Cliff grinned. His grimy moustache twitched. I’ve told you before; he was actually another who it was impossible to dislike when he smiled. He said, ‘Must be the company he’s keeping.’
Les took a cigarette from his hat, and lit up. I tried again with Cliff.
‘How did you know where I was, sir?’
‘They told me. The same way my message got to you. You did get the recall, by the way?’
‘They told me I could stop, and come home. Having chased Grace and her baby into the arms of the Russians I can come back now.’
‘Then why haven’t you?’
It wasn’t as easy to answer as all that. We were standing on big grey flagstones between the smashed houses. Two aircraft roared by at house height about two hundred yards away. They flinched automatically. It was the engines that told me.
I said, ‘Mossies,’ and didn’t even bother to look up from the brick dust I was scuffing with my boot. Then I answered, ‘I never wanted to chase Grace away. I might even still want her back, which sounds stupid, but it’s true; you don’t stop loving her because she’s shagging somebody else. Loving someone doesn’t depend on them loving you back.’ I think that I embarrassed everyone with that revelation. I needed somebody on my side. I asked Les, ‘What do you think, Les?’
It was very odd. It should have been me who sounded tired and defeated, but it wasn’t. It was Les. He sighed, ‘You reminds me of meself when I was young.’
‘When you were twenty-one?’
‘No: when I was sixteen.’ Then he asked me, ‘You still want to find that ’ospital?’
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’
Les just said, ‘OK. I’m on for it.’
Cliff’s neat little mouth turned down at the sides. Out bloody voted; I knew that he wouldn’t pull rank, but he had a last try.
‘If you don’t stop now I can’t guarantee to keep you out of trouble once we’re back in Blighty.’
‘You never could, sir,’ I told him.
I used the sir again because the negotiation was over. But it didn’t turn out like that. James came over majorish, and insisted that Les remained there to guard Kate. Having manipulated the rest of us into scrambling through Bremen on our hands and knees, Les actually looked a bit smug about being left behind.
*
After an hour at the crouch or on our bellies, we slid into a bomb crater, only to find it already occupied. There was a single infantryman – one of ours – and four scared civilians.
Cliff said, ‘Bloody fine foxhole, this. Any port in a storm.’
A mortar round or light artillery shell landed up about fifty yards away. I crouched under the shower of mud and brick pieces it threw at us. I said, ‘I think you’ve said that to me before, Cliff. At least, someone did. About a woman.’
‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ the soldier said. ‘It’s not a foxhole. Not a proper one. It’s a bomb crater. The Americans gave it to us a couple of days ago – that’s why the heap of bricks is still warm.’ Another Scot: it was their sector now.
‘What’s that smell?’ I asked. There was this thin, familiar smell. Once it was in your nostrils it never seemed to go away.
‘I thought Les had taught you that.’ From James. ‘It’s what dead people smell like. Your lot probably did it.’
There was another dull thud of a nearby explosion.
Cliff asked James, ‘We’ve shared a foxhole before, haven’t we? Where was that?’
‘Caen, I think: it must have been in July or August. Les got shot in the arse again.’
‘Excuse me, sir.’ It was the Scottie again. ‘It isna a foxhole.’
Cliff said, ‘Does it make a difference?’
‘Aye, sir, it does. A foxhole wouldnae been large enough for the eight of us. I woulda denied you entrance.’
‘With that horrible rifle?’
‘It would be sad if it hae come to tha’, sir.’
There was something about these bastards who wore khaki, carried guns, and walked everywhere: when they made threats you tended to believe them. The eight of us were me, James and Cliff, the Scottie, two women and two children. The children were both girls of about ten. One of them had fair hair and wore a pink plastic patch over one eye. There was a pad of grubby cotton wool behind it. Most of the time we clung around the sloping sides of the bomb crater. From time to time the Scottie scuttled out to the bottom of the depression to check on the meal he was cooking, and slot more wood into the solid fuel stove that stood there. It had a short chimney that smoked a clear thin smoke you couldn’t see from six feet. It must have once been in a kitchen in the pile of bricks alongside us. Something evil was bubbling in an enormous greasy black saucepan on it. Lying around it were piles of broken wood ready to feed its red maw, potato peelings and empty bully cans.
The Scottie had told us, ‘It’s for them. They haven’t eaten for days . . . ye can have what’s left over.’
‘If you’re the Stovie man,’ James told him, ‘we’ve followed you around for weeks. Aren’t you trying to rejoin your unit?’
‘Yes, sir. We have a nice phrase from where I belong, which is part and part.’
‘What does that mean?’ James got out his book and scribbled it down.
‘In my case, sir, it means that I am trying to catch up with my platoon, but not too quickly. I prefer cooking up feasts for lost civvies.’
Cliff told the Major, ‘That sounds like your sort of soldier, James, why don’t you adopt him?’
We all ducked instinctively as another round went off. Nearer this time, I thought. The girl with the eyepatch whimpered. One of the women – who had a lock of blonde hair escaping from a scarf tied over her head – hugged her. Mother and daughter, I thought.
‘We’ve chased your bloody feasts across Europe,’ I told the Scot.
‘And now he’s probably
