The Tunnel (5 page)

She began to gather his things together, the boots from the fireplace, the Irvin jacket from the chair. ‘They may be coming soon,’ she said. ‘Keep away from the roads and when you get far from here ask at another farm – perhaps they will help you. But here it is too dangerous.’ She pushed the flying jacket at him and compelled him towards the door.

Outside in the darkness and the driving rain he stood for several seconds without a plan. The stars that had guided him fitfully throughout his journey were hidden behind the clouds. But he had little need of their guidance now, being no longer driven towards the west. He had crossed the border but was still lonely, still without the warmth of friendliness.

He followed the lane to the main road and walked farther into Holland. Perhaps once out of the border country he would get more help. His trousers were already wet again and rain dripped down his nose and into the collar of his Irvin jacket.

He walked all that night, more lonely and cold now that he had known the comfort that lay beyond the shuttered windows that he passed.

By daylight he was still on the road, but managed to find a hiding-place between two haystacks near a farm. He lay there as long as he could but towards midday, impelled by hunger and loneliness, he decided to seek help at the farm. Looking carefully up and down the road he set out for the buildings that he could see a quarter of a mile away. Just as he was rehearsing what he would say to the farmer, he was overtaken swiftly and silently by two policemen on bicycles. It was useless to resist. He had lost the spirit to resist. They walked the few miles to the village without speaking.

He lay on his back in the narrow cell, trying to make maps and faces out of the damp patches which stained its lime-washed walls. He was so disgusted at having been captured that he refused to think of it. He lay on a wooden plank, and the thin grey blanket that covered him smelled abominably of ancient vomit. They had taken his flying boots and his sheepskin jacket, and he was cold. He had not eaten since early that morning and now it was late in the afternoon. The pale watery light creeping in through the small heavily-barred window fell obliquely on the bucket with its rough wooden seat, which stood in one corner of the cell. He could smell it from where he lay.

He felt sick with remorse and self-disgust. It had been too silly. A long, straight, open road; the two policemen on bicycles. He had not even tried to run for it.

There had been no cigarettes and
schnapps
this time. The cold dislike of the young policemen had been frightening. They had been to him, indistinguishable from the Germans – they may have been Germans. Anyway, their behaviour had been very different from that of the old policeman of two nights ago, and he had been glad when the door of the cell had closed behind them.

He felt no bitterness against the Dutch. The interpreter had told him that for every airman discovered in hiding the
Gestapo
would shoot ten Dutchmen. For him, as the man had pointed out, it would only mean a slim chance to avoid eventual capture; for the Dutch it would mean much more.

He sighed and stretched himself uncomfortably on his wooden bed. There would be no escape from this place, he was certain of that. Solid concrete, with a door that was inches thick. Even the bread and
ersatz
coffee that he had been given for breakfast had been pushed through a trap in the door. He would rest until they moved him again, and try to get away during the journey. He turned his face to the wall and presently he fell asleep.

He was being shaken gently by the shoulder. He had been dreaming again, at first he thought it was his batman. Then he heard a voice calling, ‘’
Raus, ’raus!’
and became conscious of the scent. It was like the perfume they sprayed in cheap old-fashioned cinemas. He opened his eyes. A German soldier was bending over him, dragging him from the forgetfulness of sleep to the bleak reality of his cell. He sat up and pushed the hair back from his face. There were two soldiers, both armed with automatic pistols and carrying black imitation-leather briefcases.

Peter swung his legs over the side of the bed and looked at them. They were most unmilitary-looking soldiers. The one who had been shaking him was young and dark, with an unhappy full-lipped face. He wore a collar and tie with his
Luftwaffe
uniform, and the long dark hair under his forage cap was slightly waved. The silver chevrons on his sleeve gave him a theatrical, musical-comedy appearance, but the automatic pistol in his hand looked real enough.

‘You can put that thing away,’ Peter told him.

‘So long as we understand one another.’ The corporal spoke suprisingly good English. He straightened himself up and put the pistol back in its holster.

The older man, who was not an NCO, handed Peter his flying boots.

‘You must come now,’ the corporal said.

Peter pulled on the still damp flying boots and followed the two soldiers out into the corridor. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

The corporal grinned knowingly. ‘You will find out in good time. For you the war is over. You do not ask questions – you do not think any more. You do as you are told, no?’

‘No.’ Peter said flatly.

‘So? Then you will find life very difficult. You will find here the German discipline.’

‘I should like my Irvin jacket, please.’ He felt that in making the demand he was making one last bid for self-respect.

‘Your jacket?’

‘My sheepskin flying jacket. The policeman took it from me last night with the boots.’

‘I know nothing of such a jacket.’

‘Let me see the policeman.’

‘I have not come here to talk about flying jackets. I have come to take you away. Now we have wasted enough time. Come!’

‘I demand my flying jacket!’ He was suddenly overcome with fury, more annoyed about the possible loss of the jacket than he had been about tearing his trousers on the barbed wire. Normally an even-tempered man, he was perturbed by these sudden irrational fits of rage. He managed to control his voice. ‘It is military equipment and you have no right to take it.’

‘I have not taken the jacket.’

‘Then I demand to see the policeman.’

‘You are a prisoner. You cannot demand any longer.’

The corporal was getting excited, shouting and waving his arms in emphasis.

Peter raised his voice in reply. ‘I am an officer and I demand to see an officer of my own rank before I leave this building.’ It sounded silly to him as he said it, but its effect on the corporal was surprising. He turned abruptly and led the way back into the cell.

‘Wait here, please. I will bring the police officer.’ Peter and the other soldier stood in the cell and listened to the footsteps of the corporal receding down the corridor. The soldier looked at Peter and smiled in conciliation. Peter scowled.

The police officer, when he came, was indignant. He was a big man with closely-cropped dark hair and a heavy-jowled coarse, unshaven face. There was a mark round his head where the cap had been, and his small pig-like eyes were shot with red. There had been no such jacket, he said. The prisoner had been captured as he was standing now. If there had been such a jacket it would naturally have been returned to the prisoner. Peter saw that it was hopeless. Choking with rage, he was marched down the corridor and out into the cold early morning air.

They walked to the railway station in silence, and found that the train would not arrive for another hour. Leaving the older man to guard the prisoner, the corporal went to the waiting room and turned everyone out on to the platform, shouting at them as though they were half-witted recruits on the barrack square. As the passengers filed out, Peter could see anger and hatred for the invader written on their faces. Some of them smiled when they recognized his uniform, and several raised their fingers in the victory sign. The corporal must have noticed this, but he said nothing. He motioned Peter into the waiting room and stood inside with his back against the door. ‘The flying jacket will probably go to the troops on the East Front.’

‘Then you know I had a jacket?’

‘You say so.’ He had adopted the tone of an unintelligent mother humouring a wayward child.

Peter did not reply.

‘Listen,’ the corporal said. ‘We have to travel all day together. Why cannot we be friendly and talk to one another? I would like to practise my English.’

‘In case we win the war?’

‘Ach,
you will not win the war. The
Führer
cannot afford to lose the war.’

‘It isn’t entirely up to the
Führer,’
Peter said.

‘You should not have fought against us in the first place,’ the corporal told him. ‘The
Führer
has said many times that we had no quarrel with England.’

Peter did not reply.

‘We are only doing now what England has done in the past.’

‘It’s no use talking about it,’ Peter said. He remembered Pop Dawson and his security lectures. They will try to get you into conversation, he had said. The only way to avoid giving information is to refuse to talk. The corporal seemed a bit phoney, anyway, his English was too good.

The other soldier came in with three cups of soup. He was rather like the old policeman in that he seemed too tired for this war; too tired and not caring enough what it was all about. He put the soup on the table, smiled nervously, and relapsed into a sort of coma.

The corporal took three slices of black bread from his briefcase and gave one to Peter. ‘You have not much bread in England,’ he said.

‘We have plenty of bread,’ Peter told him.

‘Ach,
for the rich.’

‘For everyone.’

‘Ach,
that is what you say.’ He smiled his disbelief, and bit hungrily at the bread.

When the train steamed in the corporal turned all the passengers out of the nearest compartment and shut the door leading on to the corridor. He made the other soldier sit next to the window while he sat in the corner next to the corridor. Peter sat between them. The corporal unbuttoned the flap of his holster and loosened the automatic pistol. ‘If you attempt to escape I shall shoot,’ he said.

It took them all day to get to Cologne; a day in which the wooden seats became harder, and the air in the compartment more foul. At one stage Peter made signs for the older man to open the window and let in some fresh air but the corporal, obviously fearing an escape attempt, forbade him to do so. On most stations there was a Red Cross buffet dispensing free soup, and while the older soldier went foraging the corporal growing more and more short-tempered, guarded the prisoner and prevented other passengers from entering the compartment. There was no heating in the carriage, and Peter sat and brooded over the loss of his flying jacket.

He had got the jacket without having it marked on his clothing card, and had he survived the war it would have been his own. It was on a hot summer night, he remembered, and they had been bombing Duisburg. They had been hit over the target, and on coming in to land the flaps had stuck and they had overshot and crashed into the hedge at the far end of the runway. The aircraft had gone up in a sheet of flame, but all the crew had been saved; and next morning they had indented for new flying jackets, saying that theirs had been burned in the aircraft. The wing commander had had them in the office, all seven of them, the pile of forms in front of him on the desk.

‘You each lost an Irvin jacket last night?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Are you sure of this?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I was flying last night.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘In my shirtsleeves.’

There had been a short silence, then Mac, the rear-gunner: ‘We took them in case it turned cold, sir. They were all piled up at the back of the aircraft.’

Then the wing commander: ‘Well, I don’t believe you.’ But he had signed the forms and they had each drawn another flying jacket. Now the ones they had left behind would be returned to the stores, while those they had been wearing would go to the Russian front.

At midday the soldiers opened their briefcases, and took out bread and sausage which they shared equally with their prisoner. They drank hot
ersatz
coffee from vacuum flask water-bottles and smoked foul, loosely packed cigarettes.

Several times the corporal attempted to engage Peter in conversation, but his non-committal and conclusive replies dropped each topic stillborn into the moist and smoke-filled atmosphere.

He sat, hunched up against the cold, on the wooden seat and wondered about the rest of his crew. Had they been captured or were they even now hiding up under hedges and waiting for darkness to fall? None of them spoke German; but Kim, the Canadian wireless operator, spoke French. Wally was in German hands, he knew that, but what about the others …

They had shared a car, the old Aston Martin without a silencer which had so often made the night hideous between Cambridge and the aerodrome. She had run on hundred-octane aviation spirit and, maintained by the aircraft’s ground crew, had ‘gone like a bomb.’ What would happen to her now? He would write as soon as he could to his young brother Roy, telling him that he could have her. He felt sure that the rest of the crew would agree – that is, if none of them got back, of course. If one of them got back the car would belong to him. He imagined himself driving her again, the slim wheel in his hands and the crew piled in on top of him, the exhaust blaring defiance at the police as they roared into Cambridge …

He must get out of this. The thought of spending the rest of the war behind barbed wire filled him with a sudden panic. If only he had made more of his chances while he was still free … He checked himself and tried to think constructively. The corporal had told him that they would change trains at Cologne and then travel eastward to Frankfurt-on-Main. He would try to give them the slip during the change of trains. In the meantime he must try and sleep and let them think that he had given up all hope of escape.

But he could not sleep and sat with his eyes closed trying to imagine what the station would be like and how he would make his getaway. He thought of Waterloo and Victoria stations with their many entrances and exits, and dreamed fantastic chases through subways with the guards unable to shoot because of the crowds. He imagined himself out in the busy streets, dodging through the traffic and burying himself down narrow alleys between tall houses. It was a fine dream while it lasted but in the end he found himself still in the stuffy carriage with the corporal watching him and the soldier snoring in the opposite seat.

He thought again of the squadron, of the soft murmuring evenings in late summer when his crew were grounded, and the clak-clank of the reaper in the cornfields was stronger than the faint hum of aircraft in the sky; of nights when he, not flying, sat in the control tower waiting for the returning squadron. Waiting until
S for Sugar,
his brother’s aircraft, had been signalled in, and then going to bed because he did not wish his brother to know that he had waited up. There were ten years between them. They had gone to the same school, but in different generations; he, already moustached, leaving as his brother entered. Then, years later, when he was a flight lieutenant Roy had come, as a sergeant, to the same airfield. The wing commander had told him the day before he was shot down that Roy had been recommended for a commission and would soon join him in the mess.

He thought of the fear at take-off, and how relieved he had been when flying was cancelled for the day; of how the fear of seeming afraid was greater than the fear itself.

Bob had packed it in. Perhaps his fear of death was greater than his fear of being thought afraid. Perhaps he was, in fact, braver than any of them. Peter had met him when they had first joined the RAF, on the first day. They were all lined up in front of a corporal, most of them dressed in old flannel trousers and tweed jackets. War was going to be an adventure for them – a release from civilian responsibility – and they had dressed up as though they were going on holiday. But Bob wasn’t dressed like that. He was wearing a neat blue business suit and his collar was starched. He carried his spare kit and shaving tackle in a leather briefcase as though he had just left the office, having put everything in order, with all the loose ends nicely tied up and ready for someone else to take over; which was exactly what he had done.