The Tunnel (12 page)

‘What d’you mean,’ Saunders asked, ‘a queer type?’

‘Oh, he’s a bit round the bend, that’s all. Strain, y’know. There’s a Pole, too; his name’s Otto Sechevitsky. He more or less looks after Loveday. If I were you I’d be guided by Otto until you know the ropes. You’ll find life a bit strange here at first no doubt, and Otto’s got the thing buttoned up as well as anybody. If you follow him you won’t go far wrong.’

He took them to a mess at the extreme end of the block, near the entrance and unpleasantly close to the latrine.

Otto and Loveday were playing chess. The wing commander introduced them. ‘I’ll leave you now,’ he said. ‘Otto will look after you.’

As soon as he had gone, Loveday rose to his feet. He was a tall raw-boned man and his nose looked as though it had been squashed in below the protuberant forehead. The eyes, deep-set, slanted upwards and outwards, giving the face a cunning look belied by the wide slack mouth which showed red and moist through the tangled beard. He was wearing clogs, a greatcoat and a Balaclava helmet.

He cleared his throat.
‘I’ll
look after you individuals. You are all suffering from shock. You are all a bit unstrung. But I understand the position.’ He spoke slowly, punctuating each word with a stabbing movement of one of his large raw-looking hands. ‘I make allowances for newcomers. It’s fate that sent you here. And fate that sent me to look after you. Ain’t that right, Otter?’ He chuckled without mirth and looked at Otto, who smiled in an embarrassed way. ‘You may think an individual has free will – but he hasn’t. Life’s a chessboard and we’re all pawns.’ He knocked one of the pieces from the board with a sweep of his mittened right hand and looked at Peter. ‘Ain’t that right?’ he said.

Peter hesitated. ‘Er – yes,’ he said.

Loveday looked at him for a long time, while Peter felt himself colour with confusion.

‘You’ll learn,’ Loveday said. ‘You’ll learn soon enough. Won’t he, Otter? He’ll learn in time,’ He looked round at the others. ‘You’ll all learn.’ He looked at the chessboard and chuckled again. ‘Little pawns on a big board.’ He began to drum his fingers on the table-top.

‘All the bunks are free’, Otto said, ‘except these two.’ He indicated the two-tier wooden bedstead farthest from the doorway. He was a thin brittle-looking man whose grey eyes were calm and patient beneath a mass of straw-coloured hair. He looked oddly military and neat standing there beside Loveday’s untidy bulk. ‘Just put your things down and I’ll make some tea. The other chaps will call for you when they want to take you to dinner.’

Dinner. Peter’s stomach contracted and he felt a sudden spasm of nausea. Dinner. He had not eaten a hot meal since leaving
Dulag-Luft.
He hoped that they would not be too long before they called for him.

On each bunk was a sack filled with wood shavings, as a mattress, and a smaller sack, as a pillow. There were thin shoddy blankets, and two sheets and a pillowcase of coarse cotton. He chose the bunk above the one that John had chosen, leaving Hugo to share with Saunders. Loveday watched them as they unpacked.

‘I can see you individuals are not used to this sort of thing,’ he said. ‘You have come straight from your comfortable homes and you’re bound to be upset. You’re suffering from shock. Everybody in the camp is suffering from shock. Eh, Otter?’

Otto smiled. ‘OK, Alan – so we all suffer from shock. Let us forget it. I will make tea.’ He took a packet of tea from a shelf, put half of it in a large metal jug and walked out of the mess.

Peter began to arrange his few possessions on the rough shelf which the previous owner had fixed above his bunk. All his early enthusiasm had collapsed before the impact of this overcrowded slum. How could one escape, submerged beneath this turmoil? The room was loud with the roar and chatter of a hundred voices, filled with the bustle of a hundred different aims. He worked in silence, conscious of the tall figure of Alan Loveday watching them unpack.

‘I’ve got a book here.’ Loveday took down a large book from the shelf above his bunk. ‘It tells you how to handle people. An individual has to know how to handle people in a place like this.’

Peter looked down at John and raised his eyebrows.

‘What’s the book called?’ John asked.

‘A Textbook of Psychology.
Psychology is the study of the mind. This is a good place to study psychology, because everybody is suffering from shock. Everybody is a bit abnormal round here.’

‘Yes,’ John said. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘I don’t need you to tell me when I’m right,’ Loveday shouted. ‘I’m telling
you
!’ He glared angrily at John. ‘Just because you talk with an Oxford accent is no reason for you to tell me when I’m right!’

John was silent.

‘This is a different world from the one you’ve lived in,’ Loveday continued. He was standing on one foot, the other resting on a stool at the end of the table. His mittened hands plucked restlessly at his beard. ‘This is a world where you have to study other individuals. Things are not the same here. Everybody—’

‘Goon in the block!’ It was one of the prisoners at the far end of the barrack. Soon the chanted cry was taken up on all sides. ‘Goon in the block! Goon in the block!’

‘What’s that?’ Peter asked.

‘It’s the German guards doing the rounds,’ Loveday explained. ‘The other chaps always call out when they come in. It’s a sort of warning. I always ignore them myself. When an individual …’

Peter went to the doorway of the mess, and looked down the central corridor. Followed by the jeers and catcalls of the prisoners, the tall, heavily-built guard walked down the centre of the barrack block, with his dog, a big Alsatian, on a chain.

‘Two goons approaching,’ someone called, ‘one leading the other!’

The guard, ponderous in his heavy jackboots and his long green greatcoat girdled by a thick, unpolished leather belt, walked slowly down the corridor, the dog slavering and straining at the leash.

‘What do they do that for?’ Peter asked.

Loveday laughed. ‘It’s psychological. They do it to frighten us. They turn the dogs loose in the compound every night. They’re trained to savage everyone except the owner. One man to one dog. No one else can handle them.’

Peter was collected for dinner by a flight lieutenant who introduced himself as Tyson. He went willingly, Loveday’s insistent voice ringing in his ears.

‘Loveday been holding forth already?’ Tyson was a tall man with a big jaw and a pleasant voice. He wore a black high-necked sweater under his service tunic, and strode quickly over the damp concrete floor in leather flying boots. ‘You mustn’t mind him – he’s a bit round the bend, that’s all.’

‘Round the bend?’

‘Oh – wire fever. It comes in waves. Some chaps get it worse than others. With some it’s acute depression, others definitely get a little queer. It’s different with Loveday, though. I reckon he was a mental case before he was captured.’

‘You mean, he’s always like that?’

‘More of less. He’s never violent, you know. He’s been in every mess in the block so far. No one can stand him for long.’

‘Poor devil.’ Peter could imagine him, friendless, pushed round from mess to mess.

‘Oh, he’s happy enough. Happier than a lot of us, I should think. It’s you I’m sorry for. Here we are!’ He led the way into a mess in which three men were sitting at the table. They looked as though they had been waiting for him to arrive.

‘This is Flight Lieutenant Howard,’ Tyson said. ‘Commander Drew, Flight Lieutenant Crawford, Lieutenant Simpson. The others are getting dinner ready.’ He motioned Peter to a seat at the head of the table. ‘Will you have a drink?’

Peter must have shown his surprise, because they all laughed.

‘No whisky or anything like that,’ the commander said hastily. ‘It’s a little brew we make from raisins. We keep it for special occasions.’ He poured five small tots of colourless liquid from a tin into five large pottery mugs. ‘Forgive the glasses – they’re all we have at the moment.’

The brew was strong, it tasted like petrol. Peter was glad the tot had been a small one.

‘Now, how long do you think the war will last?’ The commander, leaning across the table, spoke as though he were asking what would win the Derby – for a hot tip. He was big and gruff, and his blue eyes were set in laughter-lines above his wide, aggressively-curling beard.

Peter thought quickly. He hadn’t the faintest idea how long the war would last. They obviously wanted to be reassured. ‘I give it a year,’ he said.

‘Ah!’ the commander sighed, and leaned back as though a great weight had been lifted from his mind. ‘That’s my impression, too.’

‘I’d give it longer than that,’ Crawford said. He was an older man than the others, and he had an anxious, almost fretful look. He wore a long khaki overcoat, spoils of some forgotten army, and his knitted woollen cap was pulled low down around his ears. ‘We’ve got to get our full bombing force into operation,’ he explained. ‘We’re only playing at it so far. Yes – I give it two years at least. Possibly two and a half.’

‘Nonsense, Tom!’ The commander smiled at Peter. ‘You’ll never win a war by bombing.’

Simpson, who was younger than the others and wore the navy blue battledress of the Fleet Air Arm, held out a packet of cigarettes and offered Peter a light from a small lamp which was burning on the table, a round tobacco tin containing liquid fat. A metal bridge had been made across the open top of the tin, and through this bridge was threaded a woollen wick which burned with a small blue flame. ‘It’s almost impossible to get matches here,’ Simpson explained, ‘so we keep a permanent light. What’s the latest show in Town?’

As Peter lit the cigarette he tried to remember. He hadn’t seen a show in the West End since he joined the squadron.
‘Blithe Spirit’s a
good show,’ he hazarded.

The commander snorted. ‘That was on before I was shot down. That was old when Pontius was a pilot!’

Peter thought again. ‘There’s a very good show at the Windmill,’ he said, ‘but I can’t remember it’s name. I’m afraid I’m not very well up in that sort of thing.’

‘What were you flying?’ Tyson asked.

Peter felt safer here. ‘Stirlings,’ he said. ‘I started on Wimpeys and we converted on to Stirlings. I only did about five trips in Stirlings, and most of those were over Italy.’

‘Lousy kites, Stirlings.’ Crawford was obviously a reactionary. ‘Wouldn’t be seen dead in one. Give me a Wimpey any day. What was the Italian flak like?’

‘Piece of cake,’ Peter told him. ‘They haven’t a clue. We used to stooge around watching the fires.’

‘Where were you shot down?’

‘Over Germany. A night-fighter got us, chased us down to the deck and then set us on fire …’ He was just getting started when the other members of the mess arrived with dinner. There were three of them and each seemed to be carrying something.

The commander attempted to continue the conversation but it was obvious that he was more interested in the meal than he was in flying over Italy. ‘The equipment’s a bit primitive, I’m afraid,’ he said, indicating the seven pottery bowls, like pudding basins, which the others had set out on the bedsheet-covered table. ‘But we’ve got the best cook in the block – eh, Jonah?’

‘We’ve got the biggest appetite,’ Jonah said. He was a plump Canadian and apparently treated his cooking with all the seriousness due to that high art. There were tinned sausages, tinned tomatoes, fried potatoes and Smedley’s peas; all hot and arranged in attractive symmetry on a large roughly constructed tray. On closer inspection Peter saw that the tray was made from dozens of small pieces of tin beaten flat and joined with folded seams.

Jonah hovered, reluctant to break up his artistic arrangement and put the food into the thick pottery bowls.

‘Double up, Jonah!’ The commander had taken his seat at the head of the table and was impatiently smoothing his beard.

Peter was seated at the commander’s right hand. ‘Do you have a separate cook for every mess?’ he asked.

‘Yes, we all mess separately.’ The commander attacked his food with vigour. ‘In most messes they take it in turns to be cook. We’re jolly lucky in old Jonah, he likes cooking and takes it all off our shoulders. We give him a hand with the potato peeling and the washing up.’

‘It’s the only way I can get a decent meal,’ Jonah explained.

Peter’s heart sank; he had never cooked anything more complicated than a boiled egg in his life. He hoped fervently that one of his mess would prove as great a gourmet as Jonah.

‘Do you have a meal like this every night?’ he asked.

The commander smiled. ‘No, I think Jonah’s surpassed himself this evening. Each mess gets four Red Cross parcels a week. We usually manage one hot meal a day, but not as good as this. The other meals we make out with bread. Some chaps get used to it but I must admit I’m always hungry.’ He sighed.

As he ate Peter noticed the tactful manner of these older prisoners, the consideration with which they treated one another. They had obviously come to grips with their imprisonment and forced it to become as gracious as circumstances would allow. He remembered the frantic scrambling and pushing at
Dulag-Luft,
and wondered if these men had ever been like that. They were so quiet, with a calm reserve that made him feel soft and ineffective. He sensed that their disapproval would be a cutting and permanent thing.

After dinner they sat round the table drinking Nescafé out of the mugs which had contained the ‘brew’ and asked him questions about home; questions that he found difficult to answer. If only I’d known I was going to be shot down, he thought. I’d have got all the dope ready. He managed to give them the current prices of beer and whisky, but when they asked him about food rationing and other topical news he realized his total inadequacy.

‘What’s the cigarette position?’ Simpson asked.

‘Pretty grim at the moment,’ Peter said. ‘Tobacconists keep a few under the counter, but unless they know you it’s pretty difficult. I’ve been to half a dozen shops running before now and not been able to buy any.’

‘That’s one good thing about this place,’ the commander said. ‘We get more cigarettes than we can smoke. They’re the only thing one’s friends can send out in any quantity they like. They’re not allowed to send food, so they all send cigarettes. Would you like some?’

‘I smoke a pipe myself,’ Peter said. ‘But I’ll take some for the others if I may.’

The commander got up and went over to his locker. ‘Here’s two hundred,’ he said, ‘and four ounces of Capstan. Let me know when you get short.’

‘Thanks very much, that’s grand.’ Peter made a neat pile of the cigarette packets on the table and put the tobacco tins beside them. ‘Things don’t seem so bad as I’d thought at first …’

The commander smiled. ‘We’ve got a financial wizard in our mess. He was on the Stock Exchange before the war, and now he works a racket on the food market every morning.’

Peter did not understand.

‘You’ll see the market tomorrow,’ the commander told him. ‘It’s in a little hut down by the White House. It’s worked on a system of points. Supposing you get a clothing parcel from home, and there’s something in it you don’t want. Well, instead of trying to exchange it for something somebody else doesn’t want, you go down to the mart and pop it. You get so many points for it, which you can either spend then and there or have entered to your credit on the books.’

‘It all sounds very complicated.’ Peter had lived for so long in an RAF mess where everything had been done for him that he was filled with dismay at the thought of looking after himself.

‘You can do the same with the Red Cross food parcels,’ the commander continued. ‘Our financial wizard – he’s not here tonight, he’s out to dinner – has worked out a nominal value for every article that we get in the parcels. Took him weeks to do it. He keeps all the figures in a little book. The mart values fluctuate from day to day, depending on the demand for certain articles. For instance, oatmeal is cheaper in the summer than it is in the winter, and the opposite goes for lemonade powder. Klim is about the most valuable single item.’

‘Klim?’ He felt bewildered by it all.

‘Powdered milk,’ Jonah said. ‘It comes in the Canadian Red Cross parcels. Wizard stuff – far better than that condensed stuff you get in the English parcels. It keeps better for one thing, and it’s easier to use for cooking.’

‘Chaps do all sorts of things with it,’ the commander said. ‘Makes a jolly tenacious paste for mending books or sticking photos up. Chap mended a pipe with it once.’

‘You can boil water in the tins,’ Simpson said. He passed over a fire-blackened tin about six inches high and six inches in diameter, to which a wire handle had been fitted.

‘A full tin of Klim is worth a hundred and fifty cigarettes on the mart,’ the commander continued. ‘When our parcel arrives Tollitt rushes down to the mart with it and – to explain it simply – sells everything which is above par, and buys things that are below par. It means that sometimes our diet is not very varied, but we get more to eat that way.’

‘It seems very complicated to me,’ Peter said.

‘Ha!’ the commander said, ‘it’s the capitalist system.’ He leaned back against the upright of one of the bunks and twisted a forefinger into his beard. ‘Y’see, we’re all old kriegies, and we’ve collected a spot of reserve in the food line and can afford to play on the market with it.’

‘Do you play bridge?’ Simpson asked.

‘No, I’m afraid I don’t,’ Peter said.

‘Don’t you learn,’ Crawford told him. ‘It becomes a vice in a place like this. Chaps play all day long.’

‘It’s a good way to pass the time, I should think,’ Peter said.

‘You’ll find the time will pass quickly enough,’ the commander told him. ‘It’ll drag a bit at first, but suddenly, one day, you’ll stop and realize that you simply haven’t time to do all you intend to do. It’s simply amazing how little things will fill your life. That’s part of the danger – you fritter time away.’

‘What about escape?’ Peter asked.

There was a pause in which he wished he had not spoken. Was it that they were against escape, or had he broken one of the unspoken rules of captivity by speaking of it?

The silence was broken by Tyson who smiled wryly as he spoke. ‘Come and see us if you have any ideas. But take your time – have a good look round before you make any suggestions. If you get any ideas come and tell us first.’

The sudden extinction of all the lights in the room saved Peter from further embarrassment.

‘Blast!’ the commander spoke out of the darkness. ‘Where’s that lamp of yours, Jack?’

By the light of the small cigarette lighter flame Peter saw Simpson cross to a cupboard and take down a lamp which he lit with a spill of paper. The lamp was made from old tins fastened one above the other and had one side cut away like an old-fashioned ‘dark lantern.’ It gave off a steady golden light, brighter than the smoky red glow in the other messes.

‘That’s a good lamp,’ Peter said.

‘It’s the fuel,’ Simpson told him. ‘It’s margarine that’s been rendered down to extract the water. Expensive, but it gives a clean light. Some of these chaps burn crude margarine, cooking fat or even boot polish – what can they expect?’

‘What d’you use as a wick?’

‘This one’s made of pyjama cord, seems to be more absorbent than anything else. You can use bits of flannel, but I prefer pyjama cord.’

Peter looked round at the other messes. The long room, plunged so suddenly into darkness, slowly assumed a new personality as one after another the flickering lamps threw their long shadows across the walls and roof. Conversation had fallen to a murmur, the prisoners closing in to make small groups huddled round the lamps. ‘What’s wrong with the lights?’ he asked.

‘It’s the goons,’ the commander said. ‘The SBO had a row with them about the sanitation, so they’re carrying out reprisals.’

Peter must have shown his bewilderment.

‘SBO – Senior British Officer. Goons – Germans,’ Simpson told him. ‘Kriegies – POWs. You get used to it in time, it’s another language.’

‘You’ll forget you’ve ever been anything else but a kriegie in a week or two,’ Crawford said. ‘That’s the danger.’

When the lights came on again there were ironic cheers, the lamps were put out and the groups dispersed. Conversation swelled again, and the room was restored to its normal level of noisy shouts and long-range conversation.