Feelings of Fear (11 page)

But he stood up, and when she tried to cling on to him, he pried her fingers away, and she was in too much pain to be able to follow him. Her head fell back on the pillow and he dragged the quilt around her to keep her warm. “I won't be long,” he told her. “I'm just going to call for a doctor.”

She watched him go to the door. Her swollen eyes were crowded with tears. “Please,” she whispered, her voice strangled with misery. “Please don't, Eager. Please.”

He hesitated for a moment, then he went out and closed the door behind him.

The doctor puffed up the stairs like a GWR locomotive, every puff smelling of whisky. He wore a bowler hat and a pinstriped trousers and carried a brown Gladstone bag.

“I don't know who did this,” Cliff told him, opening the door. “I just want you to understand that it wasn't me.”

The doctor didn't say anything, but looked at him piggy-eyed.

“All right, then,” said Cliff, and switched on the light.

The room was empty. The bed was empty. The quilt was smooth and undisturbed. Cliff laid his hand on the pillow and even the pillow was cold.

“I hope this isn't some kind of a joke,” said the doctor, taking off his hat. “I was listening to ITMA.”

Cliff lifted the quilt but even the sheet underneath was chilly. Nobody had been here, not tonight. He stared at the doctor and he didn't know what to say.

“She's not here, then, your lady friend?” the doctor asked him.

Cliff said something, but what he said was drowned out by the droning of a fully laden Fort taking off south-westward into the prevailing wind.

He let himself into the house and called out, “Babsy! I'm back!”

In the living-room, little Pete was sitting cross-legged in front of the television, solemnly watching
Howdy Doody.
“Hi, son! Howdy-doo to you!”

He hung up his hat on the hallstand, brushed back his close-cropped hair with both hands, and walked through to the kitchen, where the late-afternoon sun was shining. Babsy was rolling out pastry on the kitchen counter, her blonde hair tied up in a scarf. But she wasn't alone. A lean, tall white-haired man in an inappropriately wintry suit was sitting at the breakfast table, with a stack of papers in front of him. He stood up as Cliff came in, and Cliff looked at Babsy in surprise.

“You didn't say we were expecting visitors.”

“You weren't, captain,” said the white-haired man, in a rather faded
British accent. “I'm afraid to say that I arrived unannounced. Your good lady was kind enough to allow me to wait for you.”

Cliff walked around the counter, put his arm around Babsy and gave her a kiss. “Is something wrong?” he wanted to know.

The white-haired man shook his head. “Quite the opposite. You might just say that I'm laying a ghost to rest. My name is Gerald Browne – Major Gerald Browne. You and I once talked on the telephone, several years ago.”

Cliff said, in disbelief, “You're
Anne's
father?”

“Perhaps this is something you'd rather talk about in private.”

“No, no – I—” Cliff began, but Babsy laid a hand on his arm and said, “Why don't you take Major Browne into the yard? I have to give little Pete his supper now, anyhow.”

They went out into the small back yard and sat on the white-painted swing. It was a treacly Memphis evening and the sky was gold. Cliff offered Major Browne a Lucky but Major Browne declined.

“Anne told you that she was going to Torquay, but in reality she was doing nothing of the sort. She was being flown into France to make contact with the Resistance and to set up a communications system.”

“She was
what?
Anne? But she was only just a kid!”

“I think you forget, Captain Eager, that in those days you were all just ‘kids'. Anne was an SOE wireless operator, very highly trained.”

“But I saw her, after she left. She came back and I saw her twice.”

Major Browne's eyes brimmed with sadness. They were rainwater eyes, just like Anne's. “Well, captain, I didn't believe you then, but now I think I do. Although she was very brave, Anne was terrified of being captured and executed. She felt that she hadn't lived her life to the full. She hadn't even had a lover. That was why – well, when you met her for the first time that evening, she was so forward. She felt she had to cram a lifetime of experience into just a few hours.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because six weeks ago, the French authorities returned her diary to me, the diary which she kept both before and after she was caught and imprisoned by the Gestapo. Your name comes up again and again. When they tortured her, she always tried to imagine that it was you torturing her, instead of them. She felt that she could bear the pain if
it was inflicted with passion, and with love. And she did bear pain – much more than you or I could ever imagine.

“It was thinking of you that helped her to endure her suffering. In her mind, she says, she wasn't in Amiens prison, but in your arms. And, by the way, she never gave away any of her codes or any of her comrades, not till the last.”

Cliff found that he had to wipe his eyes. “I saw her. I held her. I don't understand it. The last time she came – she was so badly hurt, I couldn't stand it. I left her and went to call for a doctor. When I came back … the bed was empty. She was gone. I thought she'd just—”

“Do you remember what date that was?”

“For sure. It was the day we lost sixty-five Flying Fortresses over Germany, all in one day. October 16, 1943.”

Major Browne nodded. “That was the same day that Anne was tortured for the last time by the Gestapo. According to the French, they did unspeakable things to her with cigarettes, and burned a swastika on her chest. When she still refused to speak, they shot her.”

Major Browne handed Cliff the small brown diary with its stained, creased cover. “Here, captain, I think this is yours, more than anybody's.”

That night, while Babsy quietly breathed, Cliff stood by the bedroom window staring out at the moonlight. Between finger and thumb he twirled the St Catherine medallion that Anne had given him. St Catherine, broken on the wheel.

He was about to go back to bed when he was aware of a figure standing in the deep shadows on the far side of the room. Or maybe it wasn't a figure. Maybe it was nothing more than Babsy's wrap, hanging on the back of the door.

“Is anybody there?” he said, very softly.

Then, “Anne, is that you?”

“
W
ell, you did your best,” said his grandfather, opening the Rover's boot-lid and dropping Jack's kitbag into it. “They were bigger than you, most of them. Don't know what their games master's been feeding them on. Six Shredded Wheat every morning, if you ask me.”

Jack climbed into the car. As he did so, three of his team-mates passed him by and shouted out, “Butterfingers! You couldn't catch a cold!”

“He did his best!” his grandfather called back. “Maybe you shouldn't have let the other forwards get through to the goalmouth so many times!”

“Grandad,” Jack protested. He was going to get even more teasing now. Can't stand up for yourself, Matthews? Have to get a hundred-year-old man to do it for you?

His grandfather slammed his door and started the engine. “It's true, though, isn't it? You were practically defending that goal on your own.”

They drove between the foggy playing fields toward the school's entrance gates. Several Johnson House boys jeered and cheered as they passed by. Jack felt cold and miserable and exhausted, and now that his ears were warming up they were tingling so much that they hurt.

Barrons School had lost to Johnson House 3–2 – not the worst defeat in the school's 109-year history – but if they lost just one more match they would be out of the schools area championship for the first time ever. Normally Jack wouldn't have played for the first XI at all, but Peter Dunning, their usual goalie, had twisted his ankle. He had told matron that he was playing squash, but the truth
was that he had fallen off the roof of the bicycle-shed pretending to be Batman.

“How about some tea?” Jack's grandfather asked him. “We could go to that café where they do those meringues.”

The café was warm, with flowery wallpaper and copper kettles hanging from its dark oak beams. Jack had a Coke and two meringues while his grandfather had a cup of tea and three squashed fly biscuits. His grandfather didn't come to see him very often, because he hadn't been very well lately, something to do with his heart, but Jack liked it when he did because he always gave him a giant-sized Toblerone bar and five pounds. And apart from that, he looked so much like his father, if his father had ever grown a white moustache.

Jack's father had been killed last year in a road accident in Kenya, where he had been helping to build a dam. Jack still missed him more than he could say.

“The thing is,” said his grandfather, “you're either a natural footballer or you're not. Your dad wasn't natural footballer, not at all. Bambi-legs, that's what the other boys used to call him. Mind you, your great-uncle Bertie, he was brilliant, by all accounts. He used to play for Whetstone United before he was called up.”

“Great-uncle Bertie? I've never heard of him.”

“He was your great-grandfather's older brother. And the reason you've never heard of him is because the family never spoke his name. They disowned him. Turned his picture to the wall, so to speak.”

“Why, what happened?”

“Great-uncle Bertie was in the trenches in France, during the First World War. I don't know whether you've been told anything about it at school. Perhaps you haven't yet. But on Christmas Day, all the shooting stopped. The Germans started to sing carols and light up little lanterns. After a while, the British soldiers joined in, and then both sides climbed out of their trenches and met up in the middle, in the place they used to call No Man's Land. They talked to each other and shared cigarettes. They even played football. It was your great-uncle Bertie who organized the football match.

“The officers were furious. This was supposed to be a war, not a game. So the order went out from the War Office that there was to be no more making friends with the enemy, ever. This made your
great-uncle Bertie very upset. He'd seen for himself that the German soldiers were nothing more than young lads, just like he was – and he didn't want to kill them any more than he wanted them to kill him. He made the mistake of writing a letter to his local paper back home, saying that the war ought to be decided peacefully – by games of football, instead of bullets.

“Of course the editor of the local paper didn't print it. Everybody was very patriotic in those days, and to say that our soldiers shouldn't fight – well, that was regarded as treason. Instead he sent the letter to great-uncle Bertie's commanding officer. Uncle Bertie got into serious trouble. They took away his corporal's stripes and they gave him all the most disgusting and dangerous jobs to do, like going out at night to cut the enemy's barbed-wire; or dragging in bodies from No Man's Land; or digging out the latrines. But he was a survivor, your great-uncle Bertie, and he managed to stay alive until the following Christmas, 1915.

“On Christmas morning, though, without any warning, he climbed out of his trench and began to walk toward the enemy lines. The ground was covered in snow. He was carrying a white flag on a stick and he was singing a carol, ‘O Little Town Of Bethlehem'. Nobody from the German trenches fired at him.

“The officer in charge of his platoon shouted at him to come back, but great-uncle Bertie didn't even look round. That was when the officer ordered one of great-uncle Bertie's friends to shoot him. The man refused so the officer took his rifle and shot great-uncle Bertie himself. Killed him instantly.

“All this was in a letter which great-uncle Bertie's friend sent to his parents. The friend said something like, ‘Even though Bertram was attempting to desert, he was my chum and I could not bring myself to obey the order to shoot him.' I think the friend himself was killed about two months later.”

“So that was why nobody ever talked about great-uncle Bertie again?” said Jack.

His grandfather nodded. “They were so ashamed that he had tried to go over to the German side that they cut every single picture of him out of the family albums, and threw away all of his football cups and all of his possessions. Everything.”

Jack finished his meringue and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Have you still got the letter?” he asked.

“It's at home. We'll stop off on the way back to school and I'll give it to you.”

It had been folded and refolded so many times that it was almost falling apart. A single sheet of soft brownish paper with faded brown ink on it. It was embossed with the name of Browns Hotel, in Dover Street, London, so it must have been written while great-uncle Bertie's friend was on leave. He probably wouldn't have been able to get it past the Army censors if he had tried to send it from France. It was dated December 31, 1915.

Jack lay on his bed in the dormitory reading the letter again and again. He could almost picture great-uncle Bertie climbing the ladder out of his trench and walking across the snow-blanketed landscape, his white flag lifted and his breath steaming as he sang.

There was something so strange about what he had done. Why did he go across to the German side? Surely it wasn't to join them, because life in the German trenches must have been just as dangerous and horrible as it was in the British trenches. And even with his white flag, he had run a very high risk of being shot by a sniper.

And there was something else, too – something that his grandfather hadn't mentioned. The letter said that he had sung one line of the carol, and then omitted the next line, all the way through. Now, why had he done that?