The Welsh Girl (14 page)

and he found himself looking down, unable to meet the eyes of those watching.

The transit camp they were marched to was ten trudging miles outside the town, at an old racetrack. Rows of tents had been set up in the infield, and barbed wire laced around the rails. Jeeps circled the course where horses had once run, and instead of the flash of binoculars in the grandstand, there was the glint of fixed bayonets.

They had been herded into a long barn, divided into pens for the horses, judging by the stink of manure. Karsten was separated from Schiller and Heino, shoved into an enclosure

with an assortment of men from other units. He'd kept himself to himself, squatting in one corner, ignoring the rest, but after a while one of them sank down cross-legged in the dusty straw beside him.

"What I'd give for a smoke," the fellow muttered. "Don't suppose you've got one?"

"Sorry."

"Just as well, probably. I'd burn this whole shambles down, if I had a light."

"How'd they get you?" Karsten asked. It was the inevitable, ever-present question; he'd already learned to ask it first.

Except this time the other fellow said, "Surrendered." He ran a hand over his close-cropped head. "Never would have thought it."

Karsten nodded miserably. "You too, then?"

"Me? No. Knocked cold by a chunk of masonry during the shelling. Woke up with a gun in my face." He could barely recall whose story it was, just how much he'd envied the fellow who told him.

"Lucky you."

"Captured is captured.". The other shook his head.

"Surrendered is the worst. You sure you...?" "No."

"Only, I heard." "Sorry. Wrong man."

"Too bad. I don't mean to...It's just that it's a little lonely, you know. There must be a thousand men here, and you'd think you were the only one surrendered." Karsten studied him then, the long pale face under a dark widow's peak, the eyes searching the crowded cell.

"Like I say," he replied softly, "we're in it together now, all the same."

"Appreciate that," the other said. "If I had a smoke, I'd give it to you."

Karsten smiled. "How'd it happen, anyway?" "Don't ask."

"No, really. I'd like to know...Can't be that bad."

"How'd it happen? How do you think? How does anything happen in the army?" He spat. "Fucking
officers
! My leutnant shat himself, or he'd have used his drawers for a white flag. Ordered us to put our hands up."

Karsten shook his head.

"
Fucking
officers! Should be shot, the lot of them. You know, I could swear I saw him here someplace, among the enlisted men."

"Who?"

"My fucking leutnant! Wouldn't put it past him to strip the uniform off one of our dead boys."

"But why?"

"Wants to pass as a regular soldier, avoid interrogation. Coward twice over. What chance did we have with that kind leading us, I ask you?"

"Not much," Karsten whispered.

"See any of yours--officers, I mean--mixed in with us?" Karsten shook his head.

"Pity. There's a bunch of lads wouldn't mind giving some of them a few licks. They could hardly pull rank! Really, you haven't seen any?"

"No," Karsten said. "I told you."

The other man had been scanning the crowd, as if for officers, but now he looked at Karsten.

"No need to cut up so. Unless you're one yourself. Are you?

"

"No!"

"All right, I believe you. Just let me know if you see any,

would you?" He got to his feet. "Fucking officers. Course"--he

smiled gapingly--"I'd be dead right now if mine hadn't given up."

Crazy, Karsten thought. Mad with shame. He watched the fellow move off among the rest, asking the same questions, looking for someone to blame, to hate, to fight.

There'd been a scuffle at last--someone objecting to his accusations, or to his admission? Karsten wondered--and the guards had leapt in and dragged the fellow out.

"Anyone know that man?" a barrel-chested corporal had called afterwards. "Anyone vouch for him? You? You?"

"Said his name was Steiner," someone offered. "Never met him before," Karsten said when the man

pointed at him. "What'd he do?"

"Anyone know
you
?" the other demanded. "No? Well, don't go asking any more questions!"

They'd sat in silence then, the group of them, staring at one another warily until the guards had ordered them out and thrust them back into the flow of men shuffling out of the barn.

Next, they'd been made to strip in the dank concrete corridors below the grandstand. Even in June it was cold down there, chilling the soles of their feet. They were hosed

down, then dusted with clouds of bright yellow disinfectant until it clung to their body hair and they coughed it up, their tongues bright and bitter with it.

"Ere, are these Jerries or Japs?" the guards hooted to each other.

Still naked, they were run across the grass to stand in long lines in the paddock, shuffling forward towards a brief doctor's inspection. Yellow dust rose off them like fog.

"Tongues, dicks and arseholes," the men who'd gone before whispered. "Stick it out, hold it up, spread 'em." When it was Heino's turn to bend over, he'd let out a long, spluttering fart and the doctor stepped back quickly. A guard brought up the stock of his rifle between Heino's legs with a fleshy crunch,

and those in line, to a man, cupped their own balls, as if suddenly modest.

The others stepped around Heino where he lay, writhing and gasping like a caught fish, but Karsten knelt beside him, shaking his head. "What you gonna do, kiss it better?" one of the guards mocked, but Karsten ignored him. "Here." He helped the boy to his feet, but when Heino wiped the tears from his eyes and saw who it was, he shook him off. Karsten let him go, Heino hobbling ahead, bent almost double, one hand pressed to his groin.
Going to get himself killed to spite me
, Karsten thought, watching him fall into one of the lines working its way towards the British intelligence officers, sitting at card tables on the grass.

The rumour, passed through the ranks, was that the interrogators, with their accentless German, were Jews, refugees from Germany. The first Karsten heard of it was someone ahead of him muttering, "Traitors." He'd been so preoccupied, glaring at the back of Heino's head, he'd cried out angrily, "What do you mean?" Too late he'd realised his mistake. Men around him were looking at him strangely.

"I mean, they can't be traitors, can they, the Jews. They weren't proper Germans to begin with." He glanced around. "Besides, I'm not afraid of them."

And the fellow ahead snapped back, "Fuck off! I never said I was afraid."

"You should be," a voice called. "I heard they're putting them in with us to spy."

"Whoever said that probably was one," someone else yelled. Karsten thought of Steiner, found himself twisting his neck to look about him. But wouldn't Karsten have known him for a Jew? The ones in the newsreels, their appearances greeted with boos and laughter from the stalls, were always unmistakable, he thought--craven faces, shrinking forms, the stars on their chests gaudy redundancies. But Steiner didn't

look the part, nor did the interrogators awaiting him. He didn't believe it.

Besides, when he'd got closer to the head of the line and could overhear the questions being asked, there were just the usual three--name, rank and serial number--repeated over

and over like a litany. Karsten, braced for an interrogation, had felt faintly disappointed. The British seemed mostly interested in finding officers passing themselves off as enlisted men, though they hardly needed spies to do so. They pulled one out of the lines while Karsten waited; the fellow's moustache had given him away among the ckan-shaven noncoms and privates. The men watched him go in silence, sorry to see him caught, yet glad to be rid of him too. Only a few saluted, the officer returning the gesture red faced, looking more naked than the rest in that moment. Karsten caught sight of Heino, looking back as the man passed, but the boy looked right through him.

It was the last time Karsten had seen the boy--the camp's big enough to avoid each other--but it hardly matters. The damage is done. He's sure Heino has already told others the story of their capture, proclaiming himself innocent of surrender, as if it were a crime.

Karsten's not quite a criminal, but he notices the others keeping their distance. The only one who doesn't shun him entirely is Schiller. Karsten tolerates his company--it's decent of Schiller, he supposes--but in truth he doesn't want the other to feel he owes him anything. Karsten can't help thinking that he saved their lives at the cost of his own honour, and if he had it to do again, he isn't sure he'd bother.

But then he thinks of his mother, of her running the pension alone, and tries to tell himself he did it for her. He's all she has left, after all. Karsten's father's loss has always had about it an air of desertion. "I told him he shouldn't have gone out that

night with the weather worsening," his mother has often maintained, in a tone as much critical as sorrowful. His parents had fought all the time, mostly over money, it seemed to Karsten. But once his mother had sneered, "You might have had the decency to go down with your ship too!" There'd been a long silence--Karsten, supposed to be asleep, had held his breath--and then his father said coldly, "I would have. Your father ordered me not to." Which is why it seemed, after his loss, as if Karsten's father might have finally got his wish.

It's coming on for evening, the day's heat lifting, the sinking sun tingeing the tents pink. At the end of the row of them, he sees men filing on to the makeshift parade ground at the centre of the encampment. As he watches, a barking sergeant puts them through their paces.

The drilling began three nights ago, led by a handful of NCOs, the self-appointed camp leaders. The men had rolled their eyes at first, called them zealots, 150-percenters. Why drill if you didn't have to, if there were no officers to make you? It had started with a group of U-boat men. They'd been sucked to the surface in a bubble of air, their sub's last gasp, when it had been split in two by a depth charge in the Channel, and pulled aboard a British minesweeper. They were men who'd been at sea for years, men who'd won victories. And they left the rest in no doubt that, had they been on the western front, the invasion would have been beaten back, or they'd have died trying. Only a couple of them were NCOs, but even the seamen among them acted as if they outranked the other men. They looked at Karsten and the rest--healthy, whole--and flashed them their scars, their burns, and laughed when the others looked away. They made Karsten think of old whores showing their wares to choirboys, and indeed, among the least offensive names they called them was virgins.

Not that they stopped at name-calling.

Several fellows had fallen foul of them, for criticising the high command mostly. One mechanic had been beaten unconscious with a tin mess tray by a thick-necked ensign for having the temerity to blame the Leader. Karsten remembers the streaks of blood and gravy on the man's face, and the tray, rocking gratingly on the floor, as warped and twisted as a piece of shrapnel.

To think that Karsten had hoped to be a submariner like his father before him, had once, for the price of a round of drinks, bribed his way on board one of the long, dark vessels in port just to get a feel for it.

During the day, the 150-percenters can be seen polishing their boots, brushing their uniforms, and for each of the past three nights they've led the drill. There'd been only a dozen men that first night, but now, as Karsten watches the formation wheel and turn, he sees rank after rank of men, perhaps a company's strength. They look smart enough from where he stands, although it's strange to see them come to attention, their feet stamping down in silence on the turf, no ringing parade-ground echo.

"Enjoying the show?" It's Schiller. "Looks like you want to fall in."

Karsten shakes his head. The camp leaders have called for all noncoms to assemble their men for drill, but he's kept silent about his stripe. Now, he realises, he's tapping his foot in time to the cadence. Yet he can't quite see himself falling in when he should be leading. He looks down at his scuffed, scarred boots and wonders when he last polished them.

"Maybe you should," Schiller says softly. "I suppose Heino has."

"Him? Haven't you heard? Shipped him off to a youth camp, the Britishers did. For the underaged."

"How did they know his age?" Karsten begins, and then he sees the other's wolfish grin.

Schiller starts to saunter on, down the alley of tents, but turns back, fishes in his tunic pocket. "Almost forgot. They were issuing these outside the mess." He holds out a bright square of paper, and after a second Karsten takes it. It's a Red Cross postcard.

He watches Schiller amble off, then turns the card over in his hands. It's already preprinted with a curt message:

Dear :

This is to inform you that I am a prisoner of the British / American / Soviet forces.

My health is poor / fair / good.