That’s when the noise came. It was almost as if they all began talking at once. Their voices filled the cavern.
‘Fucking hell, James, what have I got us into?’
The crowd didn’t exactly disperse. It just moved back out into its component parts. I sat down on the step. James sat alongside me. Ingrid sat about two steps down. After a suitable pause James said, ‘I hope that you don’t mind me observing this, but now it seems to be my sort of a problem, rather than your sort of a problem.’
‘What do you mean, sir?’
‘Well, these people are starving, aren’t they?’
‘Are they?’ It hadn’t occurred to me. I asked the girl, ‘When did you last eat?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘What did you eat?’ That was James.
‘Soup. Everyone had a bowl of soup.’
‘What was in it?’
‘Cabbages: six cabbages and a few potatoes. The boys did well yesterday.’
‘Between a hundred people?’
‘Two hundred and nine,’ she said. She pronounced the words very precisely. ‘It was two hundred and eight, but a baby was born yesterday. It is not old enough for soup.’
‘No,’ said James, and, ‘Six cabbages between two hundred people, Charlie. They had a bowl of flavoured water.’ Then he asked Ingrid, ‘How long have you been down here?’
‘Twenty days.’
Then he said to me, ‘I’ll have to radio in. Get some trucks in here if the Canadians let us.’
The girl Ingrid had been following the conversation – probably better than me.
‘But you will need to go away . . . to bring help?’
‘Yes.’
‘You cannot use our telephone?’
‘Is it still working?’
‘Of course. It is the Deutsche Telephone Company.’
When she led him away I experienced an emotion I hadn’t met properly since my school days: jealousy. I sat and watched the crowd. They watched me back: she’d told them I was their saviour. It was a curiously uncomfortable experience. He returned alone.
‘Food and blankets here by close of play today, provided the Canadians agree to stop shooting at us.’
‘You’re beginning to sound like a Major again: you didn’t sound like one when we were in the bottom of those bomb holes.’
‘I suppose I am really.’
‘Then it’s sir, again?’
‘For the time being, if you don’t mind, Charlie.’
‘My pleasure, sir.’ As long as he didn’t try to pull rank on me over the girl, that was all right by me.
‘Would you mind cutting up the stairs to Cliff, and getting him down here?’
‘No problem, sir. What shall I tell him?’
‘Tell him that there’s a live telephone switchboard down here, one of the last that’s left in Germany . . . and he can listen in to some of the calls that are still being made between the remains of Jerry’s armies and their commanders, in what’s left of Germany. Still time to win him a medal for initiative. Your girl Ingrid is going to be busy.’
I had nothing to do. My brief experience of being in charge hadn’t prepared me for relinquishing it again. The girl Ingrid, who I had never truly expected to meet, threaded her way back between the groups. She sat on a step beside me and took my hand. It was the sort of gesture I remembered of my sister. Did that show on my face? Eventually she said, ‘I did not say Thank you. Thank you.’
‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘You came.’
‘I explained that. It felt like a promise. I keep promises. Don’t Germans ever keep promises?’ Even for me, given her circumstances, that was a bit bloody brutal.
‘Germans do; men don’t.’
Me put in my place, wasn’t it? I wanted to change tack.
‘I expected I might find you, and maybe a few others hiding down here . . .’
‘. . . and instead you have a multitude to feed.’ She sounded pleased.
‘The Major says that the loaves and fishes will be here before nightfall.’
‘I didn’t know that you were a priest.’
‘I am not. I’m just an ordinary man in a priest’s jacket.’
She didn’t say anything for a time, but didn’t let go of my hand either. When she did it felt cramped, and I rubbed and squeezed my fingers together. She spoke very quietly as if she didn’t want anyone else to hear,
‘Sorry, Charlie Bassett. I thought that if I let go, you might disappear. I am afraid that I will awake, and not know what else to do except wait for the bombers again.’ Then she said something in German that I failed to understand.
I asked, ‘What was that?’
‘I said that your Major was a very good man.’
‘I think so.’
‘He values you also.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You are wrong.’
I asked her, ‘Is this our first argument?’
She didn’t understand the joke but laughed at it anyway.
She asked, ‘When will you go?’
‘I don’t know. Tomorrow probably. The Major will want to stay until his food and blankets are here. Tomorrow the fighting will have finally stopped. I have to visit someone in a hospital in the Hanseatic Hotel, in the docks, do you know it?’
‘No. I know where it is. You will find many people there also. Their telephone link failed.’
‘Of course. It was not Deutsche Telephone Company.’
‘Now you are making sport of me.’ Her face set like concrete.
‘Now I am making sport of you.’
‘So, I will go.’ She moved to get up. I pulled her gently down again by the arm.
‘No. Please stay.’
She looked directly ahead, and smiled a little smile: as if she knew a secret.
‘I was making sport of you.’
‘I know,’ I said, ‘but I wasn’t sure.’
Again there was a pause, but I didn’t feel uncomfortable. Ingrid said, ‘The other officer in the RAF uniform . . .?’
‘Mr Clifford. Yes?’
‘Yes . . . he asked your Major who I was. Your Major said that I was Charlie’s bint. Does that mean anything?’
‘Now you are making sport of me again.’
‘No. Tell me.’
‘The Major was making a mistake. It is an old Arabic word. Charlie’s bint, means Charlie’s woman. He made a mistake.’
When she spoke again
