The Road Between Us (44 page)

Charles’s fingertips are chattering in his lap. ‘We need to get to Alsace,’ he says abruptly. ‘There’s a concentration camp there which the Germans have evacuated, leaving the sick behind to die.’

The General raises his eyebrows in surprise. ‘A concentration camp? In France?’

Lehague leans forward. ‘Natzweiler-Struthof. It’s where the Nazis sent captured members of the Resistance. We were wondering if you could spare any men. A few jeeps. It would be a recon mission.’

‘You’re kidding me, right? That whole area is crawling with Krauts. Look.’ He turns and taps the large, laminated wall map behind his chair. ‘Here, here, here.’

Charles notices the General’s fingernails have been chewed down to the quick.

‘The 11th Panzer Division is conducting a fighting retreat to Alsace,’ the General continues. ‘We believe it is their intention to make a stand right here,’ he jabs the map again, ‘at this pass between the Jura and the Vosges mountains. The Krauts know that if they lose control of this area, Strasbourg and all of Württemberg to the east will be exposed.’

‘But this is an emergency,’ Charles says.

‘I’m not risking the lives of American soldiers on a recon mission,’ the General says without bothering to mask his irritation. ‘The 7th Army will get there soon enough, in strength. Then we can do the job properly.’

‘How soon?’

‘Three weeks. A month.’

‘That’ll be too late,’ Lehague says.

‘Well look, if it’s so goddamn important to you, why don’t you risk the lives of some of your own men? You’re with the FFI, aren’t you?’

‘Could we at least borrow a couple of jeeps?’

‘No.’

A dirty fog is descending and, as they walk back to the Hôtel de Ville, they feel disorientated by its glow. All three are lost in their own considerations. Eventually Charles says: ‘So now what?’

‘Now we get ready to go,’ Lehague says.

‘We?’

‘I have comrades at that camp, too, remember. They could be in the sanatorium along with your friend.’

‘Didn’t you just hear the General?’

‘I needed to know exactly where the Germans are. Now I do. Besides, it will be safer if we go there disguised as civilians. I can find some papers for you, Charles. And I’ll see if I can borrow something less conspicuous than a US Army jeep. There will be roadblocks, I imagine, but an army in retreat is not going to be interested in two French civilians.’

‘Three,’ Inis says.

Lehague looks at her and grins. ‘Three.
Bon. Bon
. We will need a nurse. I heard what happened today, by the way. Why were they after you?’

Inis stops walking as she lights up a cigar. She takes a couple of drags to get it going. Then: ‘Why do you think?’

‘Well, I want you to know you are safe now. No one will harm you.’

‘
Merci
. I am in your debt.’

That night Charles and Inis arrange to meet Lehague in a bar in the main square. It is full of drunken revellers and Charles is jostled as he waits to be served, ordering his first whisky in days. Not Irish, but he is not complaining. The intermittent waves of pain coming from his thumb are so acute he has been feeling faint and nauseous. The whisky, he feels sure, will help.

A piano is playing. A couple of American war correspondents, one balding, the other overweight, both identifiable by their armbands, are trying to chat up Inis. Charles signals for four glasses, pays for a bottle and carries it over to the table. ‘Where are you chaps from?’

‘
Stars and Stripes
,’ one says with a shrug, looking slightly put out
that someone might be ruining their chances with the nurse. ‘You a Limey?’

Charles nods as he places the four glasses on the table, tucks the bottle under his arm and holds out his hand.

‘
Baltimore Sun
,’ the other says, looking at the ‘Official War Artist’ armband on Charles’s sleeve as he shakes hands without standing, an awkward, high-elbowed gesture. He then pats Inis’s knee without looking at her. ‘I was just about to buy Rita Hayworth here a drink.’

‘I’ve got her one,’ Charles says, pulling the cork from the bottle and pouring generous measures into the glasses. ‘Do you gentlemen have any transportation?’

The reporter tries not to stare at the scar on Charles’s face. ‘Why?’

‘I’ve got a story for you.’

‘Yeah?’

‘There’s a Nazi concentration camp a couple of hours’ drive from here. The only one on French soil. They’ve evacuated it. Fancy a look?’

‘Where exactly?’

‘In the Vosges mountains. Alsace.’

‘Are you nuts?’ the
Stars and Stripes
reporter says. ‘That’s where the Krauts have withdrawn to.’

‘Did you say evacuated?’ the other reporter asks.

‘They are force-marching the inmates across the border to Germany. Resistance mostly. Political prisoners. They are leaving the sick and dying behind. I’m going over there tomorrow for a look. See if I can help. Will you join me?’

‘Count me out, pal.’

‘Yeah, me too. I’ve been sent to cover the liberation of Nancy. I have to stay with the troops.’

Lehague arrives and pulls up a chair. ‘We have transport,’ he says. ‘A butcher’s van. I have managed to get hold of a couple of cans of petrol and some compo rations.’ When Lehague opens a map and points to Natzweiler-Struthof, the two reporters look at one another sulkily then drain their glasses.

‘Well, good luck, fellas,’ the
Stars and Stripes
reporter says. ‘You’re going to need it. You too, sister.’ They move to a table where there are half a dozen young French women singing as they sit on the knees of GIs.

The butcher’s van is parked outside. All three get in the front, Inis in the middle. Lehague pats her knee. ‘Now all we need are some civilian clothes.’

‘I can help with those,’ Inis says. ‘At my apartment.’

The apartment is small and Inis looks a little embarrassed by it.

‘You can both sleep here, if you like. I’m afraid it will be the floor but I can find some blankets.’ She sizes up the major and the captain and nods to herself. ‘My father’s clothes are in there.’ She points at a cupboard. ‘Help yourselves. When you have found something we should go to the hospital. We will need bandages, morphine, saline solution and penicillin. Have you been inoculated against typhus?’

Charles and Lehague shake their heads.

‘Then I will arrange it.’ She turns to Charles. ‘And I think someone needs to look at your thumb. I can smell it.’

‘I’ll be OK.’

‘No, Mr Charles, you will not be OK. If you get gangrene from it you could die.’

At the hospital, the nurse unwraps Charles’s thumb and recoils, partly from the fetid smell of ripe cheese, partly from the sight. It is black and is oozing putrid matter. As she dresses it with sulfa powder, a doctor comes over to inspect the wound and speaks in French without realizing Charles can understand him. ‘
Faut amputer ça
.’

‘
Alors faites-le
,’ Charles says, holding out his hand and making a cutting gesture.

The doctor shrugs and indicates that the patient should lie down on the operating table behind him. As Charles does so, he takes off his shirt. It is damp from pain-sweat. Inis prepares the wound with iodine and Charles watches with strange detachment as the doctor inserts a needle into his arm. Then he feels himself on a spiral towards sleep.

II

WHEN CHARLES OPENS HIS EYES IT IS MORNING AND, FOR A
moment, he does not know where he is. Then an ache in his hand brings back a memory. He had an operation. He raises the hand and studies the shape of the bandage: four fingers and a stump. He is in a hospital, still in uniform trousers and boots. How long has he been here? He swings his legs over the side of the bed and, feeling dizzy, steadies himself for a moment. He is in a ward full of beds, of the groaning injured, civilians mostly, but some American soldiers, too.

A knife of pain twists in his hand now and he finds himself laughing. He knows about pain. Knows he can cope with it. Knows how to cope with it, too. Morphine and whiskey. He slips his shirt over his shoulders as he walks down the ward and sees a bed being wheeled towards him. They are too busy to bother with him. At the end of the ward there is a room with medicine. Recognizing the word ‘morphine’ on a bottle, he grabs it and steps outside into the ravaged city.

Though there is still a smell of shattered masonry in the air, the sun is shining hazily. He realizes he does not know the way back to Inis’s apartment. Stepping over rubble, he tries to get his bearings. The German bodies left out in the street seem to have gone now. There is a stray dog. A woman with a pram. A horse and cart. A shopkeeper is sweeping up broken glass from under his awning.
A café is opening for business. The city is trying to return to a semblance of normality, washed by the pale sun.

Seeing the two ornate towers of the cathedral, Charles heads towards them and finds himself in the Place Stanislas, the main square with its fountains, statues and gilded ironwork. He remembers the nurse’s apartment was somewhere off here.

A few minutes later he knocks on her door. There is no answer but, as it is open, he walks in and checks the rooms. Inis is in bed. Lehague is by her side, asleep. Charles stares at him in disbelief, wondering if there is a French word for collaboration with a collaborator.

When she opens her eyes and sees him, Inis smiles and sits up without attempting to cover herself. Her breasts are slightly asymmetrical, as Maggie’s were: two gently convex slopes. As she leans over to nudge the major awake, they lose their rounded shape a little, but not their hypnotic draw.

‘How is your hand?’ she asks as she stifles a yawn.

‘Lighter,’ Charles says.

Inis reaches for her uniform, part of which is draped on the bed-head, part on the bedside table next to an empty wine bottle and two glasses. She slips it on before crawling down the bed to inspect the bandage on Charles’s hand. ‘Did they give you painkillers?’

Charles retrieves the small bottle of morphine from his pocket and, holding it between finger and thumb, gives it a little shake.

Lehague is sitting up now, eyeing Inis. When she rolls on a pair of stockings, he whistles and says: ‘
Trop belle pour moi
.’

‘Come on,’ Inis says, slapping his leg. ‘Get dressed.’

Moving carefully to protect his hand, Charles changes into a collarless shirt and a jacket that has a musty, damp odour. Lehague wears a trilby and a suit with a pistol tucked behind his belt.

Under noonday clouds that are low and heavy, they leave for Natzweiler-Struthof on a narrow potholed road that winds steadily upwards and forces them to negotiate overhanging boughs that whip at the windscreen. Lehague is driving, Charles map-reading.
Inis sits between them again. About five miles out of the town they pass a sign in English which reads:

YOU ARE NOW ENTERING ENEMY TERRITORY: KEEP ON THE ALERT

When they reach a more open stretch lined by the tall spires of Lombardy poplars, Lehague breaks his silence. ‘It is said that the poplar leaf shakes because of shame.’ He takes his hands off the steering wheel to point at the trees. ‘Because it was the wood used to make the cross. But actually it shakes because its leaves are long.’

‘At least it has an excuse,’ Charles says, holding out his bandaged hand. Inis steadies it gently in her own hand. There is sweat on his brow again and his eyes close tight against the pain.

As they stick to back roads, the wooded crests of the Vosges rise above them and the incline becomes more noticeable. They watch a mist eddy about the peaks. Though an American plane buzzes them, they do not pass a single German checkpoint. For reassurance, Charles nevertheless feels with his boot for the French rifle concealed in the footwell. It is still there.

‘I need to make a stop,’ Inis announces.

Lehague pulls over. When Inis disappears behind some bushes, Lehague says: ‘Do you think we can trust her?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She’s a collaborator. How do we know she hasn’t tipped off her German friends that we’re coming?’

Charles stares at him. ‘You know your trouble, Lehague? You’re too romantic.’

Lehague laughs. ‘The thought hasn’t crossed your mind that she could make the Gestapo very happy by presenting them with a senior member of the Resistance?’

‘No. We can trust her.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I know people.’

‘Why didn’t you sleep with her?’ he says. ‘It is you she wants, you know, I can tell.’

‘Her bed looked rather full to me.’

‘Do you think me a hypocrite?’

‘Why?’

‘For sleeping with a collaborator.’

‘I prefer not to judge others.’

Lehague laughs. ‘You are a tolerant man, Charles. That is a good quality. It’s a pity you are not French. We could do with men like you to help rebuild this country.’

‘You don’t want men like me.’

Lehague narrows his lips and nods. ‘This German friend of yours, why are you prepared to risk your life for him?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I saw your file. Back in London.’

‘I have a file?’

‘It said that you were court-martialled for gross indecency in 1939 for “conduct unbecoming an officer”.’

Charles puts his head in his hands. He cannot look at Lehague as he mutters: ‘You knew all this time?’

‘You didn’t expect me to not check up on you, did you?’ He touches his moustache. ‘It also said you were awarded the George Cross, the highest civilian medal for bravery.’

As he is speaking, Inis slips back into the van. ‘You were awarded a medal, Mr Charles?’ she asks. ‘What did you do?’

‘It was nothing. Anyone would have done the same.’

‘He tried to rescue a pilot from a burning Spitfire. That was how he got the injuries to his face.’

‘I failed.’ Charles stares out of the window at a high spine of mountains. It seems to hold an answer to something he wants.

‘And now you are trying to rescue your friend,’ Inis says. ‘You are a good man, Mr Charles.’ She takes hold of his hand and kisses it. ‘I feel safe with you.’

Slate clouds are washing the eastern sky and mounting thunder-heads in the north and south. As they set off again, the road
becomes narrower and a branch sweeps along the entire length of the van. The road is meandering through a pine forest now. When they crest the next hill they see a column of Germans trudging across the road ahead of them where another hill starts. It is too late to turn back, so they slow down and come to a stop about ten yards from them. Charles feels for his rifle again with his foot. The back of his neck is numb and he is grinding his teeth. His missing thumb begins to throb. Finding it hard to breathe, he gives a sideways glance at Lehague. Inis takes hold of his good hand. The major tilts his head slightly as if to say, it will be OK.