If the Invader Comes

by Derek Beaven

  ‘No, Vic. I’ve said I don’t want to. Is that all right?’

  ‘I’ve said yes. Of course it’s perfectly all right.’

  Late the next night, when they were parting at the little local station, they clung to each other in the blue, shrouded light.

  ‘I do love you, Clarice.’

  ‘I love you too, Vic’ She seemed suddenly happy. ‘Perhaps he’s been safe after all. Jack, I mean. All this time.’ She touched his cheek.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps it’s only your old bag of dreams, you know. It’s been putting a jinx on us.’

  ‘It’s just a lot of old nonsense. Next time, if it makes you any happier, you can chuck the lot away.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, darling. It’s me, isn’t it? I’ll find a way, I promise. I’ll write and explain. Everything is so difficult’

  BUT SHE COULD not explain and they could not see each other.

  On Monday 18 October 1943, not without a certain pride of achievement, Mrs Benedick handed Dr Pike a single snippet. It had been cut from the Sunday People. She’d found it left behind at a Spitfire fund-raising sale in the church hall at Stutton.

  HITLER MURDERED 3 MILLION JEWS IN EUROPE – so ran the small headline to a minute article. It was tucked away at the bottom of a front page packed with other war news. The information was indelibly there, right in front of his eyes. But because of the way it was presented, so isolated and apparently insignificant, he was almost unable to pay attention to it, or to make it fit with anything else he held to be normal or natural. He would have liked to discuss the matter with Clarice. He would have liked even more to discuss it with Mrs Benedick. But she’d brought it in almost apologetically, as a result of a conversation they’d had weeks previously, and had run away again almost as soon as she’d arrived.

  Dr Pike took the cutting to his desk. It was a prize. He had a map of pre-war Poland, traced from an atlas by means of a piece of greaseproof paper. On it he’d marked the names of certain towns that had cropped up earlier that year in similar, very brief reports in more respectable journals, and had plotted the directions of the trains so far referred to. It wasn’t a hard thing to do, in fact disarmingly easy; yet most of the time it felt as though he sat in a vacuum, the only person anywhere trying to find a name for the monstrosity that emerged once two and two were put together. Nobody spoke about it. Nobody mentioned it – ever.

  The conclusions were chilling. Sobibor, Chelmno, Belzec, Majdanek, Oswiecim. There was no news of the resettlement transports, in fact no information at all. ‘All trace of the cattle waggons was lost after Crakow.’ ‘Beyond Warsaw no information was available.’ And yet the trains still ran, and were now apparently setting out from Hungary, far to the south-east. The pull of the Polish region seemed intense, its end profound obscurity. He wondered what laws operated there. He felt challenged to the core.

  Clarice, shackled to the daily grind of RAF vengeance upon Germany, grew inured to loss and suffering. Her father stifled his heart and collected his news cuttings. Vic trained at Bournemouth, then at Durham, then at Fimber in the Yorkshire Wolds for a ‘realistic exercise’, then Durham again, and then seaside Clacton, of all places, in Essex. Then Scotland. Now the invasion of France was a talked-of thing, and he was practised at crawling, bayonet fixed, under live fire.

  Then she was transferred back from Lincolnshire to Norfolk. Leave had been cancelled, but he was to meet her on his way down from the Highlands at her airfield, a newly concreted and reopened one. His combined operations had left him with a broken rib, and all the way from Inveraray, his battalion had crossed the mountains in a convoy of painfully bone-shaking lorries.

  After that, the Army had brought him back down from Glasgow to London by overnight train; and almost immediately, he’d set out again from Liverpool Street to make the journey up to Norwich to meet her. He was exhausted. As to Clarice, he didn’t know what to expect. He’d been with his mates. Now he was on his own, and he guessed this stolen visit to her was their one last chance. The beat of the wheels on the rail joints lulled him. He closed his eyes and let his head fall softly against the headrest next to the window.

  When he looked up again, the flat reaches of Cambridgeshire stretched away beside the train. He made himself a cigarette. It was always either training, travelling – or not travelling, because of the coal strike – or sitting around, and any one of these could quickly turn into the others. After three years in the mimicry of combat he longed for battle, for the release of it. Then there was the old suicidal feeling again, that it didn’t matter, that nothing was worth staying around for. And he knew it was a dangerous state for a soldier to get into, this verge of frenzy. He knew, but he flirted with it, because he could see no solution to his life, and this feeling of abandon seemed to whisper a promise to take him through the crisis when it came.

  It would come soon enough, he knew. At any time within the next few weeks or so. Wherever a man turned these days there were Americans gathering for the invasion. Wherever one looked in southern England there were movements of troops, movements of tanks, movements of heavy lorries. Here in East Anglia you could hardly get between two wayside stations without evidence of concrete construction, or petrol delivery, or of the machines that required these two, the heavy bombers. The island was filling up; the towns, the countryside, the air above the humdrum little country of his experience was filling up with American production. And caught up in it there was Clarice; and there was not Jack. The smoke rose up from the lighted tip of his fag.

  He unbuttoned his top pocket and took out the latest of her letters to him. He read her sentences over once again, hearing her voice. The tone was just that shade too hale, too matter-of-fact.

  From Norwich he hitched, although he had plenty of back pay in his pocket book. But it was late afternoon by the time he arrived at the gate of her airfield. She’d managed to arrange him entry and a bunk for the night. The airman on the barrier made a phone call, and he overheard himself referred to as ‘some bloody brown job’. Nevertheless the permission was confirmed and he wandered in to try to find who he should report to.

  Oulton was to be a shared base. Two B-17 Flying Fortresses had already arrived and stood on the newly tarred concrete outside a half-completed hangar. As he walked beneath their wing tips, he was impressed by the size of the planes, and imagined himself cooped up in one of those swivelling perspex bubbles. In the distance, parked in echelon along the side of the vast concrete strip, were the Lancasters of the RAF.

  Then Clarice found him. She had another woman with her. ‘Vic, this is Yvain. Yvain Beaumont. She works with me.’ They were constrained from embracing, here on military ground. In the presence of the third party, they smiled awkwardly into one another’s eyes.

  The girl, Yvain, stretched out her hand. ‘How do you do.’ She was an angular, rather striking, but serious-faced young woman with a cultured accent. Hints of her black curls clustered at her ears, and her uniform looked too big on her. A gust of wind tugged at her heavy blue skirt.

  They found a section of the mess where they might be able to sit for a while, all three of them, without offending discipline. There Vic was given food from the canteen and a cup of tea. A party of American officers was standing nearby, snatches of their talk drifting across the room. Their dashing USAAF uniforms lent them a poise and style he could only wonder at.

  ‘Oh, them!’ Clarice said, noticing his interest. ‘I’m sure they’re very sweet boys, once you get to know them; but so full of themselves. Vic, darling? Is there something the matter?’

  His rib was hurting him. ‘It’s nothing much,’ he said. ‘When the landing craft hit the beach, so-called, I was thrown against some metal sticking-out thing with all my kit on my back.’

  ‘You poor chap,’ Yvain said. ‘Have you had it seen to?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘The medical orderly lent me the jar of regimental liniment with a mark on the side and strict instructions not to take more
than my share.’

  But any lightheartedness was temporary, and the conversation proceeded in rather stilted fashion along predictable lines. The girls told him the details of their routine, and he revealed as much as he was allowed to of his recent escapades. He wondered whether it was the station that had insisted on Yvain being present while he was on site, or whether it was some ruse of Clarice’s to cover the awkwardness between them.

  ‘Yvain is an ardent communist,’ Clarice said.

  ‘I see,’ he replied.

  IT WAS EVENING before they could be alone together. Clarice borrowed him a lady’s bicycle and they rode down to the village pub. There was a large contingent of aircrew there, apparently celebrating the arrival of the B-17s.

  ‘Come on, Vic, don’t be a spoilsport. I’ll introduce you.’ And soon he was part of a gang, all drinking and joking noisily, and talking shop. Later, there was the inevitable singsong.

  Buzzed by the jeeps of the returning revellers, they rode back in the dark. ‘Can’t we stop a minute?’ he called.

  ‘Why?’ She braked and turned round, her feet planted into the darkness either side of her pedals. Moonlight touched the shape of her stockinged calves below the hem of her skirt, lit faintly the chrome of her handlebars, and revealed no more than the surface of her cheek framed silver by her loosened hair.

  ‘I thought we could …’ His voice died away.

  ‘Thought we could what?’

  ‘Well. You know. Take a little time to ourselves.’

  He saw her lower the machine into the verge, and then come towards him. She put her arms around his neck. But the kiss was perfunctory. He could neither taste her, nor feel her tongue. He broke off and pressed her head to his shoulder. ‘Clarice, darling. I’m missing you so much.’ He gazed emptily at the forms of trees beyond the hedge, the pepper-pot of a windmill sticking up as if at the end of the road, and the sharp black box of the airfield control tower with its wind-sock on the skyline.

  He stroked the back of her neck and she softened slightly, and huddled herself closer against him. ‘I’m sorry, Vic. I am trying, really I am.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Honestly. It’s just … difficult.’

  ‘How? Why? Why is it so difficult?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She lifted her face to him again, covering his cheek with her small kisses. ‘Your poor ribs.’ She caressed his chest. ‘You poor, poor boy.’

  He ran his hand down her back, feeling for her waist under the thick tunic, and on to the swell of her hip. ‘I love you, Clarice. I’ve always loved you.’

  ‘And I love you too, Vic. I swear it.’

  He nuzzled her ear with his mouth. They stood clasped together. Almost he could hear her heartbeat. Then, stupidly, he slipped his hand further, feeling for the back of her thigh, and then round to the front. He found, through the fabric, the slight bump of her suspender. It made her laugh. Then he ran the back of his hand suddenly up across her belly and away again.

  She started away from him. ‘No!’

  He let go of her. They stood together, their breaths smoking slightly in the falling cold. He was conscious of the big Norfolk sky over them, the tiny, sharpened points of the stars, the air itself about to crystallise and crack around them.

  He said, ‘I don’t understand how it could be so easy and straightforward at the start –“Oh Vic” this; and “darling” that, when I was such a shambles myself; but now I’m on the eve of going into action it’s somehow impossible. I simply don’t understand. Did you only want me when I was a cripple? Was it something like that?’

  She went silently to pick up her bike and rode off ahead of him.

  He called, ‘I don’t get it! Understand?’

  Inside the perimeter, they passed beside the asphalt plant. It loomed over him, its complicated hoppers and tubes like the mistaken corner of a factory, risen suddenly blacker out of the black ground. It smelt of frosted tar. She said nothing until they reached the huts. Then it was merely, ‘I’ll show you to your bunk.’

  He lay sick with remorse, and with his own tiredness. Precisely what would he be fighting for, when it came to D-Day and the invasion?

  With an unholy noise the Lancasters, plane after plane, took off over the hut, shaking the tin roof and rattling the window frames. The concentration of troops in the South of England was already beginning, and he would be going soon enough.

  In the morning, at the gate, he made one more effort. ‘There’s something I never told you,’ he said. ‘When I was getting out of that house, at the robbery, I lost my temper. I tried to blind the old man. I tried to smash his glasses into his eyes. I’ve been ashamed of it, hardly even admitted it to myself, certainly not to you. I’m telling you now, so that you know what I’m like. I thought maybe it was something you could tell about me. I thought you could see through me to the nastiness inside, and that was why …’ He shook his head. ‘I thought if I owned up to it, it might clear the air. Of course it’s a risk, and the risk is that it’ll confirm your worst suspicions. There, it’s done now, and I feel better for getting it off my chest, even if it means you hate me for it. Do you see what I’m trying to say? I thought perhaps some falsehood between us was what was causing the problem.’

  Her face was blanched. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I see.’ She looked away and cleared her throat. ‘I see,’ she said again, abstractedly. She turned back to him. ‘But you’re still you, Vic. You’re no different’ She dropped her gaze, biting her lip. ‘I’m glad you told me. I am, really.’

  ‘I love you, Clarice.’

  ‘I love you, too, Vic’ She looked away.

  ‘Truly? In spite of what I’ve just told you?’

  She laid her hand on his arm and met his eye again. ‘We will make it, darling. We will.’

  He didn’t believe her.

  THE VERY NEXT evening he passed Phyllis on the steps at Waterloo Station. She wore a hat that slanted down over her face, and a half veil, but she was unmistakable, her walk, the way she’d pulled at her coat as she negotiated the steps in her high heels, in fact everything about her. He was sure of it and called after her. She had almost gone down under the railway bridge, and turned back once, before hurrying on into the twilight, the heels clicking audibly on the pavement. He shouldered his kitbag and ran after her, the broken rib grinding painfully with his breaths. But he was fit from his training and caught up with her by the bomb craters. ‘Hallo, Phyllis.’

  ‘Vic!’ She pretended surprise. ‘Long time no see.’

  He gasped, ‘Where is he? The boy? Is he all right? Where have you been?’

  ‘You mean Jack? He’s well enough.’

  ‘He’s alive! You’re both alive!’

  ‘Why shouldn’t we be?’

  ‘In the Blitz. I thought, when I didn’t hear from you …’

  ‘You thought we’d caught a packet. We nearly did, as it happens, that first night. Then we got out.’

  ‘But not the cottage.’

  ‘No. As it happens. We were offered somewhere else.’ She turned away.

  ‘Yes …?’

  ‘That’s all.’ She stepped back slightly and looked down the line of her elegant skirt. Casually she wagged the toe of her shoe back and forth on its heel, as though to inspect it for a scuff. Then she looked up at him, straight in the eye. ‘My cousin Clarice helped us move out of the flat. Kind of her, don’t you think?’

  ‘The flat …? You mean Ripple Road?’

  ‘Can’t think of any other flats we lived in. Can you?’

  ‘But … You mean Clarice was there with you. And Jack?’

  ‘Yes, she was. Oh, of course,’ she eyed him meaningfully. ‘I’d forgotten you two once knew each other, didn’t you. Quite well, wasn’t it? In fact … let me see if I can remember …’ Phyllis frowned and put her finger up to her chin. ‘Yes. If I’m not very much mistaken, she’d just come from visiting you. Well, then, and how have you been, Vic? I’ve missed you something terrible. Vic? Have you missed me?
Well, have you?’

  Standing there with her chin slightly raised towards him she seemed once again to be daring him to strike her. He felt his fists clench involuntarily, yet he was amazed at how calm he was otherwise. Only his lower lip trembled. He twisted away. The old black bricks of the bridge were damp; dark weeds grew in the mortar. In the twilight vapour that was coming off the river, the structure that arched over their meeting seemed almost visibly to corrode.

  ‘Where is he, then?’

  ‘We had to evacuate him.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Times have been hard, Vic. What with this war and everything. I shouldn’t need to tell you that.’

  ‘All right.Where to?’

  ‘Vic, dearest’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’m singing tonight. At the Coal Hole, would you believe. Quite a coincidence really, isn’t it? It’s only just reopened.’ She looked at her watch. ‘But just now I do really have to dash. Meeting someone. Why don’t you come and find me there? After the show we can catch up, can’t we? On everything.’ How much of what she’d told him was true? ‘How about it, Vic, love? For old time’s sake. No hard feelings, eh?’

  She knew where Jack was. ‘Yes. Of course. Why not?’ He had to find out. ‘All right, then. I will.’

  Phyllis was hurrying off along the cobbles. Only then did his emotion catch him like a blow in the chest. It welled at the back of his eyes like acid. But he had to know.

  Why should I be surprised, then, that he kept his rendezvous, and that he ended up spending the drunken night with her?

  VI

  The Comforter

  NOW, IN THE boats at Southampton, I am with him in spirit. He’s ready, about to launch out into the Channel. That night in May, when he learned Clarice had known all along, was the night I was conceived, and now on the eve of battle the only profit he has of it is Jack’s address. He has written to him at boarding-school. In his breast pocket he has a letter from Clarice, desperately explaining, so late in the day, the fact of the rape. She asks for his understanding. She asks forgiveness.