The Road Between Us (6 page)

His whiskey arrives and he drinks it in one gulp before nodding at the barman for a refill. The drinker seated two stools away now turns and looks him down and up. He has a frayed collar and food stains on the tie that is resting on his bloated belly. ‘What’s your excuse, then?’ he says. His tone is not friendly.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Why haven’t you joined up?’

Charles stares at the grape stalks. ‘I’m an air-raid warden.’

The man gives a dismissive grunt and half turns his back again.

Charles stares at the letter. An ‘education camp’ doesn’t sound as if it would be a particularly difficult place from which to escape. A few guards perhaps, but if the inmates are expected to work as well as attend classes, presumably they will be going in and out all the time.

In moments of desperation, Charles has considered volunteering for the Red Cross, in the vain hope that he might be able to join one of their concentration camp inspection teams. But he knows this is unrealistic. Of course they won’t use an ex-RAF officer, not when the country is at war and the Red Cross is supposed to be neutral.

But anything would be better than the monotonous routine of his life here at the club these past nine months, waiting every day for word from Anselm. He keeps himself busy painting at night while doing his Air Raid Precautions training during the day, a course that has mostly involved simulated fire-fighting, blackout patrols and stretcher-bearing. But this is more pretence. More phoniness for this phoney war.

Feeling emboldened by the whiskey now, Charles mulls over the new idea he has had for getting himself to France: persuading Eric to sail over there with him as part of the rumoured evacuation of the BEF. It seems a long shot, but …

The drinker on the stool is studying him again. ‘You’re that queer, aren’t you?’

Charles folds the letter and slips it back into his pocket. He does not make eye contact.

‘I’ve heard about you,’ the man continues. ‘Bloody queers. Shouldn’t be allowed in here.’

The porter has appeared and is clearing his throat. ‘Your caller is on the line again, sir.’

Charles reaches the front desk before the porter. ‘Funf? We were cut off.’

‘Yes, yes. I know. Look, Charlie. I can’t just drop everything …’

Charles doesn’t fill the silence.

‘Hello? Are you still there, Charlie?’

‘Yes.’

‘What have you heard?’

‘That they, the Admiralty, need shallow-draught boats to help with the evacuation, to act as a shuttle. The navy can’t get close enough to the shoreline with their destroyers.’

‘Where?’

‘No one is saying. Calais, I should imagine.’

It is Eric’s turn to be silent for a moment. Then he clears his throat and says: ‘
The Painted Lady
isn’t really seaworthy. I was planning on giving her a proper overhaul this summer.’

‘I could get over there this afternoon. Make a start. Is she still at the Isle of Dogs?’

‘My patients will need …’ Eric’s protestations are sounding weaker.

‘It would only be for a day, two at most.’

There is a longer pause while Eric weighs this. ‘I couldn’t get there until at least seven tonight.’

‘Great. I’ll see you there. You won’t regret this, Funf.’

‘I already am.’

By the time Charles steps on to the deck of
The Painted Lady
, wearing gumboots, an off-white submariner’s rollneck and a duffel coat,
Eric is already on board whistling to himself as he repairs a bilge pump. ‘Ah, there you are, Charlie,’ he says. ‘Merry Syphilis!’

Charles gives a wide grin as he remembers their crosstalk routine. ‘And a Happy Gonorrhoea!’

Inside,
The Painted Lady
seems more ornate than the last time he saw it, with a mahogany drop-leaf table and a scattering of oriental rugs. It smells different too: mildewy, sour. Eric, however, is exactly the same; still a short, barrel-chested man with smooth skin that looks like freshly scrubbed teak. Though he is only a few years older than Charles, his fair hair is already going silvery. And with his blustering, distracted manner, this transforms him momentarily into the hopelessly late but time-obsessed White Rabbit.

‘Good to see you again, Funf.’ Charles extends his hand. ‘I’ve missed you.’

Eric has no volume control, emphasizing words erratically and punctuating his monologues every so often with a friendly, snuffling laugh. ‘No time for all that bollocks,’ he says, wiping his oily hands on a rag before ignoring Charles’s extended hand and putting his arm around his shoulder instead. ‘Let’s get cracking or they’ll be finished before we get there. You can start by checking the lights and the lifebelts.’

As Eric supervises the provision of food and fuel, other volunteers arrive and climb aboard the neighbouring tugs and barges. A dockyard commodore, a big man with a high whispery voice and eyes like bags of cement, comes aboard with a clipboard to take their names. He asks Eric to sign a T124 form that declares his boat is now officially a Merchant Navy vessel serving under Royal Navy command. He then informs them that they are to collect steel helmets and charts from the dockyard office and set sail for Ramsgate. There they will meet the rest of the evacuation flotilla and be told their ultimate destination. They are to watch out for mines.

With the falling caw of gulls overhead and the lusty blow of klaxons,
The Painted Lady
sets off with three other vessels. Being towed behind her is a six-seater rowing boat, and, as it bobs in the wake, it looks as if it is trying to overtake them.

Having made their way out of the Sheerness basin, they realize they will not be able to reach Ramsgate before dark and so decide to stop for the night. This they soon regret. The sea is choppy and, feeling nauseous, they get little sleep. Eventually they give up and open a bottle of Irish that Charles has brought for the journey.

Eric has a habit of stubbing cigarettes out after a couple of puffs. He lights one up now. ‘How you been keeping?’ he says before inhaling.

‘So-so. Bored mostly.’

‘Anyone said anything about your court martial?’

‘Nope. It would almost be better if they did. I’ve become a non-person.’

‘Well, maybe this …’ Eric takes another drag then flicks the cigarette out of the window. He doesn’t need to finish the thought. Both men know that this trip could be an opportunity for Charles to redeem himself.

‘How is your friend, anyway?’ Eric asks gently. ‘Heard from him?’

‘A letter. From prison in Berlin. Nothing since his trial.’ Charles closes his eyes for a few beats then opens them and slaps the table. ‘So. Where do
you
find love these days, Funf?’

‘The usual old haunts. Buggers can’t be choosers.’

‘Have you considered joining the Medical Corps?’

‘To be honest, I think my services are going to be needed more on the Home Front in the coming days. They’re already clearing beds in the south-east.’

Charles raises his glass. ‘Here’s to finding love, assuming we both survive the war.’

They clink, drain and refill.

They reach the assembly point at Ramsgate a couple of hours after the sun has risen. Here they find themselves part of a strange flotilla of more than three hundred small boats: trawlers, tugs towing dinghies, motor launches like theirs, drifters, Dutch scoots, Thames barges, paddle steamers and cockleboats. As he contemplates them, Charles feels as if he has wandered into someone else’s dream. The little vessels look like exotic misshapen seabirds
gathering behind a trawler. He takes out his sketchbook to record the chaotic scene.

Via the radio they are now told their destination is Dunkirk, and they must take Route Y, which will amount to 175 sea miles. In theory this will mean avoiding mines and coastal guns, but it will also add the best part of another day to their journey time. After studying their charts, they follow the serrated coastline of north Kent for a few more miles before heading out to sea.

They encounter neither mines nor U-boats on the crossing but no sooner has Charles made out the coast of France under a chill, lowering sky than his mouth goes dry. Two Messerschmitts are approaching, flying in low from the east. He ducks for cover as they strafe the convoy but none of the bullets hits
The Painted Lady
. Instead they send up jets of water along her starboard side, making it look as if a family of whales below the surface is spouting in sequence. Eric and Charles exchange a look, trying to hide their shock behind a mask of British insouciance. None of the other boats seems to have been hit. As the ME 109s circle around for another pass, Charles’s shock turns to gnawing, guttish fear.

Again, the bullets send up water, but none hits the boat.

He smells Dunkirk before he sees it: burning bricks, wood and plaster. The town itself has been veiled in a pall of black smoke, churning from a bombed oil tank. But in patches where the smoke breaks, he can see the glow of a hundred fires, tangled telephone wires, abandoned trucks. It looks like the end of the world.

If the ME 109s had rattled him, their strafing was as nothing compared to the disorientation he feels now. Until this moment the war has been an abstraction, something that was happening in another country, to be discussed soberly over a pot of tea rather than actively engaged with. As they await orders from the Royal Navy via the radio, Eric and Charles do not talk. Cannot. They are speechless.

Charles looks around for the rest of the flotilla but because of the oily smoke all he can see is a minesweeper, dark and silent as it lies at anchor, and the vast hull of a destroyer that has been sunk
near the East Mole, the sea wall protecting the harbour entrance.

The tide goes out and a mile of shallow, sloping bay is revealed along a seafront ten miles across. The radio crackles into life. ‘Because of the obstacle in the harbour,’ a disembodied naval officer orders, ‘the embarkation will proceed at Bray-Dunes.’

Bray-Dunes turns out to be an undulating area tufted with long, reedy grass, a couple of miles due east of the harbour. When they reach it, Charles raises his binoculars.

At first he thinks the thousands of men on the beach there are shrubs that have spread down from the dunes. Then they all start moving into long lines. Without waiting to be asked, he begins pulling the rope to which the rowing boat is attached. When it is as tight to
The Painted Lady
as he can make it, he climbs unsteadily down the stepladder and unties the rope before sitting down and reaching for the oars. He can feel his heart stuttering in his chest. A rush of blood is making a roaring noise in his ears, louder than the boom of the surf. He doesn’t think he has felt more fear-frozen in all his life.

‘Maximum of six,’ Eric shouts. ‘You included.’

Because the tide is still going out, the rowing is harder than Charles imagined it would be, but after twenty minutes he feels the nudge of sand against the hull. The seawater laps his rubber boots as he jumps out with a splash and then drags the boat ashore. A corporal from the Welsh Guards helps him.

‘I can take five this trip,’ Charles says.

The corporal holds up five fingers and the men at the head of the queue trudge over, their boots silent in the sand. Two of them, their faces smeared with oil, have half-empty bottles of wine in their hands and are clearly drunk. Another with his arm in a sling has abandoned his rifle and helmet, while a fourth soldier, in disobedience of an order, is refusing to abandon his haversack. He is also clinging on to a large suitcase held together with a belt. When the corporal snatches this from him it spills open, scattering souvenirs looted from the town: bottles of wine, a porcelain chamber pot, a pickelhaube helmet, and a brass dolphin holding on
the end of its tail a small, broken clock. When the corporal points his gun at him, the soldier looks at the boat, shrugs and wades into the surf. Charles helps him in and then gets in himself, using the oar to steady the boat. The corporal helps them push off. A private takes the other oar.

It is easier rowing this way, though the weight of the men has lowered the boat so much that water is now splashing in. Once the rescued soldiers have been pushed on board
The Painted Lady
, Charles returns to the shore and sees there is now an ambulance on the beach where he has just been and that it has sunk up to its axles. The whole town behind it seems to be burning.

This time when he calls the next five men over he says to the corporal, ‘And you.’

‘You not getting in, sir?’

For a moment Charles wonders to whom the man is talking. He hasn’t been called ‘sir’ for nine months. ‘No,’ he says. ‘I’ll go in a later one.’ He taps the helmets of the two soldiers in the stern. Points. ‘You’re heading for that boat there.
The Painted Lady
.’

Once he has pushed the boat a few yards into the water, he looks up and sees Eric on the deck of
The Painted Lady
, holding his shoulders up questioningly. Charles holds up six fingers. He knows there is no going back now and this knowledge makes him excited and fearful at the same time. Guilty too, for not sharing his plan with Eric, or even saying goodbye.

As he turns and strides up the beach past the line of waiting soldiers, he isn’t even sure if he can explain his plan to himself. Some ignore him but most look at him as if he is insane. He continues on up past a group of engineers who are setting up a makeshift jetty: lorries parked side by side on the hard sand exposed by the low tide. Some are stripping off the canvas covers and puncturing the tyres by firing bullets into them, while others are weighing them down with sand and lashing them together with ropes.

As Charles reaches the bandstand at the end of the beach, someone shouts: ‘Dover’s that way, chum.’ The scene here is more
chaotic. No one seems to be in charge. The air is acrid with smoke and brick dust and there is broken glass underfoot; he makes a crunching noise as he walks along the esplanade. Soldiers carrying rolled-up blankets under their arms have not formed up in lines but are instead milling, not sure what to do, and thousands more are arriving down every road, swelling their number. From somewhere a goat has appeared, trotting back and forth bleating. Charles looks back and sees Eric is helping the last of the soldiers on to the boat, all the while darting looks across the beach. When he then gets in the boat himself and starts rowing to shore, Charles finds his resolve weakening. What the hell is he doing? Eric is supposed to head back to England without him …