Waiting For the Day

by Leslie Thomas

  At a desk inside the lobby sat a French police sergeant, an oldish man with a philosophical demeanour, who stood as Paget came through the door. Keeping the turnip half-hidden in his left hand, Paget put up a stiff but hesitant salute with his right and mumbled: ‘Heil Hitler.’ The Frenchman nodded approvingly at the turnip.

  Marching through, Paget turned sharply right into the reception office. There were three blue-uniformed French policemen and one German junior officer in there, grouped in a corner sniggering over some confiscated pornographic pictures. There was an overalled Frenchwoman, stubby, elderly, holding a mop like a support as she cleaned the office floor and mechanically worked her jaw in time with her mopping.

  The four men straightened as he entered and one of the Frenchmen attempted to conceal the photographs in a drawer. One picture flew out of his reach and landed near the charwoman who picked it up, snorted and, as though aware of her duty, handed it to Paget. It was a nude girl apparently milking a cow. He sniffed and put it on the reception counter. He could see the alarm signal, a single white button, on the far right of the room. It was fixed, as Gilbert had told him, to a filing cabinet.

  Paget threw up a belated ‘Heil Hitler’ and the young German officer saluted in the same way while the Frenchmen, each guiltily eyeing the photograph, came to a shambling attention. The eyes of all four men now moved to the turnip. The officer seemed to be feeling some suspicion. He was examining Paget’s uniform and then looking at the turnip again. He spoke in German and Paget grunted as though the question was beneath his need to answer. He was aware of some commotion behind him in the entrance lobby. The young officer stood on his toes, looked beyond Paget, and saw whatever was going on. ‘Gott!’ he said and made to move forward.

  Paget took out his pistol. He would have thrown the grenade but the charwoman was in the way, her jaw still ruminating. The officer was unarmed but he now rushed bravely towards Paget. On the way he fell over the charwoman’s bucket, sending it clanging across the floor with the water flying. He ended on his knees with the woman standing over him, still blank-faced but with her toothless mouth working even more furiously. Paget pointed his pistol at the man. He motioned one of the frightened French policemen forwards and told him in French to disconnect the alarm. The man went across the room and with one glad pull parted the button from the cabinet.

  The German was still on his wet hands and knees. Paget kept his pistol fixed on him. From behind came a male voice: ‘Partez.’ He backed towards the door. Once outside he shut it and was surprised when the oldish French police sergeant, who had sat so thought-fully at the lobby desk, appeared and handed him the key. He locked the door, and made to return the key to the Frenchman who, suddenly vigorous, shook his head. Paget kept the key and made for the main exit.

  Outside everything was normal and sunlit. He could hear the traders in the market. Under the trees opposite were two Citroëns. As he made for them one moved away. The door in the rear car opened and he threw himself in. Antoinette Barre was sitting in the back seat. ‘That’s a nice turnip,’ she said.

  The pigsty had not housed pigs for some time; it was clean and sweet-smelling with shafts of sunlight streaming on to bales of fresh straw through apertures at the tops of the walls, below the corrugated-iron roof. There was room for them to sit agreeably between the bales.

  ‘This estate’, said Antoinette, ‘belongs to a lady aristocrat who is sympathetic. She is a widow and the Boche do not trouble her, except by appointment. She lives in the big house, about three kilometres away.’

  ‘Is this Madame Dupard?’ asked Paget. ‘If so I know her. I was in the house a few weeks ago. On my last visit.’

  ‘That is correct.’ She turned in the straw and studied his face. ‘Have we met before? It seems that we have.’

  ‘Last year,’ he said, disappointed. ‘You hid me. You stayed with me in a house.’

  She still had difficulty. ‘In October,’ he prompted.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ she smiled. ‘I remember a little. So many things happen in this country now, especially to me. I cannot remember everything.’ She turned and studied him again. ‘Did we make love?’

  She shrugged as if the reply did not matter. ‘That house,’ she said. ‘It was always dark. We were shut away in the dark so I did not see you much.’

  Paget said: ‘Does Madame Dupard know we are hiding here?’

  ‘I don’t know. If she does not, then it is better to continue that way. We should be safe although we will move on soon. The time is almost here for the invasion. We have heard the message.’

  ‘Verlaine,’ nodded Paget.

  ‘What a beautiful poem. “Les sanglots longs des violons de l’automne”. I am glad it was chosen to signal that the battle is soon. Everybody is misquoting it.’

  ‘It’s supposed to be secret,’ he pointed out.

  ‘There are no secrets in France any more,’ she said. ‘We are not good at keeping secrets.’

  He was still wearing the German uniform. ‘Soon you will have something more comfortable,’ she said. ‘Those boots make a noise like a mouse. They will bring clothes with the food and, I hope, the wine. Madame Dupard has some good vines here. We may get some from this estate.’

  ‘How will the Germans search for us?’ he asked. ‘Very thoroughly?’

  ‘I do not think so. They did not realise that they had four resistance people in the police station. They are always picking up people. And the Gestapo were away in Paris. They may not even know. They may not be interested. They are busy planning to save their own skins. Nobody likes the Gestapo and especially not the German army and the French police. If they can keep it quiet and not cause any disturbance about the incident then they may do that. They think it is a small case, not of importance, and it would only make trouble for them. Also, I think everybody will have plenty to do, to think about, when the parachutes start falling from the sky.’

  He said: ‘I understand you have married a German officer.’

  Antoinette laughed outright. ‘You understand a lot that is incorrect about me,’ she said. ‘Who told you this?’

  ‘I heard,’ he said. ‘Is it true?’

  She pouted. ‘A little true. But it is not a real marriage, not even legal, but it is – how shall we say – an arrangement. He is a good German. He hates Hitler and the Nazis. He works at the headquarters in Marseilles and he is able to tell me things I would not otherwise know.’

  ‘He might have been in danger if you hadn’t been sprung today,’ he said. ‘If the Gestapo had interrogated you.’

  Her face darkened, or the sun might have gone in. ‘I do not even think about that,’ she said. ‘I would only do what was possible. I have several choices of dying. But before that I would spit in their faces.’

  Chapter Twenty-two

  By Sunday 4 June, the day had almost arrived. The churches were not particularly full; it had been a long time coming and there had already been several National Days of Prayer. Rain had spread across southern England, it came with a choppy wind and there were four-foot waves off the coast, poor prospects for an amphibious landing on a hostile shore. The Daily Mail, after years of silence about the weather, quietly printed a report of the poor conditions in the Channel.

  General Eisenhower’s headquarters was in a convenient position to view the English sky and sea. When he came out from Southwick House, near Portsmouth, the dark and hurrying sky told him enough; he did not need his experts. ‘We have to wait,’ the Supreme Commander said. ‘Or move the invasion to California.’ A quarter of a million soldiers crouched in their camps.

  In his camp twenty-five miles to the west of Eisenhower, Private Blackie was fuming. ‘Jam sandwiches,’ he complained to the others in the tent. ‘That’s what they’re giving us to go into action – jam fucking sandwiches.’

  ‘Hope they’re not strawberry,’ ruminated Gannick, taking out his unlit pipe and staring into the burnt bowl. ‘I can’t abide strawberry. Plum’s all right.’

  �
��Any sort,’ said Blackie sitting on his bed. ‘Christ, this dump be bad enough. Stuck in ’ere loike bloody convicts in a cage. No women. ’Ardly a drop of beer. You can’t even talk to the NAAFI maids cos it be against orders and they won’t answer you. What ’arm is that goin’ to do, talking to they? Oi ask you?’

  Nobody replied and he put his thin head into his thin hands. ‘And then they ship you off to go and fight – and ’and to ’and.’

  Warren came ponderously and sat on his bed opposite. ‘It’ll all be over soon, Blackie,’ he said. ‘Couple of months at most, Oi reckon. We’ll all be ’ome by Christmas.’

  ‘There’s something on tonight,’ put in Peters, the eighteen-year-old, with an attempt at hope. He studied a square of paper. ‘A gospel meeting.’

  Very slowly Blackie raised his head. Warren was surprised to see his cheeks smeared with real tears. He almost moved his meaty hand to wipe them away but Blackie glared at him and did it himself. ‘Now that be bloody good news,’ breathed Blackie. ‘A gospel meetin’.’ He looked at Warren for a moment and smiled crookedly through his unhappiness. ‘’Member how we used to fart in Sunday school, Bunny?’

  ‘So did the teacher, ’member,’ said Warren. ‘Windy Willis, we called ’un. We used to try and match ’er, di’n we, fart for fart. An’ she made out she di’n notice.’

  ‘’Twas loike a farmyard,’ said Blackie with a distant satisfaction.

  Harris came into the tent. ‘We’ve been stood down,’ he said. ‘For twenty-four hours.’ He surveyed them. ‘Put that snakes and ladders away, Gordon, if you’ve finished playing with it.’

  The Scot looked offended. ‘I wasna playing snakes and ladders, sergeant,’ he said disdainfully. He took the board and the counters and handed the lot to Treadwell who put them in his bedside locker, looking ashamed.

  ‘It takes brains to play snakes and ladders,’ Treadwell said defensively. ‘There’s a lot to it.’

  ‘Take it on the ship,’ suggested Harris. ‘We might be out there for days.’

  ‘Sarge,’ put in Blackie. ‘Did you hear they’re giving us jam sandwiches?’

  Harris nodded to outside. ‘If the sea’s like it is we won’t want them,’ he said.

  ‘How’s your missus, sergeant?’ asked Gordon. ‘She all right?’

  Harris said: ‘She’s fine, Gordon.’ He frowned. ‘You haven’t been around there, have you?’

  They all laughed and Gordon blushed. ‘I just thought I’d ask,’ he said. ‘Only being polite.’

  Harris patted him on the shoulder. ‘I know, son.’ He studied the gaunt faces, hardened but still young. ‘Everybody ought to write home,’ he said quietly. ‘There’s no knowing when you’ll get another chance.’

  As though he had been waiting to ask, Treadwell said: ‘What d’you reckon it’s goin’ to be like, sarge? Over there. Got any idea?’

  The others leaned forward trustingly. ‘God only knows,’ he told them. ‘I don’t. If I did I’d be in conference with Ike and Monty with a line of pips instead of stripes. Then I wouldn’t need to go at all.’ He sat on a bed and they grouped around. ‘I’ve been trying to get some idea from anybody in the sergeants’ mess who’s been on an amphibious landing, the real thing. There’s two Hampshire blokes who were in the Italian landings at Salerno. And that was no picnic. They reckon the best thing you can do is run.’

  ‘Funny thing,’ said Gannick, taking his unlit pipe from his mouth. ‘Telling a soldier to run.’

  ‘Forwards,’ said Harris firmly. ‘You can’t run away because the only place is the sea. But they say you run like mad for the first bit of cover.’ He studied their faces. ‘And you watch out when you jump from the landing-craft. Like they told you when we did the training, don’t jump too soon. Otherwise the bloody boat runs over you, just like a bus. And you’re under it and you get drowned.’ Each face looked drawn, as if pulled together by string. How would they do it when the moment came?

  Blackie eventually spoke. ‘In that case, sarge, I’m goin’ to be last on the bus. I’ll wait till every other bugger ’as got off. Then I’ll go.’

  That Sunday the military padres were kept busy. In the American camps there were long files of soldiers waiting to make their confession, although, having been confined behind the wire for so many days, they had little to confess. Private Ben Soroyan did mention that he had sinned during his postal-run duty but the padre was wondering how many men he still had to absolve before lunch and handed out a couple of ‘Hail Mary’s without even asking the nature of the trespass.

  In the tents and huts of the wire-enclosed compounds the GIs, like the British Tommies a few miles away, could do little but wait and listen to the rain on the canvas and the tin roofs. The tents were more popular because the sound was softer. Some men still crouched at poker, the stakes now risen to the many theoretical thousands of dollars with grim side bets on who would be alive to collect the winnings. All the songs had been sung by now, the songs of home places: ‘Carolina, I’m Coming Back to You’, ‘Deep in the Heart of Texas’, ‘Avalon’ and ‘My Little Grass Shack in Hawaii’, although few of the soldiers had ever been anywhere near Hawaii. They had become weary of the false enjoyment of singing and the guitars, harmonicas and ukuleles had been shoved away.

  In the next bed to Soroyan was a man who knew Avalon for real. He used to sing to himself: ‘I left my love in Avalon and sailed away.’ Stretched out with his eyes shut and the English rain on the roof, he said to Soroyan: ‘It’s a few miles out in the ocean, Santa Catalina, off Los Angeles, but it ain’t like anywhere else. It’s real small and quiet and plenty of sunshine but this great ballroom where all the big bands play, Tommy Dorsey, Bob Crosby, they all take the boat across. I can just see it now. All them people dancing across the floor. I can hear the bands playing.’

  Some men continued to go to the perimeter fence to talk to the local girls between the times when the females were periodically chased off by the military police, only to return. Few of the soldiers and the inarticulate girls, however, could sustain conversation through chicken wire for long, although they were youthful and pledged their love after a few literally touching meetings. They had touched fingers and breasts and even fly buttons and some had managed a contorted kiss, but banal conversation lapsed into jokes and tears and unkeepable promises before the men retreated to their tents to wait for action and perhaps death, and the young girls went home to their mothers.

  Rumours ran rife through the camp. Most were about the war and what was going to happen. But there was one secret story that two professional women were offering sex through the gaps in the chicken wire in a secluded area behind the church. Two queues had formed, one for intercession and one for intercourse, but the military police arrived and the women vanished.

  It was just dark that night when Soroyan quietly left his tent. It had stopped raining and there were traces of moon among the clouds. Perhaps the day after tomorrow really would be the day at long last. The tents were stirring in the darkness, voices and suspicions of light; there were sounds from the huts, too. Someone had taken up a guitar again and was playing a reflective melody, not quite mournful, but enough. There would not be much sleep.

  There were guards standing slackly outside the wire but Soroyan merely walked more carefully on the wooden duckboards. Some men were loitering in the areas around the tents, smoking and talking in subdued voices. The path bent around the church where he had so easily unburdened his soul that morning. Now he became stealthy and went to the shaded area below some branches. Two other soldiers were standing there. They turned as they heard him. ‘They ain’t coming,’ said one.

  The other, a very short soldier, spat on the nearby ground and said: ‘God-dam it, nothing works out with women. Not ever.’

  ‘We fixed it,’ said the first man sulkily. ‘They promised. You can’t trust the fucking English.’ They began to move off around the church path.

  ‘Maybe you’ll be lucky, buddy,’ said the small soldier.


  ‘Yeah, good luck,’ muttered the other as they moved away.

  Soroyan waited, moving away from the dripping trees. Almost at once the reason for the other men’s disappointment was righted. A bus arrived on the road a hundred yards away. It came darkly to the stop and then drove away, leaving a solitary shadow at the side of the road. She waited, tidying herself, then stumbled over the rough ground towards Soroyan. He moved towards the fence.

  ‘Oooo-er,’ she said, stopping but then moving closer. ‘You gave me quite a fright.’ She peered along the length of the wire. ‘Are you the only bloke here?’

  Soroyan said he was. She was not by any means choice, he could see that even in the dimness: stumpy, solid, and for some reason wearing a brimmed hat, perhaps to hide her face.

  ‘There were some other guys,’ he said, keeping his voice low. ‘But they went back.’

  ‘I said eleven o’clock,’ she grumbled. ‘That’s when the bloody bus gets here. It was five minutes late, that’s all. Do you want it, then? It’s five dollars. Before.’

  Why not, he thought. He had not kidded himself that Rita Hayworth was going to stumble to the fence. Tomorrow, the next day, he might be beyond sex, beyond everything. He pushed a five-dollar note through the chicken wire. ‘Thank you,’ she said politely. ‘Promise, I won’t bunk off.’

  ‘How … how do we do it?’

  ‘Through this bleedin’ wire,’ she said. ‘It’s the only way. You put your dick through one of the holes and I sort of get myself hooked on to it this side.’

  ‘These holes are small,’ he said. ‘Have you tried it out?’

  She seemed confused. ‘No, I ’aven’t, but one of my mates ’as done it. She told me. Must have been a bloke with a thin dick.’ She opened her handbag. ‘I brought these just in case.’