The colonel was smiling. Or at least half smiling.
'Well ... I hope you're right.' The colonel shook his head. 'Because if you aren't, then Chandos Force is going to have to fight an awful lot of Germans and Frenchmen during the next week.'
Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage
6.
Sergeant Purvis shouldered his way through the crowd towards Butler.
'Harry Purvis,' he announced, thrusting out a large hand.
The voice and the hand were friendly, which was a double relief when the two bandits on whose feet Butler had trodden had been watching him with what could only be hostile intentions.
'Jack Butler, Sergeant.' He released his equipment for a moment in order to accept the hand.
'Harry,' the sergeant corrected him. 'Glad to meet you, Jack. Here —give us that'—he reached down and lifted the tangle of webbing pouches and pack before Butler could stop him—'and come along with me. Have you had anything to eat yet?'
Butler began to feel better. Irregular units like Chandos Force were bound to be informal, and no doubt Sergeant Purvis had been told to look after him. But this easy comradeship was morale-raising. 'Not since this morning,' he admitted.
'Christ! You must be bloody starving. We'll soon put that right,' Harry Purvis nodded encouragingly.
'And thirsty too, eh? Well, Taffy will fix that double quick.'
Better and better, Butler congratulated himself as he strode through the bandit encampment beside the sergeant. Obviously he had let appearances deceive him; he should have known better that a man like Major O'Conor wouldn't run a sloppy show. Misfits they might be (his Rifleman's lessons couldn't be unlearnt in an hour), but the excellence of their commanding officer was bound to rub off on them as it did in any unit.
'That young sprig of yours—with the stutter—he's a bloody caution,' confided Purvis, steering Butler round the corner of the barn towards the back of the house. 'Does he always chance his arm like that?'
'I don't know,' said Butler. 'I only met him for the first time this evening. He's supposed to be very clever.'
'Too clever by half, if you ask me. Lucky for him he was cheeking that colonel they just sent us, and not our Willy—he'll take a joke with the best of 'em, Willy will'—Purvis pointed to a doorway—'but he can't abide clever buggers. ... In here, Jack.'
Butler pushed open the door and stepped into a large lamplit room. The farmhouse kitchen it must be, he thought, as the warmth he always associated with kitchens engulfed him. The scrape of his iron-shod Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage
boots on the stone floor and the glint of lamplight on pots and pans hanging on the wall confirmed the thought.
There was a group of bandits clustered round something at the far end of the room to his right—
clustered almost guiltily, like schoolboys, so it seemed to him as they turned towards him. Harry Purvis came from behind him, and the schoolboys relaxed. 'What the hell are you lot up to?'
'Trying to get a cork out of a bottle without a corkscrew, boyo,' said Corporal Jones.
'What have you done with the corkscrew?'
'Our Willy's taken it, that's what,' said Jones with feeling. 'And a couple of bottles to go with it, too.'
Judging by the number of bottles at Jones's feet generosity was not one of his virtues.
'Well, push the bloody cork in then—haven't you got any sense?' snapped the sergeant. 'Jack here's got a terrible thirst on him.'
'Push the cork in? Man, you can't do that! This here is good wine—Grand Vin de Touraine, it says. You can't treat it like it was London beer, that would be a crime. Besides, it doesn't pour properly if you do that.'
Butler felt in his pocket for his clasp knife. 'I've got a corkscrew,' he said. 'It's not a very good one, but . . .'
'No such thing as a not-very-good corkscrew.' Jones advanced towards him. 'Jack is it? Well, I can see you're a man to know, Jack boyo. A man to keep in with ... so you shall have the first drink from this bottle, by God!'
There was nothing Butler wanted less than alcohol on an empty stomach; what he had been thinking of longingly was a huge mug of hot, sweet tea. But it would clearly be a bad mistake to reject the Welsh corporal's offer in the circumstances, when he had made such a good beginning.
'There now!' Jones drew the cork and poured a generous measure of wine into a tumbler. 'Grand Vin de Touraine—which is where we're going to, so nothing could be more fitting for the occasion. Like a taste of things to come, you could say, eh Jack?'
He offered the glass to Butler.
Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage
Harry Purvis was off the mark a second later. “What d'you mean, Taf—where we're going?'
'What I say, that's what I mean, Harry boyo.' Jones drove the corkscrew into another cork.
'You know something I don't, then.'
'I shouldn't wonder at all.' Jones drew the next cork, put the bottle on the table beside him and seized another bottle. 'I know a lot of things you don't, and that's just one of them.'
Butler put his glass to his lips and sipped cautiously. The wine shone pale yellow-gold in the lamplight, and it
