The Tunnel (18 page)

‘Does it matter?’ Hugo asked.

‘Well – you want me to get the story right, don’t you?’

‘That’s right, Saunders,’ John said. ‘You take your time.’

‘Well, it’s a long time since it happened, and a lot of things have happened since it happened.’

‘All right,’ Hugo said. ‘Sorry I spoke.’

‘Are we right now?’ Saunders asked.

‘Yes, yes, yes.’

‘Well. It was in Montreal anyway. I remember that because all the signs were in French. There were a lot of horsedrawn carriages in the streets, and someone told me that some of the people there couldn’t speak English … Not that any of them could really, not King’s English – but these couldn’t speak English at all.’

‘Extraordinary,’ Hugo murmured.

‘Everyone should be able to speak English,’ John said solemnly.

‘That’s what I told them. Fancy a city in the middle of Canada, and half the people can’t speak English!’

‘We’ll start a mission after the war,’ John said. ‘Teaching English to the Canadians. We’ll make Saunders president.’

‘Let him get on with the story,’ Peter said.

‘Well, it’s no good if they don’t speak English,’ Hugo said.

‘Well – she said she didn’t,’ Saunders said. ‘She may have been imported from France for all I know.

‘Suppose you start at the beginning,’ John suggested.

‘Well. I was in Montreal—’

The lights came on.

‘All right, I’ll save it,’ Saunders said. They’re bound to go out again before the evening’s finished.’

‘In the interval I will make the cocoa,’ Otto said.

‘He’s the only adult among the lot of you,’ Loveday said when Otto had left the mess. ‘You’re a lot of kids.’

There was a short silence, no one wanted to start an argument. Then the lights went out again.

‘Come on, Saunders,’ Peter said. ‘What about getting on with that story?’

‘Righto.’ Saunders lit the lamp. ‘Gather round again, chaps – come on, Loveday. Now, how far had I got?’

‘You were in Montreal,’ Peter reminded him.

‘Ah, yes. Well – we’d just stopped off for a few hours on our way to Halifax. We were going back to England. Or were we? Perhaps we’d just finished our Navigation Course—’

‘We’ve had all that,’ John said. ‘You were in Montreal and they didn’t speak English.’

‘Oh, yes – we’d had to change a train or something. Anyway, there we were in Montreal with nothing to do for an hour or two.’

‘Heaven!’ Hugo said. ‘How lovely to have nothing to do for an hour or two.’

‘Come on, Saunders,’ Peter said.

‘Well, as I said, there were a lot of these horsedrawn carriages, things like big prams but drawn by horses – you know the sort of thing. So we stopped one and told him to take us round the town. The horse had a sort of white loose cover over its ears with red tassels on ’em—’

‘Jolly useful in a place like this,’ John said.

‘Shut up, John.’

‘The driver was as old as the hills,’ Saunders went on, ‘older than God almost – and he whipped the horse into a sort of shambling trot and off we went, smart as ninepence. I never was much of a one for looking at buildings, but it was quite good fun sitting in an open carriage looking at all the people on the streets. It was a warm sunny day, and the girls were in their summer frocks, and there were awnings out over the pavements in front of the shops. We went up to the top of Mount Royal – it’s a sort of hill with a park on the top – and we looked at the city from there. Then we came back into the town and had a look at the hill from down below. I was getting a bit dry by then, so I climbed up behind the driver and told him to take us somewhere where we could get a cup to tea.’

‘Typical Englishman,’ John said.

Saunders winked. ‘I think he must have thought that, because he leered at me. Dirty old devil he was too, with a bristly chin. He said, “You want somewhere nice, eh?” “Yes,” I said, “take us to the best place in the town.” We’d had nothing to spend our money on in the prairie anyhow.

Well, we left the town and got out somewhere in the residential districts. There were a lot of big houses like you get in Kensington. There weren’t any shops there, and I began to wonder where the silly old fool was taking us. He stopped outside a damn’ great house with columns outside and steps going up to the front door. “Is this the place?” I said. “Yes,” he said. Hell, I thought, this is going to cost a packet. “What about it, chum?” I said.

Old Dicky Hawthorne was with me, and he wasn’t the sort of chap to back out. “Tell him to wait,” he said, “then if we don’t like it we can cut off quick.”

I told the cabby to wait and he just leered at me again. Familiar sort of chap he was – I could hear ’im chuckling as we walked up the steps.

Well, we went up and rang the doorbell. I looked back at the cabby, and he’d pulled his hat over his eyes and gone to sleep. The door was opened by an old dame in black. She must’ve been nearly as old as the cabby. She wore a black dress all covered with shiny black beads.’

‘Sequins,’ Hugo said.

‘That’s right – sort of spangles. But she was very dignified. She had a black velvet bow on the top of her head like my grandmother used to wear, and a crucifix on a long gold chain round her neck. She had earrings too. Now I come to think of it, I think she was made-up. I wouldn’t be certain about that, but she certainly had class. I saluted – I hadn’t got my commission then, I was a sergeant. “Good afternoon,” I said, “the driver brought us.” It was all I could think of to say.’

‘Very succinct,’ John said.

‘Well, she drew us on one side, and took us into a sort of waiting-room off the side of the hall. It was all sort of modern, with red doors and plastic paint on the walls. There was chromium-plated furniture, easy chairs with red covers, and the carpet was so thick that your feet sank into it like the foyer in the Gaumont. And the drawings on the walls!’ He whistled. ‘What drawings! I’ve been round the Middle East a bit, but I’ve never seen drawings like that before. It was the rummiest set-up I ever saw.’ He stopped as the lights came on again.

‘Go on,’ Peter said, ‘what happened then?’

‘Ha, ha, no,’ Saunders said. ‘That’s to be continued in our next.’

‘Come on,’ Peter said. ‘You’ve nearly finished.’

‘Haven’t started yet,’ Saunders said. ‘You wait till the next time the lights go out.’

‘They will not go out again.’ Otto had come back with the jug of hot water. ‘There is a goon in the washhouse.’

‘You missed the second instalment of Saunders’s story.’ Peter told him.

‘Don’t worry, it’ll be tacked on to the beginning of the third,’ John said. ‘He has to get warmed up each time. Anyway, the lights’ll go out again in a minute.’

‘I do not think so,’ Otto was serious.

‘Why not?’

‘The goon.’

‘You don’t mean it,’ Peter said. ‘There isn’t really a goon in the washhouse?’

‘It is Hauptmann Mueller.’ Otto emptied half a packet of cocoa into the jug of hot water.

‘What about the tunnel – they were working at it.’

‘He came in from the far end of the other block. Some chaps kept him talking while they got the trap down. Most of them are still down there, but they must remain there until he is gone. They could not risk having chaps covered in clay hanging around.’

‘Hope he doesn’t stay long,’ John said.

‘I wonder why he’s here.’ Peter got to his feet. ‘We’d better hide those bags, John.’ He collected the dispersal bags from where they lay hidden among the tins and rubbish under Saunders’s bunk. ‘What shall we do with them?’

Saunders made the usual suggestion, but no one laughed.

‘Shove ’em down the lats,’ John said.

‘Then we’ll have to make some more.’

‘One man cannot search the whole block,’ Otto told them. ‘Put them back under the bunk, it will be all right.’

‘Goon in the block!’ There was a sudden hush as the stooge called the conventional warning, unusual at this time of night.

‘Come to tuck us up,’ someone shouted.

‘Did you say
tuck?’

They heard Stewart greet him as he entered the block. ‘Good evening, Herr Mueller. Dropped in for a brew?’

‘Not this evening, thank you, Mr Stewart.’ The German sounded preoccupied.

Peter went to the doorway of the mess and saw him standing in the corridor. He was alone. Slowly he began to walk down the room, looking into each mess as he passed.

‘Looking for something, Herr Mueller?’ someone asked.

What the hell’s he want, Peter thought. Can they have got wind of something? If they raid the washhouse and find that tunnel, they’re bound to search this block – and what about those bags? If we get sent to the cooler we’ll lose our place in the cookhouse
dienst.
We shouldn’t have left them here. It was damned careless. He went back and sat at the table.

Then Mueller was standing in the doorway of the mess.

‘Good evening,’ Peter said.

The German came in without speaking. He was a sharp-nosed, pot-bellied man whose horn-rimmed spectacles magnified his pale blue eyes.

‘Have a cup of cocoa, Mueller,’ Hugo rose to his feet, doing the honours.

‘No, thank you,’ Mueller stood just inside the doorway, his thumbs hooked into the leather belt which supported his automatic pistol in its shabby holster. He was looking at the two ‘pin-up’ girls pasted above Saunders’s bunk. ‘That one is pleasing,’ he said. ‘This one – I do not like her so well. A little thin perhaps?’

Saunders was hurt. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’d rather sleep with her than with a policeman.’

There was interest in Mueller’s eyes. He looked at Saunders in disbelief.
‘So?
In England is it not forbidden to sleep with policemen?’

Their laughter washed around his ears. He reddened, turned on his heels and marched out of the block.

‘Now you’ve upset him,’ Hugo said.

‘Hit him where it hurts the most, I expect,’ John said.

‘Wonder he doesn’t make a pass at you,’ Saunders said, ‘judging by the length of your hair.’

‘It
is
about time you had it cut, y’know.’ Hugo stroked his own immaculate head. ‘I must visit old Trumper when I get back. Jolly good barber, Trumper. You always come out with your hair longer than when you went in. But controlled, of course – not down over your collar.’

John made no reply, and Peter, knowing why he was growing his hair, changed the topic of conversation. When Stewart came into the mess another argument was raging.

‘Your turn for hot showers tomorrow morning, chaps.’

‘What did Mueller want?’ Peter asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Stewart said. ‘Just looking round, I think.’

‘D’you think he suspected anything?’

‘Oh, I don’t think so. Just came along to see what we were doing, I expect.’

Suddenly it was spring. It seemed to Peter, as he walked from the barrack block to the White House for his shower, that the last few months had passed without his knowing it. He had been working hard on the tunnel, making his civilian clothes, planning a route; living in the future so intensely that he had not noticed the winter passing into spring. Now there was a hint of warmth in the air, even at this early hour, and outside the barrack blocks prisoners were shaking their bedding and flinging it over the clotheslines which bordered the paths between the buildings. The sky was blue, and even the dark earth which not long since had been mud seemed to be expanding, stretching itself in the friendly sun. The air was strangely scented, and the warm sun on his face and hands quickened his blood, making him feel that life was good.

As he walked he decided that in future he would join Hugo in his cold shower before breakfast. It would be a discipline, something to get him fit for the trip that lay ahead. He would walk too, increasing distances round the circuit; two miles the first few days, then four, then six, up to twenty miles a day. He would not fail because he couldn’t stay the distance. He would start tomorrow; for the moment he would make the most of the monthly hot shower, and change into the clean clothes that he carried under his arm.

‘I paid sixpence to see
A tattooed Scotch lady,
She was a sight to see
Tattooed from head to knee—
’

The words came through steam, the accompaniment was falling water, the tune
My Home In Tennessee.
Beneath a battery of twelve showers controlled by a German guard the prisoners unfolded like seedlings under a gardener’s hose.

‘Under her jaw
Was the Royal Flying Corps
And on her back
Was the Union Jack,
What could you ask for more?
Up and down her spine
Were the King’s Own Guards in line
And right around her hips
Was a fleet of battleships—
’

Peter, lean and hard from hours of sweating in the tunnel, soaped himself all over and sang with the others.

‘Over her kidney
Was a bird’s eye view of Sydney
But what I liked best
Upon her chest
Was my home in Tennessee!’

He was no longer just wasting his time, he had an objective now. Beside him John was singing in a high clear tenor.

Someone, a deep bass at the back of the room, began to sing
Wir Fahren Gegen England.
It was a good song to sing in the bath, and this was a typical bathroom. Their voices boomed and reverberated, aping the German Labour Corps who, in white cotton trousers, naked and bronzed above the waist and carrying burnished spades instead of rifles, marched past the camp in the mornings; marching on England by way of a road they were building through the forest.

‘…
England, England …’

Then, high above the noise of the singers, Peter heard the shrill expostulation of the guard.
‘Bitte, bitte!’
he was saying. The prisoners took no notice. Peter saw the guard’s entreaties turn to fear, fear of the approach of a superior.

The fear turned to anger. He began to shout, as the Germans always shouted when they were nervous. The prisoners still ignored him. In desperation he turned off the water. It stopped suddenly, a few last miserable trickles mocking the soap-covered prisoners, who stared impotently at the guard. Slowly the singing subsided as, one by one, they admitted defeat. It was uncomfortable standing there in the cold, covered in nothing but wet soap. One or two of the more obstinate continued for a few bars, until the last was finally silenced by his comrades.

‘So!’
The
Obergefreiter
smiled, a smile of triumph. He turned the water on again.

‘I paid sixpence to see
A tattooed Scotch lady …’

On their way back to the barrack block they noticed a crowd of prisoners gathering round the main gate. ‘What’s going on down there?’ John said. ‘God knows – let’s go and have a look.’ As they walked down they met other prisoners converging from all directions, making towards the gate.

‘What is it?’ John asked one of them.

‘New purge from
Dulag.’

‘Come on,’ Peter said, ‘there might be someone we know.’

He hurried down to the gate, trying to curb his impatience, telling himself that his brother was not, could not, be there. Ever since his mother had written to tell him that Roy had been posted ‘missing’ he had tried to stop himself from hoping that he would, one day, walk into the prison camp. To hope unreasonably, he felt, was a weakness. Nevertheless he knew the old choking sensation as he forced himself to walk more slowly as he neared the gate, could not prevent himself from almost running the last few yards.

Down at the gate the new purge was still standing in ranks outside the wire; pale, unshaven, bewildered men, most of them wearing the stiff new uniforms drawn from the stores at
Dulag-Luft.
Among them were some Americans, and these wore strange bulky flying boots and khaki jockey caps. They all looked tired, and there was an expression of horror on their faces as they regarded the uncouth bearded figures behind the wire. The kriegies were throwing over packets of cigarettes and calling out the numbers of their squadrons.

‘Anyone from Seventy-five Squadron?’

‘Yes here!’

‘How’s old Tangletits?’

‘Never heard of him.’

Peter looked along the ranks of strange faces, looking for the mop of black hair, the upright, slim, disdainful figure; quickly at first, and then again more slowly. All around him other prisoners were crowding against the trip wire, only kept from the main fence by the machine-guns of the guards in the sentry boxes.

‘Anyone from Seven Squadron?’

‘Dick! God, I thought you’d fetch up here sooner or later! How’s Jimmy?’

‘Anyone from Coastal there?’

‘Anyone from Thirty-five?’

Peter shouted the number of his squadron with the others and discovered a New Zealander who had been with the same squadron, but they did not know one another. He asked, casually, after his brother, but the man had never heard of him.

‘Come and have tea with us this afternoon,’ Peter suggested. ‘Block Four, the end mess. You can’t miss it, it’s next to the bog.’

Then the gates were opened and the newcomers, hoisting their bundles on to their backs, straggled into the compound between the automatic rifles of their escort, who kept the older kriegies at a distance. As they passed the trip wire one of the Americans threw a small parcel which was caught by a kriegie. A guard, who had seen the parcel thrown, made a dart after it, but the kriegie quickly lost himself in the crowd. The American dodged unobtrusively behind his friends as they were marched up to the White House to be searched.

‘Good show,’ Peter said. ‘That’s something the goons won’t get, anyway.’

‘Come on,’ John said, ‘we’ll be late for lunch.’

‘I didn’t see any Army chaps there,’ Peter said as they walked slowly away from the wire. He was ashamed that in his disappointment he had forgotten to introduce the New Zealander to John.

‘There never are,’ John said.

‘I’ve never understood how you came to be in an Air Force camp at all.’ Peter wanted to enter into John’s life for a moment, to bury the insistent vision of his brother grimly holding his aircraft in that last screaming dive to the dark earth or sea below. ‘Why didn’t they send you to an Army camp?’

‘I was caught so far behind the German lines they thought I was a paratroop,’ John said. ‘Apparently they always send paratroops to Air Force camps.’

That’s because their paratroops are part of the
Luftwaffe,’
Peter told him. ‘What were you doing behind the German lines – sabotage?’

John grinned. ‘As a matter of fact – I wouldn’t tell anyone else, mind – I was going in the wrong direction.’

Peter laughed, glad of the excuse to laugh. He knew John well enough to be certain that he had not been captured easily. He knew John’s shame at having been captured, a shame not shared by aircrew as their surrender had not involved a laying down of arms. He changed the subject. ‘You looked exactly as though you’d suddenly found yourself in a zoo, that first day at
Dulag.
Absolutely lost. It was being surrounded by the RAF, I expect.’

‘It was a bit disconcerting,’ John said, ‘but nothing to the first day I came here. When I saw my first authentic kriegies I swore that whatever happened I’d never let myself get like that.’

‘And now look at us – I bet those new chaps are thinking exactly the same about us.’

‘Some of us still keep pretty smart,’ John said. ‘Look at Hugo – he shaves every morning and even polishes his buttons with brick-dust. I admire him for it, in a way. It’s a sort of self-respect.’

‘I don’t think much of a self-respect that demands clean buttons to keep it alive.’ The vision was fading now. ‘That sort of thing’s all right on the barrack square, but it doesn’t do much good out here. He’s not adaptable, that’s all it is. He’s the type that takes a dinner jacket on safari with him.’

‘That’s the type that built the Empire,’ John said.

‘Don’t you believe it, old son – not Hugo’s type. The Empire was built by jokers without backsides to their trousers. You’re thinking of the people who run it now.’

‘Better tell that to Loveday tonight in the mess,’ John said.

‘I’m not telling Loveday anything. I’m sick of arguments, we always seem to be arguing.’

‘We do argue a hell of a lot.’

‘Everyone does out here,’ Peter said. ‘I wonder what we shall be like when we get back – it’ll take some getting used to. In some ways it’s doing us good, I suppose … Y’know, most of us have more freedom here than we’ve ever had in our lives.’

‘That’s good, too much freedom in a prison camp!’

‘I mean it. Inside the fixed limits of the camp we’re more free than we’ve ever been in our lives. If I decide I’ll go and have tea with old Jones, and on the way there I meet Smith and decide to have tea with him instead, it doesn’t matter. I’ve weeks and weeks to have tea with Jones in. If we want to stay in bed all day we can – look at Hugo again. After all, the essential freedom is freedom of mind – freedom from all businesses.’

John laughed.

‘Look at the way chaps are working here,’ Peter continued. ‘Enjoying hobbies and crafts they’d never have time for in normal life. Chaps painting and drawing who’d never have thought of it before they were captured. Studying too, and taking degrees. Chaps whose whole life up to now has been fully occupied in keeping alive. Now they’re in the position of the idle rich as far as the arts are concerned. They don’t have to worry about maintaining life, so they’re free to enjoy it.’

‘But it’s only compensation,’ John said. ‘It sounds all right on the face of it, but after all it’s only a compensation for what they’re not allowed to have – the freedom of choice.’

‘The freedom to spend their whole lives in keeping alive?’

‘Come off it, Pete. You know that need not be true of anyone these days.’

There’s something in it anyway,’ Peter said. ‘It’s lack of responsibility that gives the chaps time to develop their hobbies as they are doing.’

‘lt’s because they’ve nothing better to do,’ John said.

As they climbed the hill towards the barrack blocks they saw that their barrack was surrounded by small groups of prisoners who were being kept at a distance by armed guards. They began to hurry up the slippery path, wondering what had happened; Peter’s private sorrow lessened now by the thought that something, anything, unusual was taking place.

They found Stewart arguing heatedly with Mueller in front of the door. ‘But it’s lunchtime,’ Peter heard him say.

‘I cannot help that, Mr Stewart. If you will break the regulations by digging a tunnel from your barrack, you must expect to take the consequences.’

‘But this is mass punishment.’

‘Come, come, Mr Stewart. You cannot call this mass punishment. It is merely a precaution.’

There was a sudden crash as one of the small lockers, made by the prisoners from bed-boards, came hurtling out of an open window.

‘You can hardly call that a precaution,’ Stewart said.

‘You know perfectly well, Mr Stewart, that it is against the regulations to make furniture out of the bed-boards.’

From inside the block came the heavy bang, bang, of crowbars on the concrete floor, the rending crash as one of the lockers was pushed over on its side.

‘Oh, go to hell!’ Stewart said.

‘There is no need to be violent, Mr Stewart.’

Peter and John stood among the other prisoners and watched their cherished possessions being hurled from the doors and windows to lie, sometimes broken, on the ground outside; mutilated books and photographs, carefully made shelves and cooking utensils, drawings and clothing, scattered or in heaps on the muddy ground.

‘That’s the end of the washhouse tunnel,’ John said. ‘Tyson said it wouldn’t last for long.’

‘Mueller
was
after something the other night, then. I thought it was odd, coming round in the evening like that. Those damned dispersal bags of ours are still there, you know.’

‘They won’t know what they are,’ John said.

‘Of course they will, they’ve seen dispersal bags before.’ He laughed. ‘They’re under Saunders’s bunk anyway – it’d do him good to have a spell in the cooler.’

‘It won’t come to that,’ John said. ‘They’ll just cart ’em away. We can easily make some more.’

Towards the end of the aftemoon Mueller called off the search. The washhouse tunnel had been found, so also had a number of
verboten
articles which were wrapped in blankets and taken away by the guards. The dispersal bags went with them. The tunnel, flooded with water for the night, would be filled in the morning.

The end mess was in chaos. Mattresses had been ripped open, photographs torn from the walls, their small stocks of clean clothing lay scattered and trampled on the floor. ‘We’d better get cracking,’ Peter said. ‘We’ve got someone coming for tea.’

‘My pin-ups have gone!’ Saunders shouted. ‘That bastard Mueller’s pinched my pin-ups!’