I thought that it was about time somebody introduced them to the idea of verbs, pronouns and adjectives. Les turned and grinned at me.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘They’ll get down to business eventually.’
Breakfast was taken alongside a curious tank without a turret. When I asked about it a tankie sergeant said, ‘It’s a Kangaroo: that’s a Sherman without a turret. The Canadians make them. Our Skipper got it out of a Canadian squadron. We use it for dragging our nappies round in.’ He put a mug of tea in my hands that was so large I needed both my mitts for it. It was sweetened with condensed milk: wonderful. The tankies had rigged an awning out from the side of the Kangaroo to cover the field kitchen they cooked on: the officers – the Captain, two Lieutenants and Major England – stood underneath it. Les caught my eye, and flicked his head towards it. He was saying, You’re a bleedin’ officer; behave like one, and mix with the buggers! The plate of grub their cook pushed at me looked grey and familiar. I had to balance my mug of char on the Kangaroo’s track before accepting the food. The Captain told me, ‘I know that it looks like fifty-seven varieties of stewed snot, but it’s really quite tasty.’ It was a tankie joke. I smiled for him, and asked the cook, ‘Don’t you call this stovies?’
He said, ‘Aye, sir. How did you know that? A Scottie showed me how to cook this up, some place out of Caen. He was wandering on his own, and trying to join up with his unit. We lost him somewhere along the line. I wonder if he found them.’
I thought, He got as far as Paris, anyway. Another tank had fired up its engine. It differed from the others in that it sat in the geographical centre of the field, on a small hump. The rich smell of its exhaust drifted back towards me. I asked, ‘Why is it doing that?’
‘Dodgy engines. We have to run them up every few hours, otherwise the gremlins get into them.’
‘Why is it sitting in the middle of the field? Surely that’s a bit risky – every one else has hidden against the hedgerows.’
‘That’s the Judas Goat. If we get bounced by the Jerry fighter-bombers they get just one chance to hit us at three hundred knots before we start to shoot back. If you was Jerry, sir, who would you choose to go for in that split second – an easy target in the middle of a field, or indistinct, uncertain targets dispersed around it, who are going to start shooting back as soon as you circle to line up on them? The Captain is willing to sacrifice the one in the open for the others.’
Hard bastard, I thought.
James told Les, ‘Get the car undercover when you’ve finished your scran. Then you can get some rest. You might have forgotten you’ve been driving all night, but I haven’t.’
Les’s shoulders suddenly dropped.
‘Aye. You’re right.’ There was a pause that wasn’t quite long enough for insubordination before he added the ‘sir’ that we waited for, and sloped off.
He produced a camo net from Kate’s cavernous boot. It had coloured canvas leaves sewn all over it. He cut two long staves from a pollarded willow in the hedgerow, and standing them out from the wheels at forty-five degrees, draped the net between them and the car. That gave us cover, and an awning of our own. Les curled up on the back seat under James’s German cape, and was soon snoring.
James and I sat on Kate’s running board and smoked: the sun through the netting over us splashed us with shadow patterns. I was really getting the hang of the pipe now, but was worried about running short of tobacco. I hadn’t brought near enough with me. We talked war, and we talked personal. I felt comfortable with him the way I had never felt with officers before, so I didn’t mind when he said, ‘The trouble with being an Intelligence Officer – even if you’ve got a speciality like mine – is that you get asked to pick up any other intelligence tasking that might occur wherever you might find yourself. That’s how I picked you up. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘Sorry about that, James. I try not to get in the way.’
‘Know you do, old boy. Don’t mention it. You’ve actually been an amusing diversion, in a naive sort of way.’
Behind us Les gave an enormous snort in his sleep. James abruptly changed the subject.
‘How are you getting on with that pipe? Never got round to one myself.’
‘I like it better than fags now, but you can overdo it. It can sort of lie heavy on your stomach.’
‘I’ll remember that.’ He asked me about after the war. A lot of folk were beginning to talk about after the war these days. I remembered that Cliff had told me he didn’t believe it: he saw a bigger war around the corner. I told James England about wanting to emigrate to Australia to be a sports journalist. He asked, ‘Why? What started that?’
‘Because I don’t want to stay in the services and be ordered around for the rest of my life, and because the Aussies speak English, the sun shines, and sport’s the only thing that interests them outside of beer and sex.’
‘But you’d have to spend the rest of your life among Australians. Difficult.’
‘Yes. There were a few on my squadron.’
‘Ghastly, aren’t they?’
‘I suppose they were, come to think of it.’
‘You wouldn’t consider Wales, say Glamorgan or somewhere, would you?’
‘Christ, no! Have you ever met anyone from Wales, James?’
‘From Glamorgan, myself, matter o’ fact.’ He sounded moody, so
