Private's Progress (15 page)

“I
T’S REALLY TOO
bad,” remarked Catherine. “Think of all the time Stanley was in the ranks in that sordid place, and now he’s got a commission they don’t let him enjoy it, and pack him straight off to Cairo.
And
what a stupid place to send a poor lamb like Stanley. Can you really see Stanley sitting in the bar at Shepheard’s and waiting till someone comes in?”

“What on earth are you talking about?” asked Philip. “Waiting for who?”

“Well, that’s what they say,” said Catherine. “If you sit long enough in Shepheard’s the entire
population
of the globe will have dropped in. Well, it wasn’t much of a christening, was it?”

“Only seventy people here, after all,” agreed Philip ironically. “And by the way, who the hell invited that pansy Gilbert? He gushed over me for a devil of a time about some bloody cello or other.”

“
I
certainly didn’t,” said Catherine. “I told him distinctly he wasn’t to come to it when he asked when it was.”

“It wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t brought half the symphony orchestra and some bosom pal of his called Adrian. A damned hungry lot they were, too.”

“Now that’s
terribly
interesting,” said Catherine. “You realise that he must have made it up with Adrian? Oh, how sweet. They were
completely
at daggers drawn last year. Oh, and you must remind me to speak to College Sid. Marjorie Reigate’s flat was broken into while she was here at the party. Of course, her stuff’s insured, but it
is
a nuisance.”

“So that’s where Sid was,” mused Philip. “Left me to do all the sandwich-touting by myself. Actually neither he nor Herbert has been around this last couple of days. There’s only been that ludicrous
Desmond
coming in disturbing me, bewailing his large gunner friend going back to Reykjavik again.”

In the room behind Herbert’s second-hand furniture shop Herbert and College Sid checked over their takings.

“That accounts for all the Reigate stuff except those pendants, old boy. The coat got a hundred and twenty.”

“Fair enough, old boy,” said College Sid, skipping through a musty copy of
A
Boy’
s
Book
of
Heroes
from the stack of second-hand books behind him. “That makes my whack a hundred and four. I say, listen to this:
‘
Elihu
Burritt furnishes
the
world
with
another
illustra
tion
of
the
fact
that
a
mechanic
may
be
a
king
among
men.
He
has
demonstrated
the
possibilities
of
industry
by
actual
example,
and
happy
will
be
the
young
men
who
catch
the
inspiration
of
the
lesson
of
his
life.”’

“Amen to that,” said Herbert, stacking the notes neatly. “Extraordinary how you never meet mechanics called Elihu Burritt these days.”

“Actually he appears to have been some sort of a
blacksmith, old boy,” said College Sid, putting the book back. “He used to study Homer before
breakfast
.”

Mr. Windrush was drying up crockery in his kitchen. To the dishes he added a Crown Derby cake plate, which he had thought dusty in passing, and taken down from the music-room wall. He gave it a prolonged drying and held it up to the light to admire it. Then he polished it very carefully with the tea-cloth, raising a more and more perfect shine on its surfaces. He became absorbed in his work, and stood the plate carefully on a
mantelpiece
.

It did not seem to go very well with the two brass Indian pots which flanked it, so he removed these and decided to clean them too. When he had ferreted out the brass polish and made them bright, he became
possessed
by an irresistible Pooterish urge for smartening the place up. He took off his jacket and roamed the house, switching on lights, seizing polishable articles and applying metal polish to them vigorously. In his desk he found the horse brass dug up by Mr. Stilton, presented to him diffidently by his archæologist
acquaintance
. Its corrosion soon gave place to a dull gleam; it finally emerged from the treatment with a fierce shine. When brassware ran out Mr. Windrush burrowed in kitchen cupboards and unearthed some mildewed pewterware which he attacked with zest and a fierce concentrated joy. He determined to tackle Mrs. Scully on the subject of polishing, but as the evening wore on and he became obsessed with the silver, the plate, the brass and ultimately the furniture, he began
to enjoy himself so much that he decided to reserve all polishing for himself in future.

His battle drew finally to a close, and when he pulled out his watch he found it was half-past three in the morning. Weary, but intensely satisfied, he retired to his bed.

“You don’t get much idea in the dark,” said the agent as the convoy hummed along through the dim
moonlight
. “This road is at a very sharp angle to our line of advance, and there is no real concentration of troops this far forward, in fact no
major
force this side of Schloss Schimmel.”

“Grand,” said Brigadier Tracepurcel. “Then it’s practically a cert that Pepi will be at home packing.”

A faint line of lights closed towards them along the road and they held their breath as a line of German transport passed them going the other way. As the last vehicle went by Cox expelled his pent-up breath.

“Good job they’re not very matey,” he said.

“Fork left here,” said the agent.

For nearly an hour they ran through country which became more and more densely wooded. The only sign of life was an old man with a bicycle and a great bundle on his back, pedalling slowly and without lights along the edge of the road.

Eventually: “Stop here,” ordered the agent.

Cox drew the Mercédès onto the verge. The three trucks pulled in behind, and Egan’s men dismounted quietly. The brigadier went again over the important details. Several of the men fell out to go into the
bushes. After five minutes they got into the trucks again, and the party moved off once more, all lights off.

“There it is,” pointed the agent at last.

On the skyline ahead three fairy-tale towers jutted up blackly in the moonlight from the massive walls of Schloss Schimmel, showing over a black bank of trees. The Mercédès turned off on a dirt road and pulled up again. The lorries stopped close behind, and the men dismounted again. This time their German helmets and greatcoats were left in the vehicles. Although they carried German weapons, they were in British denim overalls and cap comforters, and only their teeth showed from their blackened faces.

They fanned out and faded into the trees, up the slope towards the schloss. Stanley and the others stood by the car, listening intently. An owl whooped distantly, and Stanley froze. Then the silence came down again.

They waited ten minutes, then Brigadier Tracepurcel held his watch close to his eyes, grunted and said: “Start up.”

They got in, and the Mercédès surged up the dirt road, side lights on, round three bends and under the great walls of the castle. Cox drove to within ten feet of the gates, and the agent jumped smartly out as a sudden illumination hit them.

There was a shout of “
Halt!
” but the agent waved his arm deprecatingly, banged on the gate impatiently and shouted: “
Rasch!
Aufmachen!
”

A door in the gates was opened and Hauptmann Wegweiser, flourishing his card, stepped unhesitatingly in.

From outside they could hear the two sentries and a mutter of “
Dokumente
”,
and then the main gates were opened.

Cox pulled the Mercédès in, and the brigadier and Stanley, heart in mouth, stepped out to face the sentries.

“General
von
Windpocken
,”
snapped the brigadier.
“
Der
Wachtmeister
ist
nicht
hier?”

“
Ja,
Herr
General
,”
said one of the soldiers.
“Er
kommt
gleich.
”

The guard sergeant came hurriedly out of the
gatehouse,
blinking and fastening the top button of his tunic.

“Now!” said the brigadier.

Hauptmann Wegweiser cracked a pistol butt smartly down on the wrist of the sentry with the rifle, caught the weapon and turned it on the two men. The
brigadier’s
pistol covered the guard commander.

“Kehrt
Euch!
”
ordered the brigadier.

The three men turned about.

“The gate,” said the brigadier.

Stanley ran to the doors and swung them open again. Within seconds Egan and his men came padding through. Four men were detached to hold the
Guard-Room
and the remainder disappeared to the inner courtyard towards the troops’ quarters.

The place somehow reminded Stanley, in the dark, of the front quadrangle at Apocalypse.

Stanley and the brigadier followed the agent to a shadowy doorway and up a flight of broad steps. They came soon to a corridor flanked with dark statuary and approached a door at the far end, from which came a gleam of light.

“Pepi,” whispered the agent, jerking his thumb at the door.

The brigadier nodded and stood for a moment holding the door handle. Then he turned it, flung the door open and plunged inside with his machine pistol.

Stanley, following him in, had a glimpse of two startled figures in shirt-sleeves bending over packing cases. The room was dazzling with silver and gold plate, heaped on furniture and floor, and glittering in the light of the chandelier.

“
Wie
——
?”
exclaimed the stouter of the two figures.

“
Hände
hoch!
”
said Uncle Bertram briskly, and they raised their arms above their heads.

From outside came the sudden crackle of small-arms fire.

The loading of the four lorries in the garage of the Schloss was completed by three in the morning. The sullen group of prisoners was distributed among the troop-carrying trucks.

“Good,” said the brigadier, as the last tailboard was fastened. “A two-hour run back will just time it right. Grand. Pity Pepi and his major were shot while trying to escape, but I had no choice. They’d have been up before a tribunal in any case. Where’s Cox? Right. Captain Egan, get them embussed.”

Egan whistled in his sentries and the column of trucks formed up and moved off, following the Mercédès through the fairy-tale gatehouse and down the track to the main road below.

Brigadier Tracepurcel settled back in his seat and lit a cigar.

“Pepi’s stock was fairly low,” he remarked. “But I salvaged some very good ones.”

After two hours the convoy halted at the roadside, ticking over. The agent walked forward and fired a red and then a green Very cartridge in low trajectories, one to the right, one to the left.

A white answering cartridge soared up.

“O.K.,” said the agent. He ran back to the car and the column moved forward at speed for the last
hal
f-
mile
to the laager of the 89th Tanks, now in position for the dawn stand-to.

The trucks were dispersed over the area.

“Now for breakfast,” said the brigadier cheerfully, taking his hip-flask with him.

Egan was dispatched with his men to deliver the prisoners to 692 Division’s cage, and the vehicles back to the R.E.M.E.

“Thence, you arrange transport with 692 Div., embarkation for home included,” announced Brigadier Tracepurcel. “I shall supervise the captured material with Windrush here and get it back on the first instance to the War Office. You put up a good show, young man, and I shall see you get a mention.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Egan.

“Grand. Now I’ll just make a speech of thanks to the chaps and you can get them cracking.”

Egan’s men were in the lorries and ready to move off within the hour.

“Well,” said Egan. “Good-bye, old boy. It was a good show, but I think you ought to have got something out of it. A mention would seem the very least.”

“Survival is a great deal to be thankful for,” said Stanley. “However, congratulations on yours.”

“Thanks very much, old boy,” said Egan. “Well, I must be off.”

“Good-bye.”

By mid-morning the captured lorries with the art treasures had had their German markings painted out, and white stars roughly splashed on to replace them, and, with an armed escort on each vehicle, set off for Antwerp. Stanley rode in the cab of the second truck and slept most of the way.

By nightfall they were bumping over the cobbles in Antwerp and into the turmoil of activity in the port area. They waited an hour while the brigadier negotiated for cargo space, and then threaded through the quays and the wreckage of demolished cranes to the ramp of a tank-landing craft. Once aboard, the escort was
dismissed
to the transit camp.

“This one’s leaving for Sheerness in the morning,” explained the brigadier as the trucks were being chained down. “Sail at 0400 hours.”

Stanley ate a breakfast, which proved to be very temporary, with Uncle Bertram and a silent, bearded naval lieutenant who commanded the large, ugly craft.

Afterwards he stood, pale and frozen on the
superstructure
, facing a stiff wind, and gazing miserably at the small flotilla of landing craft in the grey water around them and the escorting corvettes in the distance. Cox appeared from below and saluted.