VII
All military establishments were somehow alike, decided Benedikt critically, but one had to allow for national peculiarities.
The alikeness here—the true alikeness, apart from the unnaturally tidy ugliness—was its aura of impermanence. It wasn’t that the buildings weren’t substantial. . . the brick-built barracks and married quarters which he had glimpsed were if anything more solid than some of the ancient Dorset villages through which they had passed . . . But those little thatched cottages and small corner shops were part of the landscape, where God and man both dummy1
intended them to be, while this place had merely been drawn on a map by some far-off bureaucrat to serve a finite need, and when that need evaporated it would decay quickly.
Yet at this moment, as Audley slowed the car to turn across the traffic, the British peculiarities were more obvious: not only was this camp bisected by a public road, without any visible sign of security, but there were children climbing on that tank—and wasn’t that an ice-cream van—
The last of the oncoming vehicles passed by, and his view was no longer partially obstructed.
It was an ice-cream van. And there were several tanks, and they were all festooned with children, the nearest of whom machine-gunned them noisily with his pointing fingers as they came within his range.
And there were more tanks—and a pale grey howitzer of ancient aspect—it was all antediluvian equipment in a graveyard of armoured elephants: he craned his neck to the left as the car halted, towards a harassed mother shepherding her ice-cream-licking offspring from the van to the nearest monster; and then to the right, where on the roadside forecourt in front of a hangar-sized shed, he caught sight of the distinctive rhomboid of the sire of all these beasts, squatting on an angled concrete plinth facing the road, which until now he had seen only in old photographs, but which had once crawled out of the smoke and mud against Grandpapa.
“These are the ones they don’t care about,” said Benje disdainfully from behind him. “The proper ones are inside.”
dummy1
“These are just for kids to climb on,” supplemented Darren. “You can’t climb on the ones inside.”
Benedikt looked questioningly from one to theother. “Inside?”
“Inside the museum.” Benje raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you know where we were going?”
“The museum?” The progression of questions was beginning to make him feel a trifle foolish, but Audley was too busy finding a space in an already well-filled car park to rescue him.
“The tank museum,” said Darren.
“Museum machinationum,” said Benje, seizing this unlikely opportunity to demonstrate his Latin vocabulary further. “Or it could be plain machinarum— lacuum doesn’t sound right . . . But David says why not testudinum, from the way the Romans used to lock their shields together into a testudo—what do you think?”
“Yes.” What he thought was that Benje’s obsession with all things Roman, unleashed on the mistaken assumption that Herr Wiesehöfer was a fellow enthusiast, was as exhausting as it was surprising. But Papa would never forgive him for discouraging a young classicist, so he must consider the problem seriously.
“Testudo—a tortoise ... I suspect, if there had been armoured vehicles in the Roman Army they would have had a proper name, as we have in my country—whatever the Latin for Panzerkampfwagen may be ... or perhaps Schuetzenpanzerwagen might be closer to what they might have had. But for a nickname I think testudo does very well—unless the Roman who invented that objected to such an infringement of his copyright.” He frowned at dummy1
Benje. “Was there a Roman copyright law?”
Benje returned the frown. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of that.
They had a lot of laws . . . What do you think, David?”
Audley had finally found a space and was nosing into it. “I think testudo—there is actually an appalling monster in there called ‘The Tortoise’ ... 78 tons and quite useless—we started building it in ‘42
and finally got it to move in ’46, to no possible purpose that I can imagine, unless they wanted to play snooker inside it under fire.”
He applied the handbrake fiercely. “But I think also that I do owe you an apology for failing to tell you where we were going, Herr Wiesehöfer. Actually, I thought I had—but it’s young Benjamin’s fault for monopolising you with his theories on Boadicea—”
“Boudicca,” the boy corrected Audley sharply. “Everyone gets it wrong, Mr Burton says. ‘Boadicea’ is a spelling error—
‘Boudicca’ means ‘Victoria’, and she was Queen Victoria I, not to be confused with Victoria II, 1837 to 1901.”
Darren shook his head at Benedikt. “He just talks all the time, that’s his trouble.”
“It’s not me. It’s what Mr Burton says,” snapped Benje.
“What Mr Burton says is that you’ve got verbal diarrhoea—” As he spoke, Darren squared up to resist physical assault.
“Out of the car!” Audley shot an arm between them. “I’ve got a surprise for you both.” He winked at Benedikt.
Benedikt climbed out of the car, and then stared at Audley across its roof. “And for me—a surprise also?”
“For you the museum is the surprise. It’s strictly old hat for these dummy1
two time-expired legionaries.” Audley led the way towards the entrance to the hangar. “They have to have something new every time— semper aliquid novi ex Bovingtonio, as Mr Burton would say.”
“What’s new?” Darren, skipping backwards in order to face them, overtook them.
“They do collect new things all the time—” Benje started out in a blasé tone for Benedikt’s benefit, but suddenly an idea lit up his face and he switched to Audley “—have they got one of those Argentinian personnel carriers from the Falklands? Is that it, David? Is that it?”
“No . . . but you’re warm, young Benjamin.” Audley cocked an eye at Benedikt. “They may very well have bits of General Galtieri’s war surplus before long, they do collect such unconsidered trifles . . . They acquired their Russian SU-100 self-propelled gun from Suez in ‘56—they’re probably negotiating with the Israelis for a Syrian T6a, I shouldn’t wonder. Though where they’ll put it, God only knows.”
Benedikt measured the enormous hangar with his eye. “That is filled with tanks?”
“Bursting at the seams.” Audley nodded proprietorially. “They’ve got pretty well the whole British range, from 1915 onwards, including experimental vehicles and the ‘funnies’ from the last war
—Crabs and suchlike . . . and armoured cars . . . And a very fair foreign cross-section, too—French and American, and all your Panzer marks.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “They’re particularly good on Tigers. Got a 1942 one, and a Royal Tiger dummy1
with the Porsche turret. . . and a bloody great Hunting Tiger the size of a London bus.” He squeezed his eyes shut again, and then looked directly at Benedikt. “I met a Tiger once, on the edge of a wood in Normandy ... I don’t know which one it was, I didn’t wait to find out. All I remember is this enormous gun traversing, and I knew we couldn’t get out of the way quick enough—it was like looking Death himself in the eye and knowing that it was me he’d been expecting all morning. . . We were in a Cromwell, half his size, and we’d lost half our troop already since breakfast.” He shrugged. “Very nasty moment.”
“What happened?” inquired Benje politely. “Did you shoot him—
the Tiger?”