mountain.) ‘All bloody nonsense, of course.’
‘How so?’ (Fred spoke before he could stop himself.)
‘Huh! Wish-fulfilment – the old, old story!’ (In goes the mountain.) ‘Industrial base not destroyed ... If we want the best tanks, the most advanced aircraft, then they could soon start making them for us ... Only problem is the transport system, which has been blown to smithereens. But that can be restored effectively enough, and quite quickly, given a few competent engineer units, and pioneer battalions – you should know that, of all men, Freddie
– having done that halfway across Europe, in the wake of extremely efficient demolition by your Geairrman opposite numbers – eh?’
‘Yes.’ (Very true. But there was heresy here, somewhere.) ‘But the bombing – I thought their factories were destroyed?’
‘Propaganda. We knocked down their cities – flattened ’em. And latterly the transport system. But the industrial base is still there, most of it. Minus spare parts and fuel, of course . . . but that’s mostly a transport problem.‘ (The Crocodile actually put down his dummy4
knife for a moment, in order to wag a finger at Fred.) ’But their agriculture’s gone to hell, so the farmers are hoarding what they’ve got ... which isn’t much. And their distribution system was never very efficient. And we’ve clapped most of the petty civil servants who knew what little there was to know in jail, anyway –‘
‘Nazis, Alec.’ (Mouth full of wild boar now, Audley swallowed urgently.) ‘Only Nazis, Alec.’
‘“Nazis, Alec – only Nazis, Alec”? Oh aye!’ (The Crocodile mimicked Audley exactly.) ‘“Wicked bluidy Geairrmans” is it?’
‘You should know, Alec.’ (Audley wasn’t scared of his elders and betters, evidently. And unwisely.) ‘You were in Belsen ahead of most of us.’
‘So I was. But that doesna make me a fool, by God!’ (Pause. And then the finger wagged again, this time at Audley.) ‘You know where I was, in the winter of ’39?‘
(Pause.) ‘You were in on the poison gas trials in the Sahara, Alec.
You’ve told us.’ (The boy’s voice fell just short of disrespect.)
‘So I was. And on the anthrax trials, on that wee island – that wee island where no man nor beast will step in our lifetime, and live to tell the tale. So what would that make me, if the Geairrmans had won, eh?’
(Pause.) ‘A war criminal, Alec. You told us.’
‘A war criminal. And they would have stretched my neck for it.
And me just a slip of a lad, obeying orders.’ (Contempt.) ‘Nazis!’
‘Nazis – yes.’ (Amos de Souza, smooth as ever from down the table.) ‘Get to your point Alec.’
dummy4
‘My point? Why, I’m there, man: none of ye understand what the Nazis were all about . . . and how the Geairrmans didna understand the man Hitler, until he had them in the palm of his hand – how the Right saw the man as something temporary, which they could cut down to size. And the Left – the Socialists and the Communists both . . . they didna understand him either: they thought he was parrt of the Right. Whereas in fact he was sui generis.“
(Longer pause, while ‘sui generis’ echoed in the dark, above the candle-light in the wet-smell, faint-alcoholic-tobacco-soap-and-underarm-sweat-and-khaki-smell . . . British-Army-smell, not so different from Greece – Germany-now-smell; but what was different now was that this man was in an altogether different officers’ mess from anything Fred had experienced before: it was bloody weird –)
‘Alec, my dear fellow . . . regardless of your quaint theories about Hitler himself – ’ (Now it was Colonel Colbourne himself at last, equal-to-equal, and slightly cautious.)‘ – to pursue Amos’s point . . . Nazis – ?’
(Pause.) ‘Aye, sir – Gus . . . We’ve been arresting the wrong men, is what I’m saying – it’s a bluidy nonsense, is what it is.’ (Pause.)
‘And I don’t mean just us, of course . . . But it’s beginning to be our problem, with nobody to talk to, who can give us answers.’ (Pause.) ‘Och ... I mean, they’ve been taking in the police inspectors, and their sergeants . . . and the wee bluidy postman, and the station-master, and the schoolmaster . . . never mind the mayor, and the little civil servants . . . And I’m fed up, and sick, and bluidy tired of getting “don’t know” from what’s left, dummy4
when I ask what you want me to ask.’
‘So what are you suggesting, then?’
(Pause.) ‘What I am suggesting, sirrr – Gus ... is that we do like the Russians and the French have already done: we either shoot them out of hand, if we don’t like them. Or we leave them where they are, to do our work, which needs to be done.’ (Pause.) ‘And we get back all the middle rank servants too, from the camps – all young David’s Nazis, who had to join Corporal Hitler’s democratically-elected Party, or lose their jobs . . . They’re the ones who’ll do our work for us now, much better then we can do. And then we can always shoot them afterwards, if someone tells us to do so.’ (Pause.) ‘Because, having won the war, that’s our privilege –
right? But, in the meantime, we have to make this country work, do you see?’
(Pause.) ‘We see what you mean, Alec – and we have heard it all before, actually.’ (Major Macallister’s voice was calm and donnish now that his plate was empty.) ‘And ... I do agree that our work would be a lot easier if our people – ours and the Americans’ –
