Their Finest Hour and a Half

by Lissa Evans

  ‘Oh yes. About that – I was wondering . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When are you filming the part of the story set at Dunkirk?’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘We already have.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Those two scenes that we shot this morning. They’re supposed to be taking place just off the French coast.’

  He looked at her carefully to see if she might be joking. It appeared not.

  ‘When you see it on screen,’ she said, ‘there’ll be a whole fleet of other ships. It was a glass shot, you see, it’s like a magic-lantern slide that sits on a frame in front of the camera lens. And there’ll be sound effects put on afterwards, explosions and so on. It’ll all be quite different.’

  ‘I see.’

  She was glancing at her notes again, clearly keen to get on with her work, and Arthur gave an awkward sort of nod.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, and he saw her bite her cheek. Saying ‘thank you’, then, was probably too formal for the current situation. He always found the beginnings and ends of conversations rather difficult to negotiate, rather ill-defined; it was a pity there wasn’t a clear, impersonal signal of some kind, of the Aldis-lamp variety. Blink, blinkety, blink: – I wish to stop speaking to you. Please move away.

  There were fewer people, now, around the refreshment table, and he took a sandwich and a cup of tea and retraced his steps around the dune. A gust of wind had tumbled the stool a few yards from its previous position, and he cleared a fresh section of sand before setting it down again.

  He’d last seen an Aldis lamp on the beach at Bray-Dunes, on the fourth day of the evacuation. A driver from his unit had found one amongst the litter on the sand – though ‘litter’ was not really the word for it; there was no adequate word for it. For half a week, fifty thousand men had lived and slept among the dunes that stretched from Dunkirk to La Panne, had been shelled and machine-gunned, had nearly gone mad from thirst, had used bomb craters as foxholes and foxholes as latrines, had queued time and time again for a place in a boat, in long patient lines that ran from the land into the sea like human breakwaters, had emptied their rifles at Stukas and played cards and prayed and sworn and waited for rescue, with the German guns edging closer, and the sea that had been like grey glass for the first few days beginning to slap and heave and rock the debris on its margin. And somewhere amongst all the filth and disarray, somewhere above the tide-mark of discarded greatcoats and packs, of smashed planks and crates and smears of oil, driver Tony Pierce had found a signal-lamp.

  He brought it back to the cleft in the dunes that the remnants of their unit had adopted as home, and spent the fag-end of the afternoon fiddling with the mechanism. There was nothing else to do, for whether it was down to the deteriorating weather or the German navy, or the arrival of a vast invasion force in East Anglia, or a decision by the British government to cut their losses and simply abandon the BEF (for nobody knew what was going on – rumour was piled on rumour), there were currently no ships near their part of the shore, although a speck or two on the horizon seemed to hint that more were on their way.

  Arthur opened a tin of peas he’d been hoarding and counted them into an upturned helmet; it came to seven each and the men ate them as if they were cocktail olives. Darkness fell and the wind dropped a little. There was no moon visible, and the only light was from the glimmer of a thousand cigarettes, and the red-tinged pall of smoke that hung to the west, above the port of Dunkirk. Pierce disappeared for a while, and then returned in triumph, bearing a signals book. ‘Borrowed it,’ he said laconically. ‘Shall we give it a try?’

  Arthur and Pierce and Madden, and a few others too rattled to sleep, walked down the beach towards the water, where a smear of phosphorescence marked the breaking surf.

  ‘There’s a whole section on “Calls to an Unknown Ship”’ said Pierce. ‘What about it, chums?’

  ‘“Calls to an Unknown U-boat”, more like,’ someone muttered, but no one tried to stop Pierce. Arthur thought afterwards that as the only NCO present he should have said something, but at the time the scheme had seemed no more strange than all the other strange and terrible things that had happened over the past week, ever since a motorcyclist had swung past the bakery at Merville where they’d had their billet and had told them to head for the coast ‘on General Gort’s orders’. From then on it had been like one of those terrible dreams where a simple task is constantly hampered by the bizarre and the unfathomable. The roads had been clogged with terrified refugees, every yard of the verge strewn with abandoned luggage and clothing and burnt-out cars; half of the unit had gone off to look for firewood one night and had never come back; a Stuka had strafed a herd of cows at a cross-roads, and Arthur had spent most of a morning helping to move bovine corpses so that the trucks could get through. Every mile had been marked by chaos and fear and dead bodies, and then, when they were still half a league from the coast, they had finally run out of petrol. After they’d pushed the trucks into a ditch and spiked the engines, the lieutenant had said, ‘It’s every man for himself now, chaps,’ and Pierce had nipped into a nearby village and returned minus his watch but wheeling two ancient bicycles. Those last few miles had been the most serene of the journey; Arthur had never ridden a bike, so he’d perched on the back of Madden’s and closed his eyes, and the breeze on his face had been almost pleasant, despite the fact that the air reeked of burning petrol.

  So to find himself standing beside an invisible sea while Pierce flashed a message into the darkness was merely one more oddity to add to the list, and the fact that an answer came blinking back out of the night was pleasing but not entirely unexpected.

  ‘They’re sending a boat for us,’ said Pierce calmly, and started to take off his coat, and Madden volunteered to fetch the rest of the unit, and to find a few others beside who might want a midnight rescue.

  They waded out Indian file, Pierce at the front giving the lamp a blink every half-minute or so. The beach shelved so gently that they were ten yards out before the water crept as far as Arthur’s groin and he realized, with a gasp, how awfully cold it was. Pierce kept going until he was chest-deep and then stopped and sent a double flash out into the darkness.

  ‘Oi Pierce, tell Ma I’m coming home,’ shouted someone from the back of the line. There was a laugh and somebody else called, ‘Tell my wife to get the kettle on’ and before very long the whole of the queue, except Arthur, was shouting requests for Pierce to send a message to their granny, to their dog, to their baby son, to the landlord of the Barley Mow, and Pierce was telling them to pipe down or they wouldn’t hear the boat coming, pipe down chums, and then there was a sudden sheet of light to the far west and all noise stopped. It was a ship burning, a minesweeper, its silhouette momentarily perfect before another flash of orange broke it in half. The sound of the first explosion rolled across the water, but before the sound of the second reached them, the light had gone.

  For a moment there was utter silence and utter darkness, and then Arthur heard the clop of an oar.

  ‘Oh—’ said Pierce, and there was a thud, and the man in front of Arthur cried out and Arthur himself was smacked on the shoulder, knocked sideways and then hit on the back of the head, and then he was upside-down in the water with his nose actually grazing the sand, his pack dragging him down, and he tried to push off the bottom but something hit him on the head again, and then fingers clawed at his face and grabbed him by the hair and pulled him above the surface. He heard the bark of the air leaving his lungs, and then he was being hauled painfully over a wooden ledge before tumbling face first across the thwarts of a rowing-boat. Someone fell on top of him and a boot caught him above the eye, and he wasn’t properly awake then, at least not in any consistent way, until he opened his eyes and saw a feathering of pale streaks across the sky, and felt the gentle judder of planking under his shoulders and sat up to find that he was on a Thames paddle steamer, five miles out of Dover. He had a stinking headache and had lost his s
pectacles and his pack and a clump of hair from one side of his head, and he thought, looking around the solid carpet of sleeping soldiers that covered the upper deck, that he had lost his entire unit – until Madden found him just as they disembarked.

  ‘Pierce?’ asked Arthur.

  Madden shook his head. Pierce had never emerged from the inky water, and neither had two others from the front of the line. It was possible, of course, that they’d waded back to shore, but the likelihood was that after weeks of dodging Jerry bullets, they’d been done for by the hull of a British rowing-boat.

  In the special troop-train from Dover to God-knows-where, Arthur had dozed and clutched the postcard he’d been given by a lady volunteer at the station. ‘Fill in the address,’ she’d said, ‘and we’ll post it to your people to let them know you’re safe,’ and a stub of pencil had been passed from soldier to soldier in Arthur’s carriage, and the sheaf of postcards handed back to the platform just as the train moved off. Arthur had kept his, since there was no one in particular to send it to. He still had it, propped on the mantelpiece in Wimbledon.

  The afternoon of the first day of filming was very similar to the morning. By three o’clock most of the adult spectators had drifted away, and the schoolchildren who took their place needed only half an hour to realize that anything in the way of entertainment would have to be created by themselves. Shouting ‘Cut’ just after the assistant director had shouted ‘Action’ kept them amused for a while, and then one of the more enterprising started taking pot-shots at the camera with a potato gun. Chick, his face expressionless, walked over to the foot of the dune and crooked a finger. Chopper flew towards the group like a brindled bullet, and the crest of the dune was suddenly empty.

  Tea and rock buns were served at four and then, as Arthur was making his way back to his own particular patch of sand, he was approached by a young man in sergeant’s uniform.

  ‘Hadley Best,’ said the other, gripping Arthur’s hand and staring into his eyes with disconcerting intensity. ‘I’m playing Johnnie. I gather that you’re our military expert.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Arthur, uneasily, ‘though I don’t think I’d classify myself as an expert.’

  ‘I’m joining the navy myself.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘The board’s allowed me three months’ grace to shoot this and then I’m off. Yo ho, heave ho and all that.’ He continued to stare unblinkingly from what seemed far too small a distance. Arthur took half a step backwards.

  ‘I want you to know that I’m a stickler,’ said Hadley, smartly closing the gap. ‘It would cause me real pain if people came out of the cinema and said, “That was all very exciting and thrilling but in actual fact the East Surreys always salute with the left hand.”’

  ‘They don’t,’ said Arthur, relieved to find something about which he could be certain.

  ‘Just a light-hearted example, Arthur. I’m not like other actors, you see, I’m not simply concerned with how many lines I have. I’d rather have four honest words than fifty pages of bilge.’ The unblinking stare continued; Arthur took another, involuntary, step backwards, and fell over his stool.

  ‘I want you to promise,’ said Hadley, as if nothing had happened, as if Arthur hadn’t landed arse over tip and wasn’t now groping around in the sand for his spectacles, ‘absolutely to promise that you’ll tell me if you see or hear something that doesn’t ring completely true. Will you promise me?’

  ‘Yes of course, I’ll do my best. The trouble is . . .’

  ‘Any detail, however small. Any word of the script that sounds a false note. For instance, we’re just about to shoot a scene on the beach where Johnnie and a few others are queueing up to their knees in water. Is that something that you actually experienced, Arthur?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then as the darkness drops over the French coast they start to wade back to the shore and one of the other characters turns to Johnnie and says, bitterly, “Another bloody night on the beach.” Does that sound like the kind of phrase that you might have heard?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Arthur, with some feeling.

  ‘Good. Very good. Cigarette?’

  ‘No thank you.’ The light was beginning to fade. Arthur gave his spectacles a polish, and watched as a man unwound a spool of cable across the dunes, past the remaining spectators, and along the beach towards an enormous lamp a few yards from the water’s edge. A corporal was sitting on a canvas stool in the middle of the sand with a towel round his shoulders, while the barber snipped at his hairline. The two young lady actresses were performing leg exercises, using the breakwater as a barre.

  ‘The trouble is,’ said Arthur to Hadley, ‘that this is all very new to me. I hadn’t at all realized how much trickery was involved.’

  ‘Trickery?’

  ‘Well . . . glass-shots, for instance. If you can add boats to a scene, then I suppose you can add all sorts of things that I don’t know about. And noises being put on afterwards, and so on. And someone was telling me that anything white, like the side of the boat, has to be dirtied down because otherwise it’s too bright to photograph, so I suppose that the reason that actual dirt isn’t being put on things that should really be dirty is because it won’t show up. Is that correct?’

  ‘You’ve lost me,’ said Hadley. ‘What things that should really be dirty?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Arthur eyed him critically. Apart from a light, almost artistic, spatter of mud across the breast pocket, and a small area of scuffing on the left knee (the latter looking as if a pumice stone had been passed gently over the serge), Hadley’s uniform was completely pristine.

  ‘You mean this should be dirtier?’ asked Hadley, following his gaze.

  ‘Dirtier, and also . . .’ He fished for an adequate phrase, thinking of the scarecrow army that had arrived at Dover, undershirts used as bandages, jackets as pillows and stretchers, trousers striped with salty tide-marks from successive queueing in the surf. ‘. . . more weathered.’

  ‘Weathered,’ repeated Hadley, appreciatively. ‘That’s an excellent note, I shall pass it on straight away. I gather the director’s keen on a real-life sort of look. Anything else?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Arthur, warming to his role. ‘Your uniform fits much too well. Most of them are too long in the arm – like mine, d’you see? – or too short in the leg, or simply far too big.’

  Hadley nodded, but with noticeably less enthusiasm.

  ‘Honestly,’ said Arthur, ‘I’d say that that was as important as the weathering. Our sergeant-major said we looked like a bunch of hunchbacks after we were kitted up for the first time.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Hadley, turning away.

  ‘We were known as the baboon platoon,’ called Arthur, but Hadley was clearly already out of earshot.

  *

  Before going to Norfolk, Buckley had given Catrin a typed list of instructions:

  i) Do not attempt to tidy my desk. Any attempt at tidying my desk will result in immediate dismissal.

  ii) Check Parfitt for signs of life. Repeat at half-hourly intervals. Homework:

  i) Ask Muriel in Baker’s office to dig out scripts of Any Day but Today, Holiday in the Rain, Simpkins and Son, The Long, Long Wait and The Ladder Gang. Read, mark and inwardly digest. Note clever flashback structure in The Long, Long Wait. That’s the way to do it. Not that I got any credit, of course, since reviewers think that films are invented by the director as he goes along.

  ii) For Christ’s sake go and see some American films. Your idea of the way Americans talk appears to be based on Louisa May Alcott.

  iii) The director’s informed me that the propeller-fouling scene (studio) has too much dialogue and not enough tension. I don’t agree, but better we do the rewrites than he does. You may as well have a stab at it. Don’t cut any gags.

  iv) Go and sweet-talk Mr Shipton in accounts. Since Parfitt won’t travel (think of him as a crate of fine wine, the sediment of which needs to remain undisturbed), you might be able to sq
ueeze a return train-fare and a couple of nights out of the production. Come and see why films should always be shot entirely in studio.

  v) Don’t stand underneath any thousand-pounders.

  Parfitt had been left no such list, and without Buckley’s gadfly presence he seemed to sink into torpor, dozing for most of the morning, chin on chest, and staring out of the window with his arms folded for most of the afternoon. Catrin wanted to ask him why he didn’t just go home, but she felt oddly constrained; she realized that she’d scarcely ever spoken to him directly – all communication had been via Buckley, as if the latter were the string between two cocoa tins.

  Rather than ask Parfitt questions, then, she offered an occasional commentary on what she’d been doing, in the hope of gaining some response.

  ‘I went to see Men Against the Sky last night, it’s about a drunken test pilot. They talk so fast, Americans, I kept thinking that we ought to give our American a bit more to say otherwise we’ll end up ten minutes short.’

  ‘Any good?’ asked Parfitt, after a pause of several seconds.

  ‘You mean the picture?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Not bad. I could see the ending a mile away, though.’

  ‘Flagged.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Flagged the ending. That’s what we say. They flagged the ending.’

  ‘Oh I see . . .’

  That was one entire afternoon’s conversation. On other days, she managed to extract Parfitt’s opinion on the director (‘picky’), the war (‘lost unless we get the Russians in’), and Buckley (‘best in the business’), as well as his suggestions for the propeller scene, which mainly seemed to involve cutting most of Rose and Lily’s dialogue. She had the feeling that Parfitt didn’t have much time for women.

  By the second week of Buckley’s absence, she had read a bundle of scripts, sat through nine examples of whip-crack American dialogue, obtained a travel chit from a grudging accounts department, and lopped two and a half pages from the scene in question. She handed it to Parfitt late one afternoon and he read it slowly, hunched over the desk, the breath whistling through his nostrils.