The '44 Vintage (20 page)

Winston frowned at him. “Hell, Lieutenant… that’s no problem. I can just see that smiling sonofabitch explaining how we took the wrong turning and ran into the village before he could stop us.”

“Exactly. They may even have heard the firing in the distance.”

“So what?”

“So what will the major do, then?”

Winston frowned more deeply, his forehead creasing. “He’ll shift his ass—?” He stared at Audley. “He’ll … ?”

“Limejuice,” said Butler.

“That’s right.” Audley gave Butler a twisted non-smile. “He’ll do what he’d do if it was a genuine accident—he’ll cover his tracks and spread alarm and confusion among the enemy with an air strike. He’ll have to do it to keep up the pretence—and I rather think he would have done it anyway. Because it makes good sense.”

This time Butler frowned—and discovered in doing so that it hurt to frown now. “Good sense … sir?”

“Ye-ess … a downy bird … Because even if there weren’t any Germans at the Loire crossing when we came over they’ll be wondering what the hell happened there by now, with that limejuice strike. So now he’s given them the answer—which was us blundering into Sermigny.” Audley paused, staring up at the blue sky above them and listening to the stillness for a moment. “And
now
… if he’s the downy bird I take him to be … he’ll ram the answer home with another drop of limejuice.”

They all listened, but there was only an empty silence. “What d’you think, Sergeant?” said Audley finally.

“Lieutenant”—Winston gave the silence another five seconds—“I think the sooner we crawl our asses out of here the better.”

They crawled again.

But this time they crawled more steadily, and without the hampering Sten, Butler was able to fall into the rhythm of it, timing the movement of his left hand to his right knee, and that of his right hand to his left knee until they became automatic.

Ahead of him the American sergeant moved just rhythmically down the narrow avenue of vines, with their clusters of small green grapes and odd-shaped leaves. He had never imagined grapes growing on small bushes like these, but rather on high trellises like in the Kentish hop fields; nor did the grapes look anything like as juicy as the ones he remembered from Christmas before the war, when they had been one of the extra-special treats—though a treat not in the same class as the orange in the toe of his stocking.

More strange than the grapes were the American’s boots, which were queer, high-laced things that reminded him of pictures of Edwardian ladies’ boots; and they had no metal studs on their soles—that was why the American Army marched so unnaturally silently, of course—

The boots slid sideways suddenly.

“There’s a wood just up ahead,” said Winston.

Audley crawled up alongside them, breathing heavily—that was the difference from being encumbered by the machine-carbine, which outweighed its lightness with its awkwardness, thought Butler charitably.

“Okay. Let’s get into it,” said Audley.

“And then where?” asked Winston.

That was the question which had been looming in the back of Butler’s mind all the time as he had crawled, beyond the immediate problem of surviving.

What were they going to do?

Audley looked up into the sky, as though gauging his position. “Well … so far as I can make out, we’re southeast of the village— maybe south-southeast—which means this is the wood we came out of, probably.”

Winston squinted towards the sun. “Yeah—could be.”

“Right … so if we head due east through the wood we should hit that other road—the one
they
took?” Audley looked at Winston questioningly.

Winston nodded slowly. “Could be, yeah.”

“Then we head south.”

Butler looked from one to the other of them as they stared at each other.

“I get you,” said Winston. “And then the first Frenchman you meet, you ask if your buddies have passed that way, huh?”

“That’s right, Sergeant.”

The American smiled. “You know, Lieutenant, I kind of thought you were going to say that—I really did.”

“You did?” said Audley stiffly. ‘That was clever of you, Sergeant.”

“Sure. You’re still the real Chandos Force. All two of you.”

Audley took a deep breath. “I was … very much hoping it would be all three of us, Sergeant. I was hoping that very much.” He took another breath. “We could use some help.”

The sergeant chewed his lip. “Yeah, I can see that.” He looked at Butler. “What d’you think, Corporal?”

Butler’s mouth opened. “Who—me?”

Winston gazed at him for a second, shook his head, and then turned back to Audley.

“Okay, Lieutenant,” he said. “Let’s get the real Chandos Force on the road.”

How they met strangers in the forest

THE DRAWBACK
of the wood was that it was impossible to move quietly in it.

Once they had put the first belt of trees and bushes between themselves and the vineyard they were able to walk free and upright, and that was a marvellous relief. But the ground was thick with twigs and small fallen branches which crunched and crackled and snapped underfoot until Butler felt that the whole German Army, or at least that part of it which was south of the Loire and hadn’t yet heard that the war was almost over, must hear them.

That was a childish imagining, he knew, but it also seemed to affect the others, because they both trod as delicately as they could, and indicated to him that he should do the same. The problem was that it was difficult to keep his eyes on his feet and at the same time avoid the foliage that brushed against his face, something that would normally not have worried him at all but which now became extremely painful. Try as he would, he could not stop the branches whipping the wounds on the side of his head and his ear: they seemed malevolently determined to draw blood again, so that finally he found himself stumbling along with one hand clamped over the injuries and the other stretched out ahead of him like that of a blind man feeling his way in the dark.

At the same time he experienced a growing irritation with Audley for holding onto his precious Sten gun. He recognised the emotion as being no less childish than his fear of the noise they were making and his preoccupation with the pain of superficial scratches; and that the young officer had only taken the Sten in the first place as an act of kindness. But without it he felt naked and defenceless in the knowledge that if they did meet up with any Germans the lack of it left him no choice other than to surrender or to run like a rabbit. Which was not only unfair, but doubly unfair, because Audley still had his holstered pistol—which was the only other weapon they possessed between them.

For the first time he began to think of the impossibility of what Audley was proposing to do.

It wasn’t just impossible—it was ridiculous. They didn’t know where they were— They didn’t know where they were going— They didn’t know where the major was going— And even if they were able by some miracle to find out the answer to that last question they had no prospect of catching up with the major before he did whatever it was that he intended to do, whatever that was exactly, which they didn’t know—Apart from which, there were still the sodding Germans to think about, because however experienced the major and his bloody bandits were at keeping out of harm’s way, Second Lieutenant Audley’s knowledge of war was limited to the destruction of tanks, and mostly British tanks, and Sergeant Winston was of all things, for Christ’s sake, a demolition expert who probably didn’t know one end of a rifle from the other—

Not that they’d even
got
a rifle—all they’d got was a Sten and a bloody revolver, and Mr. Audley was now carrying both of those— “Are you all right, Butler?” asked Audley. “Sir?” Butler looked at his right hand.

“You were mumbling and”—Audley stared at him—“and you’ve started bleeding again, man.”

Butler could see that from the bright wet blood on his hand. Looking at it made him feel dizzy.

“Sit down,” ordered Audley.

“I’m okay.”

“I know you’re okay. I’m just going to patch you up a bit, that’s all. So sit down like a good fellow.”

Butler sat down. There was a crashing in the bushes and Sergeant Winston appeared. Audley must have sent him up ahead to scout the route, he decided. Look-see and movement, in the best Chandos Force manner, that would be.

There was a glugging sound and then Audley handed him a large red silk handkerchief, soaking wet.

“Wipe your face with that, Corporal—freshen up.” Audley’s voice changed. “What’s it like up ahead?”

“Like this for about half a mile. But then there’s a track goes more or less in the right direction.” Winston paused. “And I guess you were right.”

“Right? … That’s fine, Corporal. Now hold this dressing on the side of your head.” Audley took the silk handkerchief in exchange. “How was I right?”

Butler applied the field dressing cautiously to the side of his head. He could well understand why Audley was so concerned about his well-being, since he constituted one third of the available manpower. But the subaltern needn’t have worried, he thought grimly: if there was one thing worse than the madness of going on it was the prospect of being abandoned as unfit.

“How bad is he?” asked the American.

“I’m perfectly all right,” said Butler.

“Huh?” Winston addressed the sound to Audley.

“The corporal?” Audley bent over him. “Oh, he’s okay … I’m going to tie the dressing down with this handkerchief, Corporal. When I tighten it—that’s when it’ll hurt… . Yes, he’s okay. That second grenade went off right in his face and all he’s got is a couple of scratches and mild shock—“

What second grenade? There had been a second grenade which had gone off somewhere behind them, on the other side of the wooden gates, but—
ouch
!

What second grenade?

“—so he was obviously born to be hanged, like Corporal Jones… . But how was I right, Sergeant?” Audley surveyed his handiwork. “Well, it doesn’t improve your appearance much, I must say. As the Iron Duke said, I don’t know what effect you’ll have on the enemy, but by God you frighten me… . But I think it’ll hold for the time being. How was I right, did you say, Sergeant?”

Winston lifted his hand, one finger raised to silence them. In the far distance there was an angry, buzzing drone—no, it was not so much far off as high up. He had been listening to it for a minute or two—it had been growing inside his mind while they had been talking, Butler realised. And he had heard it before.

“Yes …” Audley looked at Butler. ‘Well, at least we won’t have to be worrying about the Germans following us, not for the time being anyway … all right, Corporal?”

They pushed on at a steady dogtrot, careless of the noise they made.

Butler was aware, with a curious sense of detachment, that he felt very much better. He couldn’t quite work out what had happened back in the village: there seemed to be a gap in his memory now, although there hadn’t been any loss of consciousness at the time. But after that there had been some bad moments—he could see now that they had been bad moments by comparing the clarity of his present thoughts with the haziness of his recollection of their escape from the village into the woods.

He was also aware that the drone of limejuice was building up into a roar. The first time he had heard it the sound had been overlaid by the acceleration of the jeep’s engine at the road crossing near the big house with the fairy-tale towers; now the trees surrounding them and the makeshift bandage which covered his damaged ear did nothing to mute it, but only seemed to spread it until it echoed all around them until it changed abruptly to a high-pitched shriek directly over their heads.

Suddenly they weren’t dogtrotting any more, they were running as though their lives depended on their legs again.

With his new-found detachment, Butler realised as he ran that they were running away from nothing. The Typhoons were attacking the village, drawn irresistibly by that column of smoke like wasps to a jam pot. What they were experiencing—and he could feel the same fear pounding in his own chest—was what the old sweats in the battalion, the survivors of Dunkirk, had warned him against: the panic which made men believe that every dive-bomber was lining itself up on them alone.

Not even the distant sound of explosions far behind them slowed down their speed. Rather, the explosions seemed to urge them on— Butler could feel another logic taking over, whispering to him that he couldn’t be too far away from what was happening behind him. The farther away, the better,
the farther away the better, the farther away the better
.

Not until they finally burst out of the last of the thick undergrowth into a plantation of tall pine trees did they start to slow down. “Which way?” said Audley breathlessly, skidding at last to a halt.

“Hell, Lieutenant”—Winston panted, looking around him—“I didn’t come this way first time”—he pointed towards a great tangle of what looked like blackberry bushes on the far side of the plantation—“that way, I guess.”

Audley stared at the bushes for a moment, then sank onto one knee behind a pine tree. “What was it like? Did it look as if it’s used much?” he said.

Butler was suddenly aware that the noise behind them had stopped and the drone of the Typhoon engines was dying away. The loudest sound now was the thudding of his own heart.

“The track?” Winston frowned from behind his tree towards Audley. “It looked kind of overgrown to me, what I could see of it. You want me to take another look, Lieutenant?”

“No.” Audley was still staring at the bushes ahead, moving his head from one side to the other to scan the green wall more closely, as though there was something he had glimpsed momentarily and then lost.

“You seen something?” Winston stared intently in the same direction.

“No.” Audley’s voice had dropped to an urgent whisper. “But I can smell something, by God!”

“Smell—?” Winston cut the question off.

Butler started to draw in a deep breath through his nose and then stopped as quickly as Winston had stopped speaking.