The '44 Vintage (11 page)

Someone took his arm—it was Sergeant Purvis.

“What you need, mate, is something solid in your stomach,” said Purvis distantly. “Taffy—there’s some cold stew in the pot. Get it heated up.”

Butler had just been thinking happily that the irritation between his toes had entirely disappeared—he couldn’t feel a thing even when he stamped his foot. But now there was something very strange and unpleasant going on in his stomach—something the mention of cold stew was causing to rise—

“No—“ he began thickly, as the room started to tip up under him.

How Corporal Jones answered a civil question

THE DARKNESS
was thick and warm, and it revolved around Butler not in a circle but in a great swirling ellipse. He steadied in it and was sick.

Then he was on his knees, the sweat clammy on his face, and he was being sick again. And again.

Now there was a hand on his shoulder.

“That’s right, boyo—get it off your chest—that’s right … Now, put your finger down your throat—go on …”

Butler leaned forward until he lost his balance. His head struck something hard and rough, preventing him tipping over altogether. It was a stone wall, and he felt grateful to it for being there.

Then he was sick again, and this time his stomach hurt with the spasm of it. He’d made a terrible fool of himself, but the sickness mattered more than the foolishness.

Then he felt a little better.

“Jack?” A hand touched his shoulder.

Feeling better made the foolishness matter more than the sickness. He pretended not to hear the voice.

“He still out?” Another voice, harsher and further away.

“Doesn’t know whether it’s Monday or Christmas. Proper waste of good wine.”

Taffy Jones.

“But you got what we wanted?”

Harsher voice.

“Oh yes … spilled the beans he did, before he spilled his guts. Like taking chocolate from a baby.” Taffy Jones’s voice grew fainter. “I tell you—“

A wave of nausea cut off the fading words. There wasn’t anything left inside him to throw up, but his stomach was still behaving as though there was. More than that though, he was angry that he was missing what was being said about him. Beans and chocolate weren’t things he wanted to think about, but there was something there which he must try to remember, and already he was beginning to forget it.

The stone wall was hurting his head, so he put his hands flat on it and took the strain.

That was better. And he wasn’t feeling so bad now either—he was just feeling awful.

Also … there was something he had been meaning to ask Sergeant Purvis, and he had forgotten to ask it, and now he couldn’t remember what it was. Or he’d meant to ask somebody, and Sergeant Purvis would be more likely to give him a straight answer than Taffy Jones.

Because like the Communist Party, Taffy Jones wasn’t to be trusted.

The voices were coming back.

“… get him put together. He can’t travel like that.”

The harsh voice again—he couldn’t place it.

Taffy Jones said something he couldn’t quite catch. Then— “… we can put him in the truck to sleep it off.”

Grunt. “So long as he don’t vomit over the equipment.”

Butler closed his eyes in the darkness. That grunt had been expressive of complete contempt. If there was anything worse than getting what one didn’t deserve, it was getting in full what one did deserve, he reflected miserably.

A flashlight threw his shadow against the wall.

He heard noises, voices.

“Come on, then,” said Taffy Jones. “Let’s be having you.”

Butler sat back on his heels.

“Drink this.”

He was about to protest that he didn’t want to drink anything when he felt the heat of the mug which was thrust into his hands.

“Drink it up.”

Not tea but coffee. Scalding-hot unsweetened coffee, black in the light of the torch. It burnt his mouth.

“It’s too hot.”

“Shut up—and drink up. We’re moving out, man.”

“W-what?”

“Drink.”

Butler drank, feeling the fierce heat course down into him, cauterizing as it spread.

“Get up.”

He was past arguing. The cup was taken from his hands. His equipment was draped over his shoulders. First the webbing belt was clipped together, then his shoulder flaps were unbuttoned to receive the cross-straps and then buttoned over them. He was being put together again. Finally his Sten was hung round his neck and something was pulled down roughly on his head—whatever it was, it wasn’t his steel helmet.

“Come on, then.” A hand propelled him.

“Where are we going?” he asked hoarsely.

“To the Promised Land. And you’re going to travel there in style, boyo. So make the most of it.”

The torch flashed ahead of him and he saw men moving in its beam. Men loaded with equipment. Engines started up all around him. The light picked out a truck directly in front, a small three-quarter-ton weapons carrier. The tailboard was down and the canvas flaps thrown back to reveal its load of miscellaneous equipment and jerrycans.

“In you go, then,” said Jones briskly, directing the torch beam into a small space between the jerrycans.

The night air and the walk and the coffee were working inside Butler to restore him to the human race. He could even feel a stirring of anger now; chiefly it was directed against himself for the sort of behaviour he had hitherto observed with contempt in others. It was true that he hadn’t set out to drink too much, as they so often did on a Saturday night with such mindless enthusiasm. But it was also true that he didn’t even like alcohol very much—and more, that he had been warned against it by both his father and the general, each in his different way. It was the general’s more oblique warning which hurt him more now, because in cautioning him to watch out for the untrust-worthiness of men who drank too much the old man had taken for granted that he would never be such a man.

“Go on,” urged Jones, more impatiently, taking his arm.

Butler shook the hand away. A little piece of that anger tarred his father and the general for not warning him more strongly when to beware the demon, but a much larger one blackened Taffy Jones, who had filled him up with wine and then betrayed him.

But there was nothing he could do about that now, when he was in the wrong himself. That accounting would have to wait.

He reached forward and took hold of the side of the truck. As he lifted his leg to lever himself aboard his knee struck the butt frame of the Sten, driving the gun upwards. Somehow the sling had twisted during the walk in the darkness and the movement of the gun tightened it round his neck, half choking him and throwing him off his balance.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” exclaimed Jones.

Butler untangled the Sten with clumsy fingers in the light of the torch, grasped the side of the truck once more, and attempted to hoist himself up. But this time, just as his foot was settling on the floor, he felt Jones pushing him from behind. His boot skidded along the metal, bounced off a jerrycan and lost its foothold altogether.

Meine Stiefel
, he thought irrelevantly. Meine bloody Stiefel.

Jones gave an exasperated growl. “For fuck’s sake,” he hissed at Butler, “get into the bloody truck, man!”

Butler started to move again, and then stopped.

Meine Stiefel!

He turned towards Jones. ‘What happened to Sergeant Scott?” He stared blindly into the torch’s beam. “And Mr.—Mr. Wilson—the men we’re replacing?”

There was noise and movement all round him, he could sense it in the darkness. But he could also sense the silence behind the beam of light which blinded him.

Then the light left his face. “None of your business, boyo,” said Jones, reaching forward to push him towards the truck again. “None of your business.”

Butlers anger erupted. Before he could stop himself he had swept Jones’s arm out of the way and had grabbed the little Welshman by the throat with one hand while the other spun him round against the tailboard. The man’s cry of surprise, half stifled by the choking hand at his neck, turned to one of pain as he was bent backwards into the jerrycans.

“I said—what happened to Sergeant Scott?” Butler brought his knee up into Jones’s crotch menacingly as he felt a hand clawing at him. The hand went limp.

“Arrgh-arrgh-arrgh,” mouthed Jones.

Butler slackened his throat-grip, at the same time grasping the free hand which had tried to claw him and slamming it hard against the truck.

“You f—
ahhh
!” Whatever Jones had planned to say was cut off by renewed pressure. “You’re breaking my—breaking my back.”

“What happened to Sergeant Scott?” Butler repeated, wishing he could see the Welshman’s face.

Jones whispered something, but Butler resisted the temptation to lean forward to catch the words. The strength of his grip depended on his straight arm; once he bent his elbow he would also bring his face into range of a head-butt, which was the oldest last resort of all.

“Speak up, you little bugger,” he snarled.

Jones relaxed. “Accident,” he said hoarsely. “Had—an—accident.”

“What sort of accident?”

Jones lay very still. “Shot himself.”

“How?” Butler frowned in the darkness. He hadn’t expected this answer, but when he thought about such an accident it wasn’t so very surprising, particularly with the outlandish selection of weapons favoured by Chandos Force.

“Cleaning his rifle,” said Jones.

Butler was disappointed. “And Mr. Wilson?”

This time Jones seemed unwilling to remember. Butler lifted his knee a little to jog his memory.

“Accident,” said Jones quickly.

“Cleaning his revolver?” Butler kept the knee in position.

“No. Stepped on a mine.” Jones’s voice rose plaintively.

“
Corporal Jones
!” The sergeant-major’s shout was unmistakable.

Jones struggled convulsively.

“
CORPORAL JONES
!” The shout was louder and nearer.

Butler held him down. “Next time I ask a civil question, you give a civil answer—remember that,” he said, quickly letting go of the Welshman and stepping smartly to the side out of his reach as he did so.

The sergeant-major loomed up in the darkness just as Jones had managed to straighten himself. “Are you
deaf
, Corporal Jones?”

“Sergeant-major!” Jones’s voice cracked.

“Well—get that man into the truck double-quick and then report to Sergeant Purvis
on the double, Corporal
!”

Butler didn’t wait to be helped. Pushing Jones out of the way he hauled himself up among the jerrycans.

“
Tailboard
!” roared the sergeant-major.

Jones slammed the tailboard up and groped in the darkness for the locking pin. He had lost his torch, thought Butler with malicious satisfaction. Serve the little bugger right!

“Remember?” Jones hissed at him. “I’ll remember, boyo—you can bet on that.”

“You do,” said Butler.

“Don’t you worry”—the little man was clumsy with rage; Butler could hear the pin scraping as he searched for the hole—“don’t you worry about that”

“I won’t,” said Butler.

“No. You worry about having another accident—you worry about
that
, boyo … just you worry about
that
.”

The truck rocked as its crew came aboard. Away to the right a motorcycle was kicked into life. The shaded headlights of first one jeep, then another, then others, were switched on.

Chandos Force was going to war.

“You all right back there?”

Butler grunted and settled himself as best he could among the jerrycans. He wasn’t at all sure that he was all right. He wasn’t even sure why he had lost his temper with Jones like that; it had been as though there was someone else inside him. That was what drink did to a man, of course: he had remembered that simple question, the one he’d wanted to ask about Sergeant Scott, and—

The truck jerked forward, bumping over uneven ground and then tilting steeply up an incline before turning sharply onto a smoother surface. He watched the jeeps’ headlights buck and tilt as they crossed the same ground, then flicker on and off as the trees of the farm track obscured them. They were heading for the main road—

He stared at the lights, hypnotised by the return of his memory. The simple question had not received a simple answer: Taffy Jones had been by turns unwilling to speak, and then frightened, and finally threatening. Yet even before that, when he had been throwing up the contents of his stomach against that stone wall—Spilling the beans?

“Did you get what we wanted?”

That harsher voice questioning Jones—the voice he couldn’t place at the time, but which now seemed oddly familiar.

“Yes … spilled the beans he did…”

What beans?

What did “we” want?

Who were “we”?

Too many accidents—

The truck swung sharply to the left, then slowed as the driver crashed the gears. They had reached the main road.

“Keep it moving, buddy!” shouted a rich American voice.

Chandos Force was going to war.

But there was something very wrong with Chandos Force.

How Corporal Butler heard, of his death

BUTLER MUNCHED
an oatmeal block and tried to analyse why he felt much better than he had any right to feel.

It was true that he still felt thirsty, even after having drunk at least a quarter of the precious contents of his water bottle, so that he had decided to forgo the extra pleasure of a couple of boiled sweets from his twenty-four-hour pack, since they were notorious thirst-increasers.

It was also true that he had slept most of the night away in spite of his cramped position, with only the haziest impression of numerous stops and starts, several rumbling Bailey bridge crossings, and shouted American exhortations at intervals to keep closed up and to keep moving.

But the fact remained that when he shook his head vigorously—he shook it again just to recheck the evidence—there was no headache, and the oatmeal block was expanding comfortably inside him. Indeed, if anything he was feeling rather better than he usually did before he had had the chance of a wash and a shave.