The Tunnel (7 page)

The long weary day was punctuated by the meals, which served only to exacerbate his hunger, and his periodic visits to the toilet. He was rested now, and the close confinement was getting on his nerves. He remembered Pop Dawson, knew that this was being done with a purpose; but still he could not prevent himself from getting rattled. If only he had something to read. If only his eyes could follow the printed lines. Anything, anything at all to take his mind outside this box of grey encroaching plaster.

It was on this, the second day, that he learned that it was necessary to turn the knob on the wall at least half an hour before he needed to go to the toilet.

So the long days dragged on. Restless days now, days in which he blamed himself for not escaping when he had the chance, days in which further escape seemed impossible, and the future stretched out as an infinity of similar days; enclosed by narrow walls, fed like an animal in a cage. As far as he could tell, no one but the
Feldwebel
and the gaoler seemed to know that he was there. Each time the gaoler brought him food he demanded to see the officer in charge, but the man merely looked at him blankly and shrugged his shoulders.

He awoke suddenly. It was night, the blackout shutters were still up, but the electric light was blazing in his face. The cell was very hot, and the light brighter than it had been in the evening, burning itself out as though with too much voltage. He lay wondering what had happened. There were voices in the corridor - then silence. Then, inexorably, the lights went out again. He tried to sleep, but could not settle down. The cell was so hot that he threw the blankets off and lay there in his underclothes.

He must have slept, because when he awoke the lights were on again. The cell was hotter than before. He was sweating. He lay and listened but he heard nothing. Suddenly, inexplicably, the lights went out again.

The following morning, after the blackout shutters had been taken down, he tried to rationalize the events of the previous night. Had he been dreaming, or had the light really been on and the cell heated almost beyond endurance? Perhaps there had been some new arrivals, which would account for the light, and he had imagined the heat. Perhaps there had been new arrivals, and the heat had been an accident. Perhaps the temperature and the voltage always built up during the night … Perhaps they were trying to break down his morale.

At last, on the fourth day, as he was waiting for his lunch to arrive, the door was opened wide by the gaoler who then sprang stiffly to attention. After a dramatic pause a young, blond, very English-looking
Luftwaffe
officer entered the cell. He wore a pilot’s badge on his tunic, and the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with bar. Peter, who had been sitting on the bed, rose to his feet feeling awkward in his ill-fitting khaki uniform. ‘Good morning,’ he said.

‘Good morning.’ The German’s accent was that of the West-End stage. ‘Thought I’d just pop in and say how do.’

‘Won’t you sit down?’ Peter said.

The German sat stiffly on the edge of the bed and produced a packet of cigarettes. He smelled strongly of shaving lotion but even this was refreshing after the smell of disinfectant. ‘You flew very well,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I said you flew very well. It was I who had the good fortune to shoot you down.’

Peter felt more at ease. This was pure Pop Dawson. ‘Congratulations,’ he said.

‘It was good luck. You put up a magnificent fight. It was just a fortune of war, old boy.’

Peter thought this was rather overdoing it.

‘I would like to shake you by the hand,’ the German said.

Peter took his hand, wondering when he was going to get the cigarette. Surely the cigarette came next?

Yes, Pop had been right, the German offered him a cigarette. He noticed that it was an English one.

He sat on the edge of the bed and smoked the first cigarette for days. He would have preferred a pipe, but as he inhaled he felt the nicotine release the sugar in his blood, relieve the nagging hunger, soothe his nerves.

‘The Wellington is not an easy aircraft to shoot down.’ The German’s soft insistent voice dragged him back to the subject.

‘No?’

‘Not with the Merlin engines. Yours had the Merlin engines, I suppose?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’ Then the pilot chuckled, the superior chuckle of pilots the world over. ‘Of course – you are the navigator. I have just been talking to your pilot. He tells me that you were lost.’

So Wally was here, too. Peter felt an almost overpowering desire to ask about the rest of the crew, but realized that this was what the German was angling for. Perhaps it was a trap and they were still at large. He remained silent.

‘A bit off course, weren’t you, coming back from Hanover?’

The German’s soft, insistent voice was urging him to defend his skill in navigation. But he saw the trap. ‘I’m sorry, you know I can’t talk about flying.’

The German laughed, and Peter noticed his gold teeth. ‘Oh, I’m not an intelligence officer – I’m aircrew like yourself. I’m here on rest after my first tour of operations. I’ve been flying
Junkers 88s.
Have you tried your hand at flying?’

‘I’m not allowed to discuss flying.’

‘Look here, old boy – I only came in for a chat. I’m not interrogating you. Good Lord, I haven’t sunk as low as that.’ He rose to his feet, offended. ‘However, if you’re going to be stand-offish, I’ll go and talk to someone else.’

Peter did not want him to go. Dangerous as he was, he represented the outside world. ‘I’m sorry. Naturally I’m pleased to have someone to talk to. But I’m afraid I’m not allowed to discuss Service matters.’

‘Well, of course not, old boy! It was just that both being fliers …’ He allowed himself to sit on the bed again. ‘Now what can I do for you? I’m only a visitor, don’t forget …’

‘Well – in the first place I’d like to shave. I’ve not been allowed to wash since I’ve been here. And then I’d like something to read. And to have the window of my cell open. It gets pretty stuffy in here.’

‘I’ll do what I can about it’ – then he forgot the part he was playing – ‘but I’m afraid that as you’re not willing to cooperate with us you’re going to find things a little hard at first. Life would be much easier for you y’know, if you would decide to be sensible and tell us the little things we ask. They’re not important things, you understand – we just want them for the records we make of all prisoners.’ ‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid I can’t discuss these things.’ ‘Very well.’ He was on his feet again, and this time Peter did not try to stop him. ‘If you choose to be obstinate I’m afraid I can do nothing for you.’ He gathered up the cigarettes and matches from the bed and replaced his cap. ‘If you change your mind, tell the guard, and I will come and see you again.’

During the days that followed Peter was allowed no exercise and his diet never varied. Since his first visitor he had heard nothing from Intelligence, but now he did not worry any more. The first interrogator had so closely followed the specification given by Pop Dawson that he ceased to dread the next. He spent most of his time lying on the sack of wood shavings, which he had pounded down to fit his shape, and dreaming up fantastic meals.

For the moment there was nothing more that he could do, and it was a relief to lie back and do nothing, absolutely nothing. It was just like being dead, he thought, except that one day he would go back to it all again. Like being dead long enough to learn how lovely life can be – and then having the chance to live again. Yes, he would live again. And when he returned to life, how wonderful the simple fact of living freely.

It was pleasant, in a way, suddenly to be lifted out of life and relieved of all responsibility. It was like going sick when he was at school. Now, whatever happened, he couldn’t do anything about it. Unpaid bills, unanswered letters – he was not responsible for anything any more. They all thought he was dead. They wouldn’t know until he got out of the cells that he was a prisoner. When he got to the main camp he would write to his brother about the car and the garage bill. For the moment he could do nothing.

He lay for hours living his life again, as far back as he could remember. It had been an active life – he had never been alone for more than a few hours at a time. Now he could think, take stock of all that he had done. It did not amount to much; a few drawings that he liked, and a lot of friends.

He had been lucky in his friends. He took each in turn and piece by piece built up a mental picture, living again the good things they had done together. With Ian, duck-shooting on the Neston marshes, with the sky red over the Welsh hills and the cold salty water running in the dykes; Ian, with his face red as the sun, carrying the long-barrelled twelve-bore that should have been in a museum long ago. The creak of beating pinions as the duck flighted in from the sea; the slow, clean shots in the failing light and the way the chosen birds came tumbling vertically downwards, suddenly bereft of flight. It was not until he too, flying, became a target for guns on the ground that he had known what the widgeon, mallard and teal had known.

He lay on his bed and saw again in memory the long wedges of flighting ducks driving steadily out to sea in the early morning. The sudden quickening of their wing beats as they saw the strange object on the ground below – almost as though they had changed into a lower gear. The breaking up of the flight as the guns spoke, the way the unhurt birds stalled, wheeled, and formed up again to fly, heads outstretched, in silent urgency for the safety of the sea.

Or climbing with John McGowan in the Welsh hills; John, with his beetling brow and incredible endurance. Being frightened on the slippery rock face at Tryfan; clinging to the cold grey rock and seeing Lake Ogwen like a pond below; later, in the evening, drinking beer in the Pen-yr-Pas Hotel.

Or hunting with Punch. Days when the countryside was brown and green and blue, and steam from the horses rose in clouds in the misty winter air. The smell of wood smoke and the thrilling blood-curdling summons of the huntsman’s horn. He had been frightened then, his fingers dead from pulling on that iron mouth. He had known that Punch was a borer, a fool; would as soon have gone through the jumps as over them. But Punch had been a friend, and when he was shot after breaking his leg at a stone wall Peter had been miserable for days …

And then the war. The early days of mastering once again all that he had forgotten of trigonometry. The intricacies of navigation. The long weary months of sitting in a schoolroom, treated as a child again. The first thrill of navigating his own aircraft across country at night. The close companionship of a bomber squadron.

He remembered his first meeting with his crew. Seven men, all trained on different stations, unknown to one another; meeting to form a partnership to take them through thirty trips over enemy territory. He remembered the early suspicions, the wary summing-up of each other’s capabilities. In spite of the fact that he was the only officer in the crew they had soon settled down and become good friends, working well together and surviving twenty-four of their thirty trips. He wondered again where the rest of them were; whether any had succeeded where he had failed.

Of Pat, his wife, now dead, he would not think. The hurt was too new, himself too vulnerable …

He thought instead of his friends on the squadron. Of Ginger Grant – good old Ginger who had tried so hard to hide the schoolboy behind the huge Bomber Command moustache and frightfully battered service cap. The cap had looked ‘operational’ from the very beginning. It was said that the day Ginger received his first uniform he had tied the cap into a ball with string, and left it in water in the washbasin all night ‘to make it look operational, old boy.’ Ginger had certainly got operational all right but, even when he was a squadron leader with the DFC and bar, you could still see the marks in his cap where he had tied it with string and left it in water in the washbasin.

Ginger had been an enthusiast with a zest for the small things in life. Perhaps he had known that he too was soon to be killed. He had met a girl at a dance in Cambridge – ‘perfectly wizard, old boy – absolute corker!’ They had danced to a tune called
This Is No Laughing Matter,
and the next day he had gone into Cambridge to buy the gramophone record. He had brought it back in an envelope tied with paper ribbon, put it on the radiogram, turned the control knob to
repeat,
and played it continually for half an hour, sitting on the lid of the radiogram, twirling his enormous moustache and defying everyone to come and turn him off.

Then there had been the day when Ginger had got drunk in Cambridge. Missing the last train home, he had slept on the platform until the milk train at four a.m. which brought him to the local station. Finding no transport there, he knocked up the stationmaster and asked where he could sleep. It was raining, and Ginger felt a hangover looming up. The stationmaster allowed him to sleep in the signal box, and Ginger bedded himself down among the mass of brightly-shining switches and levers. His last impression before falling asleep must have been of all those switches and levers round his head, looking rather like the cockpit of his Stirling. Hardly had he fallen into the first deep beer-induced slumber when a train was signalled by the violent ringing of a bell above his head. Jerked out of his sleep, and furious at the insistent clanging of the bell, his only sleepy reaction was to stop the row at all costs. This he endeavoured to do by pulling and pushing every lever and switch he could see. It was hours before they got the line free …

Soon after that Ginger had ‘bought it’ over Duisburg. Peter had watched the take-off; seen Ginger, fooling to the last, with his gigantic red moustache sticking out of the top of his oxygen mask, take his aircraft away for the last time. No one had ever heard what had become of him.

Every morning the gaoler brought the broom into the cell and every morning Peter refused to sweep, until at last the cell got so dirty that he had to sweep it in self-defence. Instead of being triumphant, the guard was quite pleasant about it, and in the afternoon he popped his head round the door in a conspiratorial way, a bakelite safety razor in his hand. ‘Wash? Shave?’ he said.