‘I thought that you said he gave them out to anybody for anything?’ I mislaid the sir; I suspected that he was already too pickled to notice.
‘That,’ he said, ‘was when I was being unkind. Now that you have opened up my castle, I am benevolence personified.’ He grinned a bleary grin. ‘. . . and just a wee bit squiffy. Run along now, and save a few more souls.’
I was getting damned tired of this religious lark.
I had to bloody go through with it. It must have amused James, because he sided with the LD Colonel, and ended up bloody ordering me to attend an investiture. Les summed it up with, ‘A Brylcreem boy dressed in the clothes of all the other Services, and at least two nations, and disguised as a bleeding priest, getting a French medal for killing a hundred Jerries who never existed: this is a good war!’
They sent a retired French General of my father’s vintage to present the medal the next morning. He was even smaller than me, and wore a uniform straight out of the Crimea – red pants, a blue jacket and a flat-topped peaked cap that looked suspiciously German. He needed to stand on tiptoe to kiss my cheeks and his breath smelled of Parma violet. Normally I’m not bad at picking up languages, and at least my French was fairly fluent, but his staccato machine-gun delivery, punctuated by the occasional mon brave, kept beating me down the leg side.
The Colonel had lined a few of his brown jobs up with anyone else who wanted to gawk in an open square, with me in the middle. James stood alongside me, ramrod-straight in a cleaned uniform. Out of the corner of my eye I could see my dad – he looked really chuffed. There were one or two nurses, including the one who had held the GI’s plasma drip. She had long rolling waves of chestnut hair like someone else I had known. McKechnie wasn’t there: he was cutting a Kraut who’d owned up to a shrapnel wound. With James alongside me, like a best man at a wedding, I felt a bit of a drip. I felt like a bit of a fraud too, but in my head I rehearsed what we eventually learned to call the Nuremberg Defence – I was only obeying orders.
I hadn’t expected Lee, although she seemed to turn up in my life every now and again, so I wasn’t surprised to look up and see her smiling at me. She was with her pal Dave Scherman, and a naval officer wearing a grunt’s winter parka. Lee had her arm through his, and looked happy. She gave me a discreet waist-level wave when she saw I’d spotted her. The hand she waved with had a small camera in it. George, the coloured pianist and barman from the Quonset, was there in a full infantry Lieutenant’s colours, and James Oliver had forsaken his white battle bowler for a smart fore-and-aft forage cap, and had polished his shoes.
After suffering a few more kisses and hugs I let the silly old sod pin the medal on to my battledress blouse. Just over one of the neatly mended bullet holes which had done for my predecessor. A small firing party fired three volleys over our heads, almost as if they were burying me. Then it was back into the bar for a spam sandwich and E & T reception that they’d put on for us. The mud clung to my boots; I remember that. I had a shiny cross on my chest, and its small leather-worked case in my pocket just to prove it. I waited for everyone to file into the drinks emporium in front of me, and I went in with the last man. Lee gave me a brief kiss as she moved past me; plumb on my lips. I was trembling and it wasn’t with emotion – not that kind of emotion, anyway. It was the sort of emotion I now recognize as fear.
You see, I’ve seen dead men walking, before. I’ve told you that. I want you to get that straight. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’ve seen men wandering about long after they were dead: that American patrol in Brond was an example. OK, so when I’m face to face with something I don’t believe is there, I tremble. Got it? And when I saw a dead man in that small open square that morning I got a little jittery. OK?
It was the little guy in the faded RAF blues I’d noticed the day before. Not being a man to put off the inevitable, I waited for him at the door and, feeling a bit dumb, the first thing I said was, ‘Hi, Pete. You’re dead.’
Sixteen
‘Hi, Charlie. Surprise, surprise.’
‘Am I dead too?’
‘Don’t be a focking idiot, Charlie. You would have felt it. I am pleased for your medal.’
I ignored that.
‘So you’re not dead either?’
‘Not at the moment.’
‘I got your car and your radio.’
‘I am pleased about that too: I was scared that turd Marty Weir would have them. He was always on the lookout for number one, wasn’t he?’
‘Marty wasn’t so bad.’
I reached my hand out and touched his shoulder. I could feel his bony clavicle. How else is a clavicle expected to feel, except bony? Pete: Piotr: the Pink Pole. He felt real to me. Les stuck his face out of the door.
‘What’s the matter, Charlie? You in love again?’
‘No, Les. Just an old pal. We used to fly together.’ And, ‘Les this is Pete. Pete, Les.’
They just nodded at each other. Les said, ‘That’s all right then. Don’t keep them waiting long. You’re the guest of honour, or what passes for one, and the Froggie General is wolfing
