Winter of the World (Century Trilogy 2)

18

1944

Woody stood in front of the mirror in his bedroom at his parents’ Washington apartment. He was wearing the uniform of a second lieutenant in the 510th Parachute Regiment of the United States Army.

He had had the suit made by a good Washington tailor, but it did not look well on him. Khaki made his complexion sallow, and the badges and flashes on the tunic jacket just seemed untidy.

He could probably have avoided the draft, but he had decided not to. Part of him wanted to continue to work with his father, who was helping President Roosevelt plan a new global order that would avoid any more world wars. They had won a triumph in Moscow, but Stalin was inconstant, and seemed to relish creating difficulties. At the Tehran conference in December, the Soviet leader had revived the halfway-house idea of regional councils, and Roosevelt had had to talk him out of it. Clearly the United Nations organization was going to require tireless vigilance.

But Gus could do that without Woody. And Woody was feeling worse and worse about letting other men fight the war for him.

He was looking as good as he ever would in the uniform, so he went into the drawing room to show his mother.

Rosa had a visitor, a young man in navy whites, and after a moment Woody recognized the freckled good looks of Eddie Parry. He was sitting on the couch with Rosa, holding a walking stick. He got to his feet with difficulty to shake Woody’s hand.

Mama had a sad face. She said: ‘Eddie was telling me about the day Chuck died.’

Eddie sat down again, and Woody sat opposite. ‘I’d like to hear about that,’ Woody said.

‘It doesn’t take long to tell,’ Eddie began. ‘We were on the beach at Bougainville for about five seconds when a machine gun opened up from somewhere in the swamp. We ran for cover, but I got a couple of bullets in my knee. Chuck should have gone on to the tree line. That’s the drill – you leave the wounded to be picked up by the medics. Of course, Chuck disobeyed that rule. He stopped and came back for me.’

Eddie paused. There was a cup of coffee on the small table beside him, and he took a gulp.

‘He picked me up in his arms,’ he went on. ‘Darn fool. Made hisself a target. But I guess he wanted to get me back in the landing craft. Those boats have high sides, and they’re made of steel. We would have been safe, and I could have got medical attention right away on the ship. But he shouldn’t have done it. Soon as he stood upright, he got hit by a spray of bullets – legs, back and head. I think he must have died before he hit the sand. Anyway, by the time I was able to lift my head and look at him, he just wasn’t there any more.’

Woody saw that his mother was controlling herself with difficulty. He was afraid that if she cried, he would too.

‘I lay on that beach beside his body for an hour,’ Eddie said. ‘I held his hand all the time. Then they brought a stretcher for me. I didn’t want to go. I knew I’d never see him again.’ He buried his face in his hands. ‘I loved him so much,’ he said.

Rosa put her arm around his big shoulders and hugged him. He laid his head on her chest and sobbed like a child. She stroked his hair. ‘There, there,’ she said. ‘There, there.’

Woody realized that his mother knew what Chuck and Eddie were.

After a minute Eddie began to pull himself together. He looked at Woody. ‘You know what this is like,’ he said.

He was talking about the death of Joanne. ‘Yes, I do,’ Woody said. ‘It’s the worst thing in the world – but it hurts a little less every day.’

‘I sure hope so.’

‘Are you still in Hawaii?’

‘Yes. Chuck and I work in the enemy land unit. Used to work.’ He swallowed. ‘Chuck decided we needed to get a better feel for how our maps were used in action. That’s why we went to Bougainville with the marines.’

‘You must be doing a good job,’ Woody said. ‘We seem to be beating the Japs in the Pacific.’

‘Inch by inch,’ Eddie said. He glanced at Woody’s uniform. ‘Where are you stationed?’

‘I’ve been at Fort Benning, in Georgia, doing parachute training,’ Woody said. ‘Now I’m on my way to London. I leave tomorrow.’

He caught his mother’s eye. Suddenly she looked older. He realized her face was lined. Her fiftieth birthday had passed with no big fuss. However, he guessed that talking about Chuck’s death while her other son stood there in army uniform had struck her a hard blow.

Eddie did not pick that up. ‘People say we’ll invade France this year,’ he said.

‘I assume that’s why my training was accelerated,’ Woody said.

‘You should see some action.’

Rosa muffled a sob.

Woody said: ‘I hope I’ll be as brave as my brother.’

Eddie said: ‘I hope you never find out.’

(ii)

Greg Peshkov took dark-eyed Margaret Cowdry to an afternoon symphony concert. Margaret had a wide, generous mouth that loved kissing. But Greg had something else on his mind

He was following Barney McHugh.

So was an FBI agent called Bill Bicks.

Barney McHugh was a brilliant young physicist. He was on leave from the US Army’s secret laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and had brought his British wife to Washington to see the sights.

The FBI had found out in advance that McHugh was coming to the concert, and Special Agent Bicks had managed to get Greg two seats a few rows behind McHugh’s. A concert hall, with hundreds of strangers crowding together to come in and go out, was the perfect location for a clandestine rendezvous, and Greg wanted to know what McHugh might be up to.

It was a pity they had met before. Greg had talked to McHugh in Chicago on the day the nuclear pile was tested. It had been a year and a half ago, but McHugh might remember. So Greg had to make sure McHugh did not see him.

When Greg and Margaret arrived, McHugh’s seats were empty. Either side were two ordinary-looking couples, a middle-aged man in a cheap grey chalk-stripe suit and his dowdy wife on the left, and two elderly ladies on the right. Greg hoped McHugh was going to show up. If the guy was a spy Greg wanted to nail him.

They were going to hear Tchaikovsky’s first symphony. ‘So, you like classical music,’ said Margaret chattily as the orchestra tuned up. She had no idea of the real reason she had been brought here. She knew that Greg was working in weapons research, which was secret, but like almost all Americans she had no inkling of the nuclear bomb. ‘I thought you only listened to jazz,’ she said.

‘I love Russian composers – they’re so dramatic,’ Greg told her. ‘I expect it’s in my blood.’

‘I was raised listening to classical. My father likes to have a small orchestra at dinner parties.’ Margaret’s family were rich enough to make Greg feel a pauper by comparison. But he still had not met her parents, and he suspected they would disapprove of the illegitimate son of a famous Hollywood womanizer. ‘What are you looking at?’ she said.

‘Nothing.’ The McHughs had arrived. ‘What’s your perfume?’

‘Chichi by Renoir.’

‘I love it.’

The McHughs looked happy, a bright and prosperous young couple on holiday. Greg wondered if they were late because they had been making love in their hotel room.

Barney McHugh sat next to the man in the grey chalk stripe. Greg knew it was a cheap suit by the unnatural stiffness of the padded shoulders. The man did not look at the newcomers. The McHughs started to do a crossword, their heads leaning together intimately as they studied the newspaper Barney was holding. A few minutes later the conductor appeared.

The opening piece was by Saint-Saëns. German and Austrian composers had declined in popularity since war broke out, and concertgoers were discovering alternatives. There was a revival of Sibelius.

McHugh was probably a Communist. Greg knew this because J. Robert Oppenheimer had told him. Oppenheimer, a leading theoretical physicist from the University of California, was director of the Los Alamos laboratory and scientific leader of the entire Manhattan Project. He had strong Communist ties, though he insisted he had never joined the party.

Special Agent Bicks had said to Greg: ‘Why does the army have to have all these pinkos? Whatever it is you’re trying to achieve out there in the desert, aren’t there enough bright young conservative scientists in America to do it?’

‘No, there aren’t,’ Greg had told him. ‘If there were, we would have hired them.’

Communists were sometimes more loyal to their cause than to their country, and might think it right to share the secrets of nuclear research with the Soviet Union. This would not be like giving information to the enemy. The Soviets were America’s allies against the Nazis – in fact, they had done more of the fighting than all the other allies put together. All the same it was dangerous. Information intended for Moscow might find its way to Berlin. And anyone who thought about the postwar world for more than a minute could guess that the USA and the USSR might not always be friends.

The FBI thought Oppenheimer was a security risk and kept trying to persuade Greg’s boss, General Groves, to fire him. But Oppenheimer was the outstanding scientist of his generation, so the General insisted on keeping him.

In an attempt to prove his loyalty, Oppenheimer had named McHugh as a possible Communist, and that was why Greg was tailing him.

The FBI were sceptical. ‘Oppenheimer is blowing smoke up your ass,’ Bicks had said.

Greg said: ‘I can’t believe it. I’ve known him for a year now.’

‘He’s a fucking Communist, like his wife and his brother and his sister-in-law.’

‘He’s working nineteen hours a day to build better weapons for American soldiers – what kind of traitor does that?’

Greg hoped McHugh did turn out to be a spy, for that would lift suspicion from Oppenheimer, bolster General Groves’s credibility, and boost Greg’s own status too.

He watched McHugh constantly throughout the first half of the concert, not wanting to take his eyes off him. The physicist did not look at the people either side of him. He seemed absorbed in the music, and only moved his gaze from the stage to look lovingly at Mrs McHugh, who was a pale English rose. Had Oppenheimer simply been wrong about McHugh? Or, more subtly, was Oppenheimer’s accusation a distraction to divert suspicion away from himself?

Bicks was watching, too, Greg knew. He was upstairs in the dress circle. Perhaps he had seen something.

In the interval, Greg followed the McHughs out and stood in the same line for coffee. Neither the dowdy couple nor the two old ladies were anywhere nearby.

Greg felt thwarted. He did not know what to conclude. Were his suspicions unfounded? Or was it simply that this visit by the McHughs was innocent?

As he and Margaret were returning to their seats, Bill Bicks came up beside him. The agent was middle-aged, a little overweight, and losing his hair. He wore a light-grey suit that had sweat stains under the armpits. He said in a low voice: ‘You were right.’

‘How do you know?’

‘That guy sitting next to McHugh.’

‘In a grey striped suit?’

‘Yeah. He’s Nikolai Yenkov, a cultural attaché at the Soviet Embassy.’

Greg said: ‘Good God!’

Margaret turned around. ‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ Greg said.

Bicks moved away.

‘You’ve got something on your mind,’ she said as they took their seats. ‘I don’t believe you heard a single bar of the Saint-Saëns.’

‘Just thinking about work.’

‘Tell me it’s not another woman, and I’ll forget it.’

‘It’s not another woman.’

In the second half he began to feel anxious. He had seen no contact between McHugh and Yenkov. They did not speak, and Greg saw nothing pass from one to the other: no file, no envelope, no roll of film.

The symphony came to an end and the conductor took his bows. The audience began to file out. Greg’s spy hunt was a washout.

In the lobby, Margaret went to the ladies’ room. While Greg was waiting, Bicks approached him.

‘Nothing,’ Greg said.

‘Me neither.’

‘Maybe it’s a coincidence, McHugh sitting by Yenkov.’

‘There are no coincidences.’

‘Perhaps there was a snag. A wrong code word, say.’

Bicks shook his head. ‘They passed something. We just didn’t see it.’

Mrs McHugh also went to the ladies’ room and, like Greg, McHugh waited nearby. Greg studied him from behind a pillar. He had no briefcase, no raincoat under which to conceal a package or a file. But all the same, something about him was wrong. What was it?

Then Greg realized. ‘The newspaper!’ he said.

‘What?’

‘When Barney came in he was carrying a newspaper. They did the crossword while waiting for the show. Now he doesn’t have it!’

‘Either he threw it away – or he passed it to Yenkov, with something concealed inside.’

‘Yenkov and his wife have left already.’

‘They may still be outside.’

Bicks and Greg ran for the door.

Bicks shoved his way through the crowd still filing out of the exits. Greg stayed close behind. They reached the sidewalk outside and looked both ways. Greg could not see Yenkov, but Bicks had sharp eyes. ‘Across the street!’ he cried.

The attaché and his dowdy wife were standing at the kerb, and a black limousine was approaching them slowly.

Yenkov was holding a folded newspaper.

Greg and Bicks ran across the road.

The limousine stopped.

Greg was faster than Bicks and reached the far sidewalk first.

Yenkov had not noticed them. Unhurriedly, he opened the car door then stepped back to let his wife get in.

Greg threw himself at Yenkov. They both fell to the ground. Mrs Yenkov screamed.

Greg scrambled to his feet. The chauffeur had got out of the car and was coming around it, but Bicks yelled: ‘FBI!’ and held up his badge.

Yenkov had dropped the newspaper. Now he reached for it. But Greg was faster. He picked it up, stepped back, and opened it.

Inside was a sheaf of papers. The top one was a diagram. Greg recognized it immediately. It showed the working of an implosion trigger for a plutonium bomb. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘This is the very latest stuff !’

Yenkov jumped into the car, slammed the door, and locked it from the inside.

The chauffeur got back in and drove away.

(iii)

It was Saturday night, and Daisy’s apartment in Piccadilly was heaving. There had to be a hundred people there, she thought, feeling pleased.

She had become the leader of a social group based on the American Red Cross in London. Every Saturday she gave a party for American servicemen, and invited nurses from St Bart’s hospital to meet them. RAF pilots came too. They drank her unlimited Scotch and gin, and danced to Glenn Miller records on her gramophone. Conscious that it might be the last party the men ever attended, she did everything she could to make them happy – except kiss them, but the nurses did plenty of that.

Daisy never drank liquor at her own parties. She had too much to think about. Couples were always locking themselves in the toilet, and having to be dragged out because the room was needed for its regular purpose. If a really important general got drunk he had to be seen safely home. She often ran out of ice – she could not make her British staff understand how much ice a party needed.

For a while after she split up with Boy Fitzherbert her only friends had been the Leckwith family. Lloyd’s mother, Ethel, had never judged her. Although Ethel was the height of respectability now, she had made mistakes in her past, and that made her more understanding. Daisy still went to Ethel’s house in Aldgate every Wednesday evening, and drank cocoa around the radio. It was her favourite night of the week.

She had now been socially rejected twice, once in Buffalo and again in London, and the depressing thought occurred to her that it might be her fault. Perhaps she did not really belong in those prissy high-society groups, with their strict rules of conduct. She was a fool to be attracted to them.

The trouble was that she loved parties and picnics and sporting events and any gathering where people dressed up and had fun.

However, she now knew she did not need British aristocrats or old-money Americans to have fun. She had created her own society, and it was a lot more exciting than theirs. Some of the people who had refused to speak to her after she left Boy now hinted heavily that they would like an invitation to one of her famous Saturday nights. And many guests came to her apartment to let their hair down after an excruciatingly grand dinner in a palatial Mayfair residence.

Tonight was the best party so far, for Lloyd was home on leave.

He was openly living with her at the flat. She did not care what people thought: her reputation in respectable circles was already so bad that no further damage could be done. Anyway, the urgency of wartime love had driven many people to break the rules in similar ways. Domestic staff could sometimes be as rigid as duchesses about such things, but all Daisy’s employees adored her, so she and Lloyd did not even pretend to be occupying separate bedrooms.

She loved sleeping with him. He was not as experienced as Boy, but he made up for that in enthusiasm – and he was eager to learn. Every night was a voyage of exploration in a double bed.

As they looked at their guests talking and laughing, drinking and smoking, dancing and smooching, Lloyd smiled at her and said: ‘Happy?’

‘Almost,’ she said.

‘Almost?’

She sighed. ‘I want to have children, Lloyd. I don’t care that we’re not married. Well, I do care, of course, but I still want a baby.’

His face darkened. ‘You know how I feel about illegitimacy.’

‘Yes, you explained it to me. But I want some part of you to cherish if you die.’

‘I’ll do my best to stay alive.’

‘I know.’ But if her suspicion was correct, and he was working undercover in occupied territory, he could be executed, as German spies were executed in Britain. He would be gone, and she would have nothing left. ‘It’s the same for a million women, I realize that, but I can’t face the thought of life without you. I think I’ll die.’

‘If I could make Boy divorce you I would.’

‘Well, this is no kind of talk for a party.’ She looked across the room. ‘What do you know? I believe that’s Woody Dewar!’

Woody was wearing a lieutenant’s uniform. She went over and greeted him. It was strange to see him again after nine years – though he did not look much different, just older.

‘There are thousands of American soldiers here now,’ Daisy said as they foxtrotted to ‘Pennsylvania Six-Five Thousand’. ‘We must be about to invade France. What else?’

‘The top brass certainly don’t share their plans with greenhorn lieutenants,’ Woody said. ‘But like you I can’t think of any other reason why I’m here. We can’t leave the Russians to bear the brunt of the fighting much longer.’

‘When do you think it will happen?’

‘Offensives always begin in the summer. Late May or early June is everyone’s best guess.’

‘That soon!’

‘But no one knows where.’

‘Dover to Calais is the shortest sea crossing,’ Daisy said.

‘And for that reason the German defences are concentrated around Calais. So maybe we’ll try to surprise them – say by landing on the south coast, near Marseilles.’

‘Perhaps then it will be over at last.’

‘I doubt it. Once we have a bridgehead, we still have to conquer France, then Germany. There’s a long road ahead.’

‘Oh, dear.’ Woody seemed to need cheering up. And Daisy knew just the girl to do it. Isabel Hernandez was a Rhodes Scholar doing a Master’s in history at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She was gorgeous, but the boys called her a ball-buster because she was so fiercely intellectual. However, Woody would be oblivious to that. ‘Come over here,’ she called to Isabel. ‘Woody, this is my friend Bella. She’s from San Francisco. Bella, meet Woody Dewar from Buffalo.’

They shook hands. Bella was tall, with thick dark hair and olive skin just like Joanne Rouzrokh’s. Woody smiled at her and said: ‘What are you doing here in London?’ Daisy left them.

She served supper at midnight. When she could get American supplies it was ham and eggs; otherwise, cheese sandwiches. It provided a lull when people could talk, a bit like the interval at the theatre. She noticed that Woody Dewar was still with Bella Hernandez, and they seemed to be deep in conversation. She made sure everyone had what they needed then sat in a corner with Lloyd.

‘I’ve decided what I’d like to do after the war, if I’m still alive,’ he said. ‘As well as marry you, that is.’

‘What?’

‘I’m going to try for Parliament.’

Daisy was thrilled. ‘Lloyd, that’s wonderful!’ She put her arms around his neck and kissed him.

‘It’s too early for congratulations. I’ve put my name down for Hoxton, the constituency next to Mam’s. But the local Labour party may not pick me. And if they do I may not win. Hoxton has a strong Liberal MP at the moment.’

‘I want to help you,’ she said. ‘I could be your right-hand woman. I’ll write your speeches – I bet I’d be good at that.’

‘I’d love you to help me.’

‘Then it’s settled!’

The older guests left after supper, but the music continued and the drink never ran out, so the party became even more uninhibited. Woody was now slow-dancing with Bella: Daisy wondered if this was his first romance since Joanne.

The petting got heavier, and people began disappearing into the two bedrooms. They could not lock the doors – Daisy had taken the keys out – so there were sometimes several couples in the same room, but no one seemed to mind. Daisy had once found two people in the broom cupboard, fast asleep in each other’s arms.

At one o’clock her husband arrived.

She had not invited Boy, but he showed up in the company of a couple of American pilots, and Daisy shrugged and let him in. He was amiably squiffy, and danced with several nurses, then politely asked her.

Was he just drunk, she wondered, or had he softened towards her? And if so, might he reconsider the divorce?

She consented, and they did the jitterbug. Most of the guests had no idea they were a separated husband and wife, but those who knew were amazed.

‘I read in the papers that you bought another racehorse,’ she said, making small talk.

‘Lucky Laddie,’ he said. ‘Cost me eight thousand guineas – a record price.’

‘I hope he’s worth it.’ She loved horses, and she had thought they would buy and train racehorses together, but he had not wanted to share that enthusiasm with his wife. It had been one of the frustrations of her marriage.

He read her mind. ‘I disappointed you, didn’t I?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘And you disappointed me.’

That was a new thought to her. After a minute’s reflection she said: ‘By not turning a blind eye to your infidelities?’

‘Exactly.’ He was drunk enough to be honest.

She saw her opportunity. ‘How long do you think we should punish one another?’

‘Punish?’ he said. ‘Who’s punishing anyone?’

‘We’re punishing each other by staying married. We should get divorced, as sensible people do.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said. ‘But this time on a Saturday night is not the best moment to discuss it.’

Her hopes rose. ‘Why don’t I come and see you?’ she said. ‘When we’re both fresh – and sober.’

He hesitated. ‘All right.’

She pressed her advantage eagerly. ‘How about tomorrow morning?’

‘All right.’

‘I’ll see you after church. Say twelve noon?’

‘All right,’ said Boy.

(iv)

As Woody was walking Bella home through Hyde Park, to a friend’s flat in South Kensington, she kissed him.

He had not done this since Joanne died. At first he froze. He liked Bella a lot: she was the smartest girl he had met since Joanne. And the way she had clung to him while they were slow-dancing had let him know he could kiss her if he wanted to. All the same he had been holding back. He kept thinking about Joanne.

Then Bella took the initiative.

She opened her mouth and he tasted her tongue, but that only made him think of Joanne kissing him that way. It was only two and a half years since she had died.

His brain was forming words of polite rejection when his body took over. He was suddenly consumed with desire. He began to kiss her back hungrily.

She responded eagerly to his excess of passion. She took both his hands and put them on her breasts, which were large and soft. He groaned helplessly.

It was dark and he could hardly see but he realized, by the half-smothered sounds coming from the surrounding vegetation, that there were numerous couples doing similar things nearby.

She pressed her body against his, and he knew she could feel his erection. He was so excited he felt he would ejaculate any second. She seemed as madly aroused as he was. He felt her unbuttoning his pants with frantic fingers. Her hands were cool on his hot penis. She eased it out of his clothing, then, to his surprise and delight, she knelt down. As soon as her lips closed over the head, he spurted uncontrollably into her mouth. She sucked and licked feverishly as he did so.

When the climax was over she continued to kiss it until it softened. Then she gently put it away and stood up.

‘That was exciting,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you.’

He had been about to thank her. Instead, he put his arms around her and pulled her close. He felt so grateful to her that he could have wept. He had not realized how badly he needed a woman’s affection tonight. Some kind of shadow had been lifted from him. ‘I can’t tell you . . .’ he began, but he could not find words to explain how much it meant to him.

‘Then don’t,’ she said. ‘I know, anyway. I could feel it.’ They walked to her building. At the door he said: ‘Can we—’ She put a finger on his lips to silence him. ‘Go and win the war,’ she said.

Then she went inside.

(v)

When Daisy went to a Sunday service, which was not often, she now avoided the elite churches of the West End, whose congregations had snubbed her, and instead caught the Tube to Aldgate and attended the Calvary Gospel Hall. The doctrinal differences were wide, but they did not matter to her. The singing was better in the East End.

She and Lloyd arrived separately. People in Aldgate knew who she was, and they liked having a rogue aristocrat sitting on one of their cheap seats; but it would have been pushing their tolerance too far for a married-and-separated woman to walk in on the arm of her paramour. Ethel’s brother Billy had said: ‘Jesus did not condemn the adulteress, but he did tell her to sin no more.’

During the service she thought about Boy. Had he really meant last night’s conciliatory words, or were they just the softness of the drunken moment? Boy had even shaken hands with Lloyd as he left. Surely that meant forgiveness? But she told herself not to let her hopes rise. Boy was the most completely self-absorbed person she had ever known, worse than his father or her brother Greg.

After church Daisy often went to Eth Leckwith’s house for Sunday dinner, but today she left Lloyd to his family and hurried away.

She returned to the West End and knocked on the door of her husband’s house in Mayfair. The butler showed her into the morning room.

Boy came in shouting. ‘What the hell is this?’ he roared, and he threw a newspaper at her.

She had seen him in this mood plenty of times, and she was not afraid of him. Only once had he raised a hand to strike her. She had seized a heavy candlestick and threatened to bop him.’ It had not happened again.

Though not scared, she was disappointed. He had been in such a good mood last night. But perhaps he might still listen to reason.

‘What has happened to displease you?’ she said calmly.

‘Look at that bloody paper.’

She bent and picked it up. It was today’s edition of the Sunday Mirror, a popular left-wing tabloid. On the front page was a photograph of Boy’s new horse, Lucky Laddie, and the headline:

LUCKY LADDIE WORTH 28 COAL MINERS

The story of Boy’s record-breaking purchase had appeared in yesterday’s press, but today the Mirror had an outraged opinion piece, pointing out that the price of the horse, £8,400, was exactly twenty-eight times the £300 standard compensation paid to the widow of a miner who died in a pit accident.

And the Fitzherbert family wealth came from coal mines.

Boy said: ‘My father is furious. He was hoping to be Foreign Secretary in the postwar government. This has probably ruined his chances.’

Daisy said in exasperation: ‘Boy, kindly explain why this is my fault?’

‘Look who wrote the damned thing!’

Daisy looked.

BY BILLY WILLIAMS

MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT FOR ABEROWEN

Boy said: ‘Your boyfriend’s uncle!’

‘Do you imagine he consults me before writing his articles?’

He wagged a finger. ‘For some reason, that family hates us!’

‘They think it’s unfair that you should make so much money from coal, when the miners themselves get such a raw deal. There is a war on, you know.’

‘You live on inherited money,’ he said. ‘And I didn’t see much sign of wartime austerity at your Piccadilly apartment last night.’

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘But I gave a party for the troops. You spent a fortune on a horse.’

‘It’s my money!’

‘But you got it from coal.’

‘You’ve spent so much time in bed with that Williams bastard that you’ve become a bloody Bolshevik.’

‘And that’s one more thing that’s driving us apart. Boy, do you really want to stay married to me? You could find someone who suits you. Half the girls in London would love to be Viscountess Aberowen.’

‘I won’t do anything for that damned Williams family. Anyway, I heard last night that your boyfriend wants to be a Member of Parliament.’

‘He’ll make a great one.’

‘Not with you in tow. He won’t even get elected. He’s a bloody socialist. You’re an ex-Fascist.’

‘I’ve thought about this. I know it’s a bit of a problem—’

‘Problem? It’s an insuperable barrier. Wait till the papers get that story! You’ll be crucified the way I’ve been today.’

‘I suppose you’ll give the story to the Daily Mail.’

‘I won’t need to – his opponents will do that. You mark my words. With you by his side, Lloyd Williams doesn’t stand a bloody chance.’

(vi)

For the first five days of June, Lieutenant Woody Dewar and his platoon of paratroopers, plus a thousand or so others, were isolated at an airfield somewhere north-west of London. An aircraft hangar had been converted into a giant dormitory with hundreds of cots in long rows. There were movies and jazz records to entertain them while they waited.

Their objective was Normandy. By means of elaborate deception plans, the Allies had tried to convince the German High Command that the target would be two hundred miles north-east at Calais. If the Germans had been fooled, the invasion force would meet relatively light resistance, at least for the first few hours.

The paratroopers were to be the first wave, in the middle of the night. The second wave would be the main force of 130,000 men, aboard a fleet of five thousand vessels, landing on the beaches of Normandy at dawn. By then, the paratroopers should have already destroyed inland strongpoints and taken control of key transport links.

Woody’s platoon had to capture a bridge across a river in a small town called Eglise-des-Soeurs, ten miles inland. When they had done so, they had to keep control of the bridge, blocking any German units that might be sent to reinforce the beach, until the main invasion force caught up with them. At all costs they must prevent the Germans from blowing up the bridge.

While they waited for the green light, Ace Webber ran a marathon poker game, winning a thousand dollars and losing it again. Lefty Cameron obsessively cleaned and oiled his lightweight M1 semiautomatic carbine, the paratrooper model with a folding stock. Lonnie Callaghan and Tony Bonanio, who did not like one another, went to mass together every day. Sneaky Pete Schneider sharpened the commando knife he had bought in London until he could have shaved with it. Patrick Timothy, who looked like Clark Gable and had a similar moustache, played a ukulele, the same tune over and over again, driving everybody crazy. Sergeant Defoe wrote long letters to his wife, then tore them up and started again. Mack Trulove and Smoking Joe Morgan cropped and shaved each other’s hair, believing that would make it easier for the medics to deal with head injuries.

Most of them had nicknames. Woody had discovered that his own was Scotch.

D-Day was set for Sunday 4 June, then postponed because of bad weather.

On Monday 5 June, in the evening, the colonel made a speech. ‘Men!’ he shouted. ‘Tonight is the night we invade France!’

They roared their approval. Woody thought it was ironic. They were safe and warm here, but they could hardly wait to get over there, jump out of airplanes, and land in the arms of enemy troops who wanted to kill them.

They were given a special meal, all they could eat, steak, pork, chicken, fries, ice cream. Woody did not want any. He had more idea than the men of what was ahead of him, and he did not want to do it on a full stomach. He got coffee and a donut. The coffee was American, fragrant and delicious, unlike the frightful brew served up by the British, when they had any coffee at all.

He took off his boots and lay down on his cot. He thought about Bella Hernandez, her lopsided smile and her soft breasts.

Next thing he knew, a hooter was sounding.

For a moment, Woody thought he was waking from a bad dream in which he was going into battle to kill people. Then he realized it was true.

They all put on their jump suits and assembled their equipment. They had too much. Some of it was essential: a carbine with 150 rounds of .30 ammunition; anti-tank grenades; a small bomb known as a Gammon grenade; K-rations; water purifying tablets; a first-aid kit with morphine. Other things they might have done without: an entrenching tool, shaving kit, a French phrase book. They were so overloaded that the smaller men struggled to walk to the planes lined up on the runway in the dark.

Their transport aircraft were C-47 Skytrains. To Woody’s surprise, he saw by the dim lights that they had all been painted with distinctive black and white stripes. The pilot of his aircraft, a bad-tempered Midwesterner called Captain Bonner, said: ‘That’s to prevent us being shot down by our own goddamn side.’

Before boarding, the men were weighed. Donegan and Bonanio both had disassembled bazookas packed in bags that dangled from their legs, adding eighty pounds to their weight. As the total mounted, Captain Bonner became angry. ‘You’re overloading me!’ he snarled at Woody. ‘I won’t get this motherfucker off the ground!’

‘Not my decision, Captain,’ Woody said. ‘Talk to the colonel.’

Sergeant Defoe boarded first and went to the front of the plane, taking a seat beside the open arch leading to the flight deck. He would be the last to jump. Any man who developed a last-minute reluctance to leap into the night would be helped along with a good shove from Defoe.

Donegan and Bonanio, carrying the leg bags holding their bazookas as well as everything else, had to be helped up the steps. Woody as platoon commander boarded last. He would be first out, and first on the ground.

The interior was a tube with a row of simple metal seats on either side. The men had trouble fastening seat belts around their equipment, and some did not bother. The door closed and the engines roared into life.

Woody felt excited as well as scared. Against all reason, he felt eager for the battle to come. To his surprise he found himself impatient to get down on the ground, meet the enemy, and fire his weapons. He wanted the waiting to be over.

He wondered if he would ever see Bella Hernandez again.

He thought he could feel the plane straining as it lumbered down the runway. Painfully, it picked up speed. It seemed to rumble along on the ground for ever. Woody found himself wondering how long the damn runway was anyhow. Then at last it lifted. There was little sensation of flying, and he thought the plane must be remaining just a few feet above the ground. Then he looked out. He was sitting by the rearmost of the seven windows, next to the door, and he could see the shrouded lights of the base dropping away. They were airborne.

The sky was overcast, but the clouds were faintly luminous, presumably because the moon had risen beyond them. There was a blue light at the tip of each wing, and Woody could see as his plane moved into formation with others, forming a giant V shape.

The cabin was so noisy that men had to shout into one another’s ears to be heard, and conversation soon ceased. They all shifted in their hard seats, trying in vain to get comfortable. Some closed their eyes, but Woody doubted that anyone actually slept.

They were flying low, not much above a thousand feet, and occasionally Woody saw the dull pewter gleam of rivers and lakes. At one point he glimpsed a crowd of people, hundreds of faces all staring up at the planes roaring overhead. Woody knew that more than a thousand aircraft were flying over southern England at the same time, and he realized it must be a remarkable sight. It occurred to him that those people were watching history being made, and he was part of it.

After half an hour they crossed the English beach resorts and were over the sea. For a moment the moon shone through a break in the cloud, and Woody saw the ships. He could hardly believe what he was looking at. It was a floating town, vessels of all sizes sailing in ragged rows like assorted houses in city streets, thousands of them, as far as the eye could see. Before he could call the attention of his comrades to the remarkable sight, the clouds covered the moon again and the vision was gone, like a dream.

The planes headed right in a long curve, aiming to hit France to the west of the drop area and then follow the coastline eastwards, checking position by terrain features to ensure the paratroopers landed where they should.

The Channel Islands, British though closer to France, had been occupied by Germany at the end of the Battle of France in 1940; and now, as the armada overflew the islands, German anti-aircraft guns opened fire. At such a low altitude the Skytrains were terribly vulnerable. Woody realized he could be killed even before he reached the battlefield. He would hate to die pointlessly.

Captain Bonner zigzagged to avoid the flak. Woody was glad he did, but the effect on the men was unfortunate. They all felt airsick, Woody included. Patrick Timothy was the first to succumb, and vomited on the floor. The foul smell made others feel worse. Sneaky Pete threw up next, then several men all at once. They had stuffed themselves with steak and ice cream, all of which now came back up. The stink was appalling and the floor became disgustingly slippery.

The flight path straightened as they left the islands behind. A few minutes later the French coast appeared. The plane banked and turned left. The co-pilot got up from his seat and spoke in the ear of Sergeant Defoe, who turned to the platoon and held up ten fingers. Ten minutes to drop.

The plane slowed from its cruising speed of 160mph to the approximate speed for a parachute jump, about 100mph.

Suddenly they entered fog. It was heavy enough to blot out the blue light at the tip of the wing. Woody’s heart raced. For planes flying in close formation this was very dangerous. How tragic it would be to die in a plane crash, not even in combat. But Bonner could do nothing but fly straight and level and hope for the best. Any change of direction would cause a collision.

The plane left the fog bank as suddenly as it had entered it. To either side, the other planes were still miraculously in formation.

Almost immediately, anti-aircraft fire broke out, the flak exploding in deadly blossoms among the serried planes. In these circumstances, Woody knew, the pilot’s orders were to maintain speed and fly straight to the target zone. But Bonner defied orders and broke formation. The roar of the engines went to full throttle. He began to zigzag again. The nose of the plane dipped as he tried for more speed. Looking out of the window, Woody saw that many other pilots had been equally undisciplined. They could not control the urge to save their own lives.

The red light went on over the door: four minutes to go.

Woody felt certain the crew had put the light on too soon, desperate to dump their troops and fly to safety. But they had the charts and he could not argue.

He got to his feet. ‘Stand up and hook!’ he yelled. Most of the men could not hear him, but they knew what he was saying. They got up, and each man clipped his static line to the overhead cable, so that he could not be thrown through the door accidentally. The door opened, and the wind roared in. The plane was still going too fast. Jumping at this speed was unpleasant, but that was not the main problem. They would land farther apart, and it would take Woody much longer to find his men on the ground. His approach to his objective would be delayed. He would begin his mission behind schedule. He cursed Bonner.

The pilot continued to bank one way then the other, dodging flak. The men struggled to keep their footing on a floor that was slimy with vomit.

Woody looked out of the open door. Bonner had lost height while trying to gain speed, and the plane was now at about five hundred feet – too low. There might not be enough time for the parachutes to open fully before the men hit the ground. He hesitated, then beckoned his sergeant forward.

Defoe stood beside him and looked down, then shook his head. He put his mouth to Woody’s ear and shouted: ‘Half our men will break their ankles if we jump at this height. The bazooka carriers will kill themselves.’

Woody made a decision.

‘Make sure no one jumps!’ he yelled at Defoe.

Then he unhooked his static line and went forward, pushing through the double row of standing men, to the flight deck. There were three crew. Yelling at the top of his voice, Woody said: ‘Climb! Climb!’

Bonner yelled: ‘Get back there and jump!’

‘No one is going to jump at this altitude!’ Woody leaned over and pointed at the altimeter, which showed 480 feet. ‘It’s suicide!’

‘Get off the flight deck, Lieutenant. That’s an order.’

Woody was outranked, but he stood his ground. ‘Not until you gain height.’

‘We’ll be past your target zone if you don’t jump now!’

Woody lost his temper. ‘Climb, you dumb fuck! Climb!’

Bonner looked furious, but Woody did not move. He knew the pilot would not want to return home with a full plane. He would face a military inquiry into what had gone wrong. Bonner had disobeyed too many orders tonight for that. With a curse, he jerked the control lever back. The nose went up immediately, and the aircraft began to gain height and lose speed.

‘Satisfied?’ Bonner snarled.

‘Hell, no.’ Woody was not going to go aft now and give Bonner the chance to reverse the manoeuvre. ‘We jump at a thousand feet.’

Bonner went to full throttle. Woody kept his eyes on the altimeter.

When it touched 1,000 he went aft. He pushed through his men, reached the door, looked out, gave the men the thumbs-up, and jumped.

His chute opened immediately. He dropped fast through the air while it spread its dome, then his fall was arrested. Seconds later he hit water. He suffered a split-second of panic, fearing that the cowardly Bonner had dropped them all in the sea. Then his feet touched solid ground, or at least soft mud, and he understood that he had come down in a flooded field.

The silk of the parachute fell around him. He struggled out of its folds and unfastened his harness.

Standing in two feet of water, he looked around. This was either a water meadow or, more likely, a field that had been flooded by the Germans to impede an invasion force. He saw no one, enemy or friend, and no animals either, but the light was poor.

He checked his watch – it was 3.40 a.m. – then looked at his compass and oriented himself.

Next he took his M1 carbine out of its case and unfolded the stock. He snapped a 15-round magazine into the slot, then worked the slide to chamber a round. Finally, he rotated the safety lever into the disengaged position.

He reached into a pocket and took out a small tin object like a child’s toy. When pressed, it made a distinctive clicking sound. It had been issued to everyone so that they could recognize each other in the dark without resorting to giveaway English passwords.

When he was ready, he looked around again.

Experimentally, he pressed the click twice. After a moment, an answering click came from directly ahead.

He splashed through the water. He smelled vomit. In a low voice he said: ‘Who’s there?’

‘Patrick Timothy.’

‘Lieutenant Dewar here. Follow me.’

Timothy had been second to jump, so Woody figured if he continued in the same direction he had a good chance of finding the others.

Fifty yards along he bumped into Mack and Smoking Joe, who had found one another.

They emerged from the water on to a narrow road, and found their first casualties. Lonnie and Tony, with their bazookas in leg bags, had both landed too hard. ‘I think Lonnie’s dead,’ said Tony. Woody checked: he was right. Lonnie was not breathing. He looked as if he had broken his neck. Tony himself could not move, and Woody thought the man’s leg was broken. He gave him a shot of morphine, then dragged him off the road into the next field. Tony would have to wait there for the medics.

Woody ordered Mack and Smoking Joe to hide Lonnie’s body, for fear it might lead the Germans to Tony.

He tried to see the landscape around him, straining to recognize something that corresponded to his map. The task seemed impossible, especially in the dark. How was he going to lead these men to the objective if he did not know where he was? The only thing of which he could be reasonably sure was that they had not landed where they were supposed to.

He heard a strange noise and, a moment later, he saw a light.

He motioned the others to duck down.

The paratroopers were not supposed to use flashlights, and French people were subject to a curfew, so the person approaching was probably a German soldier.

In the dim light Woody saw a bicycle.

He stood up and aimed his carbine. He thought of shooting the rider immediately, but could not bring himself to do it. Instead he shouted: ‘Halt! Arretez! ’

The cycle stopped. ‘Hello, Loot,’ said the rider, and Woody recognized the voice of Ace Webber.

Woody lowered his weapon. ‘Where did you get the bike?’ he said incredulously.

‘Outside a farmhouse,’ Ace said laconically.

Woody led the group the way Ace had come, figuring that the others were more likely to be in that direction than any other. He looked anxiously for terrain features to match his map, but it was too dark. He felt useless and stupid. He was the officer. He had to solve such problems.

He picked up more of his platoon on the road, then they came to a windmill. Woody decided he could not blunder around any longer, so he went to the mill house and hammered on the door.

An upstairs window opened, and a man said in French: ‘Who is it?’

‘The Americans,’ Woody said. ‘Vive la France!’

‘What do you want?’

‘To set you free,’ Woody said in schoolboy French. ‘But first I need some help with my map.’

The miller laughed and said: ‘I’m coming down.’

A minute later Woody was in the kitchen, spreading his silk map over the table under a bright light. The miller showed him where he was. It was not as bad as Woody had feared. Despite Captain Bonner’s panic, they were only four miles north-east of Eglise-des-Soeurs. The miller traced the best route on the map.

A girl of about thirteen crept into the room in a nightdress. ‘Maman says you’re American,’ she said to Woody.

‘That’s right, mademoiselle,’ he said.

‘Do you know Gladys Angelus?’

Woody laughed. ‘As it happens, I did meet her once, at the apartment of a friend’s father.’

‘Is she really, really beautiful?’

‘Even more beautiful than she looks in the movies.’

‘I knew it!’

The miller offered him wine. ‘No, thanks,’ said Woody. ‘Maybe after we’ve won.’ The miller kissed him on both cheeks.

Woody went back outside and led his platoon away, heading in the direction of Eglise-des-Soeurs. Including himself, nine of the original eighteen were now together. They had suffered two casualties, Lonnie dead and Tony wounded, and seven more had not yet appeared. His orders were not to spend too much time trying to find everyone. As soon as he had enough men to do the job, he was to proceed to the target.

One of the missing seven showed up right away. Sneaky Pete emerged from a ditch and joined the group with a casual ‘Hi, gang,’ as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

‘What were you doing in there?’ Woody asked him.

‘I thought you were German,’ Pete said. ‘I was hiding.’

Woody had seen the pale gleam of parachute silk in the ditch. Pete must have been hiding there since he landed. He had obviously panicked and curled up in a ball. But Woody pretended to accept his story.

The one Woody really wanted to find was Sergeant Defoe. He was an experienced soldier, and Woody had been planning to rely heavily on him. But he was nowhere to be seen.

They were approaching a crossroads when they heard noises. Woody identified the sound of an engine idling, and two or three voices in conversation. He ordered everyone down on their hands and knees, and the platoon advanced crawling.

Up ahead, he saw that a motorcycle rider had stopped to talk to two men on foot. All three were in uniform. They were speaking German. There was a building at the crossroads, perhaps a small tavern or a bakery.

He decided to wait. Perhaps they would leave. He wanted his group to move silently and unobserved for as long as possible.

After five minutes he ran out of patience. He turned around. ‘Patrick Timothy!’ he hissed.

Someone else said: ‘Pukey Pat! Scotch wants you.’

Timothy crawled forward. He still smelled of vomit, and now it had become his name.

Woody had seen Timothy play baseball, and knew he could throw hard and accurately. ‘Hit that motorcycle with a grenade,’ Woody said.

Timothy took a grenade from his pack, pulled the pin, and lobbed it.

There was a clang. One of the men said in German: ‘What was that?’ Then the grenade detonated.

There were two explosions. The first knocked all three Germans to the ground. The second was the motorcycle’s fuel tank blowing up, and it sent a starburst of flame that burned the men, leaving a stink of scorched flesh.

‘Stay where you are!’ Woody shouted to his platoon. He watched the building. Was there anyone inside? During the next five minutes, no one opened a window or a door. Either the place was empty, or the occupants were hiding under their beds.

Woody got to his feet and waved the platoon on. He felt strange as he stepped over the grisly bodies of the three Germans. He had ordered their deaths – men who had mothers and fathers, wives or girlfriends, perhaps sons and daughters. Now each man was an ugly mess of blood and burned flesh. Woody should have felt triumphant. It was his first encounter with the enemy, and he had vanquished them. But he just felt a bit sick.

Past the crossroads, he set a brisk pace, and ordered no talking or smoking. To keep up his strength he ate a bar of Dration chocolate, which was a bit like builder’s putty with sugar added.

After half an hour he heard a car and ordered everyone to hide in the fields. The vehicle was travelling fast with its headlights on. It was probably German, but the Allies were sending over jeeps by glider, along with anti-tank guns and other artillery, so it was just possible this was a friendly vehicle. He lay under a hedge and watched it go by.

It went too fast for him to identify it. He wondered whether he should have ordered the platoon to shoot it up. No, he thought, on balance they did better to focus on their mission.

They passed through three hamlets that Woody was able to identify on his map. Dogs barked occasionally but no one came to investigate. Doubtless the French had learned to mind their own business under enemy occupation. It was eerie, creeping along foreign roads in the dark, armed to the teeth, passing quiet houses where people slept unconscious of the deadly firepower outside their windows.

At last they came to the outskirts of Eglise-des-Soeurs. Woody ordered a short rest. They entered a little stand of trees and sat on the ground. They drank from their canteens and ate rations. Woody still would not permit smoking: the glow of a cigarette could be seen from surprisingly far.

The road they were on should lead straight to the bridge, he reckoned. There was no hard information about how the bridge was guarded. Since the Allies had decided it was important, he assumed the Germans thought the same, therefore some security was likely; but it might be anything from one man with a rifle to a whole platoon. Woody could not plan the assault until he saw the target.

After ten minutes he moved them on. The men did not have to be nagged about silence now: they sensed the danger. They trod quietly along the street, past houses and churches and shops, keeping to the sides, peering into the gloomy night, jumping at the least sound. A sudden loud cough from an open bedroom window almost caused Woody to fire his carbine.

Eglise-des-Soeurs was a large village rather than a small town, and Woody saw the silver glint of the river sooner than he expected. He raised a hand for them all to halt. The main street led gently downhill at a slight angle to the bridge, so he had a good view. The waterway was about a hundred feet wide, and the bridge had a single curved span. It must be an old structure, he guessed, because it was so narrow that two cars could not have passed.

The bad news was that there was a pillbox at each end, twin concrete domes with horizontal shooting slits. A pair of sentries patrolled the bridge between the pillboxes. They stood one at each end. The nearer one was speaking through a firing slit, presumably chatting to whomever was inside. Then they both walked to the middle, where they looked over the parapet at the black water flowing beneath. They did not appear very tense, so Woody deduced they had not yet learned that the invasion had begun. On the other hand, they were not slacking. They were awake and moving and looking about them with some degree of alertness.

Woody could not guess how many men were inside, nor how they were armed. Were there machine guns behind those slits, or just rifles? It would make a big difference.

Woody wished he had some experience of battle. How was he supposed to deal with this situation? He guessed there must be thousands of men like him, new junior officers who just had to make it up as they went along. If only Sergeant Defoe were here.

The easy way to neutralize a pillbox was to sneak up and put a grenade through one of the slits. A good man could probably crawl to the nearer one unobserved. But Woody needed to take out both at the same time – otherwise the attack on the first would forewarn the occupants of the second.

How could he reach the farther pillbox without being seen by the patrolling sentries?

He sensed his men getting restless. They did not like to think their leader might be unsure as to what to do next.

‘Sneaky Pete,’ he said. ‘You’ll crawl up to that nearest pillbox and put a grenade through the slit.’

Pete looked terrified, but he said: ‘Yes, sir.’

Next, Woody named the two best shots in the platoon. ‘Smoking Joe and Mack,’ he said. ‘Choose one each of the sentries. As soon as Pete deploys his grenade, take the sentries out.’

The two men nodded and hefted their weapons.

In the absence of Defoe, he decided to make Ace Webber his deputy. He named four others and said: ‘Go with Ace. As soon as the shooting starts, run like hell across the bridge and storm the pillbox on the other side. If you’re quick enough you’ll catch them napping.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Ace. ‘The bastards won’t know what’s hit them.’ His aggression was masking fear, Woody guessed.

‘Everyone not in Ace’s group, follow me into the near pillbox.’

Woody felt bad about giving Ace and those with him the more dangerous assignment, and himself the relative safety of the nearer pillbox; but it had been drummed into him that an officer must not risk his life unnecessarily, for then he might leave his men leaderless.

They walked towards the bridge, Pete in the lead. This was a dangerous moment. Ten men going along a street together could not remain unnoticed for long, even at night. Anyone looking carefully in their direction would sense movement.

If the alarm was raised too soon, Sneaky Pete might not get to the pillbox, and then the platoon would lose the advantage of surprise.

It was a long walk.

Pete reached a corner and stopped. Woody guessed he was waiting for the near sentry to leave his post outside the pillbox and walk to the middle.

The two sharpshooters found cover and settled in.

Woody dropped to one knee and signalled the others to do likewise. They all watched the sentry.

The man took a long pull on his cigarette, dropped it, trod on the end to put it out, and blew a long cloud of smoke. Then he eased himself upright, settled his rifle strap on his shoulder, and started walking.

The sentry on the far side did the same.

Pete ran the next block and came to the end of the street. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled rapidly across the road. He reached the pillbox and stood up.

No one had noticed. The two sentries were still approaching one another.

Pete took out a grenade and pulled the pin. Then he waited a few seconds. Woody guessed he did not want the men inside to have time to throw the grenade out again.

Pete reached around the curve of the dome and gently dropped the grenade inside.

Joe and Mack’s carbines barked. The nearer sentry fell, but the farther one was unhurt. To his credit he did not turn and run, but courageously went down on one knee and unslung his rifle. He was too slow, though: the carbines spoke again, almost simultaneously, and he fell without firing.

Then Pete’s grenade exploded inside the nearer pillbox with a muffled thump.

Woody was already running full pelt, and the men were close behind him. Within seconds he reached the bridge.

The pillbox had a low wooden door. Woody flung it open and stepped inside. Three men in German uniforms were dead on the floor.

He moved to a firing slit and looked out. Ace and his four men were haring across the short bridge, shooting at the farther pillbox as they ran. The bridge was only a hundred feet long, but that proved to be fifty feet too much. As they reached the middle, a machine gun opened up. The Americans were trapped in a narrow corridor with no cover. The machine gun clacked insanely and in seconds all five of them had fallen. The gun continued to rake them for several seconds, to be certain they were dead – and, in the process, making sure of the two German sentries too.

When it stopped, they were all still.

Silence fell.

Beside Woody, Lefty Cameron said: ‘Jesus Christ Almighty.’

Woody could have wept. He had sent ten men to their deaths, five Americans and five Germans, yet he had failed to achieve his objective. The enemy still held the far end of the bridge and could stop Allied forces crossing it.

He had four men left. If they tried again, and ran across the bridge together, they would all be killed. He needed a new plan.

He studied the townscape. What could he do? He wished he had a tank.

He had to act fast. There might well be enemy troops elsewhere in the town. They would have been alerted by the gunfire. They would respond soon. He could deal with them if he had both pillboxes. Otherwise he would be in trouble.

If his men could not cross the bridge, he thought desperately, perhaps they could swim the river. He decided to take a quick look at the bank. ‘Mack and Smoking Joe,’ he said. ‘Fire at the other pillbox. See if you can get a bullet through the slit. Keep them busy while I scout around.’

The carbines opened up and he went out through the door.

He was able to shelter behind the near pillbox while he looked over the parapet at the upstream bank. Then he had to scuttle across the road to see the other edge. However, no fire came from the enemy position.

There was no river wall. Instead an earth slope went down to the water. It looked the same on the far bank, he thought, though there was not enough light to be sure. A good swimmer might get across. Under the span of the arch he would not be easy to see from the enemy position. Then he could repeat on the far side what Sneaky Pete had done this side, and grenade the pillbox.

Looking at the structure of the bridge he had a better idea. Below the level of the parapet was a stone ledge a foot wide. A man with steady nerves could crawl across, all the time remaining out of sight.

He returned to the captured pillbox. The smallest man was Lefty Cameron. He was also feisty, not the type to get the shakes. ‘Lefty,’ said Woody. ‘There’s a hidden ledge that runs across the outside of the bridge below the parapet. Probably used by workmen doing repairs. I want you to crawl across and grenade the other pillbox.’

‘You bet,’ said Lefty.

It was a gutsy response from someone who had just seen five comrades killed.

Woody turned to Mack and Smoking Joe and said: ‘Give him cover.’ They began to shoot.

Lefty said: ‘What if I fall in?’

‘It’s only fifteen or twenty feet above the water at most,’ Woody said. ‘You’ll be fine.’

‘Okay,’ said Lefty. He went to the door. ‘I can’t swim, though,’ he said. Then he was gone.

Woody saw him dart across the road. He looked over the parapet, then straddled it and eased down the other side until he was lost to view.

‘Okay,’ he said to the others. ‘Hold your fire. He’s on his way.’

They all stared out. Nothing moved. It was dawn, Woody realized: the town was coming more clearly into view. But none of the inhabitants showed themselves: they knew better. Perhaps German troops were mobilizing in some neighbouring street, but he could hear nothing. He realized he was listening for a splash, fearful that Lefty would fall in the river.

A dog came trotting across the bridge, a medium-size mongrel with a curled tail that stuck up jauntily. It sniffed the dead bodies with curiosity, then moved on purposefully, as if it had an important rendezvous elsewhere. Woody watched it pass the far pillbox and continue into the other side of the town.

Dawn meant the main force was now landing on the beaches. Someone had said it was the largest amphibious attack in the history of warfare. He wondered what kind of resistance they were meeting. There was no one more vulnerable than an infantryman loaded with gear splashing through the shallows, the flat beach ahead of him offering a clear field of fire to gunners in the dunes. Woody felt grateful for this concrete pillbox.

Lefty was taking a long time. Had he fallen in the water quietly? Could something else have gone wrong?

Then Woody saw him, a slim khaki form bellying over the parapet of the bridge at the far end. Woody held his breath. Lefty dropped to his knees, crawled to the pillbox, and came upright with his back flat against the curved concrete. With his left hand he drew out a grenade. He pulled the pin, waited a couple of seconds, then reached around and threw the grenade through the slit.

Woody heard the boom of the explosion and saw a flash of lurid light from the firing slits. Lefty raised his arms above his head like a champion.

‘Get back under cover, asshole,’ Woody said, though Lefty could not hear him. There could be a German soldier hiding in a nearby building waiting to avenge the deaths of his friends.

But no shot rang out, and after a brief victory dance Lefty went inside the pillbox, and Woody breathed more easily.

However, he was not yet fully secure. At this point a sudden sally by a couple of dozen Germans could win the bridge back. Then it would all have been in vain.

He forced himself to wait another minute to see if any enemy troops showed themselves. Still nothing moved. It was beginning to look as if there were no Germans in Eglise-des-Soeurs other than those manning the bridge: they were probably relieved every twelve hours from a barracks a few miles away.

‘Smoking Joe,’ he said. ‘Get rid of the dead Germans. Throw them in the river.’

Joe dragged the three bodies out of the pillbox and disposed of them, then did the same with the two sentries.

‘Pete and Mack,’ Woody said. ‘Go over to the other pillbox and join Lefty. Make sure the three of you stay alert. We haven’t killed all the Germans in France yet. If you see enemy troops approaching your position, don’t hesitate, don’t negotiate, just shoot them.’

The two men left the pillbox and walked briskly across the bridge to the far end.

There were now three Americans in the far pillbox. If the Germans tried to retake the bridge they would have a hard time of it, especially in the growing light.

Woody realized that the dead Americans on the bridge would forewarn any approaching enemy forces that the pillboxes had been captured. Otherwise he might retain an element of surprise.

That meant he had to get rid of the American corpses too.

He told the others what he was going to do, then stepped outside.

The morning air tasted fresh and clean.

He walked to the middle of the bridge. He checked each body for a pulse, but there was no doubt: they were all dead.

One by one, he picked up his comrades and dropped them over the parapet.

The last one was Ace Webber. As he hit the water, Woody said: ‘Rest in peace, buddies.’ He stood still for a minute with his head bent and his eyes closed.

When he turned around, the sun was coming up.

(vii)

The great fear of Allied planners was that the Germans would rapidly reinforce their troops in Normandy, and mount a powerful counter-attack that would drive the invaders back into the sea, in a repeat of the Dunkirk disaster.

Lloyd Williams was one of the people trying to make sure that did not happen.

His job helping escaped prisoners get home had low priority after the invasion, and he was now working with the French Resistance.

At the end of May the BBC broadcast coded messages that triggered a campaign of sabotage in German-occupied France. During the first few days of June hundreds of telephone lines were cut, usually in hard-to-find places. Fuel depots were set on fire, roads were blocked by trees, and tyres were slashed.

Lloyd was assisting the railwaymen, who were strongly Communist and called themselves Resistance Fer. For years they had maddened the Nazis with their sly subversion. German troop trains somehow got diverted down obscure branch lines and sent many miles out of their way. Engines broke down unaccountably and carriages were derailed. It was so bad that the occupiers brought railwaymen from Germany to run the system. But the disruption got worse. In the spring of 1944 the railwaymen began to damage their own network. They blew up tracks and sabotaged the heavy lifting cranes required for moving crashed trains.

The Nazis did not take this lying down. Hundreds of railwaymen were executed, and thousands deported to camps. But the campaign escalated, and by D-Day rail traffic in some parts of France had come to a halt.

Now, on D-Day plus one, Lloyd lay at the summit of an embankment beside the main line to Rouen, capital city of Normandy, at a point where the track entered a tunnel. From his vantage point he could see approaching trains a mile away.

With Lloyd were two others, codenamed Legionnaire and Cigare. Legionnaire was leader of the Resistance in this neighbourhood. Cigare was a railwayman. Lloyd had brought the dynamite. Supplying weaponry was the main role played by the British in the French Resistance.

The three men were half hidden by long grass dotted with wild flowers. It was the kind of place to bring a girl on a fine day such as this, Lloyd thought. Daisy would like it.

A train appeared in the distance. Cigare scrutinized it as it came nearer. He was about sixty, wiry and small, with the lined face of a heavy smoker. When the train was still a quarter of a mile away he shook his head in negation. This was not the one they were waiting for. The engine passed them, puffing smoke, and entered the tunnel. It was hauling four passenger coaches, all full, carrying a mixture of civilians and uniformed men. Lloyd had more important prey in his sights.

Legionnaire looked at his watch. He had dark skin and a black moustache, and Lloyd guessed he might have a North African somewhere in his ancestry. Now he was jumpy. They were exposed here, in the open air and in daylight. The longer they stayed, the higher the chance they would be spotted. ‘How much longer?’ he said worriedly.

Cigare shrugged. ‘We’ll see.’

Lloyd said in French: ‘You can leave now, if you wish. Everything is set.’

Legionnaire did not reply. He was not going to miss the action. For the sake of his prestige and authority he had to be able to say: ‘I was there.’

Cigare tensed, peering into the distance, the skin around his eyes creasing with the effort. ‘So,’ he said cryptically. He raised himself to his knees.

Lloyd could hardly see the train, let alone identify it, but Cigare was alert. It was moving a lot faster than the previous one, Lloyd could tell. As it came closer he observed that it was longer, too: twenty-four carriages or more, he thought.

‘This is it,’ said Cigare.

Lloyd’s pulse quickened. If Cigare was right, this was a German troop train carrying more than a thousand officers and men to the Normandy battlefield – perhaps the first of many such trains. It was Lloyd’s job to make sure neither this train nor any following passed through the tunnel.

Then he saw something else. A plane was tracking the train. As he watched, the aircraft matched course with the train and began to lose height.

The plane was British.

Lloyd recognized it as a Hawker Typhoon, nicknamed a Tiffy, a one-man fighter-bomber. Tiffies were often given the dangerous mission of penetrating deep behind enemy lines to harass communications. There was a brave man at the controls, Lloyd thought.

But this formed no part of Lloyd’s plan. He did not want the train to be wrecked before it reached the tunnel.

‘Shit,’ he said.

The Tiffy fired a machine-gun burst at the carriages.

Legionnaire said: ‘But what is this?’

Lloyd replied in English: ‘Fucked if I know.’

He could see now that the engine was hauling a mixture of passenger coaches and cattle trucks. However, the cattle trucks probably also contained men.

The plane, travelling faster, strafed the carriages as it overhauled the train. It had four belt-fed 20mm cannon, and they made a fearsome rattling sound that could be heard over the roar of the plane’s engine and the energetic puffing of the train. Lloyd could not help feeling sorry for the trapped soldiers, unable to get out of the way of the lethal hail of bullets. He wondered why the pilot did not fire his rockets. They were highly destructive against trains or cars, though difficult to fire accurately. Perhaps they had been used up in an earlier encounter.

Some of the Germans bravely put their heads out of the windows and fired pistols and rifles at the plane, with no effect.

But Lloyd now saw a light anti-aircraft battery emplaced on a flatbed car immediately behind the engine. Two gunners were hastily deploying the big gun. It swivelled on its base and the barrel lifted to aim at the British plane.

The pilot did not appear to have seen it, for he held his course, rounds from his cannon tearing through the roofs of the carriages as he overhauled them.

The big gun fired and missed.

Lloyd wondered if he knew the flyer. There were only about five thousand pilots on active service in the UK at any one time. Quite a lot of them had been to Daisy’s parties. Lloyd thought of Hubert St John, a brilliant Cambridge graduate with whom he had been reminiscing about student days a few weeks ago; of Dennis Chaucer, a West Indian from Trinidad who complained bitterly about tasteless English food, especially the mashed potatoes that seemed to be served with every meal; and of Brian Mantel, an amiable Australian he had brought across the Pyrenees on his last trip. The brave man in the Tiffy could easily be someone Lloyd had met.

The anti-aircraft gun fired again, and missed again.

Either the pilot still had not seen the gun, or he felt it could not hit him; for he took no evasive action, but continued to fly dangerously low and wreak carnage on the troop train.

The engine was just a few seconds from the tunnel when the plane was hit.

Flame flared from the plane’s engine, and black smoke billowed. Too late, the pilot veered away from the railway track.

The train entered the tunnel, and the carriages flashed past Lloyd’s position. He saw that every one was packed full with dozens, hundreds of German soldiers.

The Tiffy flew directly at Lloyd. For a moment he thought it would crash where he lay. He was already flat on the ground, but he stupidly put his hands over his head, as if that could protect him.

The Tiffy roared by a hundred feet above him.

Then Legionnaire pressed the plunger of the detonator.

There was a roar like thunder inside the tunnel as the track blew up, followed by a terrible screeching of tortured steel as the train crashed.

At first the carriages full of soldiers continued to flash by, but a second later their charge was arrested. The ends of two linked carriages rose in the air, forming an inverted V. Lloyd heard the men inside screaming. All the carriages came off the rails and tumbled like dropped matchsticks around the dark O of the tunnel’s mouth. Iron crumpled like paper, and broken glass rained on the three saboteurs watching from the top of the embankment. They were in danger of being killed by their own explosion, and without a word they all leaped to their feet and ran.

By the time they had reached a safe distance it was all over. Smoke was billowing out of the tunnel: in the unlikely event that any men in there had survived the crash, they would burn to death.

Lloyd’s plan was a success. Not only had he killed hundreds of enemy troops and wrecked a train, he had also blocked a main railway line. Crashes in tunnels took weeks to clear. He had made it much more difficult for the Germans to reinforce their defences in Normandy.

He was horrified.

He had seen death and destruction in Spain, but nothing like this. And he had caused it.

There was another crash, and when he looked in the direction of the sound he saw that the Tiffy had hit the ground. It was burning, but the fuselage had not broken up. The pilot might be alive.

He ran towards the plane, and Cigare and Legionnaire followed.

The downed aircraft lay on its belly. One wing had snapped in half. Smoke came from the single engine. The perspex dome was blackened by soot and Lloyd could not see the pilot.

He stepped on the wing and unfastened the hood catch. Cigare did the same on the other side. Together, they slid the dome back on its rails.

The pilot was unconscious. He wore a helmet and goggles, and an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. Lloyd could not tell whether it was someone he knew.

He wondered where the oxygen tank was, and whether it had yet burst.

Legionnaire had a similar thought. ‘We have to get him out before the plane blows up,’ he said.

Lloyd reached inside and unfastened the safety harness. Then he put his hands under the pilot’s arms and pulled. The man was completely limp. Lloyd had no way of knowing what his injuries might be. He was not even sure the man was alive.

He dragged the pilot out of the cockpit, then got him over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift and carried him a safe distance from the burning wreckage. As gently as he could, he laid the man on the ground face up.

He heard a noise that was a cross between a whoosh and a thump, and looked back to see that the whole plane was ablaze.

He bent over the pilot and carefully removed the goggles and the oxygen mask, revealing a face that was shockingly familiar.

The pilot was Boy Fitzherbert.

And he was breathing.

Lloyd wiped blood from Boy’s nose and mouth.

Boy opened his eyes. At first there seemed no intelligence behind them. Then, after a minute, his expression altered and he said: ‘You.’

‘We blew up the train,’ Lloyd said.

Boy seemed unable to move anything but his eyes and mouth. ‘Small world,’ he said.

‘Isn’t it?’

Cigare said: ‘Who is he?’

Lloyd hesitated, then said: ‘My brother.’

‘My God.’

Boy’s eyes closed.

Lloyd said to Legionnaire: ‘We have to bring a doctor.’

Legionnaire shook his head. ‘We must get out of here. The Germans will be coming to investigate the train crash within minutes.’

Lloyd knew he was right. ‘We’ll have to take him with us.’

Boy opened his eyes and said: ‘Williams.’

‘What is it, Boy?’

Boy seemed to grin. ‘You can marry the bitch now,’ he said.

Then he died.

(viii)

Daisy cried when she heard. Boy had been a rotter, and treated her badly, but she had loved him once, and he had taught her a lot about sex; and she felt sad that he had been killed.

His brother, Andy, was now a viscount and heir to the earldom; Andy’s wife, May, was a viscountess; and Daisy’s name, according to the elaborate rules of the aristocracy, was the Dowager Viscountess Aberowen – until she married Lloyd, when she would be relieved to become plain Mrs Williams.

However, that might be a long time coming, even now. Over the summer, hopes of a quick end to the war came to nothing. A plot by German army officers to kill Hitler on 20 July failed. The Germany army was in full retreat on the Eastern Front, and the Allies took Paris in August, but Hitler was determined to fight on to the terrible end. Daisy had no idea when she would see Lloyd, let alone marry him.

One Wednesday in September, when she went to spend the evening in Aldgate, she was greeted by a jubilant Eth Leckwith. ‘Great news!’ Ethel said when Daisy walked into the kitchen. ‘Lloyd has been selected as Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Hoxton!’

Lloyd’s sister Millie was there with her two children, Lennie and Pammie. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ she said. ‘He’ll be Prime Minister, I bet.’

‘Yes,’ said Daisy, and she sat down heavily.

‘Well, I can see you’re not happy about that,’ said Ethel. ‘As my friend Mildred would say, it went down like a cup of cold sick. What’s the matter?’

‘It’s just that having me as a wife isn’t going to help him get elected.’ It was because she loved him so much that she felt so bad. How could she blight his prospects? But how could she give him up? When she thought like this her heart felt heavy and life seemed desolate.

‘Because you’re an heiress?’ said Ethel.

‘Not just that. Before Boy died he told me Lloyd would never get elected with an ex-Fascist as his wife.’ She looked at Ethel, who always told the truth, even when it hurt. ‘He was right, wasn’t he?’

‘Not entirely,’ Ethel said. She put the kettle on for tea, then sat opposite Daisy at the kitchen table. ‘I’m not going to say it doesn’t matter. But I don’t think you should despair.’

You’re just like me, Daisy thought. You say what you think. No wonder he loves me: I’m a younger version of his mother!

Millie said: ‘Love conquers all, doesn’t it?’ She noticed that four-year-old Lennie was hitting two-year-old Pammie with a wooden soldier. ‘Don’t bash your sister!’ she said. Turning back to Daisy, she went on: ‘And my brother loves you to bits. I don’t think he’s ever loved anyone else, to tell you the truth.’

‘I know,’ said Daisy. She wanted to cry. ‘But he’s determined to change the world, and I can’t bear the thought that I’m standing in his way.’

Ethel took the crying two-year-old on to her knee, and the toddler calmed down immediately. ‘I’ll tell you what to do,’ she said to Daisy. ‘Be prepared for questions, and expect hostility, but don’t dodge the issue and don’t hide your past.’

‘What should I say?’

‘You might say you were fooled by Fascism, as millions of others were; but you drove an ambulance in the Blitz, and you hope you’ve paid your dues. Work out the exact words with Lloyd. Be confident, be your irresistibly charming self, and don’t let it get you down.’

‘Will it work?’

Ethel hesitated. ‘I don’t know,’ she said after a pause. ‘I really don’t. But you have to try.’

‘It would be awful if he had to give up what he loves most for my sake. Something like that could destroy a marriage.’

Daisy was half hoping Ethel would deny this, but she did not. ‘I don’t know,’ she said again.