‘You told me it wasn’t illegal, you bastard.’
Tommo looked uncomfortable.
‘It isn’t. Not strictly. It’s deals like this. I own property in England too. It was a steal. Prices started to fall as soon as the Kraut started to bomb shit out of you. So I bought something.’
‘What did you buy?’
‘I think it’s called Buckinghamshire. Then my government made me an offer for all the produce coming off my land there, and began to send me money for it. I cashed their cheques because the bank would have become fiddly, and pushed the cash into a couple of kitbags. Then it sort of accumulated without me noticing, and then my posting back to the US caught me on the hop. Sorry.’
It was a funny bloody story. I moved my hand, slowly moving my glass across the table. Alice’s eyes moved with it. Her tongue flicked in and out.
‘How are you going to get it out? Isn’t there something called Exchange Control?’
‘How easy would it be to get our hands on it: say, if I sent someone?’
‘Ask Les. They’re his brothers. I dare say he could arrange access.’
‘For a percentage, you’re saying?’ There was a wince in his voice.
‘I should imagine so. You said it yourself: business is business.’
‘So I did,’ Tommo said. ‘But I don’t always have to like it.’
The next morning saw us back in Kate. She had new Perspex windows riveted in place; at the back and in Les’s door. The Major and Les had taken their own advice, and made a night of it. James looked ill, and Les tired. Two girls I’d never seen before turned out to wave us off.
The lane outside went to Germany. I had expected Dad or James Oliver, or someone to be there to see me off. Not a fucking chance. England groaned and asked, ‘Where did you get to last night, Charlie? I didn’t see you.’
‘I was overcome by the emotion of the investiture. I sloped off early to bed.’
‘On yer own?’ That was Les.
‘Yes; more or less.’
‘You can’t do more or less. Either you were on your own, or you weren’t.’
‘There was a nurse in the next bed but one from mine. The one between was empty. She was changing when I came into the tent. She didn’t seem to mind.’
‘Pretty?’
‘OK. Someone who would be nice to know for a long time.’
‘Shag her?’
‘No. We lay on our beds, and talked until about two. Then she went to sleep.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Dunno. I forgot to ask. She was gone by the time I woke up. Back on duty I expect.’
‘Why didn’t you ask her for a shag?’
‘I don’t know. But there must have been a reason.’ I was being truthful, but I don’t think either of them believed me.
I busied myself filling and lighting my pipe. Shortly after that the car was full of its thin blue aroma, and Les was whistling ‘Lili Marleen’. James had fallen asleep, his head to one side, and his mouth drooped open. He was snoring. I thought about the girl from last night, and must have smiled. Les stopped whistling ‘Lili Marleen’, and grinned slyly at me. Then he started to whistle ‘I Fall in Love too Easily’, which was a song that that fellow Sinatra had started to trouble us with.
Eventually he yawned and said, ‘Roman road. Spot ’em a mile off, can’t you?’
I told him, ‘Probably not. Grace said that most of the straight roads had already been here for a couple of thousand years before the Romans arrived. All they did was lay stone surfaces on top of the old straight tracks they already found.’
‘Then what did the Romans do for anyone?’
‘Baths. I suppose. They built a wall to keep the Jocks out. That wasn’t bad.’
‘Didn’t they wear dresses with purple stripes most of the time, and bugger little boys?’
‘Sounds like my old school,’ James told us. I hadn’t realized that he was awake.
‘They weren’t terribly good with women.’ I remembered the stories about Boudicca and her daughters.
Les could be very persistent.
‘So they did bugger-all for us, really?’
James said, ‘Every type of fruit you eat graced a Roman tongue before yours; every building built has got a little bit of Rome in it; every road leads to Rome, and every European army since the Romans marches in the Roman step.’
‘Like I said, Major,’ that was Les again, ‘they did bugger-all for us. Why don’t you write that down in your little book?’
PART FIVE
Germany: April 1945
Seventeen
There was no border post. Just two pork-chopped tanks which had been shoved hurriedly to one side, one in each ditch on either side of the road. One was a British Cromwell, in an elegant overall charcoal black: its turret lay upside down in a field fifty yards away. The other was a Jerry; a Mark 4 Panzer. Les stopped between them. When I wound down my window I smelt the dirty, sweet scent of the monster I had met along the Bois de Boulogne.
Les said, ‘Close it up again, Charlie, it pongs out there. I think that I should be saying Welcome to Germany, but the Boss has been insisting on demonstrating his navigation skills for the last half-hour, so we could be effing anywhere. Back in France, for all I know.’
An hour later we rolled into a small German town. That was just a day after the French gave me a Croix de Guerre I hardly deserved. What I remember of that first Jerry town is that the men were too old or too young to be soldiers, and that they looked at me with loathing when Les and I surprised them. They scuttled around heaps of rubble making less sound than the rats. Some of the women we saw walked with hands on their backs, as if massaging away pain. I tried not to notice that. There was a small girl of about twelve with a ripped dress. She froze, and
