‘Can I trust Mr Clifford?’
‘For the small things, no: for the large things, yes. He is a good man who pretends to himself to be a bad man.’
‘Is wanting to sleep with me a big thing?’
‘No. That will be a small thing. Keep your door locked at night.’
‘Now you are making sport of me again. I have no door.’
‘Yes, I am making sport of you again.’
‘How long before you come back?’
‘I don’t know: months.’
‘When will you leave?’
‘Soon.’
We were drinking wine from small mugs. The bottle had come from Kate’s cavernous backside. It was a thick, heavy red that made me sleepy. We sat on stools either side of a barrel in a small vaulted alcove in the cellar. The old ladies had prepared it for us, and had screened it with a hanging threadbare blanket: an illusion of privacy. Dieter snored in a nest of coats against the wall. He had refused to take his own off. The luggage label on his sleeve bore my name and service number – nothing else. On the other side of the blanket screen the baby was awake in a crib made from an ammunition box. I could hear the blonde woman, Gretchen, murmuring to him. Eventually Ingrid asked me, ‘Charlie, when are you going to have me?’
‘I thought about now would be all right. Do you have a place?’
Her smile danced in the candlelight. She had a dimple on her chin. I noticed it for the first time.
‘Yes. I can find a place.’
‘Will the boy be all right?’
‘He will be fine. Both your boys will be fine. Now they have a brave father and a clever mother. They will sleep.’
So did we.
We said our goodbyes in the cellar. The boy hung his arms around my legs and would not let go. He yelled, and I could not understand him. Ingrid and I knelt on either side of him, and put our arms around him.
‘When I return,’ I told them, ‘I shall never leave you again.’ It was an exceptionally stupid thing to say. She repeated it in German so that Dieter understood. In her voice the words sounded soft and loving. The yelling dampened to a teasing grizzle, and then stopped with a last sob. Before I stood up I realized that something odd had happened in my brain. I wasn’t thinking Kraut or Jerry; I was thinking German. It’s what happens when wars finish, and you start sleeping with the enemy.
*
The sky was blue, with puffy white clouds, as I strolled over to the smashed-up houses where we had left Kate. The stove had gone from the Scotsman’s bomb crater. I hadn’t seen him for a few days either: he had left as abruptly as he appeared. Moving on into Germany behind his battalion, I guessed: but never too close. He’d catch up with them just in time for the victory parade in Berlin.
James stood beside Les beside Kate. I hadn’t seen much of him either. His flesh, where I could see it – his hands and face – looked yellow and bloodless. We shook hands with an odd formality. His hand felt icy cold.
‘Silly, isn’t it?’ he told me. ‘Do you think I’ve caught something?’
‘Demob fever, I hope, sir. Did you hear that Hitler is dead? It was on the radio yesterday.’
‘Déjà ruddy vu. I seem to have heard it before, but just can’t seem to recall where. What are your plans?’
‘Les wants to go back to Paris, and leave Grace’s boy with Maggs. He says he trusts her; then we’re heading south. Grace is travelling with an Italian who comes from near Siena: I’ll start there.’
‘Clifford has arranged a plane for me from Paris. Mind if I cadge a lift?’
‘Of course not, sir.’
‘Of course not, James.’
‘If you insist.’
‘I do. It’s too late to pull rank on you now. You’re leaving your bint with Cliff: do you trust him?’
‘I think I do. I think that it’ll be all right.’
‘Why?’
‘He trusted me with something recently, when he didn’t have to. It’s just a feeling.’
We pulled out onto the street past half a dozen fivetonners. A Staff Sergeant left off shouting at his drivers to snap James a smart salute. James nodded pleasantly from his place on the back seat, as if he was royalty. It was the third or fourth supply convoy since our arrival. When I glanced back a little later he was already sleeping.
Les told me, ‘I went back to the forward depot yesterday; that’s funny, isn’t it? I wanted some spares.’
‘Good idea.’
‘I met that snapper of yours: the American woman with the cameras.’
‘Lee Miller. What was she doing?’
‘Same as me. Spares and petrol. She had enough booze to stop the Russian Army.’
‘Good old Lee.’
‘She was a bit pissed, and looked shagged out. A bit like the Major here. She was driving a ruddy great staff car about ten sizes too big for her.’
‘She got a Chevy then?’
‘Looks like it.’
After a longish silence he asked me, ‘Where we going then?’
‘Paris first. I wonder how Maggs will cope with the baby.’ It was in its ammo box alongside James England. It seemed to sleep a lot, thank God.
Epilogue
I finished writing this book in the same place I finished my first one: sitting in the garden, with a rug across my shoulders to cut away the north breeze that curls over the forest and hill behind the house in September. I’ve told you before that I don’t believe in ghosts. I’ve also told you that I’ve seen men walking who I knew to be dead. I don’t do anything with these two opinions; I just let them snarl at each other across my brain from time to time. It won’t be long before I find out for certain, I guess. The old lady who brings me my morning dram sees them more frequently than I do. Which
