The Road Between Us (31 page)

‘Thank you.’

‘What will you paint now, Anselm?’ he asks as he stands back to admire it.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, I’m sure we can find something.’

Anselm smiles. He has been given another hour, he thinks, another day, another week of life.

Without fans, the air below deck is as heavy as liquid. Having clung on to a notion of British decorum for as long as he can – perhaps to prove some esoteric point to his American shipmates – Charles relents and peels off his khaki shirt. It is so wet it clings like a second skin.

They have been anchored in the Bay of Naples for three days now and even the ship seems to be sweating. There is a layer of tar on the turret deck that bubbles and spits in the heat of the day. At night, with the steel of the hold retaining the fever as efficiently as a radiator, the bulkheads steam with moisture.

‘This heat,’ Charles says to himself.

A sleepy voice in the semi-darkness: ‘You got that right, Buddy.’

At least the water is becalmed. Charles checks the luminous hands on his watch. How much longer? Why don’t we get on with it? It is as if time is mocking him, slowing down so that minutes stretch to occupy space that properly belongs to hours. Though he has only been here for three days, he feels as if he hasn’t slept for three months. Hurry up and wait: the army paradox. Men can be bored and nervous at the same time; this is another paradox.

Even without the heat, Charles would feel unsettled. His
hammock is hard to sleep in; its hairy rope cuts into the skin and bends the spine. And the sound of thousands of men sleeping keeps him awake. It is as if they are trying not to breathe too loudly. Charles has pointed out that, as an officer – technically speaking – he should have been given his own quarters, but he has been told that this US destroyer was not built to accommodate two thousand men, so until a cabin can be found he will have to muck in with the ranks.

Major Lehague has managed to get a cabin and has told Charles he will have to fend for himself because he is too busy to nursemaid him. Charles suspects his testy mood is because the invasion of southern France, now called Operation Dragoon, has been postponed until mid-August, after endless bickering between Churchill on one side and de Gaulle and Roosevelt on the other. It had originally been planned to coincide with D-Day in June. The other reason is that it isn’t a ‘French show’, as Lehague had grandly described it to Charles in London. It is very much an American show. The French won’t even be landing on the first day.

Charles has done some sketches of the troops sleeping in their hammocks and pinned these to the wall, alongside a poster of Betty Grable. And he finds the rankers good company, especially the ones from the Deep South with their musical drawls. Quite a few seem to be from Alabama, and they talk of home nostalgically. But at least they are used to this humidity. Charles, by contrast, feels as if his marrow is melting.

And the land of the night reminds him of Anselm. It was their time together. Their intimate space. At night they felt safe from accusation, from the narrowed glances of strangers. Though Anselm was the taller man, it was always his head that lay on Charles’s chest, in the crook of his arm, gathered and protected like a child. They were almost the same age, yet Charles always assumed the role of the senior partner, the responsible one, the worrier. Anselm was carefree. A child acting on his whims. A seeker of instant gratification. Charles envied that.

Anselm. Now that he is moving closer to seeing him again, he
finds he is thinking about him constantly. Yet the name has become an abstraction. Anselm. Anselm. Anselm. His incantation. His craving. His madness.

He can barely even hear Anselm’s voice in his head any more. It has been washed from his memory through overuse, just as the single photograph he has of him has been somehow worn away from staring. It hasn’t faded but it no longer seems vital. He must draw Anselm. That is the answer. And as soon as he has the chance, he will do a painting. From memory. That will bring his friend back to life.

Back to life.

Charles closes his eyes as if hiding from the words.

As he has thought far too many times in recent weeks: what if Anselm is dead?

His eyes open. He cannot allow that possibility to creep up on him. Not now. Not here when he is so close. Anselm cannot be dead because Charles would know, would he not? Anselm’s death would have been felt in his heart.

Alive, then. But what will Anselm make of his disfigurement? Will he be disgusted by it? And what will prison have done to him? Will his friend look the same? Five years have passed since they stood together at that hotel window overlooking Piccadilly. All that really remains is a nebulous ache of longing.

Does he believe he is going to be able to rescue Anselm? Even if his friend is still alive and in that camp, the Germans will destroy it before the Allies get within fifty miles.

Lying in the shirtless dark, eyes open, Charles becomes aware of pressure building against his eardrums. It is the sense too of noise being deliberately stifled. An armada should make more sound. You should be able to hear more than the water lapping against the bows and the rats scratching the steel decks with their claws. Some run across men as they sleep. Charles has seen them. Though he feels safe down here – the shadows mean men don’t stare at his scars – he decides to go for a walk. A man cries out in his sleep: ‘Not no …’

Of what is he dreaming? Not. No. A double negative. It sounds ominous and Charles feels spooked by it. He retrieves the boots he has tied to a stanchion and negotiates the rows of bulking hammocks, heading towards the next cabin. There will be gambling in there. Sure enough, crowding around a flickering blue lightbulb that swirls with cigarette smoke are half a dozen men playing blackjack. Some are in vests, others wearing only their dogtags. Charles can smell their sweat as he feels his way along the wall towards the hatch. One soldier, wearing his cap on back to front, has accumulated a pile of dollars, quarters and cents. Behind their whispers can be heard swing music on a distant wireless.

Outside, stars. As the humidity has grown more oppressive, some men have taken to sleeping on deck. But even here, the air is steaming, and there are also mosquitoes to contend with. The showers below deck are unpopular because they use salt water that leaves the skin itchy. Men prefer to use the improvised fresh-water ones on deck. There is a man soaping himself under one now. The mosquitoes do not trouble him.

The catches of fear and excitement about the looming battle are palpable. Everyone seems to feel pride at being part of a mighty invasion fleet, including Charles who hears the historical echoes lost on most. They are overlooking the Tyrrhenian shore above Naples where once the entire Roman fleet had foundered. Bad omens were seen everywhere that day – lightning, comets, the birth of two-headed animals.

Are there any bad omens here? Not. No. That double negative. Charles studies the night sky, thick with planets. Is Anselm looking up at the same sky, he wonders? The same quarter? The night is clear and, as he stares across at Mount Vesuvius, he fancies he sees wisps of smoke. The volcano had erupted in March, destroying dozens of USAAF B-25 bombers on a nearby airfield. Is it going to erupt again? Is that sulphur he can smell?

Glancing left and right he sees the hulking silhouettes of more than fifty battleships, cruisers and destroyers, dangerous islands of steel. The vessel nearest them is a submarine, its curved shoulders
like a whale, blue in the moonlight. The German forces left to defend southern France are surely doomed. But even though the south coast couldn’t possibly be as well defended as the north, Charles has heard there is to be a heavy bombardment from the Allied battleships and bombers before the landings begin. No chances are being taken. It is mid-August now, a little over two months since D-Day, but Omaha Beach is still fresh in the collective memory. Soldiers still chill each other’s blood with what they have heard about the massacre there, thousands of GIs washed up in the surf like flotsam. At least there is no danger of a surprise attack from Japanese zero fighters here. Naples is no Pearl Harbor. America rules the skies as well as the waves. The Mustangs and Thunderbolts that patrol overhead in pairs during the day fly unopposed.

Charles checks his watch for the fourth time in an hour, as if it will tell him the date of the invasion. When will the order to weigh anchor come? Will this second D-Day happen at all? Perhaps Eisenhower has finally given in to Churchill’s lobbying and called it off. After all, with the Allies nearly in Paris, the Germans ought to retreat back over the Rhine now.

But they are fanatical. Charles knows that. They fight to the last man and the last bullet. And they are vengeful. Reports have reached them of an atrocity in June: Oradour-sur-Glane, a village in the Limousin region of central France, was razed to the ground by the Waffen-SS, with hundreds of villagers murdered in two or three hours. The men were machine-gunned. The women and children were herded into a church, which was then burned to the ground. If the bastards could do that to civilians, what could they do to prisoners in a concentration camp? Charles shivers, takes Anselm’s letter from his wallet and whispers to it:‘Are you still alive, Dopey?’

If the invasion goes to plan, Charles calculates he can be in Alsace within a month. ‘Stay alive,’ he adds under his breath. ‘Stay alive.’

And then Charles feels a coldness in his spine, a dry mouth, an emptiness in his gut. Without any fuss – no shouted instructions, no
whistles that might alert German spies in the town – the anchors are being slipped and, with a gentle churning sound on the surface, the great propellers below have come to life. The fleet is moving.

As Anselm waits to find out what his next painting assignment is to be, he inspects – without touching – a leather-bound translation of
The Tempest
that is open on the Commandant’s desk. It is printed on vellum and has deckle edges that are magnified beneath a pair of half-glasses. Also on the desk is a framed photograph of an SS general playing a violin. He picks it up and tries to read what is handwritten across the bottom. When he realizes it is a signature – ‘Reinhard Heydrich’ – he puts it back down quickly, as if afraid it will burn through his fingers. He wanders over to the gramophone and tilts his head so that he can see what the Commandant has been listening to lately:
Die Fledermaus
.

‘Do you like Strauss?’

Anselm turns to see the Commandant standing in the doorway dressed in full SS cavalry uniform. He has spurs on his riding boots and is carrying a silver cavalry sword with two golden silk tassels on its hilt. He makes a little play of conducting with the sword and says:‘Actually, Strauss is not a bad idea. One of the Viennese waltzes, perhaps.’

He places his sword on the desk, and runs his fingers along his record collection until he comes to a section devoted to Strauss. He eases a vinyl record from its sleeve and marches out of the room with it.

In his absence, Anselm stares at the sword and then watches in horrified fascination as his own hands pick it up. Its grip is wrapped in leather and gold braid. There is an inlaid swastika and the SS
Totenkopf
on its forward-swept guard. What if he were to charge at the Commandant when he comes back? Run him through? He realizes at this moment how confused he feels about his captor. He hates him and yet he doesn’t. And the thought of running at him with a sword now seems grotesquely symbolic, a sexual act.

When the Commandant returns he says: ‘Heavier than you imagine, isn’t it? Solid silver.’

Its cutting edge, as Anselm discovers from testing it with gentle side-to-side pads of his thumb, is as sharp as a guillotine. He rests its blade on his forearm and hands it to the Commandant, handle first.

‘I’ve laid on an entertainment for the camp,’ the Commandant says, returning his sword to its scabbard. ‘And Strauss would be the perfect accompaniment for it.’ He clicks his heels together and holds out his arm in the direction of the door. ‘Come and join us, Anselm. You might enjoy it.’

In the courtyard, there is a strong smell of polished leather and fresh horse manure. A groom is waiting with the black stallion already saddled up. As the Commandant strokes the horse’s downy nose it paws the ground with its hoof. ‘Such an impatient brute,’ he says with affection as he works his hands into his riding gloves and tugs down the stirrups, making the leather slap loudly. ‘Would you give me a leg-up, please.’

When Anselm bends down and joins his hands to form a cradle, the Commandant places the point of his boot in it before hopping twice on his other leg to get momentum. He then mounts his horse with a sound of creaking leather. ‘Remember your Nietzsche, Anselm,’ he says over his shoulder as he gives a nudge of his spurs. ‘Without cruelty there is no festival.’

As Anselm and Hilde the Alsatian follow the horse and rider out of the courtyard, keeping a discreet distance as they navigate the avenue of trees and turn towards the entrance gate, he wonders what the Commandant’s comment means. When he hears a crackly Strauss waltz start up through the camp’s loudspeakers he begins to suspect. A dozen or more rooks explode from the trees above, their raucous cackling making him flinch.

The entire camp of several thousand prisoners is lined up in two blocks facing each other across the square, with a long, empty space about twenty feet wide dividing them. They are all giving the Nazi salute, and, in the fervour of Anselm’s mind, their arms seem to
form a shifting sea of erections. This has been carefully choreographed, then, he thinks. A film camera has been set up on a tripod and there is a cameraman turning a handle and panning the lens along the line.

In the middle of the space, about fifty yards from the entrance gate, is a prisoner tied to a post with thick rope, from his ankles to his chest. The top of the post reaches just below his shoulders, leaving his neck exposed. He is struggling to free himself, but his binding is too tight – and his attempts to turn his head and see what is going on behind him are similarly futile. Anselm doesn’t wonder for what the man is being punished. In this bubbling pit of fear and despair, such questions are irrelevant.