Alfie Lewis Box Set

by Thomas Wood

  I kept my pistol raised and cleared my throat loudly, “Who are you?” I declared, feeling almost god like as the only one who was wielding a weapon.

  The figure slowly began to lower his net curtain, swivelling his body round so that we could meet face to face. He drew in breath to speak to me and I felt the warmth in the air suddenly retreat, leaving me standing there in a chill. As he turned, I lowered my weapon, as if he had hypnotised me in some way and I felt compelled to do it.

  “I owe you a hearty congratulation. I hear that you’ve been promoted, Sir.”

  I recognised the voice instantly, but immediately rebuffed my initial assumption over who the voice belonged to, as he was dead. I knew that he was, I had seen him lying there with no life left in him.

  “Congratulations Captain Lewis, I always knew you’d go far.”

  It was him. His voice was so recognisable that I was certain there wasn’t another man in the world that would even sound half like him.

  “Red?”

  16

  I didn’t know how to feel. I was so certain that he was dead. I had been crawling towards him when the mortar round had landed in the hole that he was taking cover in. I had seen the smile that was instantly wiped from his face and the bits of his body that lay scattered far and wide as a result.

  There was no way that this was happening. I then began to think that this was just another one of my dreams, not the recurring one that I had become accustomed to, but one that was more developed in my mind, somehow more realistic than the ones that I usually had.

  But when Jameson joined me in the room, I realised that this was no dream. This was playing out before my very eyes, no matter how unbelievable it might have seemed.

  “I thought you’d be pleased to see me, Sir.” His Tyneside accent hadn’t waned at all in the almost two years that he had remained over here, the harsh but somehow soothing tones still remaining as strong as they had done the last time I’d heard him call my name.

  As I looked at his face, a shocked expression etched upon it, as if I somehow should have been over the moon to see him standing before me, I slowly recalled that it was only in my dreams that I had seen him blasted to bits by a mortar round. In the actual event, I had merely seen him disappear from the shell hole that he was in, and I had refused to scrabble any closer to the crater, for fear of what it would do to my mind. It had never occurred to me that he might have survived the blast.

  I had all sorts of thoughts racing through my mind, and I could have done without the one that reminded me that the Germans were likely watching the house as we stood there, biding their time and waiting for the right moment to attack.

  I couldn’t just let it slide though, I had to know how he had done it. I had to know what had led him to standing here in this room with me, clearly frustrated that I wasn’t giving him the credit that he believed he deserved.

  “But, how?” my crackled and weak voice spoke, the roughness of my mouth feeling like sandpaper as I ran my tongue over the insides of my cheeks. It was completely bone dry, almost as if no liquid had ever graced the sides and I began to feel my tongue swell as it pined for more water as soon as possible.

  He twitched away at the net curtain again, checking down the track to make sure that I hadn’t been followed in by anyone.

  “Wait, you know each other?” Jameson finally came to his senses and was beginning to piece everything together for the first time since coming through the front door. “You know each other! What is this? You’ve brought me here to kill me? Has Jimmy set you up to this? Because I asked too many questions? I thought you were different Alf, I really did! I thought you believed me!”

  His tirade of anger and frustration poured out from him like a burst river bank, and I had to place my arms on him to steady him for a moment, but also to make sure that he wasn’t able to get to the pistol in the back of my waistband too easily.

  “Robert, calm down. Robert, look at me. I am on your side, I’m as confused as you are. Just give me a minute.”

  I could really be doing without him right now, and as he took a breath in to launch into another offensive, he clocked the look in my eye, the one that told him that if he carried on this way, he would be receiving a whack from the pistol right across his jawline.

  He closed his mouth and began to suck in huge mouthfuls of air, uttering madman like whispers of “It’s okay. It’s okay,” as he tried vehemently to calm himself down. In all truthfulness, I felt like joining him, but instead knew that it would be more productive to face up to Red, to find out what was going on.

  “Red, what’s going on? Why are you here? How are you here?”

  He turned to face me and looked straight into my eyes sincerely, for the first time since our happy little reunion. I realised that I had missed him awfully; the joviality of his smile, the comforting nature of the way he spoke, simply having him beside me as we fired our rifles towards the enemy, I found that I had been pining for all of it ever since I had lost him.

  It had been nearly eighteen months since I had thought I had seen him blown up by a mortar, whereupon I had conceded that he was dead and that I must carry on alone. Which I did, until I met Cécile. He had not left my mind though, and he continually reappeared in my thoughts, the guilty ones mainly, and also haunted me in my dreams, blaming me for his demise.

  I did feel happy to see him, in fact I was elated, but the confusion that governed my every thought as we stood in that run-down little cottage, failed to let me display my affection and relief that he was, in fact, alive. The primary concern that was contributing to my confusion right now was why was he acting on the orders of Joseph Baudouin. Did that mean that he too was a traitor?

  “It’s a long story Alf. I’ll get to it in a minute. Right now, we have a more pressing concern.”

  He moved away from the window for a moment, to walk over into the centre of the room. Instinctively, I edged my way over to take his place, as I felt far better if I could see what was coming for myself and retain an element of control.

  “The Germans will be here any second. Coming to pick up the colonel, here.” He raised half an eyebrow in Jameson’s direction, and it came across like he was almost mocking him in a way. “I assume that’s not your real name then?”

  Jameson was nibbling on the end of his finger, his other arm folded across his chest as he stared at the floor. He didn’t really look up as he responded to Red, shaking his head and letting his eyes close for a second or two.

  “And you’re not a colonel?”

  “No,” I said, “turns out, he doesn’t know the queen either.”

  Red chuckled as he turned back to face me once again. His face was just as I had remembered it, pointed but welcoming, but his lower jaw seemed to be ever so slightly out of line with the rest of his face, like he had jarred it and it had got stuck there.

  “They’ll be here soon, any second in fact now that the light is off. They’re back that way somewhere.” He said, flipping his thumb back down the track in the direction that he had approached from. At the mention of it, I pressed my head into the wall, to try and get a better look at the concealed part of the track that they were apparently to advance down.

  “So, what’s all this about Red?”

  “It’s a long story Alf, I’ll have to give you the abridged version for now. Then if we make it out alive, I’ll give you everything.”

  I wondered if we would ever make it out of there alive, and for a moment, I was hoping that Red wouldn’t. I didn’t understand how it was possible for him to end up in this sort of situation, and I wasn’t particularly keen to be putting my life in his hands at all just yet. There was something about him that was off, and it wasn’t just the fact that he was clearly working with Joseph, and the Germans.

  It was like he had just come out of the other side of a battle, like he was totally exhausted but also mourning the loss of many of his comrades. His face seemed to have fallen in the eighteen months since I had last seen
him. Previously, it had always been creased up in a smile, but now, it seemed like his natural resting face was to have his mouth turned downwards and his eyes heavy and bloodshot. There was something that he was still hiding, that was eating away at him and keeping him up at night, I could tell.

  “Your boss,” he started, which immediately pulled Jameson out of his comatose state and back into the room.

  “What about him?” he blurted, ambushing Red so aggressively that I was sure that Red took a pace backwards to defend himself.

  “He’s set you up, mate. He told Joseph that you were here, and what you were here to do. He knows that you were tasked with bringing him down specifically.”

  “No,” I interjected, “we were here to take down the informer, apparently he’s a British soldier. We’re here for you.”

  “No, you ain’t,” Red instantly retorted, holding his palms up to offer an explanation. “I’m not stupid. I know that I was sent here to die tonight. I’ve been asking too many questions. Joseph wants me dead, but he’s too much of a coward to do it himself.”

  Each one of us was slowly growing increasingly agitated with the company in the room, and I had to double check that I still had both of the pistols in my possession, at least that way I would be able to put up a bit of a fight against these two if it came to it.

  “Joseph Baudouin is a coward. But, if he knows he’s got the men behind him, he’s not going to run away. He’s going to stand up and fight.”

  “How do you know Jimmy betrayed us?”

  He looked confused for a second, before realising who Jimmy must have been. That gave me some comfort at least. If he had known exactly who Jimmy Tempsford was, then I would have found it even more testing to try and trust my old friend.

  “He and Joseph have a past together. For some reason, they seem indebted to one another, like neither of them can stop helping the other one out. This war isn’t the Allies against the Nazis for them, it’s them against everyone else. It’s odd. Something must have happened in their past.”

  I felt Jameson’s head twitch straight towards me, but I refrained from looking back at him, in case Red interpreted our exchange as knowing something that he didn’t. I wasn’t going to be sharing intelligence with him tonight, it was all going to be one-way until I knew for certain whose side he was really on. Right now, despite all that he seemed willing to tell us, I didn’t believe he was going to be letting us free anytime soon.

  “Look, Joseph Baudouin has been in the pockets of the Germans for years now. I’ve been here almost two years and I’m certain it goes back a lot further than that. I’d go as far to say that your boss in London is in the very same pocket.”

  “Now come on…” I said, trying to defend the man who was conveniently not here to defend himself, but Red beat me to the next sentence.

  “Your boss is using this whole situation as a set up. There was a German somewhere along the line, wasn’t there? Am I right in assuming you know about him?”

  “Yeah…” I said reluctantly, glancing over at Jameson, who was now practically hopping up and down at the prospect of getting the incriminating evidence that he had yearned after for so long.

  “Well it was the same bloke from London that told him the German was going over to the Brits. There was something he was going to tell them that Baudouin and your boss didn’t want him to spill. That’s how he found out about the extraction plan in the field, there was no other leak.”

  He gave us a moment or two to try and digest what he was saying, clearly hoping that we would offer something up in return, both of us too numb to say anything for him.

  “Anyway, the German was due to fly out with some British agent. Joseph went there, with the Germans, to make sure he never got out on that plane.”

  “That was me, by the way.” He looked at me confused for a second. “The British agent, that was me.”

  “You’re not serious? So, we were in the same field all that time?”

  “I suppose so. So Baudouin was the one who killed the German?”

  Red nodded his head gently. I instantly felt vindicated once again, having blamed myself all this time for Rudolf’s death, trying to apportion some of the blame for not being clear enough in my instructions to Louis. I felt like running to Louis to tell him the news, so that he wouldn’t place the blame at his own feet any longer. It wasn’t because of us that Rudolf had died, it was because of the conniving men that hid in the shadows that had him executed.

  “It works both ways, Joseph will still pass information to your boss, but its dodgy or just made up. Your boss has betrayed you, but he’s the one that’s being played here. He hasn’t got a clue. The one thing I can’t work out is why your boss continues to give information to Joseph, knowing full well he’ll be going to the Germans with it the minute they’ve got off the transmitter.”

  Once again, he looked at both of us in turn, searching for some kind of response that could enlighten him as to why Jimmy was so careless in what he said to Joseph.

  “Why are you telling us all of this? Surely you’d have a better chance at surviving if you kept quiet?”

  “It don’t really matter anymore. You see, once you two are out of the way in London, and me over here, there will be no more questions around Joseph and your boss. This is it. The end of the line, you know?”

  I wanted to believe him, really, I did, if only because of the hours that we spent chatting and getting to know one another on the inside of our tank. But for some reason I was struggling to believe it, there was something still missing to his chain of events. He could sense that he was still walking on very thin ice, especially when he moved his eyes down to my hands, which were still caressing the grip of the pistol, which I was debating whether to use or not right now.

  “Come on, Alf. I’m not asking for a favour because we’re friends. I’ve given you solid information here. Just ask yourself, hasn’t it seemed like everything has already been thought out for you? Look at what’s gone wrong, everything points to the fact that you’re not all on the same side, Alf. You’ve been living a lie.”

  I did as he was suggesting and began to look back at everything that had led me to standing there in that room, debating whether to use the pistol on someone who had been my very best friend, until I thought he had died some months ago.

  It was true, it had all seemed like everything had been mapped out for me, even the things that had gone wrong could have been staged. But then I asked myself whether any human could sacrifice so many people, all for the sake of keeping me away from what they were hiding.

  “It’s true, isn’t it, Alf?” Jameson said, finally unfolding his arms and going off the taste of his own fingers. “Just look at how easily Jimmy sent me here. I’m not the right man for this, he knows that. But it would make his life easier if I were dead.”

  He was right. Maybe it had all been one elaborate set up to get us off his back. If that was the case, Jameson, Red and I, would all be dead by the time the sun rose in a few hours’ time.

  17

  The floorboards creaked impatiently, as they groaned at the weight that was forcing itself down upon them. I couldn’t blame them, the combined weight of the three of us on the damp, weakened boards would probably have been more than enough to send us crashing through the floor if we all simply stamped our feet at the same time.

  “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  As he asked me the inevitable question, I realised that my mind was as far away from here as was possible, in fact, it was in Egypt. I couldn’t help but think of my brother Bill as we stood there, and wondered if he’d had a moment such as this, where he knew with an absolute certainty that he was going to die. I always thought that, when I was about to die, that I would accept it, as it was one of the only inevitable things that you can count on in life.

  I liked to think that I was mature enough and understanding of how wars worked to be able to face up to the reality of death bravely and plainly. But, in the actual event,
I found myself in denial, not being able to look death in the face like I thought I would have been able to when I thought about it. I guess it simply boiled down to the fact that I didn’t want to die just yet. It wasn’t because I wanted to be valiant, declaring that I didn’t want to die until I had finished what I had started, but out of a real, selfish desire to want to be able to go home again, maybe even live a normal life for a few years.

  I wondered how many other men had fallen before me, feeling as guilty as I now did, knowing that others may have given their lives with not a single selfish thought occupying their minds, or whether every soldier did give their lives willingly and for the sake of others. In that regard, I supposed I was nothing like any of the other soldiers that laid down their life before I did. I was nothing like my brother.

  “I don’t really know what I believe anymore Red. I used to think we were fighting this war because of the evil that was around, but how can we be, when we have to use evil to be able to fight it? Aren’t we just as bad as them? Besides, how do I even know you’re telling the truth. You don’t even know who our boss is.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” he said confidently, but also with an element of shame and despondency in his voice.

  “What do you mean?” Jameson chimed in, and I grew frustrated at him, either he wanted to be a part of this conversation or not, and right now he continued to pick and choose when it suited him.

  “So, you do know him then?” I queried, boldly.

  “Not exactly. I think I know who he is. He introduced himself as Jimmy, wouldn’t give me any other details other than that. Look,” he said, sensing how impatient we were both growing with his ceaseless storytelling, “I can prove to you that he isn’t all that he makes out. He really hasn’t told you everything has he?”

  He knew that he hadn’t, and it only frustrated me more that he was declaring it loud and clear in that rundown little cottage.