‘How much?’
‘Five dollar,’ said the man. His gaps matched Clément’s and the kid’s. I was glad the girl hadn’t opened her mouth as she smiled. I told him, ‘I’ll think about it.’
Clément Three – that’s how I labelled him – helped us to unbury the car. I got Les to move over, dumping the goodies in the back with the Major. I put five miles between us and the small walled citadel before stopping to eat. That was in a small unwalled town with a flat, open square and no bomb sites that I could see. I parked the car in the shadow on the up-sun side of the square. The people smiled and passed by. We woke Les up, and ate a long lunch in the sunshine. He admired my new gun, and showed me how to strip it, and clear a jam. He told me he wouldn’t swap his Sten for it: I hadn’t asked.
With my mouth full of greasy bread and cheap cheese I told them, ‘I’m sure the bastards knew who I was. Somebody’s been spreading it around. They dropped hints, but didn’t come right out with it.’
‘A wanted man,’ the Major said. ‘How damned colourful.’ Then he said, ‘You can’t say I didn’t warn you. They were probably pals of Maggs.’
It was late afternoon. Les told us, ‘I need another forty winks. Come back for me in an hour or so, and we’ll move on. I want to be in Blijenhoek the day after tomorrow.’ I didn’t know where Blijenhoek was, but what the hell? Grace was up there with the tanks somewhere . . . or had she already been passed on to somebody else?
England and I sat away from the afternoon sun at the back of a darkened bar, the way Les had taught us. We kept the car in view all the time, although I doubt that we could have reached it in time if some bastard had decided to have a go at Les. A flight of four P-38 Lightnings passed low over the square, with one flash git waggling his wings at the local popsies. The aircraft were all painted drab green, and had black and white invasion stripes around their wings: the wriggler had a big, smiley, orange and yellow sun on the aircraft’s nose. Their twin supercharged engines whistled as they beat us up. England said, ‘Saying hello to his girlfriend. They must be based close to here.’ Deductive logic.
The wine was thin and watered, and dearer than better stuff in Paris. The waitress who flashed her chests at us probably was as well: Paris seemed a thousand years and a million miles away. I wondered where Lee Miller was – up ahead of us probably – and if the artist had come back yet.
‘I didn’t like the way I got into this,’ I told England. ‘When I joined up they told us how the service was supposed to work. That was training stations, until you were ready to go to war, then crewing up at an O.U.T.’
‘Don’t you mean an O.T.U?’
‘Perhaps I did. This wine is getting better . . . after that you had the squadron and thirty trips to Germany, and if you survived that, a posting to a cushy number for six months, before coming back on ops.’
‘Didn’t it work out like that?’
‘Only until I finished my trips; then it went wrong. After my posting to Tempsford, and the crash, everything got very unofficial. Goldie, that was my last proper CO, told me I’d been lent to Cliff, and Cliff lent me to the Bakers – that’s Grace’s parents. They sent me looking for Grace. First with Cliff’s help, then yours.’
‘What’s so worrying about that?’
‘No papers. No orders. Nothing. If I’m picked up by the MPs, and Cliff denies all knowledge of me – which he could just do, on his current showing – what have I got to prove that I’m not just AWOL?’
‘Nothing. But their need for a commonsense explanation will direct them. Very straightforward folk, the rozzers: even Army ones like ours.’
‘How come?’
‘Most deserters travel away from the Front: not towards it, like you. You’re bound to find some Redcap bright enough to at least listen to your story.’
‘Then there’s another thing. That charge sheet the Yanks said they got from my people.’
‘I told you: they probably embroidered it to give you the shits. I should imagine your CO just issued something innocuous to cover his own back, and Cliff probably monitors signal traffic about you as a good way of keeping tabs. Maybe he even provided some of the lurid embellishments. If so, he fucked up: he gilded the lily and our American cousins thought they’d do us a favour by picking you up . . . especially if they put the word out on you, and Maggs picked up on it. That’s why Cliff came out to get you back.’
‘What about the theft of a Stirling bomber then?’
‘I thought that that was a good touch, too. How much is a Stirling worth?’
‘Thousands and thousands.’ The thought depressed me.
‘If they ask you to pay that back out of your pay you’ll be fucked.’
‘I get the feeling I already am.’
He leaned over and tapped me on the arm. He said, ‘Ask her what her name is . . .’ He meant the waitress.
The girl told me, ’ortense. No H, the way she said it. I told him, and he asked me, ‘Look old boy, if you’re not going to roger her . . . and she’s begging for it worse than Fay Wray does . . . would you mind awfully if I did?’
I left him to her, or her to him, whichever way you care to see it, and strolled back across the square to Kate. Seeing her in the subdued light of lengthening shadows I realized that I was fonder of her
