WC02 - Never Surrender (31 page)

"I have none well, almost none. My mother died giving birth to me. My father ... he's a vicar. In the church, you know?" He made an irreverent sign of the cross in the air. "All holiness and hypocrisy."

"No brothers, sisters?"

"One aunt. Spent a lot of time with her as a baby, till I started going to school. My father used to send me away to her when he got fed up with me."

"Why do you not like your father?"

Don drank. "He has a rule book for his life. I didn't fit into it."

"He hit you?"

"No. Sometimes I wish he had. What he did was worse. Preaching at me all the time. Drove me wild. Can you imagine what it was like, knowing every day of the week, every week of the year, what you had to do?"

And it came tumbling and grumbling forth, the life of a young man growing up with only his father as companion, surrounded by the drudgery of a clerical life from which every spark of surprise had been squeezed.

"Then he discovered I had a voice and I became a performing monkey communion, evensong, every Sunday. Then it got to be weddings on Saturdays, too. My school-friends played football and had a good time; I got to dress up like a choirboy. He wouldn't even let me smoke, said it would ruin the voice. He drove me crazy. Eventually I got big enough to tell him so."

"What happened?"

"I stopped singing. Refused to sing another note. It was my sixteenth birthday. He was in a foul mood. He just told me to sing my heart out that day. I said no. I was sixteen and I'd do what I liked."

More drink. His feelings seemed aroused; his arm was beginning to hurt once more. In the corner, Winston stirred distractedly. Don threw him another tin of foie gras.

"You know, Frenchie, I never got a single break, not in all my life. I always had to be the bloody vicar's son."

"And did he?"

"Did he what?"

"Get a break?"

"From what?"

"From being your father and your mother."

Don frowned. "That wasn't my fault. Anyway, he was never much of a parent. At Christmas he had time for everyone, except for me."

"He is a priest," Claude offered quietly.

"Even birthdays. He never gave me a single party, not in my entire life. It was almost like he resented me growing up."

"Did you tell me that your mother died giving birth to you?"

"Yes, but .. ."

"On your birthday."

For a moment Don was quiet. He hadn't seen it like that before. Stupid. Youth can be totally blind. It can also be short of temper.

"Look, I didn't ask to be born. It wasn't my fault!"

"No, and we don't ask to die, either. There are many things in life we don't get to choose."

"What are you saying?"

"Only this. That I lost my father. I shall regret it all my life."

The concept was too difficult for Don to struggle with. The alcohol was dragging him down, and he was giving up the fight to remain awake. Absentmindedly he picked up the wine cork and lobbed it in the direction of the dog.

His last memory, before sleep finally captured him, was of Winston, eyes full of reproach, waddling to the door and, with one final glare of indictment, throwing up.

Colville went in to check on the old man. He was still sitting there, staring into the empty hearth, as he had been half an hour ago.

I've just been in touch with Dover, sir."

Churchill seemed to barely to stir.

"They think today's total will be more than forty-five thousand."

Nothing.

"It's a terrific total for a single day."

Now he gathered himself. "But at what cost, Jock? At what terrible cost?"

"In my opinion, sir, better that the entire bloody fleet be sunk than to hand it over to Hitler."

"Thank you. I needed someone to say that." He paused. "Any sign of the Ruth woman?"

"Not a trace. We're still looking."

Colville turned to go, then changed his mind. "The front is still holding."

"Perhaps they are only allowing it to hold to entice our ships into their shooting gallery."

"So what are you going to do?" Colville demanded, deliberately provocative he was learning about Churchill's moods. "Abandon them?"

Churchill acknowledged his gratitude for the intrusion by rising from his gloom and walking purposefully to his desk.

"No, Master Colville, I will not abandon them. I did that at Calais. I don't want to make a bloody habit of it."

The gilded figure of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha looked down upon them from the throne of the memorial that had been erected by his distraught widow, Victoria.

"Damned appropriate," Kennedy said, inspecting the ornate imperial carvings and friezes, 'a German sitting on top of the remnants of the British Empire. Almost prophetic'

Butler didn't respond. They were walking through Kensington Gardens, near Kennedy's home, in morning sunshine. Everything appeared so normal. Nurses pushed prams, young boys sailed boats on the pond, elderly men in tightly buttoned jackets read their newspapers on park benches, dogs chased and barked, and on every side lupins and dark mauve pansies competed for attention. The sights and smells of a summer's day made the distant war seem so irrelevant.

"You know," Kennedy continued, ruminating on the legendary linkage between the royal families of Britain and Germany, 'when historians look back on this war, they're going to talk about it as a ridiculous spat between family who should've known better. Pointless, like Cain and Abel."

"Should be like Harrods and Selfridges."

Kennedy grunted in bewilderment.

"You know, flourishing alongside each other," Butler offered in explanation, 'room enough for all."

It was clear the ambassador was still lost in the metaphorical jungle, so Butler brought him to the point of their meeting. "Your phone call sounded urgent."

"Needed to hear a voice of wisdom, Rab. Everyone else seems in such a damned rush. Winston hasn't returned my calls; Edward's always in such a frantic hurry."

"The war."

"A war in which your Government keeps begging for

American understanding and help. So why has everyone suddenly gone so damned quiet?"

"The war," Butler repeated.

"Bad as that?"

"Wakeful, Grafton, Grenade," Butler responded. "Remember those names, and pray for them. Three destroyers lost in a single afternoon yesterday. Along with four troopships and eight other vessels. Not to mention six other destroyers badly damaged."

"Jeesus."

"Destruction so great that the Admiralty has withdrawn all its modern destroyers from the Dunkirk operation. Only the old and expendable are left."

"This evacuation is madness."

"Soon half our navy will lie at the bottom of the Channel and much of our air force in pieces on the beaches of Dunkirk in exchange for an army that will consist of little more than flotsam and a truckload of rifles."

"And all for one man's pride."

"It can't go on. The front around Dunkirk won't last for ever. The end will be awful, our entire army swept into the sea. Merely a matter of time, a day or two at most. And for Winston perhaps not much longer. Edward is waiting only for the moment."

"To resign?"

"It probably won't come to that. The mere threat will be enough to bring Winston down. There will be no option but to negotiate."

"And hand everything over to Hitler," Kennedy muttered ruefully.

"Not quite. We've prepared a paper at the Foreign Office suggesting the evacuation of our most precious assets the Crown Jewels, the Coronation Chair, our gold bullion, our securities and precious stones. Perhaps some of our best artistic works, too. Apparently Winston hates the whole concept but .. . maybe what Winston wants doesn't matter so much any more."

"Evacuation to where?"

To some other part of the British Empire."

"Canada would make sense."

"Indeed it would. With everything being transported in whatever is left of our fleet, of course."

Ah, the ships .. .

"You could rely on American assistance my personal assistance, Rab."

"Yes, I'm sure," Butler replied, already way ahead of Kennedy and his breathless personal ambitions. But there was a deal to be struck. "It would also mean evacuating the Royal Family."

"Now, that could be a problem. Not to Canada. I can't see the American people being happy with a British king beaching up on their continent."

"But Canada is part of our Empire, not yours."

"Sure, but you know we have a deep interest in anything that goes on there."

"In which case, if you object, it will probably have to be Australia."

"Now steady on .. ."

"Come on, Joe. A resting place for a king in exchange for a navy and our entire exchequer, with a few Old Masters thrown in? Seems a fair deal to me."

"Well, maybe .. ."

"Think about it. In the meantime you must excuse me. Talking of Harrods, Chips has asked me to meet him there to offer advice on Oriental carpets."

"Chips needs carpets?" Kennedy enquired, a little incredulous.

"Not really, but he is in the embarrassing position of having the devil of a lot of money. He's trying to spend some of it, buying rugs, antiques, whatever takes his fancy, while it still buys anything at all. As you say, the King's head may be filled with Germanic blood but his head on a shilling may soon be utterly worthless."

The two men set off towards evening, their mouths scraped rough from the wine but their spirits restored by the sleep and their fresh clothes although Don worried about their clothes. What would happen if they ran into Germans? Would they pass as civilians, or be shot as a spies?

The Germans made it easy for them, even in the dark. The Wehrmacht were so confident they hadn't even bothered to douse their lights. But progress was slow: Don and Claude kept to the country lanes rather than the main roads; then, as they drew ever closer to the front line around Dunkirk, they took to the fields, slipping, stumbling, the mud clinging to their boots. The darkness around them was unnaturally still. The familiar noises of the night the owls, the foxes, the night jars all were gone, leaving only the howling of distant dogs and a bellow of pain from an un milked cow. Winston slunk along beside them, his tail between his legs.

Then the German guns opened up again and they found themselves face-down in a ploughed field of mud. A weird arch of fireflies formed above them as shells and tracer bullets passed overhead, but only Winston complained. It meant that the Wehrmacht now lay behind them.

They walked into the outskirts of a small walled town. Bergues. Four miles from Dunkirk. For centuries, sailors had used its square tower and belfry as navigation guides. The worst was behind them, Claude said.

The armed guard who challenged them was British. He expressed no surprise at their unconventional clothing; military discipline hadn't been much in evidence in this part of the world these last few days. A glance at Don's pay book was enough to satisfy his curiosity. They asked him what they should do. "Do?" he repeated. He waved wearily towards the curtain of fire that lit the horizon. "Dunkirk," he said, as if that were enough explanation.

Bergues was not as Claude remembered it. Every street was choked with vehicles and weapons that had been hastily abandoned, making their progress difficult as they squeezed between the wrecks and past the fingers of flame that snatched at them from every side. The heat was painful; the only buildings that weren't ablaze seemed to be those that had already burnt and had nothing left to offer. As they came to the centre of the old town they came across a caravan of men that meandered along its main road, with French and British soldiers appearing from the shadows on all sides to join it. They saw wounded men being carried on doors or hauled along in wheelbarrows, and dying men being prayed over by priests. The dead were ignored; there were too many of them.

There was no military order, just shadows of men slinking through the night, a human convoy whose shoulders told of defeat, trudging north towards the still brighter flames. Winston grew increasingly agitated; Claude attached a length of rope to his collar to stop him from fleeing.

At the side of the road they passed an unexploded bomb that had buried itself up to its fins in a pile of foul-smelling earth. A curious pig was licking it.

But it was on the far side of the town that they were overtaken by despair.

Bergues was an agricultural town. It produced many things, one of which was industrial alcohol, stored in huge vats. The well-meaning mayor of Bergues, thinking that these vats were a fire risk to his community, had ordered that they should be emptied and the alcohol drained away into surrounding fields. But -the fields had already been deliberately flooded as part of the de fences so the alcohol spread far.

Without knowing it, the convoy of men was walking through a lake of highly flammable spirit.

It might have been a stray shell or even a discarded cigarette that did it. Whatever the cause, the effect was appalling. The alcohol ignited in a sheet of flame. Fifty, perhaps sixty men were trapped on a lake of fire, many of them too far from safety to have any chance of being rescued. Men began turning into pillars of fire.

Don and Claude were powerless. Their instincts were paralysed, their senses overwhelmed by sights, and sounds, and terrifying smells they could never have imagined. They did nothing. Some men managed to stumble from the lake, begging for their flames to be doused; others, further away from safety, screamed for mercy as their bodies began to melt. In tears, soldiers slowly began to raise their rifles and answer their prayers.

One of the burning men staggered from the pit of fire until he was standing only a few feet away from Claude and Don, the silhouette of a half-man, ablaze from head to foot like some Tudor martyr. He was swaying, begging them to shoot him.

It was Don who did it. Picked up one of the many abandoned rifles at the side of the road and pulled the trigger until the screaming had stopped.

It was some time before they were able to speak.

"I thought you didn't," Claude whispered hoarsely.