James stopped Kate again a few miles further on, and turfed us out of the back so he could radio. A jeep was on its back less than ten yards away. It had lost three wheels and its sump guard was blackened by fire.
Les said, ‘It wasn’t a mine: there’s no hole in the road: just that black flash mark. I reckon some kids got him with a panzerfaust.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Like an AP grenade with a rocket up its arse. One-shot jobs. You fire it and chuck it away. In France we found a couple of sixteen-year-old kids who had cycled from Germany with them strapped to their crossbars. They had been captured by the Paras.’
There were three wooden crosses at a field boundary near it. One had an American helmet on it. Les leaned against Kate’s bonnet; I sat on the running board. He smoked about five of his cigarettes; one after the other. I smoked my pipe. Its smoke was sweet and cool. It cleaned my mouth. The sun broke through, and stayed. Light danced on the rippling water of the canal, moving around a partly submerged barge. There was a floating bundle lodged up under the barge’s counter. It may have once been a man in a grey uniform.
Inside Kate, James rattled and rattled at the Morse key: you could sense his change of style. You could sense the urgency and the frustration. When he finished and backed out, Les asked him, ‘You got through, sir?’
‘Yes. I told them. I asked for Medics and food and clothes. They said they’d send a bulldozer.’
‘What for?’ I asked him, and immediately thought, I’ve done it again.
Les said, ‘Don’t be a prick, Charlie. It’s for digging the graves.’
I asked, ‘Will we get to Löningen tonight?’
Neither answered me. James scuffed the toe of his boot in some dirt on the road, deliberately dirtying it. Eventually he sighed, and asked, ‘Sorry, Charlie. What was that?’
‘Löningen. Will we be there tonight?’
‘I doubt it. I don’t know how far the fighting’s gone.’
Les said, ‘We could sleep in Kate tonight: I suddenly don’t fancy any company.’
James once had this theory that all three of us died out there, but that our bodies kept going somehow, until God could be bothered to pick us off one by one.
Twenty
The first thing I said to Albie was, ‘Where the bloody hell is your hand?’
He was sitting in a conservatory in a sanatorium that had been taken over by the Medical Corps. It was just outside of Löningen. There was glass missing, but Albie was out of the wind, with his faded canvas collar turned up. He looked pale: his face was a sort of white waxy colour. The end of the sleeve of his jacket right arm was pinned closed.
‘Caught my sleeve in the turret ring, and tore my hand off when we traversed. You should have seen the inside of Marlene: she looked like Custer’s Last Stand. Every time I moved my arm the blood sprayed like a fountain. I got Donny all over his face.’
He gave his great arf, arf laugh as if losing a hand was a great joke.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Who’s Marlene, and who’s Donny?’
‘Marlene is my new tank. Not a Sherman: she’s a fast bitch of a medium they call a Chaffee so I’m in love again. I didn’t know we could make them like that. We reckoned, paint the name of a Kraut singer on the turret, and they’re less likely to take a pop at her.’
‘You may be wrong. Most Jerries reckon that Marlene is some sort of a traitress: you could call it Beethoven, or Valkyrie. The Krauts go for that sort of thing.’
‘Yeah, but then my own people would whack me, wouldn’t they?’
‘How long you been here?’
‘A day. I lost the hand yesterday, or maybe the day before that.’
‘So what happened to it?’
‘Told you. Turret ring. I’d already lost the feeling in it – that damned gangrene stuff I suppose. So I saved the Cutter a trip down here.’
‘Is that as far as it gets?’
‘Yeah. Sure. I get to keep the rest. I might get it fitted with a hook, like in pirate stories. They want me to sit here a few days and make some blood, and then go home, but I got other plans. I aim to see Berlin. I got this far, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, Albie. You did. When I first met you in Bedford I didn’t think you’d get off the beach: you didn’t seem to know too much.’
‘War’s a harsh mistress,’ Albie said gravely. Then, ‘I read that in a book somewhere. It’s piss, isn’t it?’
‘I met Tommo another couple of times. He’s got a better take on that. He thinks the war’s a rich mistress.’
‘Good old Tommo. I bought a house off him.’
‘Where?’
‘Some place called Goch. We drove around it to preserve the real estate.’
‘I think we’ve been there. It was a bit knocked up.’
‘Not my house: it once belonged to the Bürgermeister. He’s run off.’
I let that pass. I asked him, ‘You told me about Marlene. So who is this bloke Donny you sprayed your blood at?’
‘My gunner. He sits beside me in the turret. He’s a good engineer too. He was a Scotchman once; now he plays a guitar pretty good and sings folk songs for us. Brings in all the loopy ladies at parties. You can hear
