‘Korne was ever a lawless place. Anyway, the Panzers have gone away – before they ran out of gas. Are you going on to Bremen, sir?’
I don’t know why Les answered him. Force of habit, I suppose.
‘Yes. Eventually.’
‘You will probably find a Police Office there.’
‘I suppose that we will. What about you?’
‘I suppose that I will stay here. At present the people need a policeman; and when they no longer need a policeman, they may need a teacher of arithmetic.’
The Major asked him, ‘Am I allowed to wish you good luck?’
‘Only after you have told me why you are stealing that child.’ He nodded my way.
It was my turn, ‘I’m not. We found him. There are loads more of them over the hill, but they are all dead. How many more fourteen-year-old soldiers do you have left to fight your war for you?’
There was a flash of something behind his eyes. He said, ‘How many do you need?’ Then, ‘I wondered what had happened to them.’
‘They fought our Panzers. It looks as if they did very well.’
‘Some of them were once my students.’
Les sniffed. He said, ‘So maybe they won’t need a maths teacher after all.’
The copper didn’t seem to have much more to say. He came to attention, and gave a terribly smart salute. His vehicle left a trail of thin, blue smoke which was blown away on the breeze.
Les told me, ‘You missed your chance. You could have given him the kid.’
‘He didn’t want him, did he? Otherwise he would have asked. Do you think the kid’ll mind if I put him down? He’s getting a weight.’
I put the child down. He stayed by me, but shuffled from foot to foot, looking very uncomfortable. I tried again: I asked Les, ‘What’s the matter with him? Can’t he stand still?’
Les laughed. He took the kid’s hand, and walked with him to the edge of the road. The first dandelions were beginning to show in the margins. Les unbuttoned himself, and pissed on them. The kid looked on with obvious interest, then pulled up his short trouser leg and did the same. The stream was so long and so strong that I wondered how long he’d been holding himself in. When Les walked him back to me the kid studied me for a couple of minutes. There was no malice in that look, but nevertheless he went back over to Les, and held his hand up. Les had no choice. He asked James, ‘ ’ow far to our next stop, sir?’
‘Don’t quite know, old chap. Twenty miles or more. I seem to have made a bit of a mess of today, haven’t I?’
‘ ’ow far back to Korne, then; for the third time?’
‘Ditto. But about ten miles I’d guess. Why?’
‘That publican and his missus. They seemed like good people: we could leave the kid with them.’
‘Good thinking that man. Your Mr Kipling always said that the NCO was the backbone of the British Army.’
‘I’m not one, Major. I’m a humble private soldier.’
‘I could always promote you.’
Les positively twinkled. He said, ‘And I would turn you down. I can do without extra responsibility.’
Les said, ‘Have you ever had one of them nightmares where you’re stuck in a maze, and can’t get out: every time you reach the way out you’re back where you started?’
I was driving, and the kid was cuddled up asleep on Les’s lap, which would be a problem if he needed to go for his Sten in a hurry. James was in the back working on his lists: occasionally he’d give a snort as if he had discovered something.
‘Yes, Les. I think so.’
‘I think that this is one of them. Every time we head away from Korne we end up coming back. Like bloody yo-yos.’
‘Or boomerangs.’
‘Yeah. Do you think that we died a couple of days ago, and this is some kind of Never Never Land we’ll never never escape from?’
Cliff had used similar words months ago. Never Never Land was always close to your tongue in ’45. It was one of those puns that meant anything. James looked up and grunted. Time for an upper-ranks contribution.
‘I can think of people I’d less like to get stuck there with.’
Les told him, ‘There was something the matter with the grammar of your last sentence, sir. Not up to your usual standard. Try again please.’ Then he said to me, ‘Slow her down, Charlie; Korne’s over the next hump.’
We had climbed up again, out of the valley that time forgot, and for the second time in several days arrived at precisely the point from which we had set off. James hugged the publican, and called him Otto as if they were old friends. Otto’s wife hugged Les, and then hugged the kid and hoisted him over her shoulder, and the kid hugged her back, so all was going more or less to plan. James began to explain to them what was going on. They were speaking Kraut, and too fast and too gutturally for my expanding vocabulary. Occasionally I picked out the word Charlie, and whenever I did they all stopped talking, and looked at me. A couple of times the looks were soft and emotional, and a couple of times they were stern and hard. What the fuck had I done this time?
I asked James, ‘What’s going on?’
He said, ‘Frieda will tell you.’
The woman gave the kid over to Otto as if she was tossing over a small sack of vegetables. Then she came up to me and hugged me. We were more or less the same height, so that was all right. Then she kissed me on both cheeks and on the mouth. Then she stood and gobbled at me like a turkey for five minutes. I couldn’t work out if I was receiving a benediction, or being ticked off. I would describe her as a fluid speaker rather than
