‘Go away, young lady,’ he said. ‘You’re not welcome here.’
Now I was close to him I could see the lean contours of his face and the colour of his eyes, a pale grey-blue, stark against the grime of his skin. There was a muscle twitching on his cheek and matted blood on his hairline.
‘What unit are you?’ I asked. ‘I work for an American magazine,’ I added, vaguely hoping the old magic formula would work, and I held up my camera. ‘People at home would really like to—’
‘If you try to take any photographs of these men I’ll kill you, here and now,’ he said, entirely reasonably, but not smiling.
‘All right, I’m going,’ I said, suddenly frightened of this tall thin man with his pale eyes. I turned and walked briskly out of the park not looking round, feeling his gaze on my back, and unsettled by the absolute seriousness of his calmly delivered threat.
I made my way back to the farmhouse — my absence unnoticed by anyone — and asked the PRO on duty to provide me with a movement order back to Paris. I’d suddenly had enough of war-reporting and I wanted my old life to be returned to me. Seeing those exhausted, filthy British soldiers sitting resting by the bandstand in the smashed and obliterated park had been disturbing in some profound way. Or was it the tall thin man? Their commanding officer, perhaps, who had so mildly and casually threatened to kill me. What had these men done or undergone in Wesel, I wondered? What death and destruction had they witnessed or effected in the ruined town that had left them so debilitated and quiet? What terrifying bleak tales would they have to tell their children, if they dared? I wanted to be back in Paris — back in Paris with Charbonneau.
My movement order took two days to arrive — the headlong breakout from the Rhine crossings was in full urgent flow and requests such as mine were the lowest priority. The other journalists were shipped forward to Frankfurt while I went in the other direction. A jeep deposited me at a surprisingly undamaged station in Holland in a small town called Nettwaard. I had a piece of paper authorising me to take my place on a troop train heading for Brussels. Once there I had to make my own way home to Paris.
There was a train standing in the station and it had a number painted on it that corresponded with my docket, but it was locked and so hundreds of soldiers, American and English, waited patiently with their kitbags and knapsacks for someone to come and unlock it and give us all permission to board. I wandered up to the furthest end of the platform, away from the soldiers, and found a bench, lit by watery sunshine, settled myself down and smoked a cigarette. It was a cold frosty March day with an intermittent sun piercing the hazy cloud cover. I was glad I was wearing my mackinaw overcoat and turned the collar up.
‘Hello again.’
I turned. It was the tall thin man from the park at Wesel. He looked much better — clean, shaved, his uniform pressed and unmuddied. He was even smiling.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I assume you’ve not followed me here to execute me.’
He winced, as if my remark had caused him pain.
‘No, no. Just waiting for a train, like you. May I?’
He lowered himself on to the bench beside me with undue care, as if he might break into a thousand pieces.
‘It seems I’ve fractured half a dozen ribs,’ he explained. ‘I’m all strapped up but if I cough, or laugh. .’ He looked at me. ‘Please don’t make me laugh.’
He was wearing a baggy green beret and a camouflaged smock beneath a leather jerkin. His shoulder ribbon read ‘15 Commando’. He was obviously an officer but I couldn’t see his rank because his jerkin covered his epaulettes. However, as I looked more closely I could see that his jerkin was lined with sheepskin and his smock was closed with horn toggle-buttons. It was a uniform, yes, but a uniform run through the hands of an expert tailor.
‘I want to apologise for the other day,’ he said. ‘It’s been bothering me — my rudeness, my threat — and then I couldn’t believe it when I saw you sitting up here at this end of the platform.’ He took his beret off and ran his hand through his very black hair. ‘We weren’t in the best of shape when you found us in that park.’
‘Don’t bother to apologise,’ I said. ‘I’m sure it was very tough in Wesel, whatever went on.’
He cocked his head and screwed up his eyes as if trying to remember.
‘It was very. . Yes. Severe.’ He smiled, vaguely. ‘You were just doing your job. I had no right to be so offensive. So — apologies.’ He offered his hand. ‘Sholto Farr.’
‘Amory Clay.’
We shook hands.
I was hugely, instantly attracted to this man — drawn to him in a way that alarmed me. I had noted this effect before — with Cleve, with Charbonneau, with any number of men I’d fleetingly encountered. It just arrives, this cognisance — though that word gives it too much logical weight. It’s uncalled-upon. Your body notes it first, as a pure instinct, then transmits the information to your brain where it’s acted upon with more reason, with a bit of luck. I was sitting waiting for a train at a railway station, a bit cold, a bit bored, and then this man appeared and sat beside me and everything changed.
‘You’re English,’ he said. ‘But you told me you worked for an American magazine, if I recall.’
‘It’s a long story,’ I said and then quickly ran through the basic details of my strange professional journey: London to Berlin to New York to Paris.
‘And now I run the office in Paris,’ I said. ‘Global-Photo-Watch. It’s a big magazine, lots of work, but I decided I wanted to get out from behind my desk.’ I paused. ‘So I did that and now I want to get back behind my desk again.’
He was staring at me intently as I spoke as if I were saying something of profound importance instead of chit-chat. I suddenly found myself incapable of coming up with a coherent sentence so spread my hands and lapsed into silence. He was meant to speak now, so I thought, but he said nothing, and the silence between us built until it became unignorable. Finally, he broke it.
‘Paris,’ he said. ‘Yes.’
He reached into his smock and pulled out a burnished silver hip flask and offered it to me.
‘Would you like a drink? Malt whisky. The best.’
‘Yes, please.’
I unscrewed the top and had a swig, savouring the peaty burn of the malt as it went down, my nostrils and sinuses warming with the finish.
He took a large gulp himself when I handed the flask back.
‘Medicinal,’ he said.
‘Of course.’
Then we were distracted by the arrival of another train chuffing into the platform opposite, halting with the usual tortured scream of metal on metal. A soldier appeared and saluted Sholto Farr.
‘This in fact is our train, sir,’ he said, pointing at the new arrival.
‘Are you coming with us?’ he asked me.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m on this one.’
‘Too bad.’
‘Trains that pass in the night,’ I said, smiling. And he laughed and clutched his ribs.
‘I specially asked you not to do that,’ he said, rising carefully to his feet, one hand on his injured side, the other replacing the beret on his head.
‘I hope we meet again one day.’
15 Commando, Western Desert, Tunisia, 1943. Sholto Farr on the right. Aldous King-Marley on the left; David Farquhar in the middle.
‘Yes, so do I,’ I said, sincerely, knowing full well that would never happen, that this was one of those encounters to be celebrated in song or story by someone else, in due course. What might have been. He gave a small wave of his hand, turned and walked away with his soldier to join the shuffling files of men crossing the tracks to board the troop train. I had a camera in my kitbag, I realised, why hadn’t I thought of taking a photograph of Sholto Farr?