The Tunnel (16 page)

Once the shutters had been put up and the doors locked for the night, the prisoners were at the mercy of their guards. A turn of a switch could transform the already dimly lit messes into a series of gloomy caves where shadowy figures huddled round evil-smelling goon lamps. Reading, writing, drawing, handicrafts were abandoned when the lights went out, and only the most elementary form of cooking could be attempted. The prisoners reverted to the habits of their fore-bears and sat around telling one another stories until the lights came on again.

While the lights were on the room was always throbbing with conversation, a steady murmur punctuated at intervals by bursts of laughter, snatches of song and the persistent tap-tap of the handyman who was making a frying pan or drinking mug out of old tin cans. In each of the twelve cells of this enormous hive eight men fed, played, argued, worked, shouted, dreamed or ate out their hearts in loneliness. Over everything hung a pall of tobacco smoke, the warm fug of drying clothes, the smell of cooking.

To Peter, as he lay on his bunk waiting for his turn to use the cooking stove and listening to Loveday’s voice droning away at some long and involved argument, it seemed reasonable that there should be only six men in their mess. Loveday was more than equal to three normal men. During the daytime, when they could separate and wander to different parts of the compound, it was not too bad. If they passed him on the circuit they were not compelled to talk. They could say hello the first time they met, and after that they could pretend not to notice him. At mealtimes it was bad, because then there was no escape; but in the evenings, when they were locked in for the night, it was becoming impossible.

The others were easy to live with. They were men who could immerse themselves in what they were doing, like Saunders with his strange inventions, or Otto with his memories, or even like Hugo with his desire to preserve the niceties of social life. They could all sit for hours with their personalities wrapped up inside them like a cat sitting within the circle of its tail. He thought of John sitting for hours completely absorbed in a book. If he looked down now he would see him, pliant and graceful, his long black hair and fringe of fluffy beard; a young tramp dressed in all the clothes he possessed, a blanket round his shoulders, two pairs of socks inside his wooden clogs. Silent. If he spoke to him, said, ‘What d’you think of this, John? Is the perspective right?’ he would look up and say, ‘What, old boy?’ – coming back to earth – ‘What did you say?’ And he would answer; give enough of himself to answer the question, and then withdraw himself again. Most of the prisoners were like that. In most messes there would be long periods of silence. They had said so much to each other, knew one another so well, that they could be happy retired within themselves.

But Loveday was not like that. He could not curl up within himself, he had to be arguing all the time. He had to prove himself. The sight of the others curled within the protective circles of their tails was a challenge to drag them out. He would fling a controversial statement into the silence of the mess, throw it out addressed to no one in particular, as a fisherman casts a fly across a silent pool; and before long an argument would be raging, a stupid argument without a point, like the one that was raging now. He was full of the mumbo-jumbo of psychology. He would remember things the others had said several days before, and which had slipped their memory. He would use these words to prove that they were not normal, would talk in elaborate parables and attempt to psycho-analyse them. There was no peace with Loveday.

When Hugo and Saunders argued, as they often did, the argument was for Hugo and Saunders, and would go unheeded by the others. But for Loveday the argument was not for himself and the other fellow; it was for him and the whole mess. He could not rest unless the whole mess was involved. With the other arguments, one could ride them out, work on and let the argument pass over one’s head; but there was an insistent quality in Loveday’s voice that made this impossible when he was talking. The voice was addressed to all the people who were still outside the argument, and in the end it was impossible to resist.

After a while they had become more cautious, and when the fly was flicked across the pool the fish refused to rise. Then, after a while, he began to address individual members of the mess. Their only defence was to be doing something – reading, writing, or drawing. Then they could say, ‘Look, old boy, I’m busy,’ or ‘Don’t interrupt me for a moment, Loveday, I think I’ve got it now,’ or even ‘For Christ’s sake shut up, Loveday – can’t you see I’m busy!’ But even this was not sufficient defence, for as soon as two of them started to talk he would join in, and before long the whole mess would be involved in Loveday’s argument.

Peter looked at his watch. It was time for him to take over the stove, and he could escape into the kitchen at the end of the block. He carried with him some pieces of wood that he had stolen from the theatre, and the already half cooked pie.

The kitchen was filled with smoke, and in darkness. He groped for the switch and turned it on.

‘PUT OUT THAT LIGHT!’

The earlier cook was just taking his dinner off the stove. ‘I had to put the light out,’ he explained. ‘The chimney leaks, and I had to open the blackout to let the smoke escape. Bloody sentry put a bullet in here the other night because we had a light showing.’

When he had gone, Peter closed the blackout shutters and switched on the light. The top of the stove was covered with tins of all sizes – poachers. He pushed them to one side, put the salmon pie on the ring, stoked up the fire, switched off the light, and dashed for the window, almost asphyxiated.

Someone opened the door and switched on the light.

‘PUT OUT THAT LIGHT!’

The visitor switched the light off again, and Peter replaced the blackout shutters. ‘All right – you can come in now.’

He was a short, round man with carefully parted hair and a blanket worn as a cloak across his shoulders. He carried a Klim tin full of water. ‘Got any room for a pisser?’ he asked.

‘Look for yourself,’ Peter said.

The man looked and said he’d call back later.

Peter switched off the light and opened the shutters again, but soon the stove needed refuelling and he dashed back into the smoke to add more wood. His half hour stooge was a nightmare of darkness, smoke and burning pie; until at last he staggered proudly back to the mess, pie prepared, to tell John that the stove was free for frying the biscuits.

‘I was talking to old Bandy this afternoon,’ Saunders said through a mouthful of pie. ‘He had a letter from an aunt saying that his wife was going round with an American.’

‘Better than a Pole – eh, Otto?’ Hugo said.

Otto grinned.

‘As it happens he knows all about it,’ Saunders continued. ‘She wrote and told him. The chap’s married, with two kids.’

‘That wouldn’t make me any happier,’ Hugo said.

‘But why couldn’t she mind her own business?’ Peter said. ‘What can Bandy do about it, anyway?’

‘Ah, that’s just it.’ Saunders had already finished his pie. ‘Better not to know. I bet she’s a spinster.’

‘Who?’

‘The aunt. She’d find something better to write about if she was married.’

‘The same applies to mine,’ Hugo said. ‘All she thinks about is her damned cat. She’s as rich as Croesus and, d’you know, she goes and stands in a queue for hours every day for cat’s meat for the wretched animal. Still’ – he brightened – ‘she isn’t spending much.’

Peter finished the pie, and went to relieve John at the stove. He found him talking to the man with the Klim tin.

‘You go and eat your pie,’ Peter said. ‘I’ll finish the biscuits.’

‘I’ve done three,’ John said. ‘I opened the window in the washhouse, it creates a draught.’ He put the three biscuits that he had fried on to a metal dish. ‘I’ll take these with me. This chap wants to get on as early as possible.’

‘I’m trying to make a cake,’ the stranger explained. ‘We’ve got a birthday next week.’

‘Won’t be long,’ Peter told him. He put the last of the wood on the fire, and set to work to fry the damp biscuits in Red Cross margarine.

‘How’s the new show going?’ the stranger asked.

‘Should be pretty good,’ Peter said. ‘It’s a lighthearted kind of thing, a sort of burlesque melodrama.’

‘That’s the sort of thing we want – we have too many tragedies.
Gaslight, Hamlet –
that sort of thing. What we want is a laugh.’

‘We’re doing
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
in the spring. They’re going to try to get old Saunders from our mess to play Bottom – he’s a natural.’

‘That chap Loveday in your mess is a bit odd, isn’t he?’

‘He’s all right,’ Peter said.

‘He stopped me on the circuit the other day and told me that I had a definite aura. I wonder what the hell he meant? He was off before I could say a word.’

‘It’s his sense of humour,’ Peter said.

When he had cleared the dinner things away his stooge for the day was done. John would make the late evening brew, and the dirty mugs would not be washed up until the morning. Thankfully he climbed on to his top bunk to finish a sketch he was making of the long room with its rows of identical messes; identical in shape but individual in content and arrangement.

Usually he enjoyed sitting up there near the ceiling, listening to the ever repeated pattern of life in the room below; but this evening the tightness inside him that had been there since he had received his mother’s letter prevented him from working. He sat there listlessly. In the end mess John read a book while Loveday, Otto, Hugo and Saunders began a rubber of bridge.

On his way to the camp theatre the next morning, Peter saw Otto walking alone, hands in pockets, round the circuit.

‘Hello, Otto. How’s the hole going?’

Otto looked at him sharply.

‘John told me,’ Peter said.

‘It goes well enough.’

‘When d’you think you’ll be out?’

‘In a month – perhaps two.’

‘Where are you making for – the Baltic?’

‘I shall go to Warsaw,’ Otto said. ‘I do not think it is possible to get to England. In Warsaw I shall fight underground.’

‘What are the others doing?’

‘I do not know about the others.’

‘Is there any chance of getting in, d’you think?’

Otto smiled. ‘I really do not think so. There are so many now. The nearer we get to finishing, the more there are who have places. There are now thirty of us.’

‘Where do you come?’ Peter asked.

‘I am third. There is a man, I do not say his name, who has offered me a thousand pounds for my place.’

‘A thousand quid! That’s expensive digging.’

‘I do not dig for money,’ Otto said.

‘No, of course not.’

They walked for some time in silence, while Peter cursed himself for asking if there was any chance of getting in. At this stage, when all the work was done. ‘How did you get started?’ he asked.

‘Started?’

‘In the escape game – how did you first get into a scheme?’

‘First I escape from Poland,’ Otto said. ‘I go to Constanza and there I get a ship to Marseilles. In France I join the French Air Force, because I am already a pilot. I train in France, and while I am still training the Germans come. So I go to Oran and Casablanca. From there I go to Gibraltar and to England. In England, I train again. I train for a long time, and then I fly and I am shot down.’

‘So when you get back to Warsaw you complete the circuit.’

‘Yes, I complete the circuit. And I do not go away again. I do more good at home, I think.’

‘What I meant was, how did you get into the escaping game here in the camp?’ Peter said. ‘It seems a pretty closed shop to me.’

‘That is because you are late arriving,’ Otto said. ‘Now you must start a scheme of your own. All the prisoners of experience are banded together. There is not room for anyone who is not experienced like themselves.’

‘You can say that again,’ Peter said. ‘It’s all very well to say start a scheme of your own, but all the possible starting places have been exhausted.’ He did not trust the possibility of Tyson’s tunnel. He believed in having as many irons in the fire as he could.

‘You will have to think … Perhaps when you are moved to a new camp …’

‘D’you think we shall be?’

‘I have been in four camps already. They do not believe in keeping us in one place for very long.’ Otto took his hand from his pocket and with a quick flick of his wrist threw a small parcel through the wire into the Russian compound. One of the Russians, a skeleton dressed in rags, made a quick dive at it and thrust it inside his coat.

‘What was that?’

‘Bread,’ Otto said.

‘But we already give up part of our rations to feed the Russians.’

‘That is given to the Russians who work. The men who are too ill to work get nothing. One of them died some time ago, and they kept his body in the hut three weeks before they told the guards.’

‘Good God!’

‘They drew his rations. You English do not realize. You say the German is not too bad. Perhaps he is not to you. You have the Red Cross, and you have many German prisoners. Do you think that the nations who have not these threats are treated in the same way as you? You do not know the Germans. You are blind in your own shell of ‘good sport.’ You English are so bloody sporting that you shame the Germans into treating you also sporting. But you could not do it without the strength behind you. The Russians do not have Red Cross parcels – no, they are treated like pigs—’ Otto stopped himself. ‘I am sorry. You will think that I am fanatic. But it is true, what I tell you.’

‘I’ve heard that the Russians don’t treat the German prisoners too well,’ Peter said. ‘Perhaps if they treated their prisoners decently the Germans would do the same.’

‘It is not a matter of treating decently!’ Otto shouted. ‘What would you do without your parcels from England? Could you live on the German ration?’

‘No.’

‘Then do not talk of treating decently!’

What is the use of talking at all, Peter thought. What is the use of trying to generalize. He thought back over his captivity, of the friendly, decent Germans who had been his guards and captors. Little men, men with a sense of humour, caught up in the vast machine of their own making which had got beyond their power to control. Then he thought of Otto and his torture at the hands of the
Gestapo.
Of the Russian prisoners, starved, worked to death, hoarding their dead for the extra rations. The concentration camps. The prisoners there were Germans themselves. They did not have Red Cross parcels. What would he and the others be like without them? How would they behave?

They came round by the Russian compound again. The smell of the huts was strong, even out here in the open air; a sharp, acrid odour, with a cloying, almost sweet aftertaste – like the smell of the monkey-house at the Zoo. There were some torn thin blankets hanging on a line, and in sheltered corners of the compound queer thin figures with large heads and dirty drawn faces sat nodding in the late winter sunshine.

Down on the football pitch there was a rugger match between Block 3 and Block 5. The teams were cheered on by their supporters, who formed a thick margin all around the pitch. At the sound of cheering borne by the wind the nodding figures in the Russian compound looked up as though in wonderment.

‘I should like to talk to you about Alan,’ Otto said.

‘What about him?’

‘You find him difficult, I think.’

‘He’s a bit of a nuisance at times.’

‘It is not his fault,’ Otto said. ‘He has a good heart.’

‘I don’t doubt it. But you need more than a good heart in a place like this, as you know well enough. If he’d only give it a rest at times.’

‘He is unhappy, you know.’

‘So are a lot of other chaps.’

‘It does not help to tease him,’ Otto said. ‘It will only make him worse.’

‘I don’t tease him – I keep away from him as much as I can.’

‘The others tease him,’ Otto said. ‘You have some influence with the others. Perhaps you will persuade them.’

‘It does him good, I think. If you don’t rag the man he’ll get worse and worse.’

‘I do not think so. He is very lonely.’

‘What do you want us to do – talk psychology?’ Peter felt a distinct aversion to this lobbying on Loveday’s behalf; perhaps it was the flattery of Otto’s assumption that he had influence over the others.

‘He should not be here,’ Otto said. ‘He should be in the hospital.’

‘Come off it – he’s not as bad as that.’

‘He is very unhappy,’ Otto said. ‘It is understanding that he needs. I do not like to think what he will do when I am gone.’

‘Haven’t you told him that you’re in the
abort
scheme?’

‘I have not told him, because we may not succeed. There is no point in hurting him without cause.’

‘You will tell him, though?’

‘If we succeed I shall tell him the night before we leave. If we fail, then he need not know.’

‘You pander to him too much,’ Peter said.

‘I know him,’ Otto said. ‘I do not think it is a good thing to tease. Understanding will help him more than teasing.’

‘But he won’t cooperate,’ Peter was suddenly impatient with Otto because of Loveday. ‘I asked him to help me with the scenery once, but he said he had no time for such childish activities. He doesn’t seem to want to cooperate … That reminds me, I promised Bandy I’d go down there this morning. I must get along.’

The camp theatre was in the White House, and when Peter arrived Bandy Beecham was in the middle of a rehearsal. The chorus, complete with long flaxen wigs and built-up brassières, were shaking the floor as they ‘Can-Canned’ furiously up and down the flimsy stage.

‘Stop!’ Bandy said. ‘Stop! I can’t bear it.’ He put his hand to his forehead. ‘How many times have I told you? Lightly, lightly – remember you’re supposed to be young ladies. And you, Rowe – tighten up that brassière a bit. It looks indecent.’

Peter’s scenery was behind the stage and he took advantage of the lull to walk across. ‘How’s it going, Bandy?’

‘Fine, fine, old boy. Will you have those flats finished by tomorrow?’

‘Providing you don’t alter it again.’

‘That’s all right – it’s fine now,’ Bandy told him. ‘Just the job … Now girls, let’s run through once more – then we’ll do the seduction scene.’

Peter fetched his brushes from where he had hidden them under the stage, and began to mix his colours. He was painting the back-cloth and wings for the baronial hall scene – panelled walls with plenty of scope for trick perspective. He enjoyed painting scenery. There was something in the large scale of the drawing, the wide sweep of the brush, that gave him a measure of release. He enjoyed making water colours of the camp and pencil sketches of life inside the barrack block. He enjoyed the rugger matches when captivity was forgotten in the dominating urge to get the ball across the line. But none of these gave him quite the satisfaction that he found in painting scenery. Perhaps it was the very falseness of it all, the glamour that coloured the production of even the camp theatre shows, that made him forget his present surroundings and lose himself in the scene that he was painting.

While he lined-out the panels of carved woodwork he listened to the high-spirited and bawdy wooing of the village maiden by the dark and fiercely amorous lord of the manor, who was played by Tyson. The maiden, almost Teutonic in her blonde and buxom charm, was importuned in rhyming couplets by her ardent admirer, sinister behind black handle-bar moustaches. First she backed nervously towards the floodlights, then suddenly darting to the very front of the stage screamed in a confidential aside to her imaginary audience:
‘If I say “yes” he’ll be content
But what a way to pay the rent!’

He had heard it several times before, but each time it made him laugh. It seemed to him as he worked that this ribaldry expressed the irrepressible spirit that would carry a tunnel beyond the wire, that baited the guards at the expense of personal comfort. Wryly he wondered how much of that spirit depended on the Red Cross parcels.

It was nearly lunchtime when John came to fetch him and while Peter was cleaning his brushes Tyson came across to them.

‘You two still keen on the cookhouse job?’

‘Yes,’ John said.

‘Meeting in my room this afternoon,’ Tyson told them. ‘Come straight along as soon as you’ve finished lunch.’

As they walked past the hospital towards the barrack block Peter told John of his conversation with Otto, about Loveday.

‘Ragging’s just what he needs,’ John said, ‘take him out of himself.’

‘That’s exactly what I said, but Otto doesn’t agree.’

‘Loveday’s got too many sharp corners,’ John said. ‘They need wearing down a bit, that’s all. Otto’s too easy with him.’ Peter did not reply.

‘I wonder how far they’d got with the cookhouse tunnel before they had to abandon it,’ John said. ‘I wonder if we’ll get out before Otto.’

‘They couldn’t have got very far or they’d have carried on,’ Peter said. ‘They’d never abandon a tunnel that was nearly finished.’

‘We’ll be out before the washhouse chaps anyway,’ John said. ‘They haven’t even cut through the concrete yet.’

They found Loveday wrestling with
A Textbook of Psychology
and Hugo asleep on his bunk. Both Saunders and Otto were out of the mess but by the window stood the inevitable stooge from the washhouse tunnel. Ever since the work had been started there had been a stooge at their window, the only one which gave a good view of the path which the Germans would have to use to reach the barrack block. Yesterday Peter had been irritated by the silent obsessed figure which stood, blocking the light and overhearing all their conversation, peering sideways out of the window, making their mess a public property. Now, warmed by the thought of their own tunnel, he asked the stooge how the work was going.

‘Dunno,’ the man said. ‘I’ve never seen it. I expect it’s getting on all right.’ He turned furtively back to the window.

‘I’ll go for the hot water,’ John said. ‘You stay and collect the soup.’ He took the metal jug from the shelf and set out for the cookhouse.

Saunders came in. ‘Soup up yet?’

‘Not yet,’ Peter said.

‘It’s up in Block 2.’ He sat disconsolately on one of the bunks waiting for his lunch. He got up restlessly and crossed to where Peter was setting out the table. ‘What’s the conscription age for women, Pete?’

‘God knows.’ Peter said.

‘It’s my old woman.’ Saunders picked up one of the forks and started prodding holes in the table top. ‘I can’t make out whether she’s joining the WAAF because she’s got to, or if she’s fed up with staying at home.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Thirty.’

‘Probably called up,’ Peter said. ‘She’ll be better of in the WAAF than in a factory.’

‘I suppose so.’ Saunders placed the fork carefully back in position and walked to the door of the mess. ‘This soup’s a bloody long time coming today.’ He began to pick idly with his fingemail at a splinter which projected from the side of his wooden bunk, until the soup arrived in a galvanized iron dustbin carried by two of the British soldiers who worked as orderlies in the cookhouse. There were about a dozen of these men who boiled the morning tea water in huge cauldrons and made the midday soup with the meagre German rations. They dumped the dustbin in the corridor where it was taken over by the barrack messing officer. ‘Soup up!’ he shouted. ‘SOUP!’

Peter joined the queue of stooges in the central corridor. Each man carried a pile of eight basins. As each stooge reached the head of the queue he shouted out the number of his mess and his fellow prisoners came to collect the bowls into which the soup, evilsmelling and dark green in colour, was slopped by the messing officer.