The '44 Vintage (10 page)

Butler frowned. “Does that mean we may have to fight them?”

“Won’t be the first time if we do, Jack.” Jones looked at him seriously. “Terrible funny lot, the Frenchies are—proud, like.”

“But … we’re on the same side.”

“Oh yes—we’re on the same side. But they’re not on our side, see. They’re only on their side.”

“Like Wales, Taf,” said one of the NCOs. “You’re not fighting for the ruddy English, are you?”

“I am not,” Jones said with a flash of anger. Then he smiled. “Except that somehow you’ve got the whole bloody world fighting for you… . But I’m right about the frogs. They don’t love us, and that’s the truth. Not since we sank those ships of theirs after Dunkirk—in North Africa somewhere.” He nodded, turned the nod into a shrug, and then turned quickly towards Butler. “And that was all he said, our Willy, Jack?”

“Aye.” Butler concentrated on the valuable property problem. “Couldn’t be a secret weapon of some sort, could it?”

The sergeant pursed his lips for a moment, but finally shook his head. “No, I shouldn’t think it’s that. Bit late in the day for secret weapons now … and … ‘certain items of property’ was what the man said. That doesn’t sound like a weapon to me.”

“Valuable,’ he said too,” said Jones. “
Extremely
valuable.”

“Sounds like money to me,” said the man who had ribbed Jones.

“Or gold and jewels,” said a tall, hatchet-faced man. “Like the crown jewels, maybe. Or old pictures, like they have in the museums—and that sort of stuff. Some of it’s worth a fortune—it must be, because they have burglar alarms and people watching over it all the time.”

“Now
that
’
s
what I call good thinking, Vic.” Taffy Jones produced another uncorked bottle from somewhere and filled everyone’s glass. “Because that’s the way I was thinking. See, there was something in the way the colonel spoke made me think this stuff’s been there a tidy old time—in Jack’s castle—maybe ever since 1940, say. And what I was thinking was that it ‘ud make sense if they couldn’t get it out of France then to hide it away somewhere safe-like, just so the Germans didn’t get it, whatever it is. But now maybe the Frenchies have got wind of it, see.”

“But if it’s British property—the property of our government—“ Butler protested.

“British property? British property?” Taffy Jones repeated the words, his voice rising incredulously. “Boyo, you know what we are?” he tapped his chest with the new bottle.

“We—are?” Butler blinked. ‘Well… we’re Chandos Force.”

Jones tutted sarcastically. “No, no—we’re the British Liberation Army, that’s what we are. And the French, they are the French Liberation Forces. And
this
”
—
he put down his glass and his bottle carefully on the table beside him and pulled back his cuff—“what do you think this is?”

“It’s a watch,” said Butler.

“It’s a gold watch—a
liberated
gold watch. I know, because I liberated it myself. And I hope to liberate a lot more before I’m finished”— Jones picked up the glass and the bottle again—“like liberating this Grand Vin de Touraine.”

Butler couldn’t help smiling back at the grinning Welshman. The doctrine was familiar—everything that wasn’t screwed down was fair game, and there were plenty of men like Taffy who also carried screwdrivers; even the general had praised the Aussies as being the finest thieves in the 1918 army as well as the best assault troops. But this was still accepting robbery on a grander scale than was right and proper.

Sergeant Purvis clapped him on the back, laughing. “You stick close to Taf, Jack—he’s born to be hanged… . But the little bugger’s right: the bloody Germans had been stealing the bloody frogs blind, so you can’t blame them for trying to do the same to us. Only I still want to know where this Touraine place is, that’s what I want to know.”

“Now there you have me,” said Taffy Jones. “If it was Koritsar, or Monastir, or Gostivar … but Touraine—“ He looked at Butler questioningly. “You have the sound of an educated man, Jack. Or maybe you have a map of France in your pocket like you have a corkscrew, eh?”

Butler grinned back a little foolishly. He was far from the bit of western Normandy he’d studied back in England, and School Certificate geography had left him no memory of the different parts of France. But Touraine sounded as though it was connected with Tours, which so far as he could recall was a city right in the middle of the country—a city on the river Loire, which they were about to cross. “I think it’s just across the river—the river Loire,” he said hesitantly.

“Go on! Maybe we’re not going to have to travel so far, then!” said Jones enthusiastically. “I don’t really like all this driving down roads like we owned the place—it’s all very well for our Willy, he travels in the middle, like. But I always seem to be in that front jeep, clinging onto a bloody great machine gun—I think the Swine’s got it in for me, you know.” He wagged his head at Butler. “That’s our good friend Company Sergeant-major Swayne, in case you haven’t met him, Jack.”

“I have met him,” said Butler. For once his shyness had deserted him, he felt. But then it was impossible to be shy in this friendly company. “I pointed a Sten at him, and he didn’t like it.”

“What happened? Did it jam?” said someone.

“Of course it jammed,” said Jones. “Here now—we’ll give you something better than a Sten, you don’t want that cheap mass-produced rubbish.” He reached under the table and produced a stubby submachine gun with a wooden stock, quite unlike anything Butler had ever seen. “Beretta .38—best little gun ever made, you take it from me, Jack. None of your Thompsons or Schmeissers, so-called. That’s real high-quality steel, that is, machined the hard way. You wouldn’t get better stuff out of Ebbw Vale than that—that’s made to last, that is.”

The Welshman stroked the gun with the same reverence he had earlier bestowed on the wine bottle. His enthusiasm was clearly split fifty-fifty.

“Did you really point a Sten at the sergeant-major?” asked someone.

“Well—not deliberately—“ began Butler.

“Swayne by name and swine by nature,” said Jones to no one in particular. “But a good soldier, I’ll give him that”

“Wonder what he’ll do now we’ve won the war.”

“They’ll send him to fight the Japs.”

“Buggered if I’m going to fight the Japs. He’s welcome to them.”

“The Americans’ll fight the Japs.”

“What about the 14th Army in Burma—they’re fighting the Japs. I’ve got a brother in the RAF there. He says they call it ‘the Forgotten Army’.”

“Ah—well that must be why I’d forgotten about them, then.”

Everyone laughed, and Butler found that he was laughing with them. It was a good joke, that one: the forgotten Forgotten Army.

Taffy Jones tugged at his sleeve. “Have you that corkscrew of yours handy?” He upended the bottle he was holding in order to illustrate his need.

Butler fumbled in his pockets, eventually found the knife and promptly split his thumbnail prizing open the corkscrew.

“All in a good cause,” said Taffy, spearing the cork. “And what are you going to do after the war then, Jack? Smart lad like you will have a cushy billet lined up, I’ll be bound.”

It seemed unreal, talking about the war’s end. Everything he had planned had been based on the war giving him the training and the professional polish he needed. Now that it was ending prematurely he could no longer see his way clearly.

He held out his glass. Taffy Jones filled it carefully and then stared at him across it. “Don’t look so miserable, boyo. With just a bit of luck we’re not going to have to do any more fighting. Our Willy’ll see to that, and he’s a man you can rely on.”

“That’s just it,” confided Butler miserably. “I was relying on taking part in the fighting.”

“Now—there you surprise me.” Taffy looked around for his glass and finding nothing in reach drank from the bottle. “It’s a nasty rough business, fighting is. Fighting”—he tapped Butler on the chest—“fighting should be left to soldiers.”

Butler frowned at him, remembering his recent testimonial for the little Italian submachine gun. “But we are soldiers,” he said stupidly.

“No, we’re not.” The finger which had tapped Butler’s chest now waved in front of his eyes negatively. “We’re civvies in uniform. I was a tool-maker before the war—a trained tool-maker. You were—whatever you were.” The Welshman took another swig from the bottle. “And after the war we’ll go back to civvy street, and they’ll expect me to be a tool-maker again … and you’ll be—whatever you were before.”

“No,” said Butler, thinking of his school blazer, which had been too small for him during the whole of his last year. “No.”

“Yes. When I say ‘soldiers’ I mean professional soldiers.”

“But that’s what I want to be—a professional soldier,” said Butler.

Taffy Jones stared at him incredulously. “Go on? You want to march up and down in a red coat, all bullshit and saluting? Never!” He blinked. “How long have you wanted to do that?”

“Ever since I was a little lad. Ever since I saw our county regiment march through the city with fixed bayonets and drums beating—it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen—“ Butler stopped abruptly, shocked by his own words. He had never told anyone that, not even the general. He’d never even put the thought into words before.

Taffy scratched his head. “And what do your da and your ma say to that? If I’d have told my da I was going for a soldier he’d ‘uv tanned my arse for me.”

“My mum’s dead. And my dad doesn’t know.” It was easier to speak now; it was almost a relief. “He’ll be wild when he does find out. He thinks the Army is there to hold down the workers—like in the General Strike.”

“Dead right he is too.” Taffy nodded vigorously. “That’s what they did in Wales, by God—Winston Churchill sent them down to do it, and he’ll send them down again without a second thought, I shouldn’t wonder … and then will you fix your bayonet on your own da, Jack?”

Butler tried to thrust the image out of his mind. “It won’t happen like that again—things have changed since then.” He reached for something to obliterate the image, since it wouldn’t go away. Anything would do. “I’m going to be an officer, too. My company commander says he’ll sign my WOSB application. It’s a good career, the Army is. You know where you are in the Army.”

“Jesus Christ!” Taffy Jones’s face seemed to float away. “D’you hear that, Harry?”

Butler was flustered by Sergeant Purvis’s presence at his shoulder. He had the feeling that he’d been talking too quickly and too loudly— and saying too much. It didn’t seem to matter that the Welshman had heard him, somehow; but the thought that anyone else had overheard him was embarrassing.

“Not going to put the bayonet into his da, he isn’t—he’s only going to give the order for it,” said Taffy. “Jack, boyo, I’m disappointed in you, I am.”

“Well, I’m not,” said Sergeant Purvis. “It’s the right place to be—giving the orders. And the right place to be giving them is in the Army, too. You’re the bloody fool, Taffy—not Jack. He’s the smart one.”

“What d’you mean?”

“I mean, you bloody Welshman, that it isn’t going to be all beer and skirts in civvy street after this little lot. It’s going to be hard work and ration cards if you’re lucky, and the dole queue and a small packet of Woodbines if you aren’t.” Purvis looked at Butler. “Unless you’ve got a nice fat nest egg tucked away somewhere, which none of us have—and I don’t mean the demob gratuity they’ve promised either, because no one’s going to get fat on that.”

Butler frowned at him.

“The best place to be is in the Army of Occupation
and
an officer, like Jack says,” Purvis continued. “That way you’ll get the best of everything—the best food and the best drink and the best women.”

Butler was disappointed in Sergeant Purvis. He was also aware for the first time that he was a little lightheaded, so that he couldn’t think of the right word with which to express his feelings. The trouble was that he had clean forgotten to eat anything—that was the trouble.

“The thing you’ve got to worry about, Jack,” said Purvis, “is whether you really can get that commission of yours, because as of now they’re not going to be so easy to pick up, once they start cutting the Army down. The bastards are going to be able to pick and choose from now on—and they’ll pick bloody hah-hah jobs like your Mr. What’s-‘is-name with the stutter.”

Taffy nodded his agreement. “You’re dead right there, Harry. It’ll be like before the war—not what you are, but who you are. And not what you know, but who you know.”

Butler looked from one to the other. They were good blokes, he decided—the best, in fact. But they were absolutely wrong.

The only problem was that he couldn’t remember why they were wrong any more.

“Influence in high places, that’s what you want,” said Taffy Jones wisely. “Influence in high places—and that’s what you and me haven’t got, boyo.” Influence—Suddenly it all came back to Butler with a rush, why it wouldn’t be the same as last time.

Because this time there were the Russian Communists—millions and millions of them, all armed to the teeth. That was why there’d be a big Army still, and a place for him in it.

The arguments were all there now, at his fingertips. But they were jumbled up like the pieces of a jigsaw. It hadn’t been his father who had said that about the Russians, for all that he loathed the Communists and was always scheming to keep them out of the union’s affairs. They weren’t to be trusted—the general said the same thing, and when his father and the general agreed on something then it had to be true, he felt that in his bones. The general!

He pointed triumphantly at Jones. “But that’s just it, Taffy: I
have
got influence in high places—I’ve got the general-in-chief of the regiment, who is a colonel…” That didn’t sound right. “… I mean, the colonel-in-chief of the regiment, who is a general—he’s a very good friend of mine. A friend of the family. My father was his sergeant-major.”

He found to his surprise that he was looking at the end of his finger, which was waving in the front of the blur of Taffy Jones’s face. He noticed that he’d broken the nail on something.