Atonement (36 page)

“So
where’s the RAF?”

A hand
whipped out and slapped the man’s face, knocking his glasses to the
floor. The sound of the blow was precise as a whip crack. It was a signal for a
new stage, a new level of engagement. His naked eyes shrank to fluttering
little dots as he went down to grope around his feet. That was a mistake. A
kick from a steel-capped army boot caught him on the backside, lifting him an
inch or two. There were chuckles all round. A sense of something tasty about to
happen was spreading across the bar and drawing more soldiers in. As the crowd
swelled around the circle, any remaining sense of individual responsibility
fell away. A swaggering recklessness was taking hold. A cheer went up as
someone stubbed his cigarette on the fellow’s head. They laughed at his
comic yelp. They hated him and he deserved everything that was coming his way.
He was answerable for the Luftwaffe’s freedom of the skies, for every
Stuka attack, every dead friend. His slight frame contained every cause of an
army’s defeat. Turner assumed there was nothing he could do to help the
man without risking a lynching himself. But it was impossible to do nothing.
Joining in would be better than nothing. Unpleasantly excited, he strained
forward. Now, a tripping Welsh accent proposed the question.

“Where’s
the RAF?”

It was eerie
that the man had not shouted for help, or pleaded, or protested his innocence.
His silence seemed like collusion in his fate. Was he so dim that it had not
occurred to him that he might be about to die? Sensibly, he had folded his
glasses into his pocket. Without them his face was empty. Like a mole in bright
light, he peered around at his tormentors, his lips parted, more in disbelief
than in an attempt to form a word. Because he could not see it coming, he took
a blow to the face full-on. It was a fist this time. As his head flipped back,
another boot cracked into his shin and a little sporting cheer went up, with
some uneven applause, as though for a decent catch in the slips on the village
green. It was madness to go to the man’s defense, it was loathsome not
to. At the same time, Turner understood the exhilaration among the tormentors
and the insidious way it could claim him. He himself could do something
outrageous with his bowie knife and earn the love of a hundred men. To distance
the thought he made himself count the two or three soldiers in the circle he
reckoned bigger or stronger than himself. But the real danger came from the mob
itself, its righteous state of mind. It would not be denied its pleasures.

A situation
had now been reached in which whoever threw the next hit had to earn general
approval by being ingenious or funny. There was an eagerness in the air to
please by being creative. No one wanted to strike a false note. For a few
seconds these conditions imposed restraint. And at some point soon, Turner knew
from his Wandsworth days, the single blow would become a cascade. Then there
would be no turning back, and for the RAF man, only one end. A pink blotch had
formed on the cheekbone under his right eye. He had drawn his fists up under
his chin—he was still gripping his cap—and his shoulders were
hunched. It may have been a protective stance, but it was also a gesture of
weakness and submission which was bound to provoke greater violence. If he had
said something, anything at all, the troops surrounding him might have
remembered that he was a man, not a rabbit to be skinned. The Welshman who had
spoken was a short, thickset fellow from the sappers. He now produced a belt of
canvas webbing and held it up.

“What
do you think, lads?”

His precise,
insinuating delivery suggested horrors that Turner could not immediately grasp.
Now was his last chance to act. As he looked around for the corporals, there
was a roar from close by, like the bellowing of a speared bull. The crowd
swayed and stumbled as Mace barged through them into the circle. With a wild
hollering yodeling sound, like Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan, he picked up
the clerk from behind in a bear hug, lifting him eighteen inches clear of the
ground, and shook the terrified creature from side to side. There were cheers
and whistles, foot-stamping and Wild West whoops.

“I know
what I want to do with him,” Mace boomed. “I want to drown him in
the bloody sea!”

In response,
there rose another storm of hooting and stamping. Nettle was suddenly at
Turner’s side and they exchanged a look. They guessed what Mace was about
and they began to move toward the door, knowing they would have to be quick.
Not everyone was in favor of the drowning idea. Even in the frenzy of the
moment, some could still recall that the tide line was a mile away across the
sands. The Welshman in particular felt cheated. He was holding up his webbing
and shouting. There were catcalls and boos as well as cheers. Still holding his
victim in his arms, Mace rushed for the door. Turner and Nettle were ahead of
him, making a path through the crowd. When they reached the
entrance—usefully, a single, not a double, door—they let Mace
through, then they blocked the way, shoulder to shoulder, though they appeared
not to, for they were shouting and shaking their fists like the rest. They felt
against their backs a colossal and excited human weight which they could only
resist for a matter of seconds. This was long enough for Mace to run, not
toward the sea, but sharp left, and left again, up a narrow street that curved
behind the shops and bars, away from the front.

The exultant
crowd exploded from the bar like champagne, hurling Turner and Nettle aside.
Someone thought he saw Mace down on the sands, and for half a minute the crowd
went that way. By the time the mistake was realized and the crowd began to turn
back, there was no sign of Mace and his man. Turner and Nettle had melted away
too.

The vast
beach, the thousands waiting on it, and the sea empty of boats returned the
Tommies to their predicament. They emerged from a dream. Away to the east where
the night was rising, the perimeter line was under heavy artillery fire. The
enemy was closing in and England was a long way off. In the failing light not much
time remained to find somewhere to bed down. A cold wind was coming in off the
Channel, and the greatcoats lay on the roadsides far inland. The crowd began to
break up. The RAF man was forgotten.

It seemed to
Turner that he and Nettle had set out to look for Mace, and then forgot about
him. They must have wandered the streets for a while, wanting to congratulate
him on the rescue and share the joke of it. Turner did not know how he and
Nettle came to be here, in this particular narrow street. He remembered no
intervening time, no sore feet—but here he was, addressing in the
politest terms an old lady who stood in the doorway of a flat-fronted terraced
house. When he mentioned water, she looked at him suspiciously, as though she
knew he wanted more than water. She was rather handsome, with dark skin, a
proud look and a long straight nose, and a floral scarf was tied across her
silver hair. He understood immediately she was a gypsy who was not fooled by
his speaking French. She looked right into him and saw his faults, and knew
he’d been in prison. Then she glanced with distaste at Nettle, and at
last pointed along the street to where a pig was nosing around in the gutter.

“Bring
her back,” she said, “and I’ll see what I have for
you.”

“Fuck
that,” Nettle said once Turner had translated. “We’re only
asking for a cup of bloody water. We’ll go in and take it.”

But Turner,
feeling a familiar unreality taking hold, could not discount the possibility
that the woman was possessed of certain powers. In the poor light the space
above her head was pulsing to the rhythm of his own heart. He steadied himself
against Nettle’s shoulder. She was setting him a test he was too
experienced, too wary, to refuse. He was an old hand. So close to home, he was
not falling for any traps. Best to be cautious.

“We’ll
get the pig,” he said to Nettle. “It’ll only take a
minute.”

Nettle was
long used to following Turner’s suggestions, for they were generally
sound, but as they went up the street the corporal was muttering,
“There’s something not right with you, guv’nor.”

Their
blisters made them slow. The sow was young and quick and fond of her freedom.
And Nettle was frightened of her. When they had it cornered in a shop doorway,
she ran at him and he leaped aside with a scream that was not all self-mockery.
Turner went back to the lady for a length of rope, but no one came to the door
and he wasn’t certain that he had the right house. However, he was
certain now that if they did not capture the pig, they would never get home. He
was running a temperature again, he knew, but that did not make him wrong. The
pig equaled success. As a child, Turner had once tried to persuade himself that
preventing his mother’s sudden death by avoiding the pavement cracks
outside his school playground was a nonsense. But he had never trodden on them
and she had not died.

As they
advanced up the street, the pig remained just beyond their reach.

“Fuck
it,” Nettle said. “We can’t be doing with this.”

But there was
no choice. By a fallen telegraph pole Turner cut off a length of cable and made
a noose. They were pursuing the sow along a road on the edge of the resort
where bungalows were fronted by small patches of gardens surrounded by fences.
They went along opening every front gate on both sides of the street. Then they
took a detour down a side road in order to get round the pig and chase it back
the way it had come. Sure enough, it soon stepped into a garden and began
rooting it up. Turner closed the gate and, leaning over the fence, dropped the
noose over the pig’s head.

It took all
their remaining strength to drag the squealing sow back home. Fortunately,
Nettle knew where it lived. When it was finally secure in the tiny sty in her
back garden, the old woman brought out two stone flagons of water. Watched by her
they stood in bliss in her little yard by the kitchen door and drank. Even when
their bellies seemed about to burst, their mouths craved more and they drank
on. Then the woman brought them soap, flannels and two enamel bowls to wash in.
Turner’s hot face changed the water to rusty brown. Scabs of dried blood
molded to his upper lip came away satisfyingly whole. When he was done he felt
a pleasing lightness in the air around him which slipped silkily over his skin
and through his nostrils. They tipped the dirty water away onto the base of a
clump of snapdragons which, Nettle said, made him homesick for his
parents’ back garden. The gypsy filled their canteens and brought them
each a liter of red wine with the corks half pulled and a saucisson which they
stowed in their haversacks. When they were about to take their leave she had
another thought and went back inside. She returned with two small paper bags,
each containing half a dozen sugared almonds.

Solemnly,
they shook hands.

“For
the rest of our lives we will remember your kindness,” Turner said.

She nodded,
and he thought she said, “My pig will always remind me of you.” The
severity of her expression did not alter, and there was no telling whether
there was insult or humor or a hidden message in her remark. Did she think they
were not worthy of her kindness? He backed away awkwardly, and then they were
walking down the street and he was translating her words for Nettle. The
corporal had no doubts.

“She
lives alone and she loves her pig. Stands to reason. She’s very grateful
to us.” Then he added suspiciously, “Are you feeling all right,
guv’nor?”

“Extremely
well, thank you.”

Troubled by
their blisters, they limped back in the direction of the beach with the idea of
finding Mace and sharing the food and drink. But having caught the pig, Nettle
thought it was fair dos to crack open a bottle now. His faith in Turner’s
judgment had been restored. They passed the wine between them as they went
along. Even in the late dusk, it was still possible to make out the dark cloud
over Dunkirk. In the other direction, they could now see gun flashes. There was
no letup along the defense perimeter.

“Those
poor bastards,” Nettle said.

Turner knew
he was talking about the men outside the makeshift orderly room. He said,
“The line can’t hold much longer.”

“We’ll
be overrun.”

“So
we’d better be on a boat tomorrow.”

Now they were
no longer thirsty, dinner was on their minds. Turner was thinking of a quiet
room and a square table covered with a green gingham cloth, with one of those
French ceramic oil lamps suspended from the ceiling on a pulley. And the bread,
wine, cheese and saucisson spread out on a wooden board.

He said,
“I’m wondering if the beach would really be the best place for
dinner.”

“We
could get robbed blind,” Nettle agreed.

“I
think I know the kind of place we need.”

They were
back in the street behind the bar. When they glanced along the alley they had
run down, they saw figures moving in the half-light outlined against the last
gleam of the sea, and far beyond them and to one side, a darker mass that may
have been troops on the beach or dune grass or even the dunes themselves. It would
be hard enough to find Mace by daylight, and impossible now. So they wandered
on, looking for somewhere. In this part of the resort now there were hundreds
of soldiers, many of them in loud gangs drifting through the streets, singing
and shouting. Nettle slid the bottle back into his haversack. They felt more
vulnerable without Mace.