‘Yesterday. Didn’t they tell you?’
‘No time. The people just keep on coming. The Krauts equipped this place for five hundred patients; we got a thousand. They just keep on coming.’
‘I think that the city actually fell two days ago.’
‘No one told us. They never do.’
There was a tug at my sleeve. When I looked round there was a small woman standing alongside me. I know what you’re thinking, but you’d be wrong. It wasn’t Grace. It was a nun; one of the nursing orders. Her white pinafore gleamed like a light in the dark. She said, ‘This way,’ and tugged me gently again. When I didn’t move she repeated, ‘This way. They are waiting for you.’
James didn’t play the officer any more. He gave me an encouraging smile and a nudge. Les had turned to look at me. He gave me a curt nod. I left them there, and followed her. We walked. The stairs were polished white-grey stone, as were the corridors. I could do hospitals; this was my fifth since leaving the squadron. Two wide corridors crossed each floor like a crucifix. They had opened up the top floor to four large wards and slipping between them along the corridor was like walking a cloister. Following the nun was like experiencing that sinking feeling you had when you were summoned to the Beak’s study at school, without knowing what you were supposed to have done. Grace was somewhere along here, and instead of skipping my feet felt heavier with each step. How to start? Sorry for chasing you? or Did you know it was me? Don’t be an arse, Charlie, of course she did. Do you still love me? Did she ever?
Grace me no grace. No Grace.
The room I followed the nun into was thirty feet across. I’d already began to think of her as a large white bird, and myself as a scarecrow flapping in her wake.
No Grace.
The lighting was subdued. Fifteen or so people: maybe more. Chairs arranged in rows of about ten facing a makeshift altar. A crucifix had been painted on the wall above it. Close to it an RAF Sergeant lay on a stretcher trolley: the thing the Americans call a gurney, I think. He was propped up on his elbows, smiled, and gave me a nod. The nun turned round, gave both the tarnished crosses on my blouse collars a polish with the balls of her thumbs, then surprised me by giving me a brief kiss on the lips. I don’t know what order of nuns she came from. The quick pressure from her body told me it might have been the Mary Magdalenes. Unworthy thought, Charlie. I regretted it immediately.
She said, ‘You are the first.’
‘The first what?’
‘The first priest here since the others ran away. That was two weeks ago. Bless you.’
‘. . . and you, Sister.’
I went to the guy on the trolley. He lay back, and stretched out a hand for shaking. I think that the British took the handshake around the world. I noticed that he hadn’t shaved for a few days. He noticed me noticing, and rubbed the back of one hand over his dark chin: it made an odd rasping noise. He said, ‘Not much water for the last few days, Padre,’ and, ‘My name is Ross. I’m from Fife.’
‘Charles Bassett. I’m English, although my father lives in Glasgow now. I’ve never been to Fife.’
‘I’ve been to England,’ he said. ‘You’d like Fife. In places it’s just like Sussex: good farming country, and big broad-leafed trees. The girls are all good-tempered, and even the kirks have that English look to them.’
‘The churches?’
‘Aye.’
‘What happened to you?’
‘Stupid. Flew into a factory chimney. It was probably the last one standing in Bremerhaven. That took enough off my wingtip to upset Old Lady Gravity. I broke my ankles in the crash.’
‘What were you in?’
‘Tiffie. Typhoon. Popping rockets into Jerry merchantmen trying to slip out of harbour for neutral countries. They’ve only got small old ships left now: our rockets turn them inside out.’
‘I’ll bet they do. Who’s this lot?’ As I asked him I looked around the room for the first time. I guess they were pretty representative of what we found in each newly captured German city. More than I had first thought. Maybe thirty people. They didn’t say much. The kids watched me with big reproachful eyes. Men and women; young and old; civilians and soldiers. Soldiers. I studied them. There were maybe five scattered around the room, all with oddly prominent bandaged injuries. Ross said, ‘Don’t worry about them, Padre. They’re out of it. If the truth’s told they’re shitting themselves because they don’t know what happens next.’
I realized that there was something he needed to know.
‘Sergeant Ross . . .’
‘Yes, Padre?’
‘You do realize that you’re going to be OK now? The fighting has stopped. The good Jerries have surrendered, and bad ones fled. The city is full of Canadians, and Scots like yourself. I’ve just left a man from Easter Ross feeding two hundred civilian refugees in a cellar about a mile from here.’
He lay back and looked at the ceiling, a forearm resting on his forehead. He smiled. It was like the sun coming from behind a cloud.
‘I wasn’t sure. I
