Ride Out The Storm (18 page)

Chouteau’s hands stopped moving under the greatcoat and he sat for a moment, silent, staring in front of hlm, his expression blank, his eyes empty.

‘And then?’ he said. ‘And then,
mon vieux,
we shall get the SS and the torture chambers, and the Germans will march through the Arc de Triomphe and down the Champs Elysées as they did in 1871. They will bring their gauleiters and they will occupy all the best hotels, and the opera will play Wagner instead of Bizet.’

‘French people would never permit that.’

Chouteau’s hands were still motionless and his eyes were faraway. ‘No?’ he said. ‘Perhaps not you or I. Perhaps not the inhabitants of Belleville and St Denis and the villages in the Pas de Calais and the Jura and the South.
They
would fight. But there are also people with apartments in the Avenue Foch who have fat bank accounts and expensive mistresses and spoilt children.
They
will make terms. You and I,
mon brave,
are going to witness the sight of France on her knees.’

He became silent and Angelet stared with him into the road. He thought of the department store where he’d worked, and tried to imagine fat German hausfraus buying the underwear that he used to sell to the midinettes. Then he thought of his girlfriend and wondered how she’d face defeat.

Already, on the roads north, he’d seen Frenchwomen and girls standing on crossroads as they’d passed. Their eyes had been full of contempt for the men shuffling northwards and some had already been staring towards that point on the horizon where the Germans would first appear. He was old enough to know that some of them might not even find the Germans unwelcome.

‘My God,’ he exploded. ‘It’s too much!’

Chouteau’s head turned. ‘What,
mon brave
?’

But Angelet had expended his fury, and was back again with his girlfriend. On his last leave they’d gone to a hotel. It had been mid-afternoon but, being France, no one had thought it odd. Angelet had not done the paying because the French army didn’t allow for such luxuries, and all he could remember about it now was that it had had a big Norman bed and a tin bidet. His girlfriend had taken off the bolero jacket she’d been wearing and flung it on a chair, and somehow he’d felt she was completely mistress of the situation.

She’d begun to unfasten the buttons of her dress and as she’d stepped out of it, Angelet had sat on the bed and watched her, shy and entranced. ‘How beautiful you are,’ he’d said breathlessly, half-blinded by badly suppressed adoration and dizzy with the sight of something he felt was pure and untouched. Her eyes had been dark and liquid and, even as the excitement ran through his body, he’d felt that she was
too
beautiful for him.

She’d smiled at him, unashamed at her nakedness. ‘Well,’ she’d said. ‘What are you waiting for, imbecile?’ And as she’d pushed him back on to the bed, reaching with a sure hand for the buttons of his clothes, he’d realised that, despite what he thought, she was not a virgin.

It hadn’t worried him then that he wasn’t the first, but he decided now that she was foolish and in need of love and that without him she’d turn to the first man to offer it to her. And with the Germans everywhere and Frenchmen forced into the shadows where it was safe, she could well be one of the first to fall.

‘What will become of us?’ he asked ‘You and I, Chouteau?’

Chouteau took a deep breath. ‘Doubtless the British will let us fight for them as usual,’ he said dryly. ‘Sometimes, in fact, I wonder which are the worst – the British or the Germans. Neither of them have much regard for France, but at least the British are not Nazis and they will not stop fighting.’

‘How
can
they fight? There’s nothing to stop the Germans now.’

Chouteau smiled. ‘Only the sea,
mon brave,
and that is the best tank trap in the world. Behind it the British will build their armies. Just as they did in 1915. From then, that war was
their
war – until the Americans took it from both of us.’

While they were talking, they hadn’t noticed the two khaki figures approaching. The road had emptied for the moment and Chouteau looked up, surprised to see the two Englishmen, one of them small and red-faced with a black pencil-line moustache and a sly expression, holding the arm of a tall, lean, man with a bone-white face streaked with blood which had dried in runnels as it oozed from his stiff matted hair.

‘Speak English,
mon fils
?’
the small one asked.

‘
Un peu
,’
Chouteau said. ‘A little.’

‘Food,’ the small man said. ‘You have food.’

Chouteau looked up and realised that the little Englishman’s sly eyes had noticed something no one else had noticed – the crumbs on his greatcoat. His hand moved slowly towards his rifle.

‘So?’

‘I’ve got cognac. My cognac for your food.’

Chouteau stared then he licked his lips. ‘I am hungry also,’ he said. ‘Let us say a little of my food for a little of your cognac.’

As Noble and Gow exchanged food with Chouteau and Angelet, Heinrich-Robert Hinze stood near Mardyck staring at the Channel and feeling as Napoleon and Caesar must have felt when they, too, had stared at its dark waters.

Behind him the battery was constructing gun pits – eighteen inches deep and sandbagged five feet high in front – and the circular steel platforms had been hoisted from the trailers and were now being embedded in the earth. Already one gun had been mounted, its wheels on the outer rim of the platform so it could easily be slewed round. Trenches had been dug behind in case of counter-fire. Parked nearby were the tractors, the light and heavy trucks from the stores, the trailer racked for ammunition, the officers’ mess vehicle, the cook’s lorry with the men’s mess apparatus and, stacked ready for use, the growing piles of shells and charges.

Hinze drew a deep breath. He could smell the sea and feel the breeze on his face, and beyond the dunes he could see the last of the light on the flat stretch of water to the north. The men behind him were cursing as they always did when there was work to be done but there was no real annoyance. They could all see the end of the war in sight and they all felt they’d soon be home.

He turned and moved back to the lorry where he worked. The major was there. ‘I hope to be ready for action at first light tomorrow, he said.

‘We shall be, Herr Major.’

‘They’ll be making a big effort. They’ll send in everything they’ve got.’

‘Yes.’ Hinze smiled. ‘The shooting season will be opening early.’

One of the targets was still waiting in Dover. She seemed to have been forgotten but it didn’t worry Tremenheere greatly. There were rations on board, and he was quite content to stay where he was.

All day the boat had bobbed and bumped alongside the pier, the passing ships setting the mat of small craft that surrounded her weaving and dancing. The destroyers were still doing the bulk of the work. They were not built to carry troops and it was incredible that they could carry as many as they did on decks crowded with guns, torpedo tubes and depth charges. But they were experimenting now with larger and larger numbers and were growing so top-heavy that when they swung to enter harbour they heeled at incredible angles. The men aboard held their breath, certain they were going over.

Some of the smaller vessels were limping badly, their decks splintered by bullets and the dead lying sprawled in corners. The cheering and excitement that had existed when
Athelstan
had first arrived had died away as the day wore grimly on.

Watching the women pinning labels to the clothing of the injured with their names, ranks and numbers, their units and their home addresses, Tremenheere had one whisky too many from Knevett’s bottle. There was a woman working nearby and as she bent he could see the backs of her thighs, and in the end the salacious thoughts that persisted in running through his head drove him to help her. She was so busy, however, she never even noticed him and in the end he went back in disgust to
Athelstan
and fell asleep in the wheelhouse.

He was awakened by voices and the clatter of feet along the deck, to see it was pitch dark. Leaving the wheelhouse, he saw men in naval uniform aboard the fishing boat,
Daisy.

‘It’s no good, mate,’ a weary voice said. ‘
We’re
not going.’ There was a little muttering and as the sailors vanished a three-badge man stepped aboard
Athelstan.
‘This one looks all right,’ he said. A young stoker appeared, who looked as though he’d just joined up. ‘Know anything about this kind of engine?’ the three-badge man asked.

‘Not a bloody thing,’ the stoker said.

‘I do, me dear,’ Tremenheere interrupted.

The three-badge man became aware of him for the first time. ‘Is she your boat, sir?’

‘No. And I’m not a “sir”, either.’

‘Better get ourselves introduced then.’ The three-badge man was formal and very proper. ‘He’s Smudger Smith and the kid just coming aboard’s Didcot. Answers to “Diddy”. I’m Nobby Clark. I was on survivor’s leave when they rounded us up. I was in
Bittern
when she was sunk off Norway and when we got back they sent us on fourteen days’ leave. I’d had eight when they recalled me. I’ll go and report we’re ready.’

As the clock hands in Dover and in France passed the hour of midnight, the rearguard was taking up its positions. To the south, soldiers still clung to their strongpoints near Poperinghe and on the mound of Cassel, but they all knew the end was not far away.

The day began with a disaster, and to the offices in the galleries in the cliffs came the news that three destroyers had been lost in the very first hours.

None of this, of course, was known to the men on the beaches where by this time everyone was involved – padres, Pay Corps officers, military attachés and liaison and intelligence groups – all of them doing things they’d never expected to do and trying to do them without panic.

Among them was Basil Allerton. He and his men had just arrived in Dunkirk when the Stukas had turned up, and at the shout of ‘Take cover’ he had run for shelter to a coal dump near the station. The blast of the exploding bombs had blown him into a pile of coal dust and he’d emerged choking on the grit that filled his eyes, nose and throat.

The beach was one of hard wet sand, with miles of shallow water so that the ships had to stand well out. It had been quiet when they’d arrived, and littered with what seemed to be bodies but had turned out to be greatcoats. The silence had been eerie but now, it seemed, everyone had recovered his breath and the place was one vast inquest on what had gone wrong.

‘I suppose they outnumbered us,’ one officer was saying doubtfully. ‘After all, we seemed to do all right when we came up against ’em. I even heard that when the Durhams went for ’em with the bayonet they ran.’

‘The Durhams were lucky,’ another officer complained. ‘My chaps just had to sit and be plastered with mortars.’

‘We could have done with a few of those.’ The words came in explosive bursts of disgust. ‘
And
a few of those blasted sandbags they’ve stuck round the churches in London. They’d have done better to spend their bloody day of prayer making guns.’

Allerton listened without emotion. He was too tired by this time for emotion and he knew the complaints were the complaints of men who were worried that people would think they’d not done their best. The attitude of the other ranks seemed to be much the same, one of shame that they’d been beaten but full of certainty that it wasn’t their fault.

‘I’d like to meet that bloke who trotted out all them stories about their tanks being made of papier mâché,’ one of them was saying. ‘The ones
we
saw weren’t.’

There was a bark of laughter, then from somewhere in the darkness, someone started singing, not drunkenly but defiantly. ‘
Look at the mourners, blooming well crying. Ain’t it grand to be blooming well dead
?’

‘Shut that bloody man up,’ an officer’s voice called sharply and someone said ‘Dry up, Ted, for Christ’s sake,’ but the voice went on doggedly. ‘
Look at the coffin, bloody brass ’andles–
’

Eventually the singing changed to an incredible happy whistling, as though the singer had become absorbed in some job he was doing and had quite forgotten the circumstances; the unbelievable cheerfulness – the same cheerfulness that was still about him despite the defeat and the horror – the one thing that kept Allerton going.

He lit a cigarette. Like everyone else he had dozens of them, looted from NAAFIs or flung from lorries to stop the Germans getting them. The smoke killed the appalling stench coming from inland where he’d seen the bloated carcasses of three dead cows. There was also a dead cavalry horse along the beach. There had been whole groups of them on the sand when he’d first arrived, wheeling and galloping about and squealing in terror as the bombs dropped. One or two of them had been hit and the one along the beach, he’d been told, had been in the sun for three days now.

In his logical intellectual way, he felt he understood what had happened. It had been the unknown they were running away from. Fed by rumour, they didn’t know who was pursuing them, or how many, or whether they’d outstrip them. They’d all been caught by the contagion of bewilderment and ignorance, rumour had spread at every halt and no man had had any orders. Their only plan was to reach safety, and if there’d only been someone to shout ‘Halt! Do this! Do that!’ half their fears would have vanished. It had started with the French and spread to the BEF. In the slang of the moment, ‘Someone had made a cock of the washing up.’