A Soldier's Tale Page 3
Now, he said, be a good girl and I’m going to love you and then we’ll sleep. Forget all the rest. We’ll talk about it in the morning.
He had big clever hands that could coax a squirrel out of a tree or break the neck of an unwary German sentry, master any dog, set delicate snares for bird or rabbit, turn a rod of beech into an intricately carved walking stick. He began patiently to handle her, holding back his raw need for her until she was ready. Steadily and gently he stroked her long thighs and her breasts which were full and soft in the darkness, and her belly and the silky fur of her crotch. She began to respond to him, kissing and touching him, but timidly, afraid to provoke that strange masculine rage again. He began to want her very much, and when he became demanding and pressed her back on the bed she drew him into her. He took her quickly, more savagely than he had meant to, and she seemed to understand and forgive his need. So great was his pleasure that he gave little thought to her, only she said softly some words he didn’t understand.
When they rolled apart, he lay beside her staring up into the dark. He wanted to say something to her but forgot. All he could think of was that it had been a long time since he’d lain in a big soft bed, and even longer since he’d been there with a woman warm beside him. There had been claspings under trees and in dark doorways and on sitting-room sofas, but not for a long time this ease and joy. He felt grateful and reached out to touch her. A wind was coming up outside, moving trees somewhere nearby, bringing a flurry of gunfire that sounded almost lazy, followed by a rattle of rain on the window. His hand touched her belly, the darkness spread out above him and he fell asleep.
Sometime early in the morning he awoke, curled up close to her and with his arm still across her. A small sound and a movement of her body had disturbed him; she sighed heavily in the darkness. The window was a square of faint paleness in the dark. Far off an early rooster crowed, a country sound. No guns spoke.
In the quietness his earliest memories came back to him. Of the darkness before dawn, and cockcrow, and the sound of his mother sighing in the dark in the little airless bedroom. Of creeping out fearfully in the dark across the eyeless bogey terrors of the blackness and the cold floor. Of standing by the bed at last and reaching out to touch the hot wet cheek. Mum, I love you, Mum. Get back to your bed, you little bastard. And creeping back through the desert of the dark to huddle under his old blanket, waiting for daybreak and all the other bitterness of the world.
His mother was a big-boned, florid, fair woman and his father some nameless soldier from the big camp outside Blandford. He lived with Mum in the back room of the estate cottage, with his granny and grandad. Little and bent, skilled in all kinds of farm-work, ploughman, cowman, hedger, thatcher, his grandad had taught him to use his hands. He was kind and firm with the little boy in a detached way, just as he was with animals. He sometimes suffered from tremendous silent rages which he took out on inanimate objects, working furiously with spade or bill-hook.
Granny was big and florid like her daughter, but in all other ways different, placid where the younger woman was passionate, a chapel-goer and a bible-reader. He had good reason to remember them both for they brought him up when Mum left. To take up a good post in service, so she said, and send money home for him. Soon the memory of her faded, except that he would still wake up at night in the back bedroom, almost believing that he could hear a woman sighing in the dark. He went to the village school where he learnt to read and write and figure. During holidays he rambled about with other boys or went out to take Grandad his snack in the fields. He might sit with him contentedly, in semi-silence. The old man spoke little but enjoyed showing him things—how to plait horsehair into a rabbit-snare, or weave a wattle fence, or carve clothes-pegs. Or how to read the warning cries of birds, or smell rain coming, or take direction by the stars at night.
His mother had faded into a distant and rather pleasant memory when one day, unexpectedly, he came home from school and saw the big yellow car standing in the lane near the cottage. A jolly fat man in bright check tweeds like a checker-board sat at the wheel smoking a big cigar. The boy Saul squinted up at him in the bright sunlight and wrinkled his nose at the cigar smoke. The fat man laughed and winked at him, the cigar poised in the air.
And there was his Mum in the front parlour and she was old. She was wearing a silly short pink dress which, as even he knew, was too tight for her, and a silly little tight hat and her face was baggy and powdered. She flung her arms round him and hugged him in one of her moods of fierce demonstrative affection. He pulled away and stared at her. And wasn’t he a boy, so big and strong, and Gran had taken real good care, hadn’t she, like her very own, which he was, and wasn’t the country good for him, of course it was, town was no good for kids, though of course there was another side to it. Then there were the presents, a box of Britains’ tin soldiers, Black Watch in kilts and topees with a piper, and a field-gun that fired caps, and a picture book of Robinson Crusoe, and a tin of Mackintosh’s toffee. She dabbed her eyes with a small handkerchief as she told them how she’d found a good man and how they’d marry when he made certain financial arrangements and live in a nice house out in the country, somewhere near Epping perhaps, and then they could be all together there.
She swept him up in her arms again, breathing patchouli, then went out to the car. The fat man winked and saluted with his cigar, while Mum got into the yellow car still dabbing at her eyes. Granny and Saul watched and waved as the car roared down the lane and vanished in clouds of dust. He kept the presents carefully in a box under his bed, but she never came back. Grandad had more of his silent spells of frenzied work and began to drink, just sometimes.
When he was twelve he left school and went to work in the fields, where he began to come into his strength. A few years later Grandad began to grow old and careless, till one day he pitched down off a rick he was building and broke his back. They carried him to the cottage on a hurdle covered with horse blankets, and the doctor came but couldn’t do much. The old man lingered on for a few days in his bed, silent as usual. Saul stayed with him a lot, watching the restless movements of the grizzled head on the pillow as he caught the call of a bird, or spied the movement of wings across the small window. His last conscious act was to hand over to Saul, as a treasured heirloom, the clasp-knife with its rough horn handle and its well-honed blade, with which he could so neatly skin rabbits, castrate lambs, put a dying dog out of its misery or carve stray ends of wood into Father Noah and a whole ark-full of animals.
The window was a square of pale early sky, across which drove the dawn patrol of Spitfires with a roar of Merlin engines.
Well, next morning (as he told it) I wakes up pretty smartly when I felt her move out of the bed. I kept my eyes shut but I could feel that she sat there looking at me. When I looked, she had turned away and was sitting on the edge of the bed. She had a lovely skin and the sight of that bare back just about got me going, I can tell you, but I held back, playing it crafty, to wait and see what she would do. I’d laid my sten on the rush-bottomed chair beside the bed where I could find it at once in the dark, like I always do. The sheath-knife—the short one—was handy too but hidden under the edge of the mattress. I always like to keep my tools in good order and ready to hand. I was curious to see if she’d try anything. But all she did, like it might be any woman, was to look down at her body, and to run her fingers through that thick red hair, brushing it away from her face. Then she wraps herself in a dressing-gown—sort of purple Japanesy thing with flowers—and goes out into the kitchen. I could hear the crinkle of paper and the crack of sticks as she laid the fire in the kitchen range.
Then I got up quietly and dressed, just shirt and trousers and plimsoles, and I comes up quietly behind her. I slipped my arms around her and kissed her neck. She tossed her head but didn’t seem to mind much. So I showed her the stuff she could use for breakfast, the oatmeal cakes and the tinned bacon and the tea.
Outside it was a bright windy sort of day but with
rain about somewhere. There was a path edged with angled bricks, and some rows of cabbages and beans. I wondered who the cottage belonged to because I couldn’t imagine her keeping up a garden like that.
Like I said, the crapper was a little shed by the far hedge. I left the door open, but it didn’t directly face the cottage. I was happy enough there, easing myself and drawing on the first fag of the day, until I heard her cry out.
I had my pants up right smartly, I can tell you, and was out of there, but I could see it would need careful handling. She was in the doorway and Big Stupid was dragging her out, she was making a fight of it but he had a bruising grip on her arms. The Brat was standing there with a rifle, waiting to hold me off. And there was me with nothing but my short knife, which I always carries. So I began to walk up the path, very steady, keeping a sharp look-out for Wolf-face, but he wasn’t there—perhaps he was asleep up on the hill.
As I got closer and closer the Kid was angry like a girl. He waved the gun and glared at me and shouted something about the traitor and justice of the people, while Big Stupid pushed the woman in front of him.
The Kid kept talking and shouting, and she kept struggling with Big Stupid. They didn’t know if I was really coming for them, or which one I was going to try and take first. So I was able to edge round the Kid a bit, then I got hold of the rifle and pushed up and out, and took him across my hip and rolled him over so that he fell on the path and hit his knees on the brick edging, which gave him a nasty fall.
Big Stupid flung her back in the doorway and came at me, but I’d carried off the rifle on the backswing—it was still on safe, anyway—and I rammed old Stupid in the midriff with the butt. He turns grey and sits down and I think I done a couple of his ribs. Now I know this wasn’t kind, but you don’t fight by Marquess of Queensbury rules, not in real fights, only when it’s in the boxing-ring, when you want to lengthen it out and make a show of it. It’s really kinder to fight dirty, because it gets it over quickly and ends the suffering.
So he turned grey and sat down on the path, and the Kid was nursing his knees. And I says, Arseholes, I says, to the people and their justice. Don’t worry, I says, Justice you shall have but it’s going to be in my way. Vengeance is mine, says I, I will repay, says the Lord.
Well, they sat there on the ground for a while to nurse themselves and get their breath back. Presently they got up and helped each other off, and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the poor perishers. After all, they weren’t like enemy, but what else could I have done?
Inside the cottage, the woman was standing there white and shaky-looking with her red hair all over her face and hanging on with both hands to the back of a chair. Her dressing-gown was pulled about too, so she was half-naked. So I straightens it up to make her decent-like and I puts my arm around her and I says, Pull yourself together, girl, I says. There’s no harm done you, and there won’t be neither. Don’t forget, you’ve got old Saul here to look after you.
She leaned against me until she stopped shaking, and then she lifts her head and says, Thank you, just like that. Thank you. Now I will get your breakfast.
She stood at the stove and crumbled the oatmeal block into a little saucepan of hot water, with powdered milk and sugar.
Your name is Saul? she says. She had a nice voice, soft.
Yes, I says, Saul Scourby.
Saul Scourby, she says, SS. You know what that means, SS, in Germany?
Yuh, I says, Nazis, storm-troopers and all that.
Not alone that, she says, Hitler’s janissaries. His Imperial Guard, but not like that of Napoleon, no. With the black dress uniform and the silver skulls. The ‘angels of death’, they call them. I knew one, he was a young officer, dark and gentle, so I thought.
She was putting out my porridge on a blue plate, with a drop of condensed milk. There was that faraway look in her eyes, like I began to know when she was remembering something, specially a lover.
I liked him very much. Then one night we were in a café by the river, the Seine, and he told me a story. There was this village in Poland where they were, and a German car—you know, a kubelwagen?—a small car it blew up and three officers were killed. It was maybe an old land-mine put down during the fighting, but the SS were angry to lose their comrades. So they went to each house in the village and took the oldest son, and they took the priest and the mayor and the schoolteacher, and they killed them with machine-guns in the church and set fire to the church. They took some of the young girls and they went away. And it was terrible because he made it sound so ordinary, like a summer holiday.
Did you still go with him after that? I says. And she says nothing. So again I says, Did you?
You know, she says, I had not much choice, but I did not love him any more.
You French lot disgust me, I says.
You do not know, she says, you should be glad you do not know.
Know what? I says.
The defeat, the Occupation. And again she has this sad, faraway look. I will cook your bacon, she says, and she opens the tin and begins to unwrap the strips of bacon from the grease-paper and lay it in an iron skillet with some onions and herbs.
She had an old radio on the dresser, so I turned it on and the power had come on, and I found the BBC news…
(He didn’t say what was on the news, just as he matter-of-factly left out most of the background detail of the landings and the build-up. After all, we both knew all that. But it gave his story, as he told it, a curiously timeless and elemental feeling, as if it took place within a bubble of space and time insulated from the outer world and all its stir and bustle of large events. At the same time, when you thought about it, it made it all look so small and distant—all that rage, all that love, half-a-dozen people against that huge sky roaring with planes, that vast bay full of ships, that green summer countryside shaking with tanks and gunfire.
If we improvised, we might say that it was one of those background-to-the-news talks, and a bland, confident voice saying, ‘…and with surprising ease normality is returning to the liberated areas, even within a short distance of our front line. Shops are open and civil authority continues to function. Of course not all Frenchmen—or women—welcome the liberation. There are the treacherous few, the hated “collabos”, who acted as fifth column for the Germans. In most cases they have retreated where they could with their Nazi masters, hoping to lose themselves, or at least to buy whatever time is left before the final defeat. For those who are foolish or unlucky enough to remain, there will be justice but scant sympathy. As one grim-faced Frenchman said to me, “These are not men, monsieur, they are filth. France must be cleansed of them.” I doubt if many would disagree with him.’)
The breakfast was smelling pretty good and I enjoyed watching her cook, because she went about it so neat, feeding the stove with a bit of wood from the big woodbox, closing the damper, then moving the skillet and keeping the kettle singing at the side ready to make my tea. It always makes me feel good to watch a woman cooking me a meal, especially breakfast. I told her that and she laughed, but she didn’t sound comfortable.
So you are not married? she says.
No, I says, I ain’t got round to it. What about you?
No, she says, short-like.
You ain’t told me your name, I says.
You didn’t ask, she says. Don’t you care with whom you sleep?
What’s your name? I says.
Isabelle, she says, Isabelle Pradier. Friends call me ‘Belle’.
‘Belle’, I says, that means beautiful, don’t it?
So she shrugs again, and I says, You are beautiful, aren’t you?
Would you care? she says. A man like you, you want a woman in bed, does it matter, the name or the face? And all the time there’s this sort of anger in her against me, but it’s all a sort of game too.
I grins at her and says, Well, you know what they say where I come from, that a man doesn’t look at what’s on the mantelpiece when he’s poking the fire.
So I went on eating and presently I says, You French certainly know how to cook. It was true too, it was a real marvel what she could do with army rations.
Thank you, she says. Perhaps it is because our men are selfish pigs. They should all marry their cooks.
That’s not what I heard, I says. Frenchmen are supposed to be great lovers, aren’t they? You know—Come wiz me to ze Kasbah, my darleeng. (His imitation of Charles Boyer was very bad, but it must have made her laugh.)
Boyer never said that, she says, and the French film is Pépé le Moko with Jean Gabin, it is much better. And that is all fairy-tales. A Frenchman expects to marry a rich wife and then have her for a servant, to be a good ménagère, a housekeeper.
Not in bed? I says.
That too, she says, like a servant, to obey.
I was drinking my tea, and I lit up a fag and passed her one. Is that why you took up with the Boches? I says.
Ah that, she says. I told you that you cannot know what it is like, defeat. Not just this time only, but the first time, and before that.
I thought we won the First World War, I says.
Look, she says, I grew up with the men who won that war, men who felt beaten and just wanted to be safe. My grandfather, my father’s father, was a young soldier in the Prussian war. He was wounded and taken prisoner at Sedan. My father, he was an officer at Verdun, he was buried when the trench was shelled and almost died. Later his men mutinied, he lost both his brothers. La Ligne Maginot, you know, the Maginot Line? It was built by beaten men. We hid behind it because we were afraid. We were beaten twenty years before this war started. All my childhood it was like that, shame, anger, fear. When the Germans came in nineteen-forty they were so young and confident. They were like new people, a new world.