by Thomas Wood
I thought about it all for a little too long, he knew that I was actually taking his proposition into consideration. But then, the doubts slowly began to creep in. Could I really trust this man? Was he actually going to let me go free tonight? Was the prospect of actually seeing the war out in relative peace a realistic one?
What if the Allies won the war? There was still a possibility that they might. I would be strung up on the nearest lamp post as soon as they had found out what I had done. The only reason that Red was still alive now was because I knew him, anyone else would have seen him dead the second they found out he was British.
“Alfie, come on. Your friend has seen the light. The Germans are not as bad as your government would like you to believe.”
I thought for a moment more, trying to think through a response incredibly carefully. I didn’t want to accidentally agree to something that would later come back to bite me. In either of the eventualities, agreeing or disagreeing to Joseph’s proposal, I was dead anyway, but at least with his option, I could wait for death with a few notes in my pocket.
What spilled from my mouth was not what I had intended, but pure emotion that had snuck up on me, like a sniper trying to find a decent vantage point.
“No, no. Red’s not like that. He doesn’t care for money. You’re lying. You’re lying! You and Jimmy have forced his hand, if he was to go back to Britain he would be thrown into prison, you’ve placed him in this, he’s not like that!”
I felt the tears beginning to brew in my tear ducts and my excessive breathing and panting was merely an attempt to prevent them from falling onto Joseph’s face, as I didn’t want to display an element of weakness for him to build his argument upon.
“I very much doubt that he has told you the full truth my friend. Maybe you should ask him one of these days. Get his view on the matter, maybe then you will understand. Of course, that is if you live that long enough to speak to him. I hope that he lives long enough to see you. Maybe he will see that you would have let him down, and not for the first time from what I have heard.”
My finger was instantly back on the trigger, almost as if it had never left, the barrel being pushed so hard into the skin of his forehead, that it was like I was trying to leave the man with a permanent tattoo of its imprint, to act as an eternal reminder to him of me and what I had stood for.
“I haven’t let him down! I haven’t! I didn’t know he was alive, I thought he was dead!”
My saliva splashed all over his face, Joseph barely even flinching as more and more droplets began to drip onto his face, a mixture of my spittle and the large collections of perspiration that were now tumbling onto him.
His face started to turn into a wry smile, as he continued to mock me childishly.
“Are you going to kill me Alfie? I don’t think you’ve got it in you. Come on, do it.”
I began to shake erratically as the adrenaline began to take control over everything in my body, from my thoughts right the way down to how thirsty I had been feeling half a second before. My skin began to sear up. A burning red pigment began to rise to the surface, I could feel it on my face almost immediately, but could sense the volcanic-like lava beginning to elevate to the surface of my entire body. I was furious.
I closed my eyes as I began to squeeze the trigger. I had wanted to kill this man ever since I had met him, and I wanted to be able to see his head explode as a round penetrated the bony case of his skull, before it ripped through his brain mercilessly. But, in the event, I couldn’t bear to watch, and I didn’t know why.
I could tell that he was speaking, pleading almost as I continued to apply the pressure to the trigger gently. I didn’t want to hear anything else that this man had to say, he had already revealed too much to me, and taunted me far too much for me to take any more on board.
“You’re not going to kill me Alf! You’re not! I have someone very special to you, I’m the only one that knows where they are! Kill me and they’ll be left all alone. And we wouldn’t want that now, would we?”
His words slowly seeped into my mind, under the net of the adrenaline that had intoxicated my consciousness with hatred and vengeance.
Everything seemed to slow down for me, as if his words had acted as the counterbalance that I had needed against the violence that was rotting away at my mind.
My eyes opened and the only thing that I could focus on and hear was the sound of my own breathing, gradually taking breaths in and out as I stared at my own hands, quaking as they wobbled the barrel of the gun around on Joseph’s skin.
He knew he had broken me, but he continued to speak in a hushed tone, “Someone very special to you, Alf. Very special. Don’t let them die.”
I wondered how long the noises outside had been going on for, the excitement that had filled my head blocking them out for an indeterminable amount of time.
For the first time since pinning him to the ground, I removed the pistol from Joseph’s head, instead letting my arm limply fall down by my side. Pathetically, I began to look around the room, as if it would enlighten me as to who was outside and in how many numbers.
“Someone very special, Alfie.”
I leapt up from his body, the pain that he had inflicted upon me in our little scuffle all but gone, as I pictured myself staring out of the window. In the short run to the glass pane, I imagined seeing no one out there, the whole courtyard was empty, but only for a few seconds.
Then, emerging from the warehouse on the other side of the railway line was one figure, a woman. Her Red Cross uniform was untouched, unblemished by the war and was as clean as when I had first seen it so many months ago.
“Cécile!” I called, banging my hand on the window pane to grab her attention. Looking up at me, she splashed into the puddle at her feet, as she sank to her knees, sobbing uncontrollably.
Joseph came to join me at the window, grunting softly as he tried his best to ignore his wounds. I looked round at him, smiling.
“Switzerland, my friend?” He said coolly.
My head turned away from him, ready to grab his proposal with both hands, but suddenly I stopped. The smile fell away from my face like a five-hundred-and-fifty-pound bomb that dropped from the sky, and my knees began to quiver as if I was being hauled in front of my headmaster.
There wasn’t just one figure there now, it had all been the imaginings of my mind. There must have been about fifty of them, all with a weapon of some description in their hands, not pointing directly at me, but all quite clearly ready to be called into action.
The figure was still there, on their knees, sobbing quietly, adding to the volume of water as they knelt in the puddle.
27
Slowly, pathetically, I moved my hand from the window, peeling it almost from the cooling glass, leaving a sweaty condensation mark where my palm had pressed into it moments ago. Everything fell silent once again, my gradual, methodical breathing the only thing that I could focus on as I closed my eyes and wished to be as far away from this place as was possible.
I began to dream of my parents, how I longed to be back with them, my heart aching as I thought about them right now, sitting in that church for the fifth or sixth time that week, praying that their youngest son would make it through the war unscathed, and would one day return to them. At least that is what I hoped they were praying for.
The longer that I stayed here in France, the longer I spent trying to sort out the mess that I had become embroiled in, the lower my odds were of actually ever making it home again. Right now, I had two options; the first was to give in to Joseph’s demands, to take his offer of being a paid member of the German army, in which I would live, but never see home again. The other was to take my chances, in which the odds of me surviving rested heavily on the marksmanship skills of the men that were all staring up at the window.
As I stood at the window pane, looking down at the scene before me, it was far from the dreamlike reunion that I had been hoping for, the loving meeting that I had dreamt
of since the first day that she had been taken away from me.
I began to pan around, taking in every single man and weapon that would be at Joseph’s disposal, each one a prod in the back closer and closer towards what Joseph was wanting me to do. There was a large group of German soldiers, all carefully spaced out in a semi-circle towards the north edge of the factory complex, the direction from which I had come in. To the south edge, there didn’t seem to be anybody, but I knew that the water tower would more than likely have some sort of sniper up there and ready to go, and he wouldn’t have been alone.
Breaking up the almost continuous line of men, on either side of the train track, were two motorbikes, parked at an angle which meant the machine gunners, perched in their sidecars, had a good field of fire down the train track, their guns trained on the area where I would emerge from when I exited the factory itself.
Behind them, were two army trucks, that had mounted the railway line to produce an odd kind of roadblock, as if my escape plan was to suddenly knock up a steam engine and puff my way out of there. It took me a few minutes to realise that they were parked in such a manner to allow for a quick embarkation and a swift exit from the factory complex.
In front of the roadblock and immense wall of firepower that they had created, was Red, standing confidently in front of the wall of armour behind him, knowing that nothing would happen to him without his friends behind chipping in to the party.
He stared at me through the window, with no hint of how he was feeling in his face; there was no smugness like I had partially expected, but no remorse or regret either. I tried to read his mind, and I hoped that he was thinking of his family now, as he tried to piece together what I was thinking myself.
Red had a pistol, and I became convinced that it was the very same one that Jameson had given to him on that night in the farmer’s cottage. It certainly looked like the same one from where I was stood.
The pistol hung limply in his left hand, down by his side but, as soon as we locked eyes with one another, he made a big show of raising it up, so that it was in line with the head of the figure that was kneeling before him.
In front of Red, the kneeling, sobbing figure wasn’t Cécile as I had desperately hoped; it was Jameson, his clothes all ripped and torn, exposing his bare knees to the puddle that he now knelt in submissively.
Jameson seemed to be the victim of his own personal little earthquake, as his whole body was shaken and swayed by the small little tremors that originated in his legs. My eyes slowly made their way down the length of Red’s arm, taking in the pistol slowly, before turning more onto the head that was at the end of it.
His head was down, so I couldn’t see how badly beaten he had been, but if the state of Louis had been anything to go by, then I didn’t hold out much hope for Jameson winning any beauty contests any time soon. Even from here, I could make out the thin piece of cloth around the back of his head, that would have run right the way around the front of his face, gagging his mouth and making it incredibly difficult for him to breathe. That way, focusing so much on his breathing, Jameson would have become a much more passive prisoner, with the Germans having far less to worry about as he honed in on simply trying to stay alive.
Jameson’s clothes were ripped and torn, as if they had tried to expose as much skin as was possible, without the same clothes falling away from his body. The sleeves on his shirt had been ripped from him, one at the elbow, the other at the shoulder, exposing nicely the length of rope that had been tied so tightly around his hands that even I, from quite some distance, could make out the blood as it forced its way into the surface of his skin.
I couldn’t blame him for sobbing, I found it unlikely that anyone else would have been able to hold it together, had they been in the same situation.
I felt a resurgence of pride as I looked at him, as he had somehow managed to keep himself alive for far longer than I had ever expected, and it felt good to know that I was going to be able to lock eyes with him, even if this was definitely going to be the last time now.
I wondered what would happen to him, should I accept Joseph’s offer, or similarly, what would happen to him if I rejected. If I took the deal, then there was a chance that I would be able to make a case for him to have the same deal put to him. If I turned it down, then I not only condemned myself, but Jameson also.
“Come on Alfie. Look around you. You could get out of all of this alive and you’d be paid handsomely as well. Do you not realise how good a bargain that really is?”
I tried my best to ignore the tremors in my breathing as I mulled it all over, and I tried to disguise them from Joseph’s ears with an attempt to clear my throat.
“Put the gun down, my friend. Come with us, and live. Who knows, you might still be able to live a happy life. You can leave all of this behind. Think of that Alfie, no more death, no more running.”
His gentle tones were soon replaced by a more irate demeanour, as he grew frustrated at my lack of activity. The man before him opting instead to continue staring at a pane of glass and hope that everything would all just blow over if he left it long enough.
“Alfie. You are in over your head. This is your only way out. Surely you see that? You are not a stupid man. Calculate the risk…You just don’t seem to understand what good the Germans are doing throughout Europe. It is not as bad as the British portray it as, really, it’s not.
“Your friend will tell you that.”
I readjusted the grip on the pistol that hung pathetically down by my side. There was no use to it now, except for the distant thought that I could still kill Joseph, before the rest of the Germans murdered me and Jameson as a result.
But the more thought I gave to the matter, the more appealing Joseph’s proposal was, the more sensible even.
There was a chance that he would give me all the intelligence that I needed to be able to go and find Cécile. With him, there was a chance that we would be able to be together again, we could actually build a life together, one that would make me happier than I could ever imagine right now. The prospect of actually finding happiness again seemed like one that was so foreign to me, that I may as well have been faced with a pilgrimage to the moon in order to find it again.
But, here it was, all of a sudden, on a plate before me, the only thing being asked of me was to take it and listen to this man in the process.
If I took the plate, then I would get a new chance at life, as if I had come out of the womb for the second time and able to start my life from scratch again. I would have a free rein in France just like Red had, until the war was over, and I could run away with Cécile to wherever I would have liked. To live in peace.
“I want your word,” I sniffled as I tried to fight back some of the tears, bewildered at the man that I had become, “that I would be safe. I also want help in finding Cécile. Understood?”
I was in no position whatsoever to be adding clauses to the bargain, but I had absolutely nothing to lose anymore. I had no shame.
“You have my word, Alfie,” he said, his eyes visibly delighted that he was adding another soldier to his ranks.
“Also…” I whimpered pathetically, like a dog who’d had his tail trodden on, “I want him to be given the same deal. At least the opportunity for him to think it through.”
I had lost too many men under my command, lost so many friends throughout this whole process, that I couldn’t bear to think of losing one more. I had to at least do my best for him, this way, the ball would be in Jameson’s court. If he chose not to take it, then his death wouldn’t be on my shoulders. He had been given a way out, one that he had refused.
Joseph nodded gently, staring out towards the scene that I too was gazing out over, one that didn’t seem like it had any way out, apart from one.
“Okay,” he whispered, his breath misting up a small patch of the glass that he stood behind, and I watched as the condensation was quickly chased away and replaced with the more usual, dirtying pane of glass that had
been there before.
I felt utterly disgusted with myself as I tried my hardest to think of a positive future, one where I had money, I had freedom, security and most of all, a future where I had Cécile.
But to take the deal, I would be going against everything that I had ever known, I would be going against my own inhibitions, my own moral code. I would be betraying not only my country and the men that I had served with, but I would be betraying myself.
If I accepted, I would be actively helping the enemy, I would be assisting them in trying to win the war. Who knows, I could end up sending the one man who would lead the allies to a victory to his death, instead of back to Britain where he could help end the war. Therefore, every German bomber that passed over my head, every last pound of ordnance that continued to rain down on the people of Britain would be partly my doing. I had to take the responsibility for it.
I would be giving the Germans so much assistance that it might as well have been me to be the one who pulled the trigger on my own brother Bill, making me want to throw up and break down in tears in equal measure.
How could I do that to my parents? They had already had one son killed as a result of this war, to lose another would surely put them both in early graves. If they were to ever find out my true situation, as working for the Nazis, then I doubted either of them would want to go on living for another second. I wasn’t sure that I could live with the knowledge of their disappointment, even though I knew that I would never see them again if I agreed to be turned.
I felt like I was being suffocated, as if the walls of the factory were tightening around my chest, forcing an answer out of me, especially as the dying light of the sun was beginning to succumb to the victorious darkness of the night.
I drummed my fingers over the grip of the pistol, no more thoughts running through my mind, praying that something would spring out at me, the next thing that did would be the option that I would take. That would determine my future.
