The Restless Sea, page 40
The carriages stop often. German soldiers patrol up and down the sides of the stationary wagons, their boots clicking against the ground, their rifles gleaming in the winter sunshine. Troop trains full of German soldiers pass by on the opposite track. The Germans do not seem browbeaten in the least. Quite the opposite. Their uniforms are smart, their boots shiny, their smiles fixed. They are nothing like the dejected, stinking, unshaven prisoners in the wagons. As the temperature rises, so does the smell of unwashed men. They cannot even let fresh air in through the windows: they are all screwed down.
As night falls, Charlie dozes, only struggling briefly when his boots are removed by a soldier. ‘In case you run,’ says the soldier, cocking his head towards the door, where two more soldiers stand guard. The windows are now shuttered. The wagon is pitch black; the stink of sweat stifling. In the darkness, the men rest against each other, their bodies bumping uncomfortably on the wooden benches as the wagon rattles on.
At some point in the night, the train stops again. The men sleep in fits and starts. They are coupled to another goods train in the early morning. As it pulls on, the guards finally slide the doors open. Most of the prisoners are still asleep, but Charlie inches forward, welcoming the cool breeze. He sticks his hand out, feeling the air touch the skin of his arm and blow into the carriage. It is fresh and cool and he could just as well be on the sleeper to Scotland.
‘Enough,’ says the guard, and Charlie shuffles back. The guard indicates that he may pass the water and bread around the waking prisoners. They eat slowly, savouring each mouthful; they do not know whether they will be given anything else before they reach their destination.
The lavatory is now blocked. Sewage creeps along the floor towards them. The smell is indescribable. The train stops to let a faster train go past, and one of the prisoners persuades the guards to let them relieve themselves on the side of the track. The men stand or squat in the dull morning light. As the train chugs on again, the guards start to argue among themselves. The man with the startling blue eyes is missing. Geordie laughs. ‘Run and run and don’t look back!’ he yells out into the chilly morning. The guards shout up the train and hammer on the walls of the carriage. It draws to a halt, but the man is long gone. ‘Good luck to him,’ says Geordie.
At the next transit camp they are kept separate from a mass of other prisoners by lines of twisted barbed wire. Charlie is relieved to be on his side – the other side is filthy: crammed with hundreds of dirty, sick, and injured men. They are standing or lying, or propped up in any space they can find. They have no shelter. The only structure is a high watchtower. Charlie can see the German guards surveying from the top. Beneath it, some of the men have dug holes in the ground in a bid to hide from the wind and rain and sleet. But the holes have turned into sludgy pits, and the men lie there, encrusted in mud and their own faeces. A haze of flies buzzes over everything.
It is the first time that Geordie has not been upbeat. ‘I can barely look,’ he says. ‘Poor buggers.’
‘Are they soldiers?’ says Charlie.
Geordie nods.
‘Why do airmen get treated so much better?’
‘It’s not because we’re airmen. It’s because they’re Russians.’
Another man adds, ‘Others too: Yugoslavs, Serbs, Ukrainians …’
‘Word is, they’re simply chucked into pits when they die. And sometimes before …’ Geordie cannot talk about this without paling.
As if on cue, three of the pathetic prisoners are dragged away by German guards. They do not even protest, their limp bodies tumble and bump along the ground until they are out of sight. There are three shots. None of their comrades protests. They are too weak to move anyway: their faces gaunt, their eyes sunken, their wrists and hands just skin and bone. Some pull at the last remnants of muddy grass and push it into their swollen mouths.
Charlie glares at a guard who is standing expressionless beside them. ‘Can’t you give these men some food?’ he says.
The guard looks at him in astonishment: ‘These are not men. They are subhuman. Socialists and communists. We will not waste food on such undesirables.’
Charlie walks closer to the fence that separates them. An icy drizzle is turning to a stinging sleet. On the other side, a man pushes through the crowd towards him, putting his hand up, as if in greeting. It looks as if he is holding something. The smell of disease fills Charlie’s nostrils. The man’s teeth are black, decayed stumps. He is trying to say something, but the words are mumbled, his tongue restricted by the pus oozing from his swollen gums.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Charlie, moving closer. ‘I can’t understand.’ He takes another step, straining to make out the words.
‘Zhena,’ the man is saying. ‘Wife. Please.’ The guard shouts, and the man stumbles back whence he came.
Charlie can just make out the remnants of a Soviet star sewn on to his shabby uniform. He thinks of the Russians at Polyarnoe, proud and suspicious, wrapped in their warm clothes, checking his papers. He looks back at this creature, covered in filth, emaciated and shivering in the sleet. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says. ‘I wish I could help.’
The man starts to shout, and suddenly runs back past the guard, throwing himself at the barbed wire, his hand outstretched, a dirty scrap of paper in it. Immediately a shot rings out, that sound Charlie knows so well. The piece of paper floats to the ground, dissolving into a puddle. The body on the wire shudders and then hangs still, the uniform caught on the wire, the thin, bare feet swinging freely in the snow.
The compound for British and Commonwealth prisoners at Stalag Luft consists of fifteen long huts surrounded by barbed wire. Charlie has to wear a metal disc with his prisoner number and the name of the camp printed on it. The discs are easy to snap in half, so that if a prisoner dies, the Germans can send the other half back to his family. The officer processing him says, ‘You must wear this at all times. If you are found without it – on the inside or the outside – you will be treated as a spy. We do to spies in our country what you do to spies in your country.’ He draws his hand across his throat, laughing.
Charlie and Geordie are marched to their barracks and given two blankets. They are greeted by a crowd of men, all searching the new arrivals’ faces for friends. They enter their hut and each choose a spare bed in the triple-deck wooden bunks. There is washing strung around the walls and between the chairs and tables. A lanky man with thinning hair greets Geordie. ‘Welcome back,’ he says. Then he addresses the other prisoners: ‘I can vouch for this one,’ he says.
‘And I can vouch for this one,’ says Geordie, pointing at Charlie. The men relax: it is not unusual for German spies to try to infiltrate the camp, so newcomers need to be approved.
The man sticks out his hand. ‘Banks,’ he says. ‘Welcome to Kriegsville.’ The hut is warm: there is a coal-burning stove in one corner. Banks rubs his hands together. ‘Make the most of it,’ he says. ‘Coal’s running low. We’ll be without soon.’
Geordie introduces Charlie to more old friends. ‘Barnes and John.’ He waves to another man who is deep in a game of chess. ‘And there’s Spike. He’s another Fleet Air Arm pilot.’
Spike holds up a hand in greeting. ‘Just can’t stay away, can you, Geordie?’ he says, without looking up from his game.
Stalag Luft isn’t the worst place to be sent – many of the Luftwaffe officers who run the camp are veterans and heroes of the First World War, and not necessarily indoctrinated into Nazi thinking – but it is still a prisoner-of-war camp. Armed guards patrol the exterior and interior perimeters, between the barbed wire. Their dogs pad along beside them, panting, tongues lolling over sharp teeth. Along the fences are high watchtowers. The guards are allowed to shoot anyone who steps beyond the low warning wire that protects the first perimeter. At night, powerful searchlights send eerie shadows flickering through their huts. The air is punctuated by a cacophony of sharp barks. ‘There goes another one,’ says Geordie.
None of the men looks up, although Charlie knows that each of them is straining to hear what happens next. He watches John, whose head is always bent in concentration over a table: he is a talented artist who paints cartoons of camp life, soaking food labels to mix missing watercolours, using the end of a burnt stick like charcoal, even making paintbrushes out of his own hair. He is always busy illustrating something: the weekly newsletters they pass around the camp, posters for the plays, his head bent in concentration. But as soon as the hut has been locked for the night, he gets down to the more important business of forgery, painstakingly copying passes and stamps and signatures for documents. The electric bulb that flickers overhead is not enough to draw by, so the men make candles out of margarine, and set them around John while he dabs and scratches, squinting in the dim light.
‘Goon up,’ says Spike, who has been keeping an ear to the door, and John swiftly covers the documents with a programme for the next concert they are planning. A guard flings the door open and subjects the hut to another random search. The men gaze nonchalantly on, but their hearts are racing and their blood is up. These small risks are worth it, because Charlie soon learns that the overriding feeling of camp life is boredom. They are all bored of the endless inspections and roll calls and searches. Bored of standing around with nothing to do. Bored of the German propaganda. Of playing cricket and football, chess, checkers, and bridge.
The only other moments of excitement during the dull week are when the call comes for Red Cross parcels. These are packed with biscuits, tea, lard, flour, egg powder, condensed milk, cheese, salmon, prunes, jam, cigarettes, and dried fruit and vegetables. Of course, a letter from Olivia would be even better, but there has been no mail for Charlie since he sent news of his whereabouts. In the darker moments, he cannot help wondering whether that means that Jack made it, and now he, Charlie, is forgotten. He pictures their joyful reunion. He hopes that she is happy.
The Germans grow stricter and more agitated as the centre compound expands, filling with American prisoners-of-war. Supplies are low, and, with more men arriving every day, hunger is beginning to grip the camp. Some of the heftier inmates develop a stoop, as if pulled downwards by their shrinking stomachs. As well as softball and basketball, the Americans bring tales from outside. The hopeful news of an Allied victory is tempered by rumours of extermination camps, where prisoners are disappearing; of a mass breakout in another camp on the other side of Poland, where prisoners chose to risk the barbed wire and mines rather than stay in the camp. The men fear they could have to endure the same conditions before long.
Tension begins to rise. The German officers grow short-tempered. The Allies are pushing back. Three prisoners mount a daring escape. They have spent weeks digging a tunnel hidden beneath a vaulting horse. Day after day they have inched their way beneath the camp perimeter undetected, and now they are gone. John’s forgeries are found, which leads to more roll calls, more searches.
Charlie is shouted awake. It is a night inspection. The prisoners stagger outside in the cold, shivering while they rub the sleep from their eyes. Inside, the guards search their beds, bundling sheets and blankets on to the floor and tearing the pictures from the walls. Mattresses are left sticking up, and washing strewn in a muddle on the ground. ‘This!’ says the guard, striding towards Charlie with a tin in his hand.
‘It’s just a candle.’
‘It is verboten!’
‘For goodness sakes.’
‘To the cooler!’
The guard pushes Charlie into the punishment cell. It is a small room with a bed, a table, and a chair. He paces anxiously as far as the room will allow – about three steps lengthways and two widthways. There is a tiny barred window high up in the wall. It barely lets in any light. It is freezing cold.
He loses track of time. Seconds feel like hours. He is only able to stretch his legs properly and see daylight when he visits the toilet block with a guard. He is allowed no book, no cigarettes, nothing. His thoughts fracture. He tries to focus on something – anything. He recites poems he learnt at school. Hymns. He tries to remember Olivia’s letters from those early days of the war, forming the words in his mind, then the pictures. He tries to mark the passing of days by scratching a line in the wall for each one. Sometimes Charlie wakes and for a moment he isn’t sure where he is. He can feel the movement of the great ocean beneath his ship, but as his eyes adjust to the light, he realises he is still in the cooler. The days fragment into fleeting images: the downward spiral of a Spitfire, smoke spewing from its tail. The thumbs-up of a fellow pilot just before his plane bursts into flames. Thick smoke. The smell of fuel. The scream of a Stuka. The Hurricane’s throttle as she banks, banks, banks. London burning. St Paul’s Cathedral rising from the ashes. The Polish pilots at the airfield, laughing, hollow-eyed, strewn across the floor, exhausted, patting each other on the back, staring, crying. Sometimes his heart won’t stop hammering. At other times, in moments of clear lucidity, in a state somewhere beyond sleep yet still awake, he is taken right back to the beach of his youth, resting his head on his mother’s lap, and there is his father, fresh from a swim, rubbing at his hair with a towel, and they are all laughing as the cold drops of water splash on to their hot skin.
Eventually, Charlie is taken to a small interrogation room. A German officer enters. It is not one that Charlie recognises. ‘Please. Sit,’ he says, pointing at the table. But Charlie shakes his head. ‘All right,’ says the German. ‘Your choice.’ He is young, probably around the same age as Charlie. He closes the door carefully behind him, apparently without need for a translator. The action is furtive. Charlie braces himself for the interrogation that must surely follow.
‘I am sorry if you are finding this hard. I will try to make it easier for you.’ Charlie sees that the man has a lazy eye, as if it can’t focus on anything. His English is remarkably good. He pauses to light a cigarette, before handing it over. Charlie is confused, the small kindness is unexpected.
The guard pulls an apple from his pocket and gives this to Charlie as well. It is not just the gift, but the touch of another human being after being so long in solitary confinement that brings a lump to his throat. ‘Thank you,’ he says, barely able to get the words out.
‘It is no problem. Now please, sit. I would like to try to help.’
‘Why?’ says Charlie, wary of any attempt to break him with false friendliness.
‘You were captured with a watch,’ says the guard.
Charlie nods, his heart sinking. He waits for the shouting to start again.
‘This watch is my watch.’ The German lifts his sleeve and displays the watch proudly.
Charlie frowns, confused. He blinks at the German, who nods with encouragement. ‘I gave this watch to a friend. I believe she must be your friend too.’
CHAPTER 28
Olivia
Olivia braces herself against the bumps of the train. She is writing to tell Jack that they have found his sister, but she is struggling to tell him about Betsy’s pregnancy. She puts it off, deciding it is too important an issue to deal with in a letter. Besides, Charlie should be the first to hear. Deep down she knows it is a secret that has become tangled with the one that already lies in her empty womb.
The train stops and starts, pulling into sidings to let troop trains pass, avoiding bomb damage on the tracks. Betsy’s moods change without warning. For the first part of the journey, she is excited and apprehensive, bouncing in her seat like a child while Olivia fills her in on some of Jack’s recent life. There is a woman sharing their cramped compartment with her five young children, and they giggle as Betsy echoes Olivia, ‘Africa? Russia? A training ship? How tall, did you say?’ Happy endings are as rare as bananas these days. But soon she is withdrawn again, and now that the children have no stories to listen to, they also become fractious and tearful while their mother tries to console them with precious sweets.
Betsy reluctantly takes a corned beef sandwich from Olivia. ‘If ever there was a reason not to have kids,’ she says through her mouthful of food, staring at the agitated baby that is wriggling crossly on its mother’s lap.
Olivia glares at her. ‘Try and sleep,’ she says. ‘There’s still a way to go.’
For a moment, Betsy looks like a child too, upset by Olivia’s harsh tone. ‘Did Jack ever talk about me?’ she asks.
‘Of course. Lots. I even tried to find you in Devon …’
‘That place …’ Betsy shudders.
‘Do you want to talk about it …?’
But she has lost Betsy again; the girl is staring out of the window. Outside, in the corridor, there are soldiers sitting on the floor, their uniforms creased, the leather of their boots wrinkled with use, their rifles propped against the wall. They sit silently, their eyes unfocused, their heads bowed. Cool air rushes in through the open window, replacing the smell of smoke and men with the damp of peat and bracken. Rannoch Moor stretches for miles, patched with brown and green, and blotched with dark boulders. A shallow burn runs along near the railway line, the black pebbles of its bed glistening like obsidian. A herd of red deer hinds lift their heads and stare at the passing train. Their red-brown coats are the colour of the moor. They are so close that Olivia can see their wet noses and their large, surprised eyes. Their ears twitch and they don’t take their gaze from the train for a second. And then suddenly they turn and run, flashes of pale rump as they leap and bound away, unaffected by war, impervious to the changing world.
This time they take the train all the way to the small railway station at Achnasheen. From there they get a lift with some young men who are on their way to the new Highland Fieldcraft Training Centre. It has been set up by the War Office: the people in charge are worried about the lack of decent officer material now that so many youngsters are coming up through the ranks. The centre is designed to teach boys to become men, and to increase the pool of officers ready for a final push against the Germans. Betsy switches from scowling teenager to charm itself. She knows how to make the boys grin, encouraging them with smiles and chatter.
