Ride Out The Storm (38 page)

Scharroo glared. ‘I’m not one of your goddam soldiers,’ he growled.

‘Who the hell are you then?’

‘I’m an American citizen. I’m a newspaperman.’

‘Wearing a British battledress?’

Scharroo’s eyes fell to the blouse he was wearing and then he remembered his jacket was still somewhere in the ruins of the warehouse where he and Marie-Josephine had sheltered the night before.

‘My name’s Scharroo,’ he insisted. ‘Walter Scharroo.’

‘What sort of name’s that? It’s not American.’

Scharroo almost laughed in the officer’s face. American names covered the whole face of the globe in their origins.

‘It could be German and
you
could be a fifth columnist. Where’s your pass?’

‘I lost it. In an air raid.’

‘A good story. Search his pockets, Corporal!’

The corporal pushed Scharroo against a wall and wrenched a brown army pay book from his pocket of the battledress blouse. ‘AB64, sir,’ he said. ‘James Edward McLeod. Corporal. Service Corps.’

‘It’s not my blouse,’ Scharroo said. ‘It’s one I picked up.’

‘Very likely. Hang on to him, Corporal. He might stand investigating.’ The officer turned to face the straggling line and, as Scharroo was pushed alongside the little Cockney, a tall sergeant with his cap over his nose like a Guardsman stepped forward.

‘Right,’ he bawled above the din. ‘Company–!’ Heads lifted automatically, even if not together, and they managed to come to attention. ‘Ri-ight – turn!’

As they turned, Scharroo was still standing facing the officer, his face dark with rage. No one took any notice of him.

‘Qui-ick – march!’

As the group set off, the little Cockney banged into him. ‘Git going, mate,’ he growled.

Scharroo tried to step out of line but the sergeant shoved him back and gestured at one of the red-caps. ‘Keep an eye on this bastard, Corporal,’ he said. ‘We don’t know who he might turn out to be. Perhaps even Goering.’

The red-cap stepped alongside Scharroo, his hand on his revolver, and the sergeant nodded his approval. Scharroo was being pushed along now by the men behind and on both sides of him, until eventually he was forced to walk with them.

‘It’s no good, mate,’ the little Cockney said. ‘If it’s inevitable, lie back and enjoy it. Better have a fag. I got hundreds.’

It was a cigarette that finally brought Tremenheere back to life.

When he came round he was lying on the cushions of the wide bunk that Knevett’s wife always used. It was stained now with salt water, the cushions stiff with blood, and above it there were several jagged holes through which the daylight showed. As the boat lifted in the swell the sun shone straight into Tremenheere’s half-opened eyes and seemed to pierce his brain like a red-hot shaft. He rolled over, groaning, aware of a sickening nausea in his stomach and a splitting ache in his head, and for a long time he lay like that, blinking at the empty whisky bottle rolling about the floor and bumping softly against the lockers.

He felt sure he was dying and his unsteady hand found a cigarette. Slowly it brought him back to life so that eventually he struggled to his feet and staggered on deck. The sun was on the sea, sparkling in a way that knifed through his brain. Just beyond the stern he could see what was left of
Eager
sticking out of the sea. The water between her and
Athelstan
seemed to be a solid mat of corpses, brown and navy blue, rising and falling together in a slow saraband of death as the swell moved past them. There must have been a dozen of them clustered round
Athelstan
’s
stern. The one that had caused all the trouble was still jammed underneath with its white bloodless hand protruding from a soaked sleeve and, with it now, another in naval uniform, the square collar floating where the head should have been.

He turned away and vomited into the sea, and as he wiped his streaming eyes he realised he was staring at yet another corpse bobbing in the water below him. He was surrounded by the dead.

‘Oh, Jesus!’ he said.

For a moment he was unable to make his brain function. Then he tried to shout to some of the boats in the distance. But none of them was near enough to hear and just at that moment the guns of a destroyer began to fire – whango whango whango!

Slowly he pulled himself upright. His intestines felt as though they were being squeezed out through his skull and, as the medals on his chest clinked together, the sound seemed like two great brass gongs clashing in his brain. Then the crash of an explosion somewhere nearby made him jump and his head felt as though it were about to fall from his neck in two halves, like a melon split by a knife.

‘Oh, Christ, me dear,’ he said aloud. ‘Oh, God Jesus Christ!’ He dropped to the deck. The aeroplanes came over again and the explosions seemed to lift
Athelstan
out of the water. He spent ten minutes clinging weakly to the wheelhouse and, as the racket died, climbed to his feet, knowing that he had to do something or he’d be there all day, surrounded by the mat of corpses.

As he lifted his head, he became aware of a thin voice crying on the port side and it jerked him to life. A soldier was swimming towards the boat and Tremenheere could see he was in great pain. He snatched up a heaving line and threw it. It fell across the swimming man’s head and Tremenheere was able to pull him towards the stern where what was left of Ordinary Seaman Didcot and the other dead floated. It seemed to take hours to get him on deck and, as he lay there moaning, the water running from his soaked clothes, Tremenheere saw blood and realised that in addition to having two broken legs he’d also been wounded. How he’d managed to swim at all was incredible.

The soldier was unconscious now, so Tremenheere dragged him to the cabin and, slowly and with difficulty because he was a big man, got him on to Mrs Knevett’s bunk. As he did so the soldier opened his eyes.

‘763,’ he said. ‘Private Bawes, H, Worcesters.’ Then his eyes closed again.

There was still a little water in the tank and Tremenheere made a mugful of tea. He knew as soon as he reached the cabin with it, however, that he was too late so he sat down opposite the dead man and drank it himself.

After a while, he remembered what he’d been about to do when he’d found Bawes. He picked up the spare boat-hook and, moving aft, still feeling as though the side of his head was in danger of falling off, he began to poke in the water. As he shoved, the putty-coloured horrors under the stern bobbed and danced and turned over, bloodless hands reaching, dead eyes staring. He had to turn away and be sick once more, but he knew he could never move
Athelstan
while the hampering corpse was still round the screw. At last he cleared enough space in the water to reach the body which had caused all the trouble. To his surprise it now came free at once and lurched to the surface.

Flinging down the boat-hook, he slipped down to the engine room, only to realise that he’d been wasting his time because it was lapped by oily black water, the floorboards floating on their rests.

He had just clambered slowly back to the deck when a lone Junkers 88 on its way home dropped its bombs. The first one lifted him off his feet and flung him into the well again with a crash that knocked all the breath from his body. The second and third hit the wreck of the destroyer and the whirring splinters ripped through
Athelstan
’s
planking until she looked like a colander.

The day progressed agonisingly in a cacophony of noise. The sun passed its peak and began to sink. The wreckage along the tide line increased, the numbers of the dead bobbing in the wash of the ships grew larger, and the smoke still covered the town like a funeral pall.

Allerton had stood on the empty beach all morning, suddenly indifferent to his chances of reaching safety, watching the noisy tragedy by the mole with narrow-eyed fascination. Not far away, a big transport had been hit abaft the engine room and a huge gout of flame and smoke had reached upwards out of the funnel as she’d begun to sink in a cloud of steam. A destroyer had manoeuvred alongside to put her bow to the transport’s forecastle and soldiers were now scrambling across while naval men dragged more survivors from the sea. By this time the transport had heeled so far over that her forward funnel and mast were in the water, and all the time the German bombers were trying to hit her yet again. Then, as Allerton watched, she turned right over and he could see soldiers running across the keel, still under air attack and with the destroyers’ guns crashing away over their heads.

He turned back towards the beach, defeated and unable to absorb any more. His face was swollen and he felt he could hardly place one foot in front of the other. Dunkirk seemed unreal now, a place where army discipline had gone by the board but yet somehow managed to survive. Near him a group of men were wading neck-deep and a man sitting on the sand, his head swathed in bandages, stared silently towards them.

‘You on your own?’ Allerton asked, and as the man turned his head he saw his face was terribly scarred by burns.

‘Yes, mate,’ the soldier said calmly. ‘It’s me eyes. I can’t see. Are you an officer?’

‘Yes. I am. Can I help you?’

‘Nothing you can do for me, sir.’

‘I could get you to one of the boats.’

The soldier’s head turned. ‘Could you do that for me, sir?’

Allerton helped the soldier to his feet and took his hand. The palm was rough and calloused.

‘Private Blewitt, sir,’ the soldier said. ‘East Lancs. I was by one of the lorries, getting wounded out, and when she was hit the petrol exploded in me face.’

He allowed Allerton to lead him down the beach. The nearest queue opened for them to join and Allerton stood with the blind man in the water. No one spoke to them, and Allerton’s mind was full of pain and sadness and a new compassion of which he hadn’t believed himself capable. Somebody behind him in the line, standing waist deep in the water, was playing
The Londonderry Air
on a mouth-organ with a lilt that he found infinitely moving.

A boat bobbed towards them and one of the men behind Allerton gave him a little push. ‘Go on, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s all right.’

Allerton pulled the blind man forward. Blewitt said nothing, patiently allowing himself to be led, and when a floating body bobbed against them another soldier quietly pushed it away.

‘It’s deep,’ the blind man said.

‘Nearly there,’ Allerton pointed out.

A sailor was reaching out over the bow of the boat and Allerton passed Blewitt’s hand to him.

‘You’ll be all right now,’ he said.

‘Thanks, mate,’ the scarred head turned slowly. ‘You’re a toff.’ Allerton drew a deep breath and backed away. The man behind him pushed him forward again. ‘Go on, sir. You can go in my place.’

‘No.’ There were tears in Allerton’s eyes as he stumbled away through the water. ‘It’s all right.’

From the mole Scharroo peered over the beaches and the scattered groups of men, at the wreckage along the tide line, the burned-out vehicles and the guns canted up in the sand, the wrecks of aeroplanes and cars. He’d long since stopped arguing with the military policeman who’d marched him away.

Among the men around him now were a lot of Frenchmen squabbling over the contents of a sack of hard biscuits. They were bewildered, not knowing whether to go on the ships or stay with their own country in its hour of disaster. Round their waists most of them wore inner tubes they’d taken from abandoned vehicles, like children on a trip to the seaside.

The queue began to shuffle forward again and Scharroo moved with it. The little Cockney was still with him, still sucking at a fag. He seemed to have thousands stored about his person and had kept Scharroo supplied ever since they’d left the town. The mole was littered with bloody bandages ripped off by men afraid of being refused permission to board, and from time to time they saw corpses covered with groundsheets or coats, big boots awkwardly protruding. The sun was sinking in a blaze of red now, and Scharroo had a feeling that he’d never see the evening glory again without remembering this day.

‘Soon be ’ome,’ the little Cockney said. He was subdued now with exhaustion. ‘Expect they’ll send us to the glasshouse when we arrive.’

‘They won’t send me,’ Scharroo said. ‘I’m an American citizen. I tell every sonofabitch who asks but nobody listens. I’m a newspaperman and I have to get some place to file my story.’

‘What story?’

Scharroo stared. ‘
This goddam story.
The biggest defeat the world’s ever seen!’

The Cockney looked indignant. ‘
We’re
not defeated,’ he said. ‘We’ll win in the end.’ The narrow face became taut. ‘You sure you ain’t one of them fifth columnists? You’re spreading propaganda.’

‘Propaganda be damned! I’m a neutral. I’m American!’

‘Who’s President of the United States then?’ The Cockney flung the question at Scharroo as though hoping to catch him unawares.

‘Franklin Delano Roosevelt.’

‘And what’s the capital?’

‘Washington.’

‘It’s New York.’

‘Don’t be goddam stupid! It’s Washington, DC. And the President lives in the White House. If you like, I’ll recite the Declaration of Independence or list the states.’