were, he quite liked her at times, despite her obvious shortcomings and the difference in their social status. He quite liked her, no more than that.
“I do love you so,” Grace told him, openly and loudly in the middle of the street, to the obvious amusement of the passers by. Not that they mattered, of course. They were merely colliers and their women, or people associated with the mines in some way or another. They were so far beneath him that they barely registered in his mind.
“I love you too,” he lied. He linked his arm with hers and walked with her along the main street of Newtongrange, with its many domestic chimneys belching smoke and the gas works chimney and the pit head of the Lady Victoria Colliery dominating everything.
“I thought you might be here sooner.” Grace was not complaining, Ramsay knew. She was only voicing whatever ideas ran through her mind at that instant. He did not expect she had developed her mental powers sufficiently to control the space between thoughts and voice.
“I got here as quickly as I could,” Ramsay said. They stopped outside the Dean Tavern and he contemplated taking her inside. Were women permitted entry to such places?
“When will you take me to meet your family, David?” Grace asked bluntly.
Ramsay had expected that question. “My father is in India,” he lied easily, “and my mother does not keep well at all. I do not think she could cope with the shock of me being engaged to wed.”
“You mean she would disapprove of you being engaged to a miner’s daughter and not some Edinburgh girl.”
“You are my choice,” he told her and pulled her towards him.
A light rain pressed the smoke down on the streets so every breath inhaled miniscule particles of soot and every inch of his clothing was contaminated and dirty within minutes. Ramsay looked around at the men and women who lived in this environment every moment of their lives, as their parents and grandparents had before them. He expected to see depression and dejection, shuffling people pressed down by their lives but instead he saw hard pride and a tight-knit community.
A group of men passed him, three generations walking together and all dressed the same in broad flat bonnets, their Saturday afternoon second best. They looked at him with disapproval but said nothing.
“What is wrong with them?” Ramsay asked.
“They wonder why we are not yet married,” Grace told him.
Ramsay hid his smile. He had not thought of Midlothian miners as being particularly moral people.
“You are surprised,” Grace read him far too easily. She wrestled free of his arm. “You think we are all savages here, like Africans or Eskimos!”
Ramsay shook his head. “I never thought anything of the sort …”
The group of miners had halted and were listening. The oldest of them stepped closer and beckoned the others to join him.
“Don’t deny it!” Grace’s quick temper was gathering quite a crowd of onlookers as a pair of be-shawled women joined the men. They folded their arms and glowered at Ramsay as if he was their mortal enemy. Grace thrust her face forward and into his. “You think you’re too good for the likes of us.”
The crowd growled, obviously in full support of Grace. One woman pointed to Ramsay’s suit. “Look at him, all toffed up as if he owns the place.”
“Toonies. They should stay in Edinbury!” her friend agreed.
“Well, you’re not better than we are!” Grace had worked herself into a passion now. “You are no better than the rest of us.” She patted her swollen belly. “And our baby will be from Nitten, not Edinbury!”
The crowd was larger now. About a dozen strong, they formed a semi-circle a few yards from the pair, openly staring and making derogatory comments.
“I hope you’ll make Grace a respectable woman, you!” The older woman pointed at Ramsay.
“We’ve heard all about you, David Napier!”
Ramsay looked around. What on earth am I doing mixing with this type of person? I am from a respectable family, for goodness sake. I am of a higher breed.
“Go on, get away!” Grace shoved him and he staggered. “We don’t need you anymore. My baby and me will do just fine without the likes of you.”
“He’ll need a father,” one of the women shouted. “He’ll be a bastard else.”
“I will marry you,” Ramsay said quietly. He knew it was the right thing to do, but at the same time he knew he was condemning both himself and Grace to a lifetime of unhappiness.
“No you bloody won’t!” Grace screamed. “I’d rather have my child a bastard than be married to one.”
“I will marry you,” Ramsay repeated. He thought of decades trapped with this bundle of volatility, of badly cooked meals and neighbours in cloth caps and the constant grit of smoke in his lungs. No, he would not sacrifice everything because of a few moments’ pleasure. “But we will live in Edinburgh.”
She slapped him then, a wild swinging blow that caught him by surprise and echoed around the narrow street. “There! That’s for you!”
Ramsay instinctively put a hand to his face and stepped back. “What was that for?”
Strangely, the blow had altered the
opinion of the crowd.
“Hit her back,” two of the men shouted, “hit the bitch.”
“I will marry you,” Ramsay said for the third time.
Grace shook her head. “I don’t want my baby growing up with folk like you,” she said. He saw the tears bright in her eyes and, despite himself, he reached out for her, but she pushed him away, turned and ran up the street in a rustle of skirts.
“Let her go, man!” the youngest of the miners advised. “Grace Flockhart was always a flirt.”
“You’re better without her,” another miner said. “You offered, she refused. Run while you have the chance.”
One of the women stepped forward. Hardship and work had aged her, but there was warm light behind her eyes. “If you want her, son, then go after her. If you don’t, you’ll never get her back.”
Ramsay nodded. Knowing it would only bring him trouble, knowing that they could never forge a happy marriage, knowing his family would disown them both, he shouted, “Grace!” and followed, striding down the street. “It’s my baby too!”
Another shell crashed down somewhere in the town, but Ramsay barely heard it as he reached the building. The door gaped open and the interior was dark. He plunged inside, gasping with the strain of his passage across, and had a quick look around.
There was a very small hallway with doors leading to what had been a living room and a bedroom, both now stripped of everything but the largest items of furniture. His men would be cramped inside, but safer than on the street and closer to the outskirts. It would do as a temporary refuge. Ramsay signalled to McKim to send them over and watched for any Germans.
Shells came over in ones and twos, a desultory bombardment that had only nuisance value. He watched as two men left the estaminet; Turnbull and Timms, running in a zig-zag pattern to confuse any enemy snipers. McKim and Cruickshank were on guard, their rifles moving as they scanned the street. Ramsay started as there was movement at the far end of the street.
The German soldiers arrived just as Timms reached the centre of the road.
Last Train to Waverley Page 22
