A Future Arrived (45 page)

“Haltez-vous! Haltez!”

He stopped, smiling to himself. The dreadful French pronunciation could mean only one thing … “It's all right! I'm English!”

A shielded torch flicked a thin shaft of light across him.

“Keep your 'ands up, mate.”

There were two of them, short, stocky men in British battle dress, their hobnailed boots ringing on the worn stones as they came toward him. One of them held a rifle.

“Now then,” the man with the torch said, flicking it on Albert's face. “What's a civvy doin' out 'ere?”

“The name's Thaxton … A. E. Thaxton … correspondent for the London
Daily Post
. My credentials are in my jacket pocket.”

“Oh, they are, are they? Got a bloody grenade in there, too? What you think, Pincher?”

“I dunno, Bert. Chap I know says he saw ten Belgium nuns last week all wearin' German bloody army boots.”

“That's just a story,” Albert said.

“How would you bloody well know, mate?”

“Look, we're wasting time. Check my passes.”

The papers were checked and the soldiers were satisfied. “Sorry, mate. You can get a bit windy out here on your lonesome. Where are you goin'?”

“Arras.”

“Hop in with us, then. We were just pullin' out when we 'eard you down at the pump.”

They were troopers of the Royal Lancers on a patrol in their Bren gun carrier. Albert got into the back of the squat little armored vehicle and they roared off, the caterpillar tracks chewing into the hard-packed gravel road.

Most of what was left of the British armor was in Arras, parked under dusty trees or scattered about draped with camouflage netting. The Luftwaffe had come over that day and dive bombed the town heavily. Some houses still burned at three in the morning and the streets were filled with the debris of shattered brick and plaster.

Major General Wood-Lacy's HQ was in a garage off the main boulevard, a noisy place crowded with overtired tank officers clustered in front of a wall map—a Michelin road map of northern France that was pathetically inadequate for military use. Soldiers cursed the squawking, static-ridden radio sets and the nearly useless telephones. It was an atmosphere of chaos but no sign of despair. Fenton, looking drawn and haggard, sat drinking a warm bottle of orange soda behind an oil-stained desk cluttered with Renault parts.

“I'm bloody glad to see you, Albert.”

“Rather good to see you, too.”

“Where have you come from?”

“The Ardennes and Sedan … carried along in the retreat.”

“
Rout
would be a better word,” Fenton said in weary resignation. He took a swig of soda pop and handed the bottle to Albert, who took it gratefully. “With the help of some French tanks we stopped a panzer column cold today … about three miles out of town. Only an advance group so we probably won't have the same sort of luck in a day or two.”

“Is the BEF digging in here?”

“Christ no. We're just odds and sods. A holding action. Gort's pulling the army back to the coast—if there's still a coast left to fall back to. Jerry is between us and Paris and reached the sea today at St. Valéry and Noyelles. Nothing to stop them from rolling up to Boulogne and Calais. Bloody
nothing
.”

“And you're to hold on here?”

Fenton lit a cigarette and then immediately stabbed it out. “A counterattack is in the works … hit the panzers' right flank if possible … slow the bastards up a bit. Though how much we can slow them with sixteen medium tanks, some bloody useless lights, and a few odds and ends of infantry is not worth thinking about. ‘Hawkforce' is the code name in case you want to write an obituary.”

Morning came, hazy with smoke. A Bofors gun in a little park across from the garage began to fire, followed by the nervous chatter of machine guns, the sound of the firing drowned by the howl of Stukas and the heavy detonations of their bombs. Albert, who had managed to find a spot to sleep in the bottom of the lubrication pit, was advised to stay there by a knowing sergeant. “You won't find a better dugout, lad,” the man said. “As good a bomb shelter as they come.”

Albert ignored the advice and started for the narrow concrete steps leading from the pit. “I want to move out with Hawkforce.”

“Too late for that, son. They left before dawn.”

He spent the day being bombed, going hungry—except for some hardtack and weak tea—and attempting to get the story of the French army's debacle in the Ardennes down on paper. The sergeant, who had fought near this spot during the last war, knew the value of a hole in the ground. A bomb, landing in the park, had sent splinters into the garage killing two radiomen. The radios were now down in the grease pit along with half a dozen signalers, and Albert barely had room to balance his typewriter on his knees.

The long day finally ended, and so did the Stuka attacks. At dusk, what was left of Hawkforce began to trickle back into what was left of the once thriving town.

“We scuppered a few,” Fenton said, climbing painfully out of the Bren gun carrier he used as a command car. “But it was a bloody balls-up just the same.”

“Are you all right?” Albert asked in concern.

The general removed his steel helmet and wiped his smoke-stained face with a handkerchief. “Just stiff as a bloody post and fucking dead on my feet. We knocked out a dozen of their tanks and gave their infantry holy fits, but we had to cut and run.”

“Attack again tomorrow?”

“No. We're to pull everything out during the night and get across the La Bassée canal.”

“And then what?”

“Head for the coast … form a defense perimeter around Dunkirk.”

“Dunkirk?”

“Yes. I was there once. Dreary little town. Not much of a port either, so I don't know what the hell the army will do there. Play in the sand I imagine until Jerry rounds us up.”

T
HE SQUADRON THAT
had been sent to France returned to Kentish Hill on the 25th of May—four pilots and a dozen ground crew on one of the last ships out of burning Calais. Every one of their Hurricanes had been destroyed, three of them by a German tank which had come bursting across their makeshift landing field all guns blazing. The survivors of the ill-fated squadron reported to Jolly Rodgers and were hastily packed off on leave.

“They were all in rum shape,” Jolly said, convening a meeting of 624 Squadron in the mess that afternoon. “The first thing one of them said to me—and I shall not tell you this man's name—was that we might just as well pack it in. He told me that the BEF is bloody doomed now that Boulogne has fallen and Calais about to fall any minute. I will not tolerate that sort of talk as long as I am station commander. A squadron of Spits will arrive in the morning from North Weald and you will fly in concert with them. That's all I have to say, chaps. Powelly can take it from here.”

Squadron Leader Powell then explained the current military situation in Artois and Flanders, enumerating the terrible facts as though summing up a case in front of a jury. “All plans for evacuating the army have been thrown out of kilter now with the loss of two major ports. They're backed up against Dunkirk and Jerry has been bombing the port facilities there. The hope is that a few thousand men can be drawn off at night by destroyers, but even that may not be possible unless the Luftwaffe can be slowed down a bit. We have not one plane left in France that can do the job. It's going to be up to us, and squadrons like us, here in England. The men coming in tomorrow from North Weald are all regulars and may not think too highly of the Auxiliary. I expect every man to show them that we're second to none. All right, eat, drink, and be merry … for tomorrow we
fly
. If I can be excused my little pun.”

Pilot Officer Barratt looked puzzled as he walked from the mess with Derek. “What little pun was that, Ramsay?”

“Damned if I know,” he said, not caring to explain.

“Going to the Red Bull?”

“No … not tonight. Meeting someone in Watford.”

Or at least he hoped he would be. He hadn't seen Valerie since their Sunday together at Burgate, although he had managed to get through to her on the telephone one evening. It had been impossible to make plans. The squadron had been on continuous stand-by since the debacle in France, never knowing from one day to the next if they would be sent across to back up the decimated regulars. Had not seen her, but had never stopped thinking about her, living over in his mind the all too brief time in that little room. The horsehair couch … the exquisite feel of her body in his arms. “You seem to be smiling to yourself a good deal lately,” had been the squadron leader's comment one night at dinner. He was smiling now, hunched over the handlebars as he raced the motorbike toward her at seventy miles an hour.

The Jolly Huntsman was the RAF pub in Watford, filled with staff and “back-room boys” from the vast and secret Fighter Command headquarters and communications complex at Bushey Heath and Bentley Priory. It was crowded in the early evening. The saloon bar was exclusively for the upper ranks, mostly middle-aged wing commanders and group captains. The more lowly officers and NCOs of both sexes jammed the less stuffy public bar. He spotted Valerie standing at the three-deep bar drinking a sherry and talking with the officers he had seen at the ops building the week before. She saw him elbowing his way through the crowd and hurried to meet him. She looked impossibly beautiful to him and he had to restrain himself from sweeping her up and sending her sherry glass flying.

“Hello,” he said.

“And hello to you. This is a surprise.”

“It's impossible to call first.”

“I know. Impossible to call you. I just got off.”

“Same here. First day we've been allowed off the base.”

She nodded. “I know. My friend Judy Davis works in sector control. She keeps tabs on your squadron for me. I was praying you wouldn't be sent across.”

They stood in the middle of the noisy room looking at each other and being jostled.

“Anywhere we could go and be alone for a few minutes?”

Her eyes were steady on his face. “Is that all the time you have?”

“No … hours. Well, until midnight anyway.”

She set her drink down on a table and took his hand. “Come on then.”

He did as she asked and cut the engine before entering the drive, letting the bike coast to a stop in the shadows of the house.

“Mrs. Lamb goes up to bed at eight. My room's on the top floor. The governess's room in the days when Mrs. Lamb had need of one.”

“Is it all right for me to come in?”

“Of course it isn't. Do be quiet on the stairs. Don't, for heaven's sake, trip over a carpet rod.”

He took his shoes off in the entry hall and they reached her spacious room without incident. She bolted the door behind them. “Safe and secure. Sorry I can't offer you a drink. I have some oranges, though. One of the group captains brought a bag back from Gibraltar.”

He placed his hands on her shoulders and stroked the sensible uniform cloth which covered the vibrant flesh beneath. “I don't need a drink … nor an orange.”

“No,” she whispered. “Neither do I.”

The bedside lamp threw a feeble light, tinged rose by the silk shade. She straddled him, thighs pressed tightly against his hips, back arched in ecstasy. He gazed up at her and ran his hands across the downy softness of her belly. “I love you, Valerie.”

She bent down to him and touched his face. “Please don't. I don't think I could bear it if I fell in love with you.”

His hands cupped her breasts, the taut nipples. “I think you are now … a little bit.”

“A bit, yes … some. Making love. I'm not made of stone.”

“Christ, no.”

“You touch my heart, Fat Chap. I wish you didn't.” She raised her hips and lay beside him, her face cool against his chest. “The terrible thing about the place where I work is that I will always know where you are … what you're doing … what happens to you. I made a vow with myself that I would never take a fighter pilot for a lover.”

“God's little jest. I wanted to join my father's regiment, the Royal Marines, but the RAF grabbed me out of the Cambridge air squadron. If I had been a marine I never would have met you again. That, my darling Val, is fate for you.”

“Yes,” she whispered, stroking his body lightly with her fingertips. “I know all about fate.”

T
HE SQUADRON FLEW
at twenty-two thousand feet, three thousand feet below and a good way behind the faster Spitfire squadron that had joined them early that morning from North Weald. The smoke from Dunkirk was a thick, greasy black plume twenty miles to the south of them. Sector Control was vectoring them to cross the Belgian coast over Nieuwpoort to intercept the German bombers before they could reach the bridgehead and the nearly defenseless troops jamming the beaches.