Читать книгу The Sixth of June - Lionel Shapiro - Страница 10

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THE 8 a.m. train for Peterborough, Doncaster, and Hull hadn’t left King’s Cross Station and here it was nearly nine o’clock. An air alert had hit London just after midnight, and although the main enemy thrust had been blunted halfway up the Thames estuary by a heavy barrage and the fierce resistance of night fighters, two Heinkels managed to squirm through to the city and a stick of bombs looped down over the northwest suburbs.

A brakeman passing through the corridors of the stalled train saw an American lieutenant sprawled in lonely grandeur in a first-class compartment.

“Won’t be long now, mate,” he said, leaning into the open door. “The Jerry left a bit o’ fuzz on the track. Up near Hendon, it was.”

Brad said, “How long?”

“Oh, give ’em another ten minutes,” the brakeman cajoled. He was a sallow, gangling man. Dark creases ran down his face, denoting a lifetime of poor nourishment. He said, “We’re pretty slow here compared to America.” He pronounced it Ameyrica.

Brad said, “Will I miss my connection? I’ve got to change trains at Newark.”

“Going up to the bomber station?”

“Wherever I’m going, I’ve got to change trains at Newark. Will I miss the connection?”

The brakeman winked. “That’s the spirit, mate. I know it and you know it and the Jerry knows it. But”—he cupped his mouth and his voice fell to a whisper—“no use letting the bloody Mesopotamians know it. No, sir, your connection will be sitting nice and pretty on the track waiting for you. About fifty Yanks back in third class, they’re all changing at Newark. All pooped too.” The brakeman chuckled.

Brad sat up.

“Can I get coffee on the train?”

“Buffet three carriages back——” The train suddenly jerked and moved forward slowly. “Well, wadd’ya know,” the brakeman said in a poor mimicry of the American idiom, “the slowpokes ackchelly got the track fixed.”

When the brakeman left, Brad glanced over the Daily Express he had bought in the station. The headline read: AUSTRALIANS SMASH AT ROMMEL’S FLANKS and the dispatch beneath was a highly colorful descriptive by Alan Moorehead of moonlight fighting in the desert near a place called Sidi Barrani. There was also a long report on a debate in the Commons about the feeding and housing of 18-B internees on the Isle of Man. A small item near the bottom of the page hinted at a major naval battle in the Solomons but there were no details. He searched the paper for a report about last night’s air raid and found only a three-line item: “An alert sounded in London at 12.33 a.m. Anti-aircraft fire was later heard in most districts of the city. The all-clear sounded at 1.48 a.m.”

The train gathered speed along an overpass. He put away the paper and glanced out at the rust-colored rooftops of north London, drabber than ever beneath an overcast sky.

Last night’s air raid had been his first. After three weeks in London it had finally happened. He had looked forward to the experience, and now, thinking about it, he felt singularly chagrined. Of all the nights to pick for a bender! It was a pity, for he had promised Damien he would write a chatty letter describing his first air raid, the intention being to publish it, anonymously of course, on the Star’s feature page. There was nothing he could write. His only recollection was of a frolicsome night, some wonderfully gay bravado on the streets, and innumerable drinks in a variety of places. He hadn’t been so drunk, he recalled mournfully, since a night in his freshman year at Dartmouth when, suddenly free of the maternal influence, he had indulged his awareness of man’s estate by guzzling four quarts of Canadian beer with rye chasers and disgracefully passing out. He hadn’t passed out last night but he couldn’t remember much of what happened. He wouldn’t even write Janie about it, let alone the Star.

A minute or two later the train slowed abruptly. On the side of the track scores of workmen stood watching the wheels pass over the roadbed. Barely crawling, as if the engineer was himself taking a good look, the train chugged past the place where a bomb had struck.

Brad saw, fenced off from the right of way, a series of vegetable gardens belonging to a row of uniform two-family dwellings. The bomb had exploded in one of the gardens, completely shattering the rear wall of a house and shearing off the corners of two adjoining houses. A scramble of brick and timber had cascaded into the garden, and above it a bedroom lay open and naked. A red and blue patchwork quilt, a washbasin, and some framed pictures lay halfway down the fall of rubble. Steel-helmeted men, their hands on their hips, stood at the base of the rubble. They appeared to be looking up idly into the bedroom. An L.C.C. ambulance was parked in an adjoining garden, and women and children grouped around it in a respectful circle, except one little boy who had climbed on its fender and was peering inside.

Once past the wreckage the train picked up speed. Brad’s New England conscience, a relic of an astringent, God-fearing ancestry, prodded at his torpid brain. He wondered where he had been at the time the bomb had struck. He tried to remember.

It had all begun at four in the afternoon when Lieutenant Colonel Timmer summoned him into his office.

For three weeks he had been waiting for the summons, three interminable weeks of idling at a desk in a large office in which everyone else, about twenty staff officers and enlisted specialists, worked with speed and a certain air of excitement on a great mass of documents. He had heard the word “Sledgehammer” whispered about and he guessed it was the code name for an operation, but he knew better than to ask. His duties consisted of reading the London papers and clipping everything pertaining to the American forces, seeing to it that the colonel’s staff car was brought around from the motor pool whenever it was needed, and acting as a courier to other offices on the same floor. He was clearly on probation even with the other junior officers. He spent the evenings wrestling with his lonesomeness in the American Officer’s Club on South Audley Street and the weekends wandering the unbelievably empty and quiet streets of Mayfair and Whitehall. He wrote ardent and descriptive letters to Janie. The days passed slowly.

Now the summons had come.

He was followed into Lieutenant Colonel Timmer’s private office by a pfc. carrying a pot of coffee.

The colonel waited carefully until the pfc. left the office.

Then he said, “I don’t know how you are, Parker, but I work hard and I play just as hard as I work. I’ve done it all my life. Might cut a couple of years off my old age but that’s all right with me. Working or playing, I give it everything I’ve got. But”—he compressed his lips and poked his index finger forward in regular strokes—“the minute I walk out of this office nights, I don’t know any more about the war than my youngest kid back home and she’s going on four. It’s a sort of reflex action. You get that way when you’ve been working in Plans awhile.”

Brad could believe it, at least the part about playing hard. Alex Timmer would command equal attention at a cocktail party or in a room full of wrestlers. He had a hard, square, handsome face and a low rasping voice that was absolutely without shading. His black mustache was neatly trimmed, his shiny hair fitted close to the scalp, and everything about him, his small stabbing eyes and his darkly shaded jaw, leaped with virility. The head, set upon a pair of enormous shoulders, was reminiscent of a silent-movie star well past his prime. The middle buttons of his blouse were bursting tight across his stomach. He looked and talked like a composite of the dedicated professional soldier, but he happened to be, Brad knew, a Minnesota automobile salesman in civilian life, one of the few non-professionals who had made good in an exacting staff job.

Brad said, “I’ve been fully briefed on security, sir.”

“Where?”

“Fort Harrison, sir.”

The colonel grimaced. “Kid stuff.”

“And naturally I’ve studied the regulations here very thoroughly.”

Timmer drew deeply on his cigarette and snorted two sharp streams of smoke out of his nostrils. He picked up a folder from his desk.

“You’ve had the course all right,” he said. “A lot more than you realize. We’ve made a full field investigation of you here and back home.” He turned the pages of the folder. “Good family line, good life history, fitness reports okay, and you look like you can stand the gaff.” He tossed the folder aside. “The Department’s cleared you a hundred per cent. But you’ve certainly got a couple of doozies—Bradford Gamaliel. What do they call you?”

“Brad, sir.”

“All of this doesn’t mean a thing, Brad. You’ve got to live security, breathe it, sleep it. And even that’s not enough. Security has got to become like a steel door in your brain, shuts automatically even if you get falling-down drunk or talk in your sleep alongside some fancy bitch. Tell you how I do it. To me this office means work—plans—secrets. Minute I step out of this office I don’t know a goddamn thing. If I’ve got work to worry over, I worry over it right here. All night if necessary. So, rule number one: No homework, mental or material. Understood?”

“Understood, sir.”

Timmer poured a cup of coffee and swallowed half of it in a single gulp. He said, “Where are you billeted?”

“I’m still in transient, sir. I thought I’d better wait until I knew where I stood.”

“Smart.” Timmer swallowed the rest of the coffee. “Billet’s important. Don’t kid yourself there aren’t any German agents in this town. Plenty of ’em.”

Brad said, “Captain Boyce has offered to let me share his apartment.” Captain Boyce occupied the next desk to Brad’s in the outer office.

“Boyce is all right. Where does he live again?”

“Arlington Flats, sir. Just along Grosvenor Street.”

Timmer nodded. “Good enough. Our secret service keeps it covered.”

“Thank you, Colonel.”

He let Brad get as far as the door. “But remember, the fact that Boyce works in this section doesn’t mean he knows everything you’re going to know. Understood?”

“Understood, sir.”

“That’s all.” Timmer barked. “Consider yourself on the team. And good luck.” He was reaching for the coffeepot as Brad left the office.

During the next two hours a whole new exciting world was opened up to Brad. He was allowed to learn that Operation Sledgehammer was a plan to pinch off the Cherbourg peninsula before the end of summer. The objective was twofold: to seize the area as a launching platform for an eventual full-scale drive into northwest Europe, and to relieve the mounting political pressures for an immediate second front. Seven months after Pearl Harbor, the people back home were impatient to start winning the war. They didn’t know, as he had just learned, that the total American strength in Europe was two incomplete and partially trained divisions, and that Sledgehammer would be fought mostly by British and Canadian troops. He thought of Ben Carver bending over his ponderous war editorials back home in Malton, and how little he knew. How little they all knew.

It was well after six o’clock when Brad moved his gear from his transient billet to a handsome six-story apartment house called Arlington Flats at 37 Grosvenor Street.

The hall porter, a frail old man with hollow cheeks and exceedingly sad eyes, led him through a richly tiled lobby to an elevator and brought him to the fourth floor.

“Captain Boyce sends his compliments, sir,” the porter said, “he left word he’d be back shortly.” He opened the door with a passkey and they entered a large living room which was tastefully and expensively furnished. On the far wall a set of french doors opened on a tiny balcony.

Brad thrust open the doors. The sun had disappeared from Grosvenor Square but in the sky the barrage balloons were still shining crimson. He caught himself up wishing there would be an air raid. After three weeks he was impatient to be tested.

He said, “This is a very nice room. Captain Boyce has expensive tastes in furniture.”

“Well sir, this is Mrs. Ecklin’s flat. Lived here going on eight years. She’s at her cottage in Surrey for the duration.”

Brad had no idea where Surrey was. He said, “It’s safer out there, I suppose.”

“Indeed it is, sir.”

When Brad closed the french doors, the porter came forward and drew the blackout curtains.

“Think we might get a raid?” Brad asked.

“I wouldn’t think so, sir, unless it clouds over. The Germans like cloud cover these nights. This way, if you please, sir.”

They passed a dining room which, the porter explained, was used to store Mrs. Ecklin’s bric-a-brac and certain especially valuable pieces of furniture. Two bedrooms were located at the end of a long hall. Boyce had taken possession of the master room, a large and feminine affair in pale blue and pink. The other was considerably smaller and more severely furnished but exceedingly comfortable.

Brad said, “This’ll do fine. Was it Mr. Ecklin’s?”

“Young Mr. Ecklin’s, sir. Mrs. Ecklin is a widow.”

“He in Surrey too?” Brad asked flippantly.

“Oh no, sir,” the porter said. “Young Mr. Ecklin was taken prisoner at Douai. That was in ’40, sir.”

Brad was angry with himself for having asked the question; the reply hit hard against the sense of happy excitement he had been enjoying. He walked about the room, casting critical glances at the wide, comfortable bed, the handsome chest of drawers, the scatter rugs, seeking something to complain about, to suggest, anything to erase the subject of young Mr. Ecklin. He groped without success for an appropriate remark.

“It seems only yesterday young Mr. Ecklin went off to war, although I dare say, sir, it’s a bit different to him. Two years is a long time in a prison camp. You see, sir, I was taken in the last war ...”

Why did he have to go on? It was the one thing about the British that annoyed him. Their talent for understatement was admirable when it reached across an ocean but sharp and excruciating when it was rammed into you at close quarters. He didn’t need to be reminded that the British had fought since 1939 nor had he asked to come over and sleep in young Mr. Ecklin’s fine bed while young Mr. Ecklin languished in a prison camp.

“... They can be correct the Germans, sir, but being their prisoner is no music-hall turn. I found that out ...”

He went on and on, maliciously it seemed to Brad. And then Boyce burst in, his arms wrapped around a paper bag which contained his monthly liquor ration—one rye, one scotch, and one sherry—and loudly suggested that the occasion called for a celebration.

“Two celebrations!” Boyce cried. “Your graduation summa cum laude from Timmer’s patented probationary course—proves you’re untainted, untarnished, unpolluted, uncorrupted, and a hundred and ten per cent American.” He dashed into the kitchen and came out brandishing a corkscrew. “And then there’s my celebration. Billets had a knife at my throat to fill this extra room and I was dead scared they’d foist some pinhead on me. Drink, Middleton?”

The porter said, “Oh no, sir. Never on duty.” He backed toward the door. “Anything else, sir?”

“Nothing, Middleton, except when is Anny going to get rid of that pink chiffon drape in my bedroom? Makes me feel like a daffodil. Anny”—he explained to Brad—“is our daily. Half-sister to Dracula but she has her own peculiar charm.”

Middleton said vacantly, “I’ll jog her, sir,” and left the apartment.

The captain poured two drinks of scotch. “Come on, Brad. You look like the last act of Hamlet.” He lifted his glass. “Bless this house and all who float in her!”

Brad swallowed his drink like a man gulping unpleasant medicine. The notion of sleeping in young Mr. Ecklin’s bed still rankled. The second drink was a lot better. He began to count himself lucky to have so fine an apartment and so superior a companion. He felt complimented that Ray Boyce had selected him to share this de luxe location. Junior officers usually had to live a subway jump from headquarters.

Raynold Boyce was clearly a mettlesome fellow. He carried his honors carelessly (a master’s degree from Oxford and a Northwestern Ph.D.), but this did not prevent his colleagues and even his superiors from standing slightly in awe of his learning. He was a political adviser attached to Lieutenant Colonel Timmer’s section. His direct commission (by order of the War Department) had interrupted a brilliant career as a lecturer in political science at Georgetown. A narrowly built man in his early thirties, his pleasant, youthful face leaped with awareness and intelligence. Patently he enjoyed the army although he made no pretense of being a soldier. His tie was invariably askew, his blouse fitted as if he’d picked it off a rack at a bargain sale, and he wore his overseas cap squarely on his head like a toque. He never returned an enlisted man’s salute; instead, he responded with a nod and a cheerful “Good morning” or “Good afternoon.” In the evening he took no notice of salutes. “Off duty,” he always explained.

“Absolutely amazing Timmer’s agreeing to let you share this apartment,” he said over their third drink. “I’d an idea he doesn’t completely approve of me.”

Brad said, “Timmer’s passion is security. He apparently decided you’re safe.”

“Did, did he? Well, he’s wrong. I’m a man rent by three passions. I’m gregarious, blindly trusting, and hopelessly talkative. Also I drink. Not passionately, only pleasurably. I’ve found that hangover is the finest brain sharpener in existence. I’m absolutely brilliant the morning after. Feel wretched but absolutely brilliant.”

On the fourth drink they took to comparing notes on their respective wives. Brad dug into his baggage for a photo of Janie, and Boyce produced a snapshot of a petite, vivacious girl balanced precariously on a hammock, a glass in one hand and the middle finger of her other impishly thrusting upward. “Last year’s commencement party,” Boyce explained. “I had a terrible time keeping her from goosing the dean of arts.”

In a burst of unanimity they determined that the occasion called for a meal and a fine bottle of wine. There was only one place, Boyce decided, and that was the Savoy Grill. They piled into a taxi.

The atmosphere at the Savoy was quiet, distinguished, and somewhat ludicrous. It required the services of three waiters to serve them a boiled leg of chicken. But the bottle of Montrachet which Boyce had pried out of the wine list was absolutely magnificent.

“Timmer? Wonderful machine, Alex Timmer,” Boyce said, mooning over the last of Montrachet. “Plays bridge Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday nights, reads military history Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, goes on the town Saturday nights and gets horribly boiled. Sees his girl every morning at six. Brilliant organizer.”

Brad said incredulously, “Sees his girl every morning? At six?”

“Certainly. Rather handsome girl too. I’ve met her. She’s a V.A.D. Runs a first-aid station in an underground shelter till five-thirty every morning. Visits Timmer at six and goes home at seven. Suits him perfectly because he’s a very ordered man. Work, study, sex, bridge, and drink in precise proportions. He’s a perfect push-button individual who someday will be a perfect push-button general fighting a perfect push-button war. If you have any ambitions in the military, hitch your star to Alex Timmer. He’s going way up, he and electronics.”

“He doesn’t look like the bridge type to me.”

“He isn’t,” Boyce replied. “He’s bursting to get a star on his shoulders and bridge has become a mania among the professional staff officers. The word’s gone ’round that Eisenhower is a bridge fiend. Timmer would break into the Reichs Chancellery with his bare hands if it brought him favorably to Ike’s attention. That’s how ambitious he is. He knows he’s got to be twice as good as the West Pointers at practically everything or else he’ll never get that star. Lieutenant colonel is about as high as a civilian can go on the staff side.”

They began drinking brandy after dinner.

How they got involved with the war correspondents in the residents’ lounge of Savoy was never quite clear to Brad. He faintly remembered that Boyce and a correspondent of the Chicago Tribune tested each other’s conversational mettle, found it happily explosive, and proceeded to clash on the subjects of Roosevelt, Britain, and Senator Burton K. Wheeler. Somehow a virile character from New Zealand inserted himself into the group and insisted on betting a round of drinks that he could sing all the verses of “John Brown’s Body” which was more than any American he had ever met could do. He proceeded to prove it with a lusty rendition.

That was when the Savoy’s night manager, his blanched face tweaking with anguish, interrupted to say that an air raid was in progress and would they kindly proceed to the lobby or down to the shelter.

Instead, they grabbed their caps and frolicked out into the Strand. The muffled, distant gunfire was no match for the New Zealander’s uninhibited singing. They marched down the black, deserted street to the beat of “John Brown’s Body,” and when they came into the open space of Trafalgar Square they could see the searchlights tracking the sky over the estuary and the tracers and the rocket shells exploding orange darts.

It was here that they heard a series of cracks and saw a sudden burst of distant light. They all squealed, feigning terror. Then, for no apparent reason, the Tribune man took careful aim, kicked the New Zealander squarely in the pants, and the two closed in, scuffling like a couple of spaniels.

“Glory, glory hallelujah ... glory, glory, hallelujah

His truth goes marching on ...”

All four of them were singing now. They marched up the Haymarket into Piccadilly, bowed with extravagant gallantry to each prostitute who came up to them out of the darkness, and finally piled into a huge bottle club on Old Bond Street which was crowded with American officers and their girls. They drank the Tribune correspondent’s scotch and took to singing “A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening” to the annoyance of everyone around them and Brad didn’t recall how or when he got back to 37 Grosvenor Street.

He was awakened by a persistent telephone at six in the morning.

It was the night duty officer in Timmer’s section.

“Report in at seven,” he said, “you’ve got a courier job. Better bring a musette bag. You’ll be away overnight.”

The train raced north across the open countryside. Under rain-laden skies the fields looked wonderfully green, a deeper and richer color than Brad could ever remember in Connecticut.

The bomb tragedy, he thought, was something he would have to get used to. This was war and people got killed in it. He might die too but so far he was having fun. Dan Stenick was going to drop on Adak, while he lived in a luxury flat in Mayfair. That was the luck of the draw.

He felt extraordinarily good. He was, he suspected, still a little drunk. Later in the day he would feel wretched but it didn’t matter. There would be no need to pull himself together for the editorial luncheon, no company for dinner, no chiding glances from Janie. He was free, free, free—and, back home, a hero to boot.

The breathless rhythm of the train on the rails was in tune with his spirits.