‘He did speak of you, and how he’d met you here - I was stuck in London, you see - and then the embarkation came—’ Unaccountably her vision blurred.
The girl took her arms. ‘Here, don’t take on so. Come with me. Here, sit down.’ She led Mary to a bench; some of its slats had been removed, maybe for firewood, but it was possible to perch on it. Sitting there, in the sharp sunlight, Mary felt the last of her energy drain out of her.
Hilda was as pretty as her photographs had suggested, but with a long, rather serious face, a strong nose, and a determined set to her chin. She didn’t seem to be wearing any make-up; that bright red hair, struggling to escape from her cap, was the most colourful thing about her. ‘What are you doing here, Mrs Wooler?’
‘Mary. Call me Mary, for God’s sake.’
‘It’s Gary, isn’t it?’ Her voice rose. ‘Has something happened to him? I’ve had no news since—’
‘There’s nothing bad, that I know of.’ She told her what she had learned from the War Office.
‘And so you came.’
‘Yeah. The trouble is I don’t know what to do now I’m here.’
‘Then it’s lucky you found me,’ Hilda said firmly. ‘We’ll ask my dad.’
‘Your dad?’
‘You’ll see.’ Hilda took Mary’s hand, stood, and led Mary away from the sea front and into the town. But as they walked she glanced across at the work unit still labouring at the balloon.
Mary asked, ‘Are you sure you can get away?’
‘Oh, they can manage without me. Tricky job, mind. If the wind changes you get a bag of hydrogen coming down in the middle of town, and one fag-end and it’s blammo. Of course we WAAFs could manage it alone, but the men would never admit to that.’ She turned her palm to show what looked like rope bums. ‘They call us “amazons, you know. In the papers.’ She laughed, quite gaily.
‘I’m partly responsible for that, I suppose. I’m a journalist of sorts, a stringer for the Boston Traveller.’
Her eyes widened. ‘You are? Gary says you’re a historian.’
‘A historian by profession. I, we, happened to be here when the war broke out. I looked for something more useful to do.’
‘Just as Gary did.’
‘To tell you the truth, I tried to stop him joining up. I mean, America isn’t in this war.’
‘Do you wish you’d tried harder now?’
‘No,’ Mary said, thinking that over. ‘No, I’m proud of him. He did what he thought was right.’
Hilda nodded. ‘Look, here’s my dad.’
Her father turned out to be a policeman, a constable in uniform. Today, complete with his gas-mask slung over his shoulder, he was on duty outside the town hall. With various uniforms hurrying to and fro, the building was evidently serving as some kind of information station for the evacuation operation.
‘Dad!’ Hilda broke into a run for the last couple of steps, and, suddenly girlish, let him give her a quick uniformed hug.
‘Hello, love.’ The father took off his heavy bobby’s helmet, to reveal a square, deeply lined face, greying hair cut short and smoothed flat with pomade. He must have been in his late forties. Mary thought she could see something of his daughter in him; he must have been a looker once. ‘What’s up? Lost your toy balloon?’
‘It’s Gary. Dad, he’s back—’
‘He might be,’ Mary put in.
The father eyed her, surprised by her accent. ‘And you are?’
Hilda introduced her quickly.
The father shook her hand; his grip was warm, firm and sure. ‘Call me George.’
‘Mary.’
‘I saw little enough of your son before he was shipped away. But he went off to fight for a good cause. And now you say he’s back?’
‘It’s possible. All I really know is that elements of his division should have been brought back here. What I don’t know is where I might find him.’
George Tanner rubbed his chin. ‘The evacuation’s being going on for about six days already. There are shot-up soldiers all over town - I don’t mean to alarm you, Mary - not enough of them by half, things have gone badly over there. Look, I have contacts of my own. Wait while I nip inside.’ He tucked his helmet under his arm and went into the town hall.
With her father gone Hilda asked solicitously, ‘How are you bearing up? Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Maybe later,’ Mary said. ‘I’m glad I found you, Hilda. Without you I don’t know what I would have done.’
‘Somebody would have helped you. People are like that. Besides, we haven’t done anything yet.’ She was staring at the town hall door. ‘Come on, Dad.’
George came hurrying out of the hall, fixing his helmet hastily on his head. He carried a slip of paper in his hand. ‘Look, we need to go to the hospital. It’s that way.’ He pointed. ‘It’s only half a mile. I could get a car but it’s going to be quicker to walk it.’ He eyed Mary, uncertain. ‘Are you up to that?’
‘I’m tougher than I look.’
Hilda led the way, hurrying.
Mary said carefully, ‘So you found him.’
‘There’s a record in the log, yes,’ George said, with what sounded like a policeman’s caution. ‘They’ve got everything buttoned down in there, those ATS ladies, it’s quite remarkable. Every last soldier logged in, cross-checked, filed and indexed. If only the generals had done as well in France.’
Her relief that Gary was here, that he had come through the funnel of the evacuation, was tinged with fear. ‘But he’s in the hospital, you say.’
‘When the evacuation started, they cleared out all the hospitals ready to receive the wounded. They set up a few field stations in the schools too. As it turned out there were far fewer coming back than had been planned for.’ He said carefully, ‘You mustn’t read anything into the fact that he’s in hospital. It’s a case of first come first served, not medical need.’
‘We’ll know soon enough,’ Hilda said, hurrying forward.
‘Afterwards we’ll sort you out,’ George said. ‘Find you somewhere to stay. You can be with us if you like. There’s just the two of us, Hilda and me. My wife passed away a dozen years ago.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Long time ago. Look, is there anybody you’ll need to call? We don’t have a private phone, and the public lines are blocked - well, you know that - but if you want to make a call I’ll take you to the police station. You have a husband - Gary’s father?’
‘I’m afraid we’re divorced, George. But, yes, I’ll need to speak to him at some point. Depending on - you know.’
‘We’ll sort you out, don’t you worry.’
‘You’re being very kind.’
III
At the hospital entrance ambulances pulled up and drove off, and there was a steady stream of stretcher parties. Nurses fussed around, and a doctor seemed to be on hand to greet every arrival. Green Army blankets were spread over the stretchers. The staff looked strained, the doctors’ white coats ominously stained with old blood.
At a desk inside the entrance an ATS volunteer, a woman of about sixty with a helmet of steel-grey hair, was doing her best to block the way to all non-essential visitors. But George the copper, big and bluff and authoritative, easily talked his way past her. Further in they found an information desk manned by a Wren, who was able to give them the number of the ward they needed. The hospital was busy, and there were soldiers everywhere, in grimy uniforms and bandages. But even so there were a lot of staff and arm-banded volunteers standing around, looking fretful, with nothing to do.
There was a dreadful smell, a heavy iron stink. George saw Mary react, and he touched her arm, and Hilda’s. ‘That’s dried blood. I remember it from the last lot, the first war. The men are turning up here with old wounds, days old some of them. You never forget the smell. But you just have to put it aside and get on with things. All right?’
They both nodded, and went on. To Mary, knowing that Gary was close, somewhere in this
crowded, busy building, these last moments, this walk down the corridors with their shining floors, seemed endless, as if time was stretching.
At last they came to Ward Twenty-Three. There were two rows of beds before a big sash window that had been flung open to allow in the light and air of a garden. The beds were all full of broken-looking bodies, lying still. Mary couldn’t bear to look at their faces. She marched forward, looking at the names on the medical notes fixed to the iron bed frames.
And here was his name, WOOLER, GARY P., with his British army serial number. He lay on his back covered by a thick white blanket, his eyes closed. A skinny young man with thick black hair and wearing a white coat sat on a hard upright chair beside the bed, eyeing them.
Gary looked asleep. His face was clean, though Mary could see some bruising, but his blond hair, scattered over the pillow, was matted and filthy. A drip stand stood beside him; a clear tube snaked into a vein in his arm, the needle covered by a bit of bandage. Mary was hugely relieved that at first glance he looked whole: two arms, two legs, no hideous medical apparatus strapped to his body.
But Hilda was crying, with great silent heaving sobs. Mary felt her own tears come, and she buried her face in the girl’s neck, smelling the starch of her uniform.
When they broke, Mary turned to the young man on the chair. She whispered, ‘Nurse? When will he wake up? Can we speak to him?’
He stood. ‘Well, I’m not a nurse. Just a volunteer.’ He grinned, and showed her an armband with a red cross. ‘My name’s Benjamin Kamen.’
Both Hilda and George stiffened at hearing his accent. ‘You sound German,’ Hilda said, wondering.
‘I’m Austrian,’ said Kamen. ‘An Austrian Jew, in fact. I came to Britain to fight. They wouldn’t let me join up. Flat feet! So I’m doing this instead.’
‘And why are you here?’ George asked, still sounding suspicious.
‘Because I’ve got this accent,’ Kamen said simply. ‘Makes the English uncomfortable. So I try to help out with the international brigades. Half of them don’t recognise my accent, or if they do they feel like outsiders anyhow. And when I got to know Gary, when he was brought in - he spoke about you, Mrs Wooler.’ He faced Mary. ‘I recognised your name. I used to read your pieces in the Traveller, and I know about your work before the war. I’ve been waiting here to meet you.’
Mary was bewildered. ‘Thank you—’
‘Mrs Wooler, there’s something I need to talk to you about. You might be able to help me. It could be urgent.’
George snorted. ‘More urgent than this? For God’s sake, man.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Kamen backed off, hands raised.
‘But is he all right?’ Hilda asked.
Gary stirred. ‘You could try asking him yourself.’ His head turned, and his eyes flickered open.
Mary grabbed her son’s hand and squeezed it, pressing it to her face. ‘Oh, Gary, my God. What a day you’ve given me!’
‘I’m sorry.’ His voice was very dry, cracking. ‘Mind you, I’ve not been at a picnic myself, I can tell you that.’ He turned his head to Hilda, who was suffering that odd silent sobbing again, and he stroked her face. George, standing massively, rested a hand on his daughter’s shoulder.
‘He got off lightly,’ Ben Kamen murmured. ‘Believe it or not. The troops are turning up raw off the beaches of France. When they come in it’s more like a battlefield dressing station here than a hospital.’
‘And you,’ Hilda said, stroking Gary’s brow, ‘look as if you need more sleep.’
‘Yeah.’ But he faced his mother, wanting to tell her. ‘Listen, Mom. They tore across the country in those tanks of theirs. There was nothing to stop them. We did nothing but retreat - a fighting retreat, but a retreat. The Brits just weren’t prepared for what hit them. I heard some of them bitching that it wasn’t like this in India. And, Christ, the things we saw. Women and kids mown down from the air—’
‘It’s all right,’ Mary said.
‘Well, we got to the coast. The Germans had us pinned. And then we heard that Guderian was coming, with his First Panzers. We all knew what that bastard had done in Poland. They say he reached Gravelines, and secured bridgeheads over the river there. He waited one day. This was last Friday. I don’t know why he paused. It let us start the evacuation. But then, on the Saturday, he came for us.
‘Mom, we set up a perimeter. We fought back. But it was a slaughter. You had the Panzers ripping into our flanks, and the damn Luftwaffe coming at us from overhead, and we just couldn’t get on those ships fast enough. I was in a line for three days, a typical goddamn English queue, waiting for a place on a destroyer. No food, no water, nothing.
‘I got away. I was lucky. The scuttlebutt here is that ten per cent might make it home, out of four hundred thousand on those beaches. That’s half the damn English army, Mom. I can’t see how much of a fight they can put up after that.’
‘Hush,’ Mary said, for he was becoming agitated; she tried to calm him, smoothing his brow.
‘He didn’t sleep for five nights, I think,’ Kamen murmured. ‘He has a lot of healing to do.’
But Gary was still distressed. ‘I think maybe the English have lost their war already, Mom. Lost it, on the beaches of France. Next thing you know they will be here. The Nazis.’
George shook his head. ‘They won’t come. Hitler wants an armistice. That’s what they say.’
Gary actually laughed, though it hurt him. ‘An armistice? After all this?’
A nurse came then, and a doctor; they administered a sedative. Mary sat with her son until he slept.
The strange medical volunteer, Ben Kamen, waited for his chance to speak to her.
IV
17 July
It was another glorious day in this long, glorious summer. And in occupied France there was nothing more glorious than to be a soldier of the Reich.
Ernst Trojan was on a rest day, and he wanted to use it well. He would have come here to Claudine’s little apartment even if not for the sex; sooner the sweet breath of Claudine than the gusty farts of some fat Bavarian pig of an obergefreiter in the Wehrmacht’s tent city - or, worse, a few more hours of drunken mockery by his elder brother and his drinking partners in the SS. And yet, as the heat climbed in the middle of the day, as he lay naked with Claudine on her bed and the light slanted through the shutter slats into the dusty, scented room, he longed to be out in the world.
‘Get dressed,’ he told Claudine with a grin. He threw a bundle of clothes at her, and hunted for his pants.
She lay there watching him. Claudine Rimmer was tall, taller than he was in fact, her limbs long and her torso slim; she lay naked on her bed, her legs parted slightly in unconscious, unafraid invitation. Her dusky complexion and rich black hair would have made him think more of a girl of the Mediterranean than of Boulogne, of the northern coast. That was how he would have thought two or three months ago anyhow, but he had never even left Germany back then, and now he was learning fast. And when they made love, he had learned that she was not as delicate as she looked.
When she saw he was serious she sat up with a sigh, hunted through her clothes, and found a bra of impossible delicacy. ‘Getting bored with me, are you, Gefreiter Trojan? We’re not running out of sheaths, not yet.’ She brushed her hand over a pile of the things on her bedside table. They were actually English army issue, the spoils of war, far better quality than the standard Wehrmacht supply.
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