Bent

by Joe Thomas

  Inside, you’re giggling, you’re tickled and you’re laughing as you try to form the sound of this low whistle in words, or something like them, in your head —

  Whit Whooooo

  Silence —

  You move and you whistle.

  *

  Challenor thinks he’ll stop by the Geisha club, see old Wilf, seeing as Elizabeth Ewing Evans has given such considerable insight, such food for — you know, you know the word — thought. Quite an appraisal she's given him, Challenor thinks, and it strikes him, it strikes Challenor now, that the iron is hot. He reckons he might get a little more out of old Wilf now he knows the actual, genuine origin of this sorry little saga -

  About time he felt some collars. He needs to sus these lads, get them inside.

  What he was brought in for, after all, by Brass, as he's been reminded often enough, to clean up this Soho sewer, by any means necessary, and, after all, enough is enough, isn’t it?

  Enough's a bloody nuff, Challenor reckons, and grins.

  He keeps his head down on Old Compton Street, passes the Three Greyhounds, which is heaving, crammed with drinkers and smokers and cheer. Lamps lit low and stout and ale thick, and one or two spilling out onto the pavement and Challenor ducks his bonce further, dips his chin into his coat, and keeps his head down.

  He's across the road and in through the velvet curtains of the Phoenix, skips the stairs two at a time, and he's in.

  Radio's on. The Four Seasons singing about some bird Sherry. Frankie Valli giving it the high-pitched yearn, the wail. Can you come out tonight?

  Challenor likes this one, its got welly, bit of soul, it swings, sways. Yeah, he's all right, old Frankie Valli.

  Couple of punters give Challenor the sidelong fisheye. One or two visibly shrink, turn away. Couple of the dancers give the tiniest nod of acknowledgement. They know it's no bad thing if a copper as notorious as Challenor is in attendance. No one plays up, no one's going to take liberties, not with Uncle Harry in attendance.

  What are you going to do about it?

  Challenor adopts a business pose: thick neck forward, head tilted across, eyes narrowed, his bull-like frame tensed, not quite crouched, ready, if necessary, to spring into sudden and irrevocable violence.

  It's the impression that counts -

  ‘Brown ale,’ Challenor says to a passing waitress. ‘I’ll take it at the bar.’

  The waitress nods and scurries off, her outfit pure Weimar camp.

  Challenor lurches to the bar, muscles to the bar, his thick frame squat and hard.

  ‘I’ll be wanting a word with your guvnor,’ he tells the waitress when she delivers his brown ale and asks if he’d like anything else.

  Off she scurries, again, in her kit. Challenor shakes his head at the back of her scurrying figure. It's no job this, dressed up like a foxy Fraulein, like a Bavarian bitch in heat, all the promise of a jug of industrial lager - and a wink to match its strength.

  Challenor feels for her, his waitress -

  But that's not why he's here, so he gives his head another shake, to clear it, to settle it, and he thinks about the proposal he is about to outline to old Wilf.

  It's a cracker. It really is.

  Two birds situation and no mistake -

  Challenor grins.

  *

  There he is, you think, there's Wedderburn, and there's Foster, and there's Shortall, and there's Greville-Bell, and there's Pinckney, and there's Dudgeon.

  You made it, you’ve found each other on this cool, cool, deep, dark night, and it seems the whole stick has gone smoother than your rosy red behind, smooth as silk, smoother than a wop cocksman, someone says, and you all laugh, quietly.

  Next few hours you rest. You keep your mouths shut and you rest —

  The chatter of the birds wakes you up —

  They speak English then, someone says, and you laugh, quietly.

  The red sun is fat and crawling up from behind the Apennines —

  Italy. Beautiful Italy.

  You shin up a tree — you’re getting good at this — and, with your binoculars, you locate the containers carrying the kit, the equipment.

  There they are, their red and blue chutes standing out on the hillside like the proverbial You and three others recover them and the first thing to do after you’ve buried and given the last rites to the chutes is to brew up, open tins of bully, and get some army-issue fuel inside of you.

  Then you’re confirming your position by what's around you, and all bloody day it takes, all bloody day studying maps and compass bearings, checking against the landmarks all around you, shinning up and down trees, checking, checking, checking all day, all bloody day until nighfall, and the next move.

  A rendezvous is set: seven nights from now, at a specific point, on a specific stream, at a specific distance between Pontremoli and Villafranca.

  You split into your pairings, and scatter into the night-

  Low-key goodbyes and good lucks.

  Off they march, the others, down a wooded mountain track, in single file, these men you’re here with, in Italy, behind the lines, deep behind the lines, these men, carrying explosives to blow up trains and make a significant dent in the German plans to advance.

  There they go in the cool, fresh, Italian night, the mountain air invigorating —

  Will you ever see them again?

  A dog barks, far away, in a distant village —

  A guard dog, no doubt. And you think, as you trudge behind Wedderburn —

  With any luck, quite soon, I’ll be killing my first ferry sentry. You think, to yourself, quite clearly, ‘With any luck, I’ll soon be killing my first ferry sentry.’

  Lover

  Tanky was round my grandad's place once, I’d say early 80s, and there was a young French woman staying. She must have been nineteen, and it was a pen-pal, student-exchange scheme with some of their old SAS allies in the Châtillon region, where they were dropped post D-Day to carve a path for the Yanks in 1944, and cause bother.

  The Maquis, they were called, these French allies. Resistance fighters, really.

  Well, in the early 80s, the SAS mob were invited over to Châtillon and were honoured for their part, and this led to the student-exchange scheme, not that I ever benefited.

  There's an award, a certificate, I suppose it is, when all's said and done, hanging on the wall in my flat, from the Maquis, honouring my grandad, specifically, for what he did in and around Châtillon in 1944. It's right next to the one from The People of Norway thanking him for his role in ‘helping to restore freedom to our land’.

  Good lads.

  Anyway, in the early 80s I was only a kid, when this nineteen-year-old French woman plonked me on her lap. I soon squirmed away.

  Tanky grabbed me, gave me a little tap to the side of the head.

  ‘You want your bonce examining, my old son,’ he said, grinning. He nodded over at Delphine, or Claudette, or Mathilde, or Alice, or Nicolette, or whatever her sexy little name was, and said, ‘Few years from now you’ll be trying to climb on, not jump off.’

  Everyone laughed.

  Doris, Tanky's wife, she laughed. My grandad laughed. Delphine or Claudette, or Mathilde, or Alice, or Nicolette laughed.

  My grandma didn’t laugh.

  Good old Tanky.

  Three

  ‘Lying on my back, smoking a cigarette and stroking her hair, I thought: what a life for a soldier!’

  ‘Same again, Harry?’

  Wilf Gardiner points at Challenor's bottle of brown ale.

  ‘Go on then,’ Challenor says. ‘In for a penny, eh, Wilf.’

  ‘In for a penny.’

  Wilf Gardiner has a whisky glass bunched in his fat fist. He knocks it against Challenor's new bottle of brown ale, and the ice clinks and a few drops of the whisky slither over the top of the glass and run down over Gardiner's fat fingers and Challenor makes a good show of wiping his own hand on his trousers.

  ‘My mistake,’ Gardiner says.
‘Apologies, Harry.’

  ‘It happens,’ Challenor says. ‘It can happen to the best of us, Wilf. No harm, no foul.’

  ‘Well, cheers, anyway,’ Gardiner says, and he pours whisky from his fat fist straight down his fat neck. ‘Good health.’

  Challenor's head bobs. He clocks the clientele. It's not heaving, really, for a Thursday, a Thursday in late September. End of the summer, he thinks. There is a hubbub, a low one, and radio's playing ‘Soldier Boy’ by The Shirelles, a group that Challenor admires. He listens to the song as Gardiner barks instructions at some of his yobs. They’re a ham-faced, tight-mouthed, thick-necked lot, Wilf Gardiner's yobs. Not the brightest of sparks, Challenor suspects, these men brought up in and around pubs, clubs, bookies, these men working as Wilf Gardiner's yobs. The Shirelles turn Challenor's ear. They’re singing about how they’ll never make their fella blue, that there's only ever one girl, only one girl you can love.

  Challenor reckons he's only ever really loved but one girl. He's had his moments, of course he has, young good-looking soldier like Challenor, a good-looking soldier boy himself, hasn’t been short of moments, but love, love, well, there's only ever been but one girl.

  The yobs are shifting crates to and from the bar area.

  ‘What can I do you for, Harry?’ Gardiner asks.

  ‘I’ve just been talking to your missus.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Get any sense out of her? I rarely do.’

  Challenor frowns. ‘I must say, Wilf, I suspect that this is more a reflection of your failures as a conversationalist than it is hers.’

  ‘All right, Harry, easy on,’ Gardiner says, raising a palm. ‘You’ve a good point. She's a fine woman. Just having a crack, know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes, I know what those words mean.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So she's filled me in on how your nonsense with Oliva and Ford and Pedrini and so on really started.’

  ‘Oh she has, has she?’

  ‘She has.’

  Gardiner's nodding. ‘Well, it's not like I’ve lied to you, Harry, is it?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘What's next then?’

  Straight to the point, Challenor thinks. I’ll say that for you, Wilf - you’re always straight to the point when you’re caught out and you need a solution. I will say that for you.

  ‘A thought, Wilf, occurred.’

  Gardiner is nodding again. ‘The starting point isn’t really the point, though is it?’ he says. ‘The start has led us here, that's all. Here, where you want us to be, right?’

  ‘The Italians threaten you. They’ve threatened your missus. There's your corroboration, you know, for the legal lot, for court, when it conies to it.’

  Gardiner catches on. ‘Gotcha,’ he says.

  ‘We need a caught-red-handed scenario, really, for our Italian friends, understand, for me to go to work.’

  ‘Okey doke. When?’

  ‘Tomorrow: Friday. September twenty-first, it is. Or will be. That works.’ Challenor turns his bottle of beer, peels at the label on his bottle of beer. ‘That do you?’

  ‘That’ll work, Harry.’

  ‘Good. Set it up for about eleven p.m. OK?’

  ‘And what do I tell them?’

  ‘That you’re game, you’re in, that you’ll do what they ask — what they say. You tell them that, and when they turn up, you let them see that this, in fact, is simply not true.’

  Gardiner's still nodding. ‘Gotcha.’

  ‘And keep the missus well away tomorrow night, you know, just in case.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Challenor drains his bottle of brown ale. ‘It’ll be two new lads, Wilf, understand? So you won’t recognise them. Police Constables Legge and Wells.’

  ‘Gotcha.’

  And I’ll see you after, at the Mad House, and we knock this little palaver on the head once and for all.’

  ‘Suits me, Harry.’

  Challenor stands. He leans forward. He means business, Challenor. He does not mess about. His head is inches from Gardiner's fat face. Challenor smiles. ‘And after we’ve done and knocked it all on the head, you and me will have a proper chat about how you can help me a bit better, help me do my job with a little bit more efficiency Wilf He straightens up. ‘That suit you too, Wilf?’

  Gardiner nods. Gardiner does not look thrilled by this news. He is not, Challenor thinks, tickled by this prospect.

  ‘You know how it is, Harry,’ he says. ‘I’d love to help, but if I ain’t got socks, I can hardly pull them up now, can I?’

  Challenor grins. ‘Arrivederci,’ he says.

  *

  ‘You don’t say much do you, sir,’ you say to Thomas Macleggan Wedderburn, your senior officer on this Italian job —

  Blowing up trains in tunnels.

  Here the two of you are, you a working-class tyke from a none-too-happy home, he a posh Jock law student in owlish glasses. ‘Tojo’, you reckon, makes a good little nickname for Lieutenant Wedderburn —

  You wonder how long until you’ll be able to use it.

  Bit cheeky, of course, imagining your senior officer looks like a general in the Japanese Imperial Army.

  ‘There's not much to say, lad,’ Wedderburn says.

  ‘I suppose not,’ you reply.

  ‘There’ll be plenty to talk about when we find our targets, Tanky.’

  You nod. You’d found a bridge the night before, but there was no chance you had enough explosives to do that over, so you left it.

  You’re on day five now, slogging on, trudging on, night after night, sleeping a little each day, when you can, under whatever bush or brush or copse offers any sort of shelter.

  It's a lonely business.

  *

  Challenor leaves the Phoenix. He heads back to the Geisha. He's got an idea, something he does not want Wilf Gardiner to know about, seeing as it’ll throw a spanner in the business the next evening, September 21st. He needs to speak to Elizabeth Ewing Evans. Just a quick word -

  Just needs to get hold of some contact information.

  *

  You know that the Apennine mountains running down the spine of Italy, are, in fact, the spine of Italy, look, even on a map, like the spine of Italy —

  The cracked vertebrae, the twisted bone structure of the spine of Italy.

  And you know that you were dropped somewhere near the northernmost part of the Appennino Centrale mountains. And you know that somewhere a little to your west is La Spezia. And you know that somewhere a little to your east is Bologna. And you know that there is a significant railway line that runs between the two cities. And you know that to get through the Appennino Centrale mountains, these trains have to, they simply have to, there is nothing else for it, they have to go through tunnels to make their important goods runs between La Spezia and Bologna.

  So why is it, you think, hour after hour, day after day, night after night, for six days and six nights now, why is it, you think, time and again, why is it that you cant find a single fucking trace of a tunnel in these mountains?

  Where are these fucking tunnels? you ask yourself, hour after hour, night after night tramping around in the dark.

  Where are they? you ask yourself, day after day, lying in a bush, a shrub, trying to sleep, but not sleeping as the question echoes and ricochets —

  And then: day seven —

  *

  Challenor leaves the Geisha club with two addresses and a phone number written on a scrap of paper.

  He looks at his watch. It is almost midnight. He weighs it -

  No chance now of finding what he needs, who he needs.

  Doris has been calling him The Stranger. No need to guess why. He pauses for a moment on Charing Cross Road, watches the traffic shunt by Cambridge Circus, watches the late night Soho crowd throb in down Moor Street, past the Spice of Life, up Romilly towards the Coach and Horses, which will still be open, quietly enough, locked in, yes, but
still open to those who know how to get in the side door. Challenor thinks he might pop in, could pop into the Coach and Horses, for a quick one, and if he keeps his head down, he can well easily get a quick one in before causing any bother, and it's already midnight, so he's still The Stranger either way.

  Yeah, quick one, go on then.

  *

  ‘And on the seventh day...’

  Welly Tojo laughs at that one. ‘Tell you what, Tanky, it's about bloody time, right? Let's get to work. First thing's first: we need to see if it's safe.’

  By safe you know Tojo means sentry-free. ‘I’ll go,’ you say in a heartbeat.

  Tojo is nodding. ‘See up there?’ He points to a tree that is bent, bent over and into another tree, about fifty yards up the mountainside, providing cover, shelter. You nod. Tojo continues, ‘I’ll take the packs, the kit, and wait up there. New base, got it?’

  You nod. ‘Yes, sir,’ you say.

  ‘Go on then, lad.’

  You go. You slip down the mountain, dead quiet. Your army-issue knife is in your hand, ready to strike at the enemy, to pierce from behind the heart of any sentry.

  Here we go, you think, here we fucking go —

  You fancy yourself as a silent killer.

  The mountains lighter down here, towards the tunnel, the dark hills roll into paths, shallower ground, turf flattened by livestock — what, sheep? Goats? — trees sharper, tidier, more domesticated it seems. A stream runs alongside the railway line and you step into it, you need to cross it to get to the entrance of the tunnel. You’re stepping alongside the line down in the river, down here in Italy, falling, ghosting into the shadows the trees afford, your movement blends in, you are these shadows, these shadows become you, a ghost, you become a ghost, a silent killer, any noise deadened by the splashing and gurgling of the stream.

  You reach the mouth of the tunnel. You cant hear anything beyond the gurgle and splash of the stream and the rustle of the wind through the leaves of these sharper, tidier trees down here. The mouth of the tunnel is a gaping hole of black, grey stones showing the faint light of the ground. On the other side of the track, the ground rolls away, down a touch, and then rises again. You are in a dip, a valley, and you can see no sign of any fucker, sentry or otherwise.