Against the wall of the Palace, where the sentry boxes had stood, and the sentries had marched and saluted in their absurd wooden-toy manner whenever they saw an officer half a block away, there was nothing now. The sentries, Michael knew, had not been permitted to leave their posts, and they had merely stood there, in their stiff, pompous, old-fashioned version of soldiers, and had accepted the whistle of the bomb, accepted the explosion, stiffly died as the windows evaporated behind them, and the old clock in the tower above them tore loose from its hinges and hung greyly out from its springs. While he, Michael, a hundred yards away, had been sitting with the whisky in his hand, smiling. And overhead, the desperate boy had crouched in the bucking plane, blinded by the searchlights, with London spinning crazily below him in an erupting glitter of explosions, with the Thames and the Houses of Parliament and Hyde Park Corner and Marble Arch swinging murderously around his head, and the flak flicking at the wings. The boy had crouched in the plane, peering shakily down, and had pressed, finally, whatever button the German Air Force pressed to kill Englishmen, and the bomb had come down, on the automobile and the girl with the beret and the houses that had stood there for a hundred years and on the two sentries whose units had been relieved from other duty and honoured with the job of guarding the Palace. And if the boy in the plane above had touched the button a half-second sooner, or a half-second later, if the plane had not at that moment bucked to port in a sudden blast, if the searchlights hadn't blinded the pilot for a second earlier in the evening, if, if, if… then he, Michael, would be lying in his own blood now in the wreck of the Canteen of the Allies, and the sentries would be alive, the girl with the beret alive, the houses standing, the clock running…
It was the most banal idea about a war, Michael knew, that if of fatality, but it was impossible not to think of it, impossible not to think of the casual threads of accident on which we survive to face the next if that comes tomorrow.
"Come on, darling," Louise said. He could feel that she was shivering, and he was surprised, because she had always been so cool, so contained. "We're not doing any good here. Let's go home."
Silently, they turned and walked away. Behind them, the firemen had managed to reach some valve and the gushing from the broken main diminished, then stopped completely. The water in front of the Palace was calm and black.
Four days after the opening of Hamlet, Michael was called into the orderly room of the Special Services Company to which he was attached for rations and quarters and told that he was ordered to report to the Infantry Replacement Depot at Lichfield. He was given two hours to pack his bags.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE landing barge went round in a monotonous circle. The spray heaved in over the side, puddling on the slippery deck. The men crouched over their weapons, trying to keep them dry. The barges had been rolling a mile off the beach since three o'clock in the morning. It was seven-thirty now, and all conversation had long ago ceased. The preliminary barrage from the ships was almost over, and the simulated air attack. The smoke screen thrown across the cove by a low-flying Cub was even now settling on the water's edge. Everybody was wet, everybody was cold, everybody, except for the men who felt like throwing up, was hungry.
Noah was enjoying it.
Crouched in the bow of the barge, tenderly keeping dry the charges of TNT that were his special care, feeling the salt spray of the North Sea batter against his helmet, breathing the sharp, wild, morning air, Noah was enjoying himself.
It was the final exercise for his regiment in their assault training. It was a full-dress rehearsal, complete with naval and air support and live ammunition, for the coast of Europe. For three weeks they had practised in thirty-man teams, each team to a pillbox, riflemen, bazooka men, flame-throwers, detonation men. This was the last time before the real thing. And there was a three-day pass, waiting like a promise of Heaven, in the orderly room for Noah.
Burnecker was pale green from seasickness, his large farmer's hands gripping his rifle convulsively, as though there, at least, might be found something steady, something secure in a heaving world. He grinned weakly at Noah.
"Holy jumping mule," he said, "I am not a healthy man."
Noah smiled at him. He had grown to know Burnecker well in the last three weeks of working together. "It won't be long now," Noah said.
"How do you feel?" Burnecker asked.
"O.K.," said Noah.
"I'd trade you the mortgage on my father's eighty acres," Burnecker said, "for your stomach."
There was a confusion of amplified voices across the sliding water. The barge veered sharply and picked up speed as it headed for the beach. Noah crouched against the damp steel side, ready to jump when the ramp went down. Maybe, he thought, as the waves slapped with increasing force against the speeding hull, maybe there will be a cable from Hope when I get back to camp, saying it is all over. Then, later, he thought, I will sit back and tell my son, "The day you were born, I was landing on the coast of England with twenty pounds of dynamite." Noah grinned. It would have been better, of course, to have been with Hope while it was happening, but this really had its advantages. You were too occupied to worry very much. There was no anxious pacing of corridors, no smoking of too many cigarettes, no listening to the screams. It was selfish, of course, but it had its points.
The barge grated against the smooth beach and a second later the ramp went down. Noah leaped out, feeling his equipment banging heavily against his back and sides, feeling the cold water pouring in over his leggings. He raced for a small dune and flung himself down behind it. The other men lumbered out, spreading rapidly, ducking into holes and behind clumps of scrub grass. The riflemen opened up on the pillbox eighty yards away, on a small bluff overlooking the beach. The bangalore-torpedo men crept carefully up to the barbed wire and set their fuses, then ran back. The bangalores exploded, adding the sharp smell of their explosion to the soft, thick smell of the smoke that the plane had laid down.
Noah picked himself up, with Burnecker protecting him, and ran forward to a hole that lay near the wire. Burnecker fell in on top of him.
Burnecker was panting heavily. "Goodness," Burnecker said, "isn't dry land wonderful?"
They laughed at each other, then slowly poked their heads out of the hole. The men were working precisely, like a football team running through signals, advancing, as they had been taught, on the pale grey sides of the pillbox.
The bazooka went off again and again, in its rushing, noisy explosion, and large chunks of concrete flew up in the air from the pillbox.
"At times like this," Burnecker said, "I ask myself only one question. 'What are the Germans supposed to be doing while we go through all this?'"
Noah leaped out of the hole and dashed, crouching, holding his charges, through the opening in the wire. The bazooka spoke again and Noah threw himself to the sand, in case any of the concrete flew out towards him. Burnecker was lying beside him, panting heavily.
"And I used to think ploughing was hard," Burnecker said.
"Come on, Farmboy," said Noah, "we're on our way." He stood up. Burnecker got off the ground, groaning.
They ran to the right and threw themselves behind a six-foot-high dune. The grass on top of the dune was snapping in the wet wind.
They watched the man with the flame-thrower carefully crawl towards the pillbox. The fire from the riflemen supporting them still whistled over their heads and ricocheted off the concrete.
If Hope could only see me now, thought Noah.
The man with the flame-thrower was in position now, and the other man with him turned the cock on the cylinders on his back. It was Donnelly who carried the enormous heavy cylinders. He had been picked because he was the strongest man in the platoon. Donnelly started the flame-thrower. The fire spurted out, whipping unevenly in the strong wind, smelling oily and heavy. Donnelly sprayed the slits of the pillbox in savage, arching bursts.