“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. They passed a hotel that had taken a hit. Turner wondered if it was a hotel room he had been thinking of. Nettle was seized by the idea of dragging out some bedding. They went in through a hole in the wall, and picked their way through the gloom, across rubble and fallen timbers, and found a staircase. But scores of men had the same idea. There was actually a queue forming up at the bottom of the stairs, and soldiers struggling down with heavy horsehair mattresses. On the landing above—Turner and Nettle could just see boots and lower legs moving stiffly from side to side—a fight was developing, with wrestling grunts and a smack of knuckles on flesh. Following a sudden shout, several men fell backward down the stairs onto those waiting below. There was laughter as well as cursing, and people were getting to their feet and feeling their limbs. One man did not get up, but lay awkwardly across the stairs, his legs higher than his head, and screaming hoarsely, almost inaudibly, as though in a panicky dream. Someone held a lighter to his face and they saw his bared teeth and flecks of white in the corners of his mouth. He had broken his back, someone said, but there was nothing anyone could do, and now men were stepping over him with their blankets and bolsters, and others were jostling to go up. They came away from the hotel and turned inland again, back toward the old lady and her pig. The electricity supply from Dunkirk must have been cut, but round the edges of some heavily curtained windows they saw the ocher glow of candlelight and oil lamps. On the other side of the road soldiers were knocking at doors, but no one would open up now. This was the moment Turner chose to describe to Nettle the kind of place that he had in mind for dinner. He embellished to make his point, adding French windows open onto a wrought-iron balcony through which an ancient wisteria threaded, and a gramophone on a round table covered by a green chenille cloth, and a Persian rug spread across a chaise longue. The more he described, the more certain he was that the room was close by. His words were bringing it into being. Nettle, his front teeth resting on his lower lip in a look of kindly rodent bafflement, let him finish and said, “I knew it. I fucking knew it.”
They were standing outside a bombed house whose cellar was half open to the sky and had the appearance of a gigantic cave. Grabbing him by his jacket, Nettle pulled him down a scree of broken bricks. Cautiously, he guided him across the cellar floor into the blackness. Turner knew this was not the place, but he could not resist Nettle’s unusual determination. Ahead, there appeared a point of light, then another, and a third. The cigarettes of men already sheltering there. A voice said, “Geh. Bugger off. We’re full.”
Nettle struck a match and held it up. All around the walls there were men, propped in a sitting position, most of them asleep. A few were lying in the center of the floor, but there was still room, and when the match went out he pressed down on Turner’s shoulders to make him sit. As he was pushing debris away from under his buttocks, Turner felt his soaked shirt. It may have been blood, or some other fluid, but for the moment there was no pain. Nettle arranged the greatcoat around Turner’s shoulders. Now the weight was off his feet, an ecstasy of relief spread upward through his knees and he knew he would not move again that night, however disappointed Nettle might be. The rocking motion of daylong walking transferred itself to the floor. Turner felt it tilt and buck beneath him as he sat in total darkness. The problem now was to eat without being set upon. To survive was to be selfish. But he did nothing for the moment and his mind emptied. After a while Nettle nudged him awake and slipped the bottle of wine into his hands. He got his mouth around the opening, tipped the bottle and drank. Someone heard him swallowing.
“What’s that you got?”
“Sheep’s milk,” Nettle said. “Still warm. Have some.”
There was a hawking sound, and something tepid and jellylike landed on the back of Turner’s hand. “You’re filthy, you are.”
Another voice, more threatening, said, “Shut up. I’m trying to sleep.”
Moving soundlessly, Nettle groped in his haversack for the saucisson, cut it into three and passed a piece to Turner with a chunk of bread. He stretched out full length on the concrete floor, pulled his greatcoat over his head to contain the smell of the meat as well as the sound of his chewing, and in the fug of his own breathing, and with pieces of brick and grit pressing into his cheek, began to eat the best meal of his life. There was a smell of scented soap on his face. He bit into the bread that tasted of army canvas, and tore and sucked at the sausage. As the food reached his stomach a bloom of warmth opened across his chest and throat. He had been walking these roads, he thought, all his life. When he closed his eyes he saw moving asphalt and his boots swinging in and out of view. Even as he chewed, he felt himself plunging into sleep for seconds on end. He entered another stretch of time, and now, lying snugly on his tongue, was a sugared almond, whose sweetness belonged to another world. He heard men complaining of the cold in the cellar and he was glad of the coat tucked around him, and felt a fatherly pride that he had stopped the corporals throwing theirs away. A group of soldiers came in looking for shelter and striking matches, just as he and Nettle had. He felt unfriendly toward them and irritated by their West Country accents. Like everyone else in the cellar, he wanted them to go away. But they found a place somewhere beyond his feet. He caught a whiff of brandy and resented them more. They were noisy organizing their sleeping places, and when a voice from along the wall called out, “Fucking yokels,” one of the newcomers lurched in that direction and for a moment it seemed there would be a rumble. But the darkness and the weary protests of the residents held the peace.