‘You should have phoned me, Mr Stein.’
‘No good phoning you,’ growled Stein, still continuing to eat the potatoes. ‘They only allow you one completed phone call and I was chasing my goddamned lawyer from bar to restaurant to night club.’
He finished the potatoes, took the slice of buttered toast and got to his feet. The smell of the jail was still on him. ‘I’ve got to take a tub,’ said Stein. ‘Change out of these stinking clothes.’
‘It must have been terrible for you, Mr Stein.’
‘Goddamned Fascists,’ said Stein. ‘I told them that too, I said, I fought a war to get rid of Fascists like you. I told them.’
‘What did they say?’
‘They laughed,’ said Stein. He shrugged. He was getting used to people laughing about the war. Billy Stein had been laughing about it for years. Why get mad because other men’s kids laughed too?
Stein got to his feet, pulled off his tie and loosened his shirt collar. Restlessly, he went to the fireplace and moved some of the china ornaments as if looking for something.
‘Are you all right, Mr Stein?’ the housekeeper asked. She had never seen him like this before.
‘They laughed,’ said Stein again. His talk with Jerry Delaney had reawakened his memories; his night in the county jail had given him too much time to brood. There was the other half of the story. He remembered telling it again and again to the untidy little captain from the judge advocate’s staff who had shouted with rage and called Stein a liar.
Delaney had told the same story of course. Delaney was his buddy, a tall gangling youth with a long neck and the awkward physique of a boy who had not yet grown to manhood. Major Carson was the only old-timer with the column that day. Carson had fought in France in the First World War. He was a plump, grey-haired man, his nose and cheeks red from the cold, early-morning parade grounds and evenings of cheap booze which had made up his years in the peacetime army. ‘No need for binoculars,’ he had told Lieutenant Pitman when they saw the smoke. ‘The Germans are over the next hill, kicking shit out of the supply column.’ He parked his chewing gum on the armour plate and looked down at his map case as the next salvo sounded. Stein was watching him closely; he did not flinch. The inquiry had tried to brand Carson as a coward, but a coward would have remained with the column, not tried to take a jeep across the open country to tell the battalion what was happening. ‘I’ll need a driver,’ said Major Carson.
‘Take young Stein,’ said Lieutenant Pitman. ‘The kid’s too young for combat.’
‘They all are,’ said Carson without looking up from the map. ‘And if the Germans are this far… ’ he stabbed at the shiny transparent map cover, ‘the whole damn shooting match is surrounded-CCA, regimental combat team, the whole works… shit! The top brass are as dumb as assholes, Pitman.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Pitman, who had consistently tried to reduce such disrespect for authority amongst his men.
Carson looked at him and smiled. Pitman was ten years older than most of these kids and trained at the Point, but his experience of real soldiering was pitifully inadequate. His uniform was brand new, his tie folded neatly into his shirt, his waterproof jacket without a stain. Pitman was smaller than the rest of them, and the heavy automatic pistol and full canteen of water sagged on his belt. His fieldglasses were like a millstone round his neck. As his eyes swept quickly round the horizon-seeing only the black stony hills that had put them out of radio contact with headquarters-his steel helmet clanged against the armour plate of the M-3.
Major Carson put an arm round his shoulder in a gesture that was at once paternal and confiding. ‘You get these kids down into the gully, Lieutenant, and pull back parallel to the Sbeitla road.’ There was more smoke followed by the drumbeats of the guns. ‘Could be the Germans will try to push through here all the way to Kasserine.’
‘Kasserine?’ said Pitman. It was unthinkable.
Carson was fingering the map again. His nails were worn short, his hands stained with oil and nicotine, and his fingers marked with tiny scars. They were the hands of a man who liked to take engines apart. ‘Don’t get any ideas about winning the Medal of Honour. They’ll elbow this little caravan without pausing. Go back along the gully, and get the hell out of here.’
‘We’re tank destroyers,’ said Pitman. ‘You want us to run?’
‘Get my jeep, kid,’ Carson shouted to Aram Stein. To Pitman he said, ‘Get these museum pieces out of here, Lieutenant. And that’s a goddamn order. Understand?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Pitman giving the major an exemplary salute. Carson climbed into the jeep without even looking back.
Lieutenant Pitman took off his helmet and ran a hand round the sweaty leather of its liner before putting it back on his head and tugging the chinstrap tight. He was on his own now; commanding the whole column in the face of the enemy, just as he had so often dreamed of doing. ‘There’s a soldier coming up the track,’ he said but his words were drowned by another explosion, this time from down the hill. Only Stein realized what had happened, perhaps because he had spent so much time dreading it. ‘ Aram,’ he shouted. He jumped out of the M-3 with uncharacteristic agility, and ran down the hill like a madman. ‘Don’t move, Aram. I’m coming. Stay just where you are. I’m coming, Aram. Aram!’
But Aram Stein would never move again, neither would Major Carson. The jeep had hit a Teller mine half a mile down the track, its wreckage was bent and the tyres aflame. The bodies were cruelly dismembered. ‘ Aram!’
‘Can I get you anything else?’ asked the housekeeper.
‘I’m going to have to talk to Billy,’ Stein told her. He had pampered the boy too much; he must start involving him in the real problems. Stein was tired. From now on Billy would have to help, really help.
‘Yes, Mr Stein,’ said the housekeeper, puzzled that Stein should thus confide in her. ‘Don’t forget that your telephone is still switched over to the answering machine.’
26
It was almost eight years since young Billy Stein had been in London. That visit had been with his mother and father-a special vacation to celebrate his parents’ wedding anniversary. They had taken him to all the usual tourist treats: the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, a visit to a musical show, a trip on the Thames, lunch at Simpson’s in the Strand, not forgetting to tip the man who carved the roast meat. It had been pleasant enough as an interlude, but London had not attracted any of the Stein family enough to make them want to return. The chilly climate, with frequent rain showers which always seemed to catch them unprepared, made them miserable, and the hotel had been neither heated nor air-conditioned. They had all sneezed, he remembered.
Little had changed since those days. The parking problem was horrendous, the taxi service inadequate, the telephones arcane and the food not to his taste. Billy Stein had spent most of his life in Southern California and now he was rarely happy anywhere else.
These factors all militated against the young Stein in his mission to London to discover, at Stein senior’s request, what Mr Paul Bock had to tell them. Even in this luxury hotel near Park Lane, Billy Stein did not find things easy. The room-service waiter was Portuguese and could not comprehend Billy’s breakfast order. The British morning newspaper was even more bewildering-devoted almost exclusively to the parochial activities of British trade union leaders, plus passionate analysis of recent British exports and some incomprehensible accounts of cricket. The headline said ‘Hanging: No by 119. MPs’ verdict in the great debate.’ He laid the newspaper aside and turned his attention to breakfast. Tinned orange juice, a smear of scrambled eggs and some shrivelled fragments of bacon. He poured the coffee and sighed deeply. Why had he let his father bully him into coming to London? He could have been eating his usual sliced fresh pineapple with real cream and good coffee, in the shade of the palm trees, looking at the map, deciding where to fly for an afternoon of swimming or surfing or skiing. He switched on the TV but got only a snow storm of static and a loud hiss. He shut his eyes and swallowed the hotel coffee.