A New Kind of War (10 page)

‘What job?’ Fred plunged straight in as the little man drew breath.

‘Ah—’ The little man fiddled maddeningly among the controls, switching switches on and off quickly, until a feeble yellow glow finally illuminated the trees ahead, totally useless in the half-light and the rain ‘—
ah
! I did that once, an’ all the electrics fused up … Yes—but you could be lucky, sir—arrivin‘ late, like … ’cause it wouldn’t be fair to send you out … always supposin‘ we ever gets there—’ he pushed his face up against the rain-smeared windscreen again, peering into the gathering murk ‘—all these little roads looks the same to me, this time uv day … An’ most uv ‘em don’t go anywhere, anyway —’

Fred’s heart sank as he identified the familiar whine of the totally useless and incompetent driver, who was accustomed to following the tail-lights of the lorry in front, and believed that maps were for officers only.

‘No! I tell a lie!’ The little man sat bolt upright as he looked directly into the muzzle of an 88-millimetre gun, his voice joyful with recognition as the car crunched past the enormous tank on which the gun was mounted. ‘Not far now!’

Fred swivelled in his seat, to peer back at the abandoned monster through the rear window, his irrational fear dissolving slowly.

‘That’s wot we call “our signpost”—proper useful it is,’ confided the little man as the tank disappeared in the rain and the overcast behind them, like a dead dinosaur sinking into its primeval swamp. ‘Gawd knows ’ow ‘e got ’ere, up the top. Prob’ly just lost ‘is way, like I thought we ’ad. But Mr David sez ‘e was most likely just goin’ ‘ome through the forest as the crow flies, an’ this was where ‘is tank run dry. But ’e’s a yarner, is Mr David.‘

‘A … yarner?’ Something stirred in Fred’s memory. ‘Mr David?’

‘‘E tells yarns—makes up stories. Wot ’e sez is that everythin’s got a story behind it, to account for where it ends up. An‘ it’s the same with people—like for you an’ me, sir: we ain’t ‘ere by
accident
, is wot ’e means, ‘e sez … We’re ’ere because of wot we are, or wot we done—‘ The death-rattle was repeated, but happily now because the little man knew where he was at last’—which in
our
case must’ve bin somethin‘ wicked, ’e sez … So … ‘ave you done somethin’ wicked then, sir?‘ This time the chuckle degenerated into a smoker’s cough which racked the man, and swerved the car dangerously between ranks of dripping trees on each side of the road.

‘Not that I’m aware of, no.’ Fred searched for something in the cobwebby attic of the past which still eluded him because it was hidden under more recent rubbish. ‘Mr David?’

‘Yes. Captain —’ The yellow headlights caught the loom of something substantial through a thinning screen of trees up ahead. ‘—there we are! Wot did I tell you. “Not far”—didn’t I say it?’

Through the driving rain and the trees the substantial something became long pale yellow-brown stone walls—crenellated walls, almost medieval, except that they were too low for the siege-warfare of those days and far too untime-worn to be anything older than nineteenth-century work.

‘Yes.’ It was a barracks, of course: now he could even see the two low towers, with their distinctively unmedieval low-pitched tile-roofs, on each side of a double gateway, as the car swung off the road and transfixed them momentarily in its headlights—up here, in the middle of nowhere, what else, of course? ‘It’s a barracks, is it?’

‘Yes—’ The wheel spun as the car turned again, and then spun once more as the driver lined up the car on one of the gateways, between the wooden struts of a bridge crossing the barracks-ditch ‘—yes, you could say that—a
barricks
: that’s wot it is—a bleedin’
barricks
, is what it is!‘

As the car began to accelerate again (and something too fast for Fred’s peace of mind, given the narrowness of the arched gateway, which he could now see even more clearly in the brief intervals after each sweep of the windscreen-wipers swept the rain from the glass)—

‘ ’Ere we go, then!‘ Like so many RASC drivers, the little man evidently belonged to what Fred’s first company commander had always called ’the school of empirical verification‘: if a vehicle got through a gap, or crossed a suspect stretch of ground, then that gap was wide enough for it, or that ground was free of mines, as the case might be. ’ ‘Old tight!’

There was a rumble under them as the big car advanced across a plank-bridge over a double-ditch, and he caught a glimpse of an equestrian statue between the double doorways: it looked more like a Roman emperor than a German Kaiser—in fact it looked
exactly
like a statue of Marcus Aurelius he had admired in Rome last year, during his leave in that memorable time-out-of-war before the battle of the Gothic Line—so perhaps it was a Kaiser dressed as a Caesar, maybe?

But then the statue was gone, and they were squeezing through the gateway, with more familiar sights in the glare of the headlights: canvas-hooded jeeps and 15-cwt trucks lined up, with even more familiar soldiers, caped against the downpour, attending to their unloading—TRR-2 at last!

But …
Christ! Because there was a man
—
a British soldier
—
standing bold as brass and unashamed under an umbrella! Christ Almighty
!

‘Right, there you are, then!’ The driver swung the car round the umbrella-carrying soldier, braking so fiercely that Fred’s chest thumped sharply against the front seat. ‘End uv the line, this is, sir.’ He peered at the car’s switches, before flicking them off one by one; and then swivelled towards Fred, grinning familiarly as though they were equals who had shared some testing experience. ‘I’ll see to your bag, sir—your servant’s Trooper Lucy, shared with Mr David, so you’ll not ’ave anythin‘ to worry about there—’avin‘ Trooper Lucy is like ’avin‘ a good lady’s maid.’

Between Marcus Aurelius, and the umbrella-soldier, and Trooper Lucy, and the fact that he couldn’t find the door handle, Fred cursed impotently under his breath.

‘Wot you wanta do is to find the adjutant. An ’e’ll be in ‘is office, which is in the prinny-kipyer, first on your left as you go through the door right in front, an’ round under the little roof wot keeps the rain
orf
—
which is that way—see?‘

Fred couldn’t quarrel with any of that, which was the last word in old-fashioned courtesy itself, compared with what he had so often been used to. Except, he didn’t understand any of it.

‘The … prinny—prinny-kip … year?’ That wasn’t quite right. ‘
Kipyer
?’

‘That’s right.’ Nod. ‘Wot the Colonel calls it—
prinny-kipyer
…
Just on the left, through the door.’ Nod.

He had found the door handle. ‘Well … thank you—what’s your name?’

‘Hughie, sir.’ The little man came quickly to his rescue. ‘Knock twice, an’ ask for Hughie, is what they say.‘ The little man stared at him in the gloom. ’You’re a Sapper, sir—Major Fattorini, sir … Would that be reg’lar army or ‘ostilities only?’

‘Territorial.’ He found himself answering automatically, as a distant but warning bell sounded in his memory. ‘March, 1939.’

‘Is that a fact?’ The date seemed to meet with the man’s approval. Terriers is orl right, most of ‘em. The Colonel —’e’s a terrier.‘ He nodded. ’You’ll be orl right wiv‘ ’im then, I reckon.‘

‘Indeed? Fred tightened his grip on the door handle. ’Haven’t I met you before somewhere? Was it in—?‘ Before he could finish, a movement at the front of the car took his attention: the soldier with the umbrella appeared to be examining the offside wing intently.

‘ ’Scuse me—‘ The little man caught his change-of-attention, turned towards its direction, and was out of the car like a ferret out of a bag ’—that wasn’t me! That was there ‘fore I sets orf, that was—someone else done that!’ The sound of his voice, raised to a protesting whine, entered the car with a wind-driven spatter of rain.

The umbrella-carrying soldier straightened up to his full height, the wind catching his umbrella and almost pulling it out of his hand. ‘Hughie, you’re an absolute and in-invvv—
inveterate
—liar. I checked the whole b-bloody car myself before you set out. And there wasn’t a mark on it. So now the Croc-Crocodile will have both our g-guts for … garters.’

Oh God
! thought Fred, the mists of half a year’s memory clearing instantly in the same instant as the umbrella soldier turned towards him. Then he knew that he must pull himself together, and confirm the hideous certainty which confronted him in the headlights.

The full force of the wind-and-rain hit him as he stepped out of the car. ‘Hullo there!’ Even as he spoke, he saw that things
were
as bad as they seemed. ‘David Audley, is it?’

‘It was them Yanks, Mister David—it must uv been them,’ whined the little man. ‘I ’ad to leave the major’s car, for a minnit—‘

‘It is. Or what’s left of him.’ Audley struggled with his umbrella. ‘Captain Fat-O’Rhiney, well met!’ He gave the little man a quick sidelong glance. ‘Hughie, I told you most particularly
not
to leave the car—remember?’ He came back to Fred. ‘Bad trip, was it?’ He gave Fred a friendly grin. ‘We’ve been expecting you these last three hours … At least, the CO has been.’

‘I ’ad to meet the major—I couldn’t let ‘im carry ’is bag now, could I?‘ The little man rolled an eye at Fred, hope and fear mixed in it equally.

‘It was a bumpy one.’ Faced with the truth, Fred temporized. ‘It’s not good flying weather. We went round three or four times before landing.’

Strangely, as he felt the rain on his face—or perhaps
not
strangely, as he observed Audley’s relative dryness—the need for truth evaporated. ‘But I’ve no complaints about my reception. And we certainly didn’t hit anything coming up here. Not even that bloody-great tank of yours, back there.’

Audley’s face contorted, from friendliness to its natural ugliness. ‘Not mine—
yrrch!’
He drew a deep breath through his nose. ‘King Tigers …
them
I don’t need reminding of!’

The little man bobbed his head at Fred, and then at Audley. ‘I’d best take the major’s bag now, ’adn’t I, sir—so as Trooper Lucy can settle ‘im in, like?’ He wiped the rain from his face. ‘An’ the major is gettin‘ rather wet, sir … ’im bein‘ out in the open, like—?’

‘What?’ Audley looked from one to the other of them quickly. ‘Oh … very well, Hughie—’ He ended up looking at Fred ‘—you do that … and
I
will extemporize great lies about the Americans for the benefit of Major McCorquodale, if I must. And Major Fattorini will confirm them—right?’ He fixed his glance on Fred. ‘Shall we go in, out of the rain, Major Fattorini?’ He gestured towards the doors in the building directly ahead of them, which Driver Hughie—
Hewitt
, Fred remembered now—had indicated earlier. ‘Shall we go—?’

Fred followed him, and as Audley deflated his umbrella and opened one of the doors he caught sight of the three pips on the young man’s shoulders. ‘Congratulations … Captain Audley.’

Audley swung the door open, gesturing him through it. Temporary … but paid, thank God!‘ He grinned at Fred. ’Twenty-three shillings a day, plus sundry allowances—riches beyond the dreams of avarice, which are supposed to sunder us from all other temptations in Occupied Germany in A-U-C 2-6-9-8—two thousand, six hundred and ninety-eight, God help us!‘

‘What?’ Inside the doorway it was darker, and he couldn’t see Audley so clearly now. ‘A-U-C—?’

‘ “
Ab Urbe Condita”
—
“From the Founding of the City of Rome”—?’ Audley shook the rain from his furled umbrella on to the stone-flagged floor ‘—he put us all up in rank in Germany, to help us on our way, did Colonel Caesar Augustus Tiberius Germanicus Colbourne: lieutenant to captain, in my case—’ he looked up, from the umbrella to Fred ‘—and captain to major, in your case.’ He grinned. ‘If you ask your friend, Driver Hewitt … who is unpromotable, actually … Driver Hewitt will say: “Take the money, and run …
sir!”
’ The grin twisted. That is, if he remembered to say “sir” … because Hughie takes a somewhat jaundiced view of officers. Although, as you have already lied so nobly for him, he may treat you differently, of course.‘

They had moved across the stone flags as Audley had been speaking out of deeper darkness, faintly yellowed by a hurricane lamp hanging from a bracket, into the grey-ness of an inner courtyard with pillared arcades on all four sides, like a monastic cloister in the middle of which the rain still deluged from above, catching the faint light of other lamps at its other corners.

‘That way—’ Audley pointed to the left, towards an open doorway, moving as he did so ‘—Amos? Are you in there?’ He peered into the doorway.

‘David?’ The voice from inside was sharper, just as the light was brighter. ‘What do you want?’

‘Major Fat-O’Rhiney has arrived, Amos.’ Audley gestured to Fred.

‘Oh …
Christ
!’ A chair scraped on stone. ‘I’d given him up for lost, damn it! Where is he?’

‘I’m here.’ Memory reanimated him as he took up Audley’s invitation: beyond Driver Hewitt, and Audley himself, there was a nastier memory of de Souza being busy. ‘Captain de Souza—?’

‘
Major
de Souza, Major Fattorini.’ Audley hissed the inflated rank in his ear as Fred advanced past him. ‘Go on—go on!’ He pushed Fred forwards.

From within, the little room didn’t seem so bright as it had done from outside, in spite of its two pressure-lamps; and its typical temporary military furniture—two folding tables on thin metal legs, and two collapsible canvas chairs—somehow made it even emptier. One of the tables was furnished with a large typewriter and all the paraphernalia of its absent clerk—in-tray, out-tray, and a pile of files. And there were more files on the other table, which was set below the room’s single window—a curiously shaped opening, heavily latticed and set well above eye-level. But judging by this quantity of paperwork neither the adjutant nor his clerk would have much time for looking out of any window, thought Fred—certainly not if this was the load Colonel Colbourne’s band of brothers carried with it in the field, in a temporary billet.