Day (4 page)

Alfred rolled on to his side, saw Vasyl tip his head back and eat the Klim out of the can – just pouring it down too fast to taste. It made the bugger cough for a moment before he paused, spoke again, the words thick with milk. ‘I said, do you sleep, Mr Alfred? In my camp – in my real camp. I sleep.'

‘Then why come and do this? If your camp is so bloody lovely, why don't you stay in it? Want to be a film star, do you?' Alfred felt his tiredness coming, inviting a pain in the head. ‘Or didn't you get enough of the fucking war?'

‘Displaced Persons, we have no choice until they decide what to do with us, we must stay where they keep us. Work is a way to leave.' Vasyl sighed as if he was a man of distinction and excellent schooling, someone cultured who loved porcelain and perhaps symphonies and it was a very great shame that a person of so many qualities should be suffering so badly and speaking to a so much lower type who was too stupid even to notice. He made a point of emptying the rest of the Klim out on the grass, wasting it, watching Alfred for any reaction.

Alfred just made a smile and didn't shout and looked as if he might be stupid, because he was good at that – self-taught. Self-defence.

‘We have to be very patient and wait very nice with each other and not speak a great deal, or ask questions. It is very dull.' Vasyl lit yet another cigarette. ‘This making a film is a thing to do which is not concert party, or recital with poetry, or digging a field, or debate concerning democracy and the future –
in preparing tomorrow's peace, English influence will never be devoted to a policy of enslavement
. I have heard this enough times to remember. Always lectures. Always the same.'

‘Funny, I've never heard it at all.'

‘Swiss people, they say it in the war. What the Swiss understand is nothing. Very small people in their minds and thieves and trying to say what everybody should resemble.' He licked his forefinger, dipped it in the little pile of Klim on the grass, licked again. ‘And we get paid. For what work we do with this film, they pay us six marks any day.' As if anyone might believe he had need of the money. ‘Currency is useful and my intention is to improve my speaking English.'

‘You're supposed to be playing a German.'

‘German I know already.'

‘Me too, our kid. Me too.'

Beyond which they ate for a while in silence and Alfred must have drifted, dozed, because when he woke the thought of the boys was with him again, the whole pack of them, staring into his head. Dickie Molloy there in a temper, kicking at a wall and then running off limping up the lane, yelling like stinko as he went, and Bill's mints, Bill Torrington's peppermints – inexhaustible supply he had from some cousin who worked in a factory that made them – never got anything useful, like sugar, only peppermints – and Edgar Miles who quietly looted them three seats for the mess from a bombed-out cinema – made everywhere smell of burning – and Hanson who was a bastard.

‘Give us a look at your thumbs.' Hanson with his frayed cuffs, his uniform that looked as if he'd been buried wearing it. ‘Come on. Thumbs.' By this time Alfred and the skipper had gathered up Pluckrose, Torrington, Molloy and they were looking for a W/Op. Pressing on regardless, this scruffy article was following them, making straight for Alfred, ‘If you're a gunner . . .' when they didn't want him, when nobody wanted him. ‘Show us your thumbs.' A round head and flat little eyes, needling.

‘I am a gunner.' What else could Alfred say?

The skipper and the rest had stopped, had turned to wait at Alfred's back and so he had to get this right and be the man they took him for, one who stood his ground. ‘I am a gunner.'

‘You
say
you're a gunner.'

‘That's because I
am
a gunner.' This heating him in his legs, his neck and the weight of the crew behind him making him reckless, letting him prop his fists on to his hips and stand. ‘What are
you
?' And someone, he'd guess Pluckrose, making this low chuckle in his throat at that, appreciating the show.

Hanson wove his fingers together, stretched them, popped his joints. Filthy nails he had and the smell you would get if you slept with your guns. He glowered at Alfred from under dank blond hair, making a meal of things and raising up both of his thumbs. ‘Gunner's thumbs.'

And, after a moment, the others had punched out a single, solid laugh between them and Torrington and Molloy had patted Alfred's shoulders, but he hadn't shifted, because Hanson had to be the one to move, to flinch, and Alfred's heart had seemed high in his chest and eager.

‘Lord, it's like a mongoose with a snake.' Pluckrose at his back, gentle. ‘To paraphrase Wellington – I don't know if they're going to scare Goering, but they put the fucking wind up me.'

Hanson breaking off then, giving a grin. ‘Straight AG.' And waiting for the word.

‘What do you say?' The skipper at Alfred's side now. ‘Do we want him?'

He liked being given the power to pick. ‘Not sure.'

‘Do we need him, Boss?'

‘Probably.' Alfred surprised to hear himself. ‘Probably we do.' He'd not looked at Hanson after that, had avoided the sight of him for the rest of the day.

Edgar Miles had wandered along to them soon after, yawned a bit, stood at his usual shambolic angle – looked so slack that you could pour him, carry him off in a bucket – and he said he would like to be part of a crew that laughed, which had set them off laughing again, nearly howling, this time Alfred and Hanson joining in, because this made the seven of them fit and seemed like the start of how they'd be and meant they were complete, crewed up.

Not that they weren't a lifetime away from knowing anything: they'd only had a round or two of training from madmen being rested between tours. Still, no need to worry, a lifetime wasn't all that long.

And they had so many ways to pass the time.

‘Why don't you do her, so? Why don't you do the deed?' Molloy, a little drunk one evening, maybe two weeks since they'd met, and punching Alfred's arm, ‘If you have a lady friend.'

There are things that you never imagine.

‘You do have a lady friend.' Molloy flushing a touch with the lateness of the hour and drink taken, but still mainly pale.

‘I didn't say I did.'

There are things you should never remember.

‘Ah, but you have to. No choice. Special circumstances with a war on and such.' Face and hands white as paper and the eyebrows, eyes, mouth – the features all dark, as if they were drawn on, added in black ink.

‘I didn't say I had a lady friend.'

‘Ah, you do, though. I heard. Straight gen. You've one and another one for Sundays, surely.'

Pluckrose nudging in, ‘You mentioned there was a war on? You know that would explain all the fucking noise.' This in the low, square saloon of the Duke's Head, their earliest local. The Duck's Head – what else would they call it?

‘You've a foul mouth on you.' Malloy smiling and making his eyes round: a touch cracked-looking.

‘Thank you kindly, I do my best.' Nodding in a way that made you think of other Pluckroses, ‘And tell me, Dickie . . .' of admirals and judges and tall-headed men on horseback and hunting things, their long Pluckrose shins hanging down and their great, thin Pluckrose feet dragging on to the ground. ‘Tell me, dear Mr Molloy – with whom exactly are we at war?'

‘The Eskimos, you heathen bastard.'

‘Really and why's that?'

‘Because we've stolen their fucking penguins and now haven't they gone and decided they want them back.'

There are things that you never remember, because you are sensible and have studied unarmed combat. You defend yourself.

‘But never mind that, so. You, Little Boss – will you do her or not?'

You defend yourself.

Wish her well if you have to and then get on. Not another thought.

You will not hold a thought of her.

You will defend yourself.

Alfred sat up, dry and vaguely breathless. His pack was leaning against Vasyl's on the turf, but there was no sign of Vasyl himself beyond a white mound of milk, ants working at it.

Oh, well.

He took a moment to imagine cleaning off his mind, washing it down with petrol, removing the stains. Sometimes this worked after dreams. The thing was to concentrate on something else and let them fade.

I suppose I could manage the journey back alone – the camp's about due west. I'd recognise the route, more or less. So flat around here, I'd be able to see it from a good way off. But if I went wrong, there are places out here you wouldn't want to come across. Things left behind.

No hurry, in any case. He enjoyed a long swig from the bottle of tea then stood, brushed at his trousers, thought how green the air was: a day's sun raising the scent of live earth, animal heat.

I don't get out in the country enough. I don't exercise any more. Still, I can change that. If I'd like.

He'd no time to consider how, because a clatter in the low trees and the slash of a stick being swiped into leaves announced that Vasyl was heading back. He liked to proceed by breaking whatever he could.

‘Good evening, good evening. You are awake. This is splendid. We have just the time to walk and be there.'

‘You've seen it?'

‘Yes, yes. I don't bring you all this way for no reward.' He bent to his pack, couldn't help hefting it slightly, checking it, to see if Alfred had taken anything, disturbed it. ‘Your belongings, you carry them. We may not pass this way again.'

Alfred checking his own pack on principle, slow. ‘We never pass this way again. That's the law.' Happy he'd puzzled Vasyl with that, ‘All right, then. Lead on, Macduff.'

‘This is from William Shakespeare, correct?'

‘This is from William Shakespeare, correct.'

But I still have the advantage, because I found Shakespeare myself. Nobody just gave him to me in a school: I earned him.

There was sort of rabbit track and Vasyl set off along this, through young trees and over uneven ground.

Alfred followed. ‘How do you know this is the way?'

‘A British captain told me. They said the way and the place. He was there. He was with Montgomery also – saw him take the signatures for that first little surrender. He tells me one of the German officers has a briefcase with him: a very full briefcase, as if he would need it. As if they would let him keep it. That was a blooming good day, yes?' Vasyl monitoring Alfred's face as he said this, getting too loud.

Alfred ignored him and they started off, pushed to a broad rise of tawny grass, junipers rearing up from it in dark plumes, banks of heather showing the first bluish haze of flower. Vasyl's stamping about drove up a rush of small birds and Alfred hoped they were larks because he liked the thought of larks.

Once they'd walked to their little horizon another had stretched beyond a break of trees and laid itself down in a shimmer of sun. There were sheep standing in the distance, or else pale rocks, and a cluster of buildings that could have been barracks at sometime: perhaps still were, but for an unintended army. There was a thin road, a shine that could have been from the windscreen of a truck.

Alfred inhaled, the breeze sweet, tranquil, healthy.

‘OK.' Vasyl planted himself and folded his arms, staring firmly at a patch of grass. It seemed entirely like any other.

‘What's OK?'

Vasyl frowned. ‘We are there.'

‘I don't see anything.'

‘What would there be to see? This is their whole aim, they don't make a memorial. He kills himself – in Uelzener Strasse, over in Lüneburg, you can go and discover – and they bury him where nobody will know except who did it. No bastards coming to put flowers.' Vasyl turned his back slightly unsteadily, fumbled and began, Alfred realised, to piss. ‘You tell anyone I come here and I put what I like, which is best.'

And what
should
you do if you're standing where they buried Himmler? Dance, maybe, if that didn't seem too frivolous, or wish him in hell if that didn't seem too late, or – why not? – piss on him. There wasn't a drill set down for the occasion. Plus, Alfred hadn't planned this far, not having believed they would find the place and not exactly sure they really had. The ground here looked just the same as all the rest, the air still tasting very fine.

Vasyl was dogged: emptying himself, you would have thought – an impressive volume. ‘You say to anyone who asks.'

Say what, mate? That you can hold about a bloody quart? That you're like Mr Woo in the air-raid warden song – could put out a fire?

Alfred rubs the skin above his eyes, concentrates. ‘How can you tell this is it?'

Because Alfred sounded annoyed and Vasyl maybe didn't expect this and so he snaps, ‘I can tell.'

‘But didn't they . . .' Perhaps pushing his luck here, ‘I'd heard they . . .'

Vasyl finished at last and faced him, fly rebuttoned, suddenly belligerent.

Alfred continued all the same. ‘I heard they came back and dug him up, cremated him.' The little, harmless knife still sleeping in Vasyl's pocket, he was sure. ‘Is that wrong? I did think that they'd dug him up.'

Vasyl stamped his foot, the dried earth under it sounding hollow. ‘I heard this. I know it. I don't care.' The crickets had stopped. Everything had stopped. ‘He was here for months before that. You know a body buried for months?' He flickered a slow glare at Alfred. ‘I know bodies buried for months. They don't get him all out. Some of him is left here. Enough for me.' He spat.

‘Well.' Alfred pulled his side cap out of his pack, set it in the proper place: badge in centre of forehead, edge angled to one inch above right eyebrow. ‘I suppose I should make my contribution on behalf –'