Ride Out The Storm (21 page)

‘Yon bastards’ll learn a thing or two, if they come,’ he said, and though Chouteau didn’t understand a word of Gow’s thick dialect, he knew exactly what he meant

‘
Oui
,’
he said. ‘
Vraiment.
’

Gow was just wishing the Germans would come so he could shoot a few, when he heard Noble’s voice behind him. Noble had disappeared the previous night and it had been Gow’s firm impression that they’d never see him again. His face was pale and, as he approached, Gow saw he was limping.

‘Don’t you ever stop fiddling with that bloody gun, Gow?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘And look at them boots. There must be quarts of spit on ’em!’

Gow frowned. ‘It wouldnae do you no harm to polish
your
boots.’

Noble stared at his feet. ‘They’re all wore out,’ he said.

‘Nor do y’have a crease in your pants, and no blanco on yer webbing.’ Gow’s eyes glinted as he snatched the rifle from Noble’s hand to squint down the barrel. ‘Your bundook’s dirty, too,’ he announced. ‘You could plant potatoes in there, mon, and yon foresight’s lousy with spiders and cobwebs and dairty filthy rust.’

Noble stared. Gow took his breath away. He was an elemental force, understanding not much beyond a punch in the teeth, and nothing would ever change him. But Noble was a Cockney, supple, tough and moving with the wind because that was how he survived, and nothing would ever change
him
either.

‘I’m not looking forward to a hero’s death as a prize for me patriotism,’ he said.

‘Where’ve you been, anyway?’ Gow asked. ‘And for why are ye standing there like a wet hen, mon? Get your heid doon.’

Noble shrugged and, pulling a sandbag forward, produced a handful of army biscuits, a white loaf and a tin of bully beef.

‘Bully again,’ Gow said. ‘It’s coming oot o’ ma ears.’

‘Wait, you ungrateful soldier you,’ Noble said and from his blouse he began to bring out sweet biscuits and tins of fruit and chocolate. ‘Dessert,’ he said. ‘Will it do?’

Gow stared at Noble. He was still surprised to see him back. ‘Aye,’ he said grudgingly. ‘It’ll do.’

Noble knelt awkwardly and as Chouteau reached out for the loaf he pushed his hand away. ‘Less o’ that,
mon camarade
,’
he said. ‘I will
donner une partie à
chaque homme.
Savvy?’

Chouteau nodded and nudged Angelet. ‘Wake up,
mon vieux
,’
he said. ‘We’re going to eat.’

Gow was studying the loaf. ‘Where’d you get it, you bluidy scrounger?’ he demanded.

‘Where you think? I pinched it. There’s Robin Hood, Robin Starch and robbin’ bastards. I’m one o’
them.
’

‘
Where did you get it
?’

‘I saw this feller–’

‘You pinched it? Off one of your comrades?’

Noble was unmoved. ‘Listen,
mon fils
,’
he said, ‘he was belting up the road like he’d got ten legs.
You’re
still here, fighting off them nasty rotten ’Uns, aren’t you? I thought you needed it more’n he did.’

As they began to eat, tearing at the food like famished wolves, Noble glanced round him, suddenly aware how few of them there were. ‘Where’s all the rest of the fellers?’ he asked.

‘What fellers?’

Noble looked at Gow in disgust. ‘Don’t say we’re on our own,’ he said.

‘There’s enough.’

Noble snorted. ‘Trouble with you, Gow,’ he said, ‘is that you’ve got the light of bloody glory in your eye.’

Gow’s solemn face cracked a little and he nodded to the distance across the canal. ‘Them bastards winnae come out o’ yon trees till we let ’em,’ he said.

He studied Noble, still puzzled. He’d seen plenty like Noble in the last few days. Some of them had conveniently lost their units, some even their rifles. But, though Noble’s rifle and his person were a disgrace even to a Territorial, he was still among those present.

‘What did ye do in Civvy Street, Noble?’ he asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Do all right at it?’

Noble had a feeling that Gow, whom he’d always assumed to be a man without humour, was pulling his leg. ‘Yeh. Okay,’ he said.

‘You a religious mon?’

‘No. I don’t think it took. Why? What are you gettin’ at?’

‘I was wondering why you didnae bunk while you had the chance.’

Noble frowned. He wasn’t sure himself. It had seemed to start from the moment he’d first seen Gow, blinded but still clutching the Bren. As a Londoner, Noble knew the traditions of the Household Brigade, their calm demeanour, the fact that they had registered, exclusive, privately built faces which came with training, no matter what sort of features a man joined up with. He’d seen battle pictures of them, wearing red coats and stalking from the fray with long slow strides, every man two yards high, shaved, correctly dressed – even the bloodstained bandages they wore neat – a remnant of a company moving unhurriedly past relieving troops in majestic silence, not a single eye moving from some spot up ahead, as though only they knew how to fight battles. Though in the past he’d considered any man who joined them a bloody fool, he’d also occasionally found himself suffering from a secret envy that he wasn’t one of them.

It wasn’t just that, though, he knew. There was something about Gow that appealed to him. He was the sort who’d salute an officer on the telephone and he could hardly be called dynamic. Those icy eyes of his sometimes looked like a murderer’s and his conversation wouldn’t have taxed the resources of a trained parrot, while in behaviour he was about as unlike the unprincipled wide boys with whom Noble had surrounded himself in Civvy Street as a racehorse was from a costermonger’s moke. He decided it must be his sheer moral guts.

‘I dunno,
mon fils
,’ he said slowly. ‘Thought you’d need someone to look after you. Quartermaster, sort of. I’m no fighting man, old mate. I’m lines of supply troops. So, okay, I’ll supply. You’ll not go ’ungry while Lije Noble’s around.’

‘Right.’ Gow gestured. ‘Well, now get your heid doon before you get hurt.’

Noble gave him a twisted smile and turned round. The back of his trouser legs and his battledress blouse was torn by tiny holes each of which was stained by a pinprick of blood.

‘I
got
hurt,’ he said. ‘I bin wounded. I’m the most wounded man in the bleedin’ British army, I reckon. Seventy or eighty times I got ’it. Up me nostrils, in me ear’ole, up me backside. You’d better start pickin’ ’em out before I get blood poison.’

By this time
Vital
was just completing her third trip, and Hatton was on the point of collapse with tiredness.

The sky was empty as he ran down the mole driving a group of soldiers ahead of him but no one expected it to be empty for long and Hough was watching it anxiously, his face grey with fatigue.

‘Good show, Hatton,’ he shouted. ‘How many does that make?’ Hatton consulted the petty officers. ‘Nine hundred and sixty-three, sir. Give or take a few.’

‘Good God!’ Hough sounded startled. ‘The bloody ship’ll go to the bottom under the sheer weight. Right. Avast boarding.’

As the gangplanks were hauled aboard and
Vital
began to go astern, Hatton found he was unbelievably thankful to be away. Fear was growing in him with his increasing tiredness and he was itching to be back in the safety of England.

Above him on the bridge, the telegraphs clanged and the ship’s propellers stopped as
Vital
swung. A paddle-steamer was slipping inside her to take her place and Hough’s head was lifted, his eyes on the sky, as they waited for the steamer to clear their stern. Then, while
Vital
still paused between the narrow sandbanks, the man on the point fives, who seemed to have eyes like a hawk’s, shouted. ‘Stukas, sir! Port quarter!’

The clouds were clearing now, and as Hatton’s eyes lifted he could see patches of blue with small moving specks in them. The guns began to go in a crashing chorus that deafened him, and the aeroplanes began to fall out of the sky, one after the other. Vast eruptions of dirty brown water rose round
Vital.
Then, as she picked up speed, the men on her decks crouching with their heads down against the splinters and bullets, Hatton heard the scream of a shell and saw a fountain of water rise from the sea on the ship’s starboard side.

‘Six-inch,’ Hough said calmly. ‘Must be that battery near Gravelines. Let’s have smoke, Pilot.’

The navigating officer pressed the plunger and, below deck, Lieutenant MacGillicuddy, standing on his iron grating, still worried sick about the troublesome bearing which was beginning to show signs of growing worse, watched the petty officer in charge adjusting the valves that admitted just too much oil to the furnaces and shut off just too much air to allow complete combustion. The glazed peephole which normally showed a white-hot flame was a gloomy blackness as the oil broke down into greasy hydrocarbons that were snatched up by the draught and poured up through the after funnel. MacGillicuddy studied it dispassionately, not even thinking of the possibility that a shell might rip through the side of the ship and send steam as harsh as red-hot iron blowing through the compartment.

The ship was swinging first one way and then the other, heeling crazily under the weight of the men on her deck. A Stuka dropped down behind her and swept overhead, its guns clattering, then every rifle on board went off with the ship’s pom-poms. The bomb seemed to lilt the old ship from the sea and Hatton’s breath came out in an explosive gasp of fear, but as the column of water the bomb had thrown up collapsed across the deck he felt
Vital
shake herself like a terrier emerging from a pond and continue to pick up speed.

‘I wish I’d never come,’ some humorist wailed. ‘I’m always seasick going to Margate.’

As the bomber pulled up, a patrolling Spitfire from England, at the very range of its petrol, caught it and the ship was pandemonium.

‘He’s got him! He’s on fire!’

A long stream of dark smoke was pouring out of the Stuka now to mingle with the black coil from
Vital
’s
funnel, and the aeroplane was racing up the port side of the ship, settling lower and lower all the time. It was only a few hundred yards away, flying below the smoke as though sheltering beneath it, and Hatton could see the pilot struggling with the hood. Then it hit the sea in an enormous splash and as the spray cleared, they saw its tail sticking up, then slowly, as they cheered, it sank out of sight.

‘We’ll not dally to look for survivors,’ Hough said. ‘And you can go easy on the wheel now, Quartermaster. We’re wearing out the sea.’

His nostrils full of the stink of the belching black smoke, Hatton was still pushing men away in odd corners when MacGillicuddy passed him, thrusting his way through the soldiers.

‘That bloody bearing’s gone,’ he snarled.

The sound of the shell seemed to start miles away over a group of woods to the east. It came from nowhere, starting as a whisper and increasing until it filled the whole air.

‘Down,’ Scharroo said as he pulled Marie-Josephine towards the ditch.

They were passing what appeared to be the British army headquarters, situated in a château just behind La Panne. A transit camp had been set up in the surrounding woods and there were soldiers everywhere, melting away as the shell approached. Lorries and pennanted staff cars were parked down the gravelled drive and round the ornamental pond that fronted the building, but they were empty now, their doors still swinging as the drivers bolted for cover. A French horse artillery regiment heading north began to scatter in confusion, charging away in a disorderly line, shouting and yelling, the drivers lashing at the horses, the gunners frantically clinging to the limbers, ammunition trailers, mess carts and wagons. As they tried to swing off the road, one of the horses went down with a crash and they saw it sliding along the ground, its eyes bulging with terror as it was dragged along by the violent forward motion of its companions and the weight of the gun. Then the whole lot piled up in a ghastly, floundering, screaming heap of men, animals, spinning wheels and rolling, bouncing mess kits, just as the shell arrived.

Scharroo had just lifted his head when it exploded in the ornamental pond with a crash that seemed to strip the flesh from his body. Blocks of stonework flew into the air with a huge spray of water that drifted away on the breeze as the clods of earth and the dead carp whacked down on the lawns and the gravel drive.

Immediately the whole area began to boil again like an ants’ nest stirred by a stick. Soldiers appeared from holes in the ground and from behind walls and trees. Abandoned vehicles were reoccupied and began to get under way once more. Limping French artillerymen were trying to drag their horses to their feet and a man hurried past on the road, leading a string of saddled chargers. A military policeman shouted hopelessly at him in English to turn them loose but the Frenchman ignored him and joined the vast trek towards the coast.

The whole countryside had come alive again where a moment before it had seemed empty, and the flow of moving figures restarted, heading like lemmings towards the sea, tramping unspeakingly past the pink and white of the apple blossom and the green of new corn, dragging the last lurching stragglers with them. Some of them were wheeling their wounded in barrows, pride in their unit not allowing them to abandon them, the sergeants chivvying them like sheepdogs. ‘Keep the step, lads! It’ll help! Keep the step!’ Despatch riders so tired they looked like zombies drove up and down the columns and, alongside the road, a group of Frenchmen taking up positions for a final stand were digging slit trenches and covering them with branches from a nearby garden to bide them from the sky.