Yes – but you could be lucky, sir – arrivin‘ late, like . . . ’cause it wouldn’t be fair to send you out . . . always supposin‘ we ever gets dummy4
there – ’ he pushed his face up against the rain-smeared windscreen again, peering into the gathering murk ‘ – all these little roads looks the same to me, this time uv day . . . An’ most uv ‘em don’t go anywhere, anyway –’
Fred’s heart sank as he identified the familiar whine of the totally useless and incompetent driver, who was accustomed to following the tail-lights of the lorry in front, and believed that maps were for officers only.
‘No! I tell a lie!’ The little man sat bolt upright as he looked directly into the muzzle of an 88-millimetre gun, his voice joyful with recognition as the car crunched past the enormous tank on which the gun was mounted. ‘Not far now!’
Fred swivelled in his seat, to peer back at the abandoned monster through the rear window, his irrational fear dissolving slowly.
‘That’s wot we call “our signpost” – proper useful it is,’ confided the little man as the tank disappeared in the rain and the overcast behind them, like a dead dinosaur sinking into its primeval swamp.
‘Gawd knows ’ow ‘e got ’ere, up the top. Prob’ly just lost ‘is way, like I thought we ’ad. But Mr David sez ‘e was most likely just goin’ ‘ome through the forest as the crow flies, an’ this was where
‘is tank run dry. But ’e’s a yarner, is Mr David.‘
‘A ... yarner?’ Something stirred in Fred’s memory. ‘Mr David?’
“ ‘E tells yarns – makes up stories. Wot ’e sez is that everythin’s got a story behind it, to account for where it ends up. An‘ it’s the same with people – like for you an’ me, sir: we ain’t ‘ere by accident, is wot ’e means, ‘e sez . . . We’re ’ere because of wot we dummy4
are, or wot we done – ‘ The death-rattle was repeated, but happily now because the little man knew where he was at last’ – which in our case must’ve bin somethin‘ wicked, ’e sez ... So . . . ‘ave you done somethin’ wicked then, sir?‘ This time the chuckle degenerated into a smoker’s cough which racked the man, and swerved the car dangerously between ranks of dripping trees on each side of the road.
‘Not that I’m aware of, no.’ Fred searched for something in the cobwebby attic of the past which still eluded him because it was hidden under more recent rubbish. ‘Mr David?’
‘Yes. Captain –’ The yellow headlights caught the loom of something substantial through a thinning screen of trees up ahead. ‘
– there we are! Wot did I tell you. “Not far” – didn’t I say it?’
Through the driving rain and the trees the substantial something became long pale yellow-brown stone walls –crenellated walls, almost medieval, except that they were too low for the siege-warfare of those days and far too untime-worn to be anything older than nineteenth-century work.
‘Yes.’ It was a barracks, of course: now he could even see the two low towers, with their distinctively unmedieval low-pitched tile-roofs, on each side of a double gateway, as the car swung off the road and transfixed them momentarily in its headlights – up here, in the middle of nowhere, what else, of course? ‘It’s a barracks, is it?’
‘Yes – ’ The wheel spun as the car turned again, and then spun once more as the driver lined up the car on one of the gateways, between the wooden struts of a bridge crossing the barracks-ditch ‘
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– yes, you could say that – a barricks: that’s wot it is – a bleedin’
barricks, is what it is!‘
As the car began to accelerate again (and something too fast for Fred’s peace of mind, given the narrowness of the arched gateway, which he could now see even more clearly in the brief intervals after each sweep of the windscreen-wipers swept the rain from the glass) –
‘ ’Ere we go, then!‘ Like so many RASC drivers, the little man evidently belonged to what Fred’s first company commander had always called ’the school of empirical verification‘: if a vehicle got through a gap, or crossed a suspect stretch of ground, then that gap was wide enough for it, or that ground was free of mines, as the case might be. ’ ‘Old tight!’
There was a rumble under them as the big car advanced across a plank-bridge over a double-ditch, and he caught a glimpse of an equestrian statue between the double doorways: it looked more like a Roman emperor than a German Kaiser – in fact it looked exactly like a statue of Marcus Aurelius he had admired in Rome last year, during his leave in that memorable time-out-of-war before the battle of the Gothic Line – so perhaps it was a Kaiser dressed as a Caesar, maybe?
But then the statue was gone, and they were squeezing through the gateway, with more familiar sights in the glare of the headlights: canvas-hooded jeeps and 15-cwt trucks lined up, with even more familiar soldiers, caped against the downpour, attending to their unloading –TRR-2 at last!
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But . . . Christ! Because there was a man – a British soldier –
standing bold as brass and unashamed under an umbrella! Christ Almighty!
‘Right, there you are, then!’ The driver swung the car round the umbrella-carrying soldier, braking so fiercely that Fred’s chest thumped sharply against the front seat. ‘End uv the line, this is, sir.’ He peered at the car’s switches, before flicking them off one by one; and then swivelled towards Fred, grinning familiarly as though they were equals who had shared some testing experience.
‘I’ll see to your bag, sir – your servant’s Trooper Lucy, shared with Mr David, so you’ll not ’ave anythin‘ to worry about there – ’avin‘
Trooper Lucy is like ’avin‘ a good lady’s maid.’
Between Marcus Aurelius, and the umbrella-soldier, and Trooper Lucy, and the fact that he couldn’t find the door handle, Fred cursed impotently under his breath.
‘Wot you wanta do is to find the adjutant. An ’e’ll be in ‘is office, which is in the prinny-kipyer, first on your left as you go through the door right in front, an’ round under the little roof wot keeps the rain orf – which is that way –see?‘
Fred couldn’t quarrel with any of that, which was the last word in old-fashioned courtesy itself, compared with what he had so often been used to. Except, he didn’t understand any of it.
‘The . . . prinny – prinny-kip . . . year?’ That wasn’t quite right.
‘ Kipyer?’
‘That’s right.’ Nod. ‘Wot the Colonel calls it – prinny-kipyer . . .
Just on the left, through the door.’ Nod.
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He had found the door handle. ‘Well . . . thank you –what’s your name?’
‘Hughie, sir.’ The little man came quickly to his rescue. ‘Knock twice, an’ ask for Hughie, is what they say.‘ The little man stared at him in the gloom. ’You’re a Sapper, sir – Major Fattorini, sir ...
Would that be reg’lar army or ‘ostilities only?’
‘Territorial.’ He found himself answering automatically, as a distant but warning bell sounded in his memory. ‘March, 1939.’
‘Is that a fact?’ The date seemed to meet with the man’s approval.
Terriers is orl right, most of ‘em. The Colonel –’e’s a terrier.‘ He nodded. ’You’ll be orl right wiv‘ ’im then, I reckon.‘
‘Indeed? Fred tightened his grip on the door handle. ’Haven’t I met you before somewhere? Was it in – ?‘ Before he could finish, a movement at the front of the car took his attention: the soldier with the umbrella appeared to be examining the offside wing intently.