Читать книгу The Sixth of June - Lionel Shapiro - Страница 8

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SEVEN HOURS out of New York the full-bellied B-24 suddenly dipped its starboard wing. The twenty-seven men who had been dozing on bucket seats in the converted bomber came nervously to life and peered through the windows. From seven thousand feet they saw Labrador’s endless succession of bald hills separated by valleys of green scrub and chains of tiny lakes. Behind the tail structure the sun lay low and red.

As the plane swung level and then banked sharply on its port wing, cigarettes were lit all over the cabin. Some of the men took to staring at a forward door marked “Crew only.” Eventually the door opened and a staff sergeant poked his head out.

“Cigarettes out!” he bellowed over the racket of the engines. “We’re in the approach pattern for Goose Bay. Refueling takes forty minutes and there’s a canteen on the field. Better eat good. There’ll be nothing more till we hit Prestwick. That”—he added knowledgeably—“is in Scotland.”

Someone barked, “What about this parachute harness, Sergeant?”

“You don’t need it on the next hop, sir.” The sergeant noted that his questioner was a full colonel. “Can’t do anybody much good over the ocean.”

Brad twisted his chest buckle, slapped it with the flat of his hand, and the parachute harness fell away. He put on his trench coat. Under New York’s blazing sun the plane had been a furnace; now the air was sharp and thin and cold. He noted for the first time that he was the only junior officer in the cabin. There were two civilians; a gaunt, elderly State Department courier who carried an oblong canvas pouch chained to his right wrist, and a curly-headed young man who had identified himself as a war correspondent for Time. The others were field officers, majors and both ranks of colonel, accompanied by a sprinkling of staff sergeants; clearly administrative people who probably didn’t know a Garand from a grenade.

The plane had begun to lose altitude. The steady pitch of the engines gave way to gasps and surges, and the wings shuddered in the bumpy air. As a veteran of eight jumps, Brad enjoyed watching the body gyrations and paling faces of the others, especially the full colonels who had looked so formal and fearless on boarding the plane.

Brad was not given to vanity. Yet in this company of civilians and desk soldiers he liked the distinction of having been combat-trained. The men of the Special Service Force regarded themselves as elite soldiers; it was an integral part of the course that they should, for they were at once parachute, raid, and winter troops, and many a recruit who would be acceptable in an ordinary infantry outfit had been washed out during the first two months at Helena. He had made the grade, had won his parachute wings, a first lieutenancy, and command of a platoon. It had been the first triumph of his life because it had been all his own; he could recall no other real achievements that had not been the gift of the Lakelock connection.

He wasn’t braver than the next man. This he could admit to himself, although the Special Service Force, being fully volunteer, had tried to nurture in him the notion that he must be. He hadn’t volunteered in the same spirit that Dan Stenick, for instance, a born adventurer, had deliberately sought out an extra hazardous duty. He, in truth, had stumbled into it.

It happened a week after Pearl Harbor. He had been summoned before a white-haired colonel in the Evaluation and Assignments office at Hartford. The man, thumbing through his R.O.T.C. and reserve record, had said, “Hmm, so you’re Bradford Parker. You know, Parker, if there’s one thing we need right here in this headquarters it’s a public-relations officer. The establishment calls for it but we haven’t got one, and we’re going nuts with these reporters crashing our offices as if they owned the place. Now you must know the newspaper business. Want the job?”

The notion of spending the war in Connecticut appalled him. He turned it down flatly.

“All right,” the colonel said, returning to the record, “let me see. It says here you made the cross-country ski team at Dartmouth. Right?” Right. “Well, we’ve got a brand-new outfit organizing out at Fort Harrison. Going to specialize in winter warfare. They need skiers. How does that strike you?”

Fort Harrison was at Helena, Montana, half a continent distant from Connecticut. That struck him fine.

The colonel’s eyes twinkled in a blank face, like a born practical joker. He said, “Looks like a pretty hot outfit. They prefer volunteers. Might even be some parachute jumping involved. Still strike you fine?”

He remembered how the challenge had given him pause. Thinking it over, he had heard the colonel murmuring, “We sure could use a good public-relations officer at this headquarters——” and that had done it. The day after Christmas he was on his way to Helena.

The family had been shocked. Although it was beyond question that the Star’s heir apparent, being of military age, should get into uniform, this seemed too much. His mother tearfully mentioned a foolhardy streak in the Parker blood which she had been praying would not become dominant. Grace Lakelock stared at him unbelievingly and retired from the living room, apparently in anguish. Even Damien brought himself to say, “Your sense of judgment was one quality I thought I could always depend on. I think in this case you’ve made an unfortunate decision.”

Only Janie seemed to understand exactly what had happened. “Listen, darling,” she said to him that night, “you don’t want to be a parachutist. I know you too well. You’re not the kind that goes looking for trouble, but you’re not the kind that steps away from it either. You did what you had to do and I’m proud, but I hope they wash you out at Fort Harrison.”

Dear Janie! She knew him better than he knew himself. She possessed that sixth sense of behaving exactly as she knew he would want her to behave. This morning was the perfect example. She had accompanied him to the door of the Military Transport Office at La Guardia Field. In the corridor a throng of excited wives and sweethearts and children waited while their men went inside to present their travel orders. There were tears and lingering kisses and an occasional sob.

“This is as far as I go,” she had said. “Good-by—good-by, Brad. Don’t be too brave or too foolish. Just remember I want you back exactly as you are.” Then she had kissed him and walked away swiftly. He had watched her as she moved with long, graceful strides to the end of the corridor. There she had turned and looked back over the distance of fifty or sixty yards, and, seeing him still watching her, she had smiled widely and waved. Then a group of new arrivals had cut off their line of vision and she was gone. She had been fine—fine and brave and neatly disciplined, just as he had hoped she would be.

“For God’s sake, Lieutenant! Fasten your seat belt!”

He looked into the terrified face of a colonel sitting next to him and grabbed at a pair of canvas straps hooked into the bucket seat. The plane was teetering like a tightrope walker off balance. Not more than a hundred feet below, wild wooded terrain was rushing past. The engines surged and the plane lifted sickeningly, then dropped with a thump into an air pocket.

The colonel muttered, “I don’t like this ... I don’t like this one bit.”

The plane continued to careen downward. Suddenly the treetops gave way to stumps in an open field and the engines cut back and a wide, clean runway miraculously appeared beneath the landing gear.

“This fellow,” the colonel grumbled, “must have learned his flying in a jujitsu school.”

It was dark when they filed out of a Nissen hut which operated as a combination lounge and cafeteria. A stiff wind nipped at their ears, and the stars seemed tiny and very dim in an inhospitable sky. They passed a hut which advertised a movie called This Gun for Hire and they stopped to watch station personnel going into the movie as if it were an intriguing sight.

When they reached the B-24, the pilot, a frail young man who seemed to have hardly any chest, was meandering under the starboard wing eying the engines. He paused before No. 3 engine and his tongue played inside his cheek. They stood around and contemplated the pilot.

A colonel called out, “What’s the matter, Lieutenant? Anything wrong?”

“Naw. Cowling got loose coming in. They fixed it. We’re all set.” He smiled self-consciously and edged his way through the group and climbed into the plane. He called down to them from the head of the ladder. “Pile of blankets here, one to each man. The idea’s to roll them around, Indian-style, and lie down crosswise on the floor. We can’t give you much heat but it won’t be long. Nine-ten hours. We got a tail wind right across. All aboard now.”

As they climbed into the plane someone said, “He sounds like he’s made the trip before.”

Brad found himself stowed between the correspondent and a fat staff sergeant who burped with alarming regularity. Somewhere down the line of bodies laid out like jam pancakes someone mumbled, “This is a hell of a way of transporting key personnel.” Then the ceiling light went out. One by one the engines swirled into action and the plane bumped toward the runway. Someone cracked, “Well, g’night folks.”

The correspondent said uneasily, “My name’s Kennelly.”

“Parker.”

“Noticed your parachute wings. I guess this is old stuff to you.”

“It’s my first ocean hop.”

“Can’t be as bad as a jump. Pilot friend of mine flies these kites.” Kennelly spoke in short, nervous bursts. “Says the thirty seconds after take-off are the toughest. I mean at the controls. If the engines don’t cut out in the first two hundred feet of climb you’re away to the races.”

Brad said, “We made it out of La Guardia.”

“Yes but if—if anything happens out here you’re gone. For good. Look at us bundled up, in the dark too. We wouldn’t have a chance.”

The plane pivoted on its undercarriage and came to rest. The engines were revved up one by one, then in pairs, then all four. The plane shivered against its brakes.

Kennelly said, “Imagine a kid lieutenant flying a four-engine job across the Atlantic. It’s lousy organization as far as I’m concerned.”

“The war’s young,” Brad said.

“So am I.” The correspondent sat up. “Why do they have to shut the lights? Gives me the willies.”

Brad pulled him down firmly. “Look, Kennelly, light reflections out of the sides confuse the pilot’s visibility. Besides, we can’t sleep with the lights on and you yacketing. If you’re scared you shouldn’t be here.”

The correspondent lay silent. After a time he said, “I’m sorry.”

Brad listened to the roar of the engines. It must be two or three minutes, he thought. He felt nervous too, but he was tough compared to the man lying next to him. The engines were idling now. The pilot was awfully young, probably plenty nervous up there. He wondered what the co-pilot was like.

Kennelly said, “What do you think?”

“I think we’ll be in Scotland in the morning——”

A full-throated roar cut him off. The plane shuddered and swept forward. Brad listened to the rumble of the wheels racing over the runway and tried to estimate the distance. His temples hurt and he became aware that he was clenching his teeth. He felt the plane waggle. Suddenly it surged upward, banked steeply for a few seconds, then straightened out in a steady, shallow climb. He listened to the engines, high-pitched and powerful, and the pressure came away from his temples. Farther down the cabin people began to sit up. The sergeant next to him emitted a burp which gave hope of being the climactic one.

Kennelly said, “I think we’re all right.”

Brad nudged him. “Thanks for telling me.”

He lay back on the floor boards, his head pillowed against his folded trench coat, and gazed at a cluster of dim stars trapped in the circle of the plane’s window.

Over the curve of this night, England and the war awaited.

The thought set him tingling, for he knew with the certainty of a man who habitually takes a long look fore and aft over the years that this night’s journey must mark the second climacteric of his life.

He knew it with the same certainty that had gripped his mind on the night of the other climacteric, the night he first entered the silk-paneled living room in the Lakelock mansion. Damien had come forward to receive him, but his attention had been speared by the dark-haired girl who sat carelessly on the arm of a chair and watched his approach with large, appraising eyes. Before the evening had ended he remembered knowing he was going to marry the Lakelock daughter and that, at twenty-three, his life was suddenly brand new.

He remembered it well, even to the date—February 12, 1939.

It snowed that night. His small Chrysler roadster, a relic of happy years at Dartmouth, churned in drifts which billowed on the pavement of Hamilton Terrace Drive. He had neglected to put on chains—they weren’t necessary down near the center of Malton where he lived—and he wondered if the driveway into the Lakelock grounds would be clear. He didn’t fancy walking through snow in his dress shoes. Besides, he was late.

His mother had come into his bedroom while he was doing up his black tie and had said, “Don’t think it’s any compliment being asked to the Lakelocks for dinner——”

“There’s nothing social about it, Mother.” He suspected that she resented not being asked along with him. “I suppose Damien Lakelock wants to discuss the ad with me. He’s really sold on it.”

She had settled herself firmly in his reading chair by the window.

“If anybody should be complimented, it’s the Lakelocks. Your grandfather always regarded Everett Bolding—that’s Grace Lakelock’s father—as a particularly uncouth man. He was, you know, an ordinary typesetter up from Bridgeport.”

“He managed to build up the best newspaper in the state——”

“And as for Damien Lakelock—well, he’s acquired some polish, I must admit, and that’s to his credit because his father Barney, everybody called him Barney, never Mr. Lakelock, he was an ordinary shoemaker.”

“Oh come, Mother. The Lakelock business was sold to National Shoe for over two million dollars. Even in the boom of ’27 it was fair enough for an ordinary shoemaker.”

“That’s what he was.”

“Have it your own way. Blast this tie, it never ties right. If some of us had worked like Barney Lakelock, maybe I wouldn’t have to be tootling through this snowstorm for a business dinner.”

“You shouldn’t say that, dear. You’ve never wanted for anything. You’ve had a good education, good clothes, a car at Dartmouth, and when I die you’ll have this house and maybe a little income from the corner property if the city really buys it for a community center. Only yesterday the real estate people——”

“What brought this up, Mother?”

“It’s just that you seem to forget you carry the finest name in Malton, none better in the state, and I don’t want you to think the Lakelocks are doing you any honor. You just remind Damien Lakelock that you’re Delbert Parker’s son. Why, when your father was courting me, the very thought of Barney Lakelock’s son moving in our circles was ridiculous. If your father hadn’t died a young man, things would be different ...”

While he struggled to get his tie neatly placed under the wings of an excessively stiff collar, she went on reminiscing rather sadly about an era that seemed to him a million years removed.

He had heard it many times before, almost since childhood. The truth was that for two generations the Parkers had lived comfortably by selling parcels of land from what had once been the Parker farm. (The street was still called Farm Street and had become an outmoded residential district on the edge of the city’s business center.) During his own lifetime his mother had sold three parcels of land and had acquired as neighbors an A&P supermarket, an undertaking establishment, and a bowling alley. Now she possessed only her own house and the corner lot, hardly enough for him to take up the traditional Parker career of managing the estate.

On his graduation from Dartmouth with an A.B., he had taken a job as a junior account executive with an advertising firm called Debeney, Fancourt and Smith. Arthur Fancourt, luckily, had been a boyhood friend of his father. In 1937 too many Dartmouth graduates could get nothing but sales jobs on commission.

He had done well in his year and a half with the firm. Malton was coming out of the depression with a rush. Shoe and textile factories were reopening on the quickening pressures of the tense situation in Europe, business on Pentland Street ripened fast, and his personal client list grew steadily. But the high point of his career had just been reached.

Mr. Fancourt had thrown open to all twelve account executives an assignment to lay out a series of promotion ads on the Malton Daily Star itself, to be run in newspapers all over its circulation area, and Brad’s idea had won out over the others.

The display text in 72-point italics across the page read: THE MOST EXCITING EVENT OF THE DAY—YOUR FRONT PAGE! Below was a reproduction of the Star’s front page of that morning, detailing the recurring crises in Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, Spain, and the Polish Corridor. Along the side, the text read: From Danzig to Addis Ababa, from the Moldau to the Pyrenees, the world is striking fire! Is a movie more exciting? A novel? A stage play? Everything pales before the pulsating drama being written by men and by nations in today’s world! Read it in its most thrilling narrative form—the Star’s front page!

Only that morning he and Mr. Fancourt had been invited to lunch with Damien Lakelock in his private dining room atop the Star’s executive tower. There had been a number of Star executives at the lunch and he hadn’t figured much in the conversation. But when the lunch broke up Mr. Lakelock had maneuvered him into a corner and had said, “Sorry we didn’t have our own little chat. Would you like to come out to the house tonight? I don’t know if my wife has anything else planned but I can promise you a drink and a reasonably good dinner. Let’s say seven-thirty—12 Hamilton Terrace Drive.”

A stiff wind whistled through the celluloid side curtains of his roadster as he turned into the gateway of the Lakelock estate. Snow had blown onto the driveway from the open gardens. He swung into low gear and moved carefully along the circular drive to the canopied front entrance.

Walking through a spacious front hall toward the living room, his mother’s bitter chant rang in his ears. He saw himself somehow unfaithful to his forebears but only for a few minutes. On the second sherry, Damien smiled his soft, charming smile and said, “I even remember your grandfather, Gamaliel Parker. He once caught me stealing apples from his orchard on the farm—that’s where the Y.M.C.A. stands now. I’ll never forget it though it must be a good forty years ago. I was nine or ten. He demanded to know my name and then he bellowed, ‘If you’re Barney Lakelock’s son you’ve no need to go stealing my apples.’ He had a real foghorn voice. You know, I was surprised he didn’t say Barney the shoemaker. That’s what most everybody used to call my father, behind his back that is, to the day he died.”

If he intended the remark to disarm his visitor, he succeeded perfectly. Brad felt easy and warm and a little proud. He glanced toward Jane to see how she was reacting to her father’s remark. There was no reaction. She was watching him as if politely interested in the conversation but she obviously wasn’t listening.

All through dinner she remained inconspicuous and quiet—unusually so, her mother pointedly remarked several times—and when her father suggested she might not be feeling well, she eagerly confessed to a headache and asked to be excused.

Driving home that night Brad felt wildly prescient about her curious behavior, and he was confirmed in his theory, at least to his satisfaction, three days later. Another invitation came from the Lakelocks. This time Jane was decorative and excessively gay and there were several young people present. Later, when they all piled into cars to go dancing at the Pentland Hotel, he found that he had been paired off with Jane. After that they saw each other almost every day, and six weeks later their engagement was announced.

Mrs. Parker received the news with reserve, but Brad understood perfectly that much of her secret happiness lay in playing the aggrieved party. At the wedding she was unquestionably the grande dame. In her eyes the scion of the Parkers was ascending his rightful place at the pinnacle of the little empire that was Malton, Connecticut.

The B-24 came down steeply through layers of thick white overcast, and when the mists finally scampered away from the wings Brad had his first glimpse of the Old Country. The plane crossed high above a gray coastline and he saw what looked like a shuttered resort hotel built long and narrow on an escarpment facing an angry sea. Behind the hotel the fields were bare and despondent.

Banking for its approach run, the plane passed low over a solid expanse of rust-colored roofs each thrusting up uniform clusters of chimneys. Rain began to fall as it taxied to a halt before a dun-colored shack which bore a sign, “U.S. Army Air Forces, Transport Section.”

Chilled and hurting with weariness, Brad nibbled at a lunch of franks and beans (it was a few minutes past noon in Scotland) and blindly followed a transport officer down a hall to a waiting room, unpainted and unfurnished except for a scattering of wooden chairs.

The T.O. said, “I know you’re all dying to get to your billets, but Croydon’s fogged in right now. Take it easy and we’ll do the best we can.”

Their best turned out to be three unbelievably long hours of waiting and then a rocky ninety-minute flight in a C-47 through pelting rain as far as Bristol. The rain was still slanting down when they landed. Brad was too wretchedly tired to put on his coat. While the others dashed across an open space to an administration building that looked as if it had been put together with old doorframes, he straggled behind and got thoroughly wet and couldn’t care less. Yesterday’s neat uniform, like his eager spirits, had become a shambles.

He saw no American personnel at the field. A gray-haired R.A.F. officer with a rigid way of carrying himself checked their numbers against a passenger manifest and herded them into a bus.

“This is the form,” he said crisply. “Your train to London leaves in an hour and eighteen minutes approx. You’ll be driven to the Grand Hotel where you can have tea and sandwiches, coffee if you like, and a wash. Train time to London three hours fifteen minutes if you’re lucky. Any questions? None? Right-e-o, we’re off. And gentlemen—when we drive into Bristol, those open spaces you see will be—uh—Bristol. Taken some pretty hard knocks.”

Brad looked at the man through half open eyes and decided he didn’t like him.

The bus moved into the city at a faster clip than seemed safe for so noisy a vehicle. Brad had an impression they were traveling on an overpass through fields of rubble. As far as he could see through the rain, bricks and doors and windows with shreds of curtains still clinging to them were strewn everywhere in crazy heaps. There were no other vehicles on the street, and no pedestrians. In the midst of this desert the bus screeched to a halt for a traffic light, then moved along past a massive brewery which stood intact and a burned-out church which retained its steeple somehow balanced atop a single scorched wall.

They turned sharply into a narrow street lined with military vehicles and pulled up before a solid brick wall. This on examination proved to be the entrance to the Grand Hotel.

“Sharp right, gentlemen,” the R.A.F. officer called out muscularly, leading the way into the hotel.

The lounge was large, dim, smoky, crowded with British officers, and deathly quiet.

Brad sank into the deepest chair he could find. Two British officers, a lieutenant colonel and a captain, who sat stonily in the same circle of chairs made no move to speak to him. He dozed until a waitress brought him coffee and a sandwich. He didn’t taste the sandwich, two slices of brown bread stuck together by a ketchup-colored smear, and, after a sip, abandoned the coffee.

He was thoroughly miserable. He hated the room with its air of despondency, the British officers who seemed smug and self-possessed, and the thought of a long train trip before he could stretch out on a bed.

The colonel was ruddy and had an enormous nose which overhung a receding mouth. He resembled a pointer, especially when he took quick neat nibbles at his sandwich. The captain badly needed a barber. His blond hair curled behind his ears and he held his teacup with a delicate hand.

Brad closed his eyes and wished devoutly he were back at Fort Harrison.

After a time he heard voices.

“The convoy is ready to load aboard, sir.”

“Thank you, Bailey. Be right out.”

“I say, Bailey, have you seen my servant?”

His servant! Brad pried open his eyes.

A private standing by the table said, “No, sir.”

“Dash it all,” the colonel muttered, “hasn’t anybody seen my servant?”

“He may have gone aboard by this time, sir.”

“Dammit, he’s never around when I need him.” The colonel snatched up his beret and stalked away.

The private watched him go. He grinned and said to the captain, “Shall I take your haversack, sir?”

“Thanks, Bailey. I’ll manage.”

“Better put on your coat. It’s pouring out.”

As the captain reached for his coat, Brad caught a glimpse of a Commando flash on his battle dress. He opened his eyes a little wider and scrutinized the sensitive face and the curling blond hair and wondered how long this joker would last at Fort Harrison.

“Glad to be off, Bailey?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s the spirit. Let’s go.”

Cheerleader type, Brad scoffed, and went back to dozing.

Someone shook him and said it was time to go to the station.

The journey to London was a nightmare of bone weariness and exhaustion and disappointment, suffered in snatches of awareness. He had impressions of a crowded train, of drawn shades and a tiny blue lamp, of being driven from Paddington through caverns of rain and pitch darkness to a billeting office and thence to a room that was sickeningly cold and smelled of dust. He fell asleep thinking it was a strange June and how terribly far he was from Malton.

The morning was wonderfully fresh and sharp with slanting sunlight.

On Grosvenor Square uniformed Americans converged from all directions toward a huge red apartment building which housed ETO headquarters. Some yawned and were laggard, some brisk, some savored the weather and seemed loathe to go indoors; they were, Brad thought, very much like men passing into a factory gate on any summer morning in Malton.

But here, too, were scorched wrecks of Georgian residences, and blast walls of brick and cement protecting each doorway, and above the roofs in the distance barrage balloons glinting in a crystalline sky. He spied a flight of tiny fighters, undoubtedly Spitfires, pass high over the sprawling city. In a few minutes they would scream across the Channel where the enemy, droning in the sky, awaited combat.

This was the brink of war and he a part of it at last. He strode across the square in a tremor of exhilaration.

An image of Dan Stenick fell into his mind. He, like Dan, was footloose at last, disentangled from the Lakelock dynasty, delivered out of the bondage of being Brad Parker. He felt fresh and strong and indescribably free as if his spirit had been ransomed by Pearl Harbor. He wondered what the first Parker, who sailed from Devonport more than two centuries ago seeking adventure in a dangerous new world, would think of the last Parker who had returned to the Old Country on the selfsame quest.

Inside headquarters a WAC captain, bored and impersonal as if she were working in a bargain basement, glanced at his orders, checked his name on a long document filled with names, and flipped over the cards of an index file. He watched her capable hands as a man watches a bouncing ball on a roulette wheel. Her fingers paused at a card, then flipped it over and paused at the next—and the next. ETO headquarters was just building up; there were hundreds of junior officers arriving to be placed among hundreds of staff sections. Would his name be paired against a vacancy in Operations? Or Special Services? Or, God forbid, Supply? He watched the nimble, unpainted fingers and enjoyed the brief gamble as if they were fingers of fate.

Finally the fingers stopped decisively. He was directed to report to Lieutenant Colonel Timmer—in Operations! He offered up silent thanks and went off briskly lest she found she had made an error.

He could not know that the selection of this card lying among hundreds was the first of a series of accidents, tiny but inexorably chained, that was to lead him to a meeting with Valerie Russell.