CHAPTER 25
Ernie wasn’t too full of gossip that night, and we spent it going over old, old tales of our times in Normandy and further on. The toast, in essence, was ‘absent friends’, and several times we found ourselves sitting silent, as if by mutual agreement.

The room was nice, and the toilet and bathroom out on the landing were clean. The breakfast was almost as good as Beattie’s. I took a little while to let it settle before squeezing into my Number Twos. Rodney had been quite specific: we would visit our comrade as exactly that, as fellow soldiers unashamed to be seen with him. Let the world think what it wanted to, we would show that we cared and held fast to honour and friendship, for I was beginning to feel that Bob had nothing else left to him. I mean, I would never be able to understand how a man could ever feel that way about another man, and if I let myself linger on the idea too long I felt a little sick, to tell the truth.

I made myself put those thoughts away. This was Bob, first and above anything else. Tricia’s words came to me just then, and yes, Bob was worth any trouble I could put myself to.

Matthew surprised us by arriving in a Daimler saloon car “On loan from my chum”, and I noticed a few more strips of colour on his breast than I bore on my own. Boots bulled, Brasso freshly put to my buttons, buckles and cap and shoulder badges, and who was there to tell any of us that we were no longer members of their club? Matthew kept up a steady flow of nonsense chatter as he drove us in the borrowed car to the gates of the glasshouse, but I was scarcely aware of the noise as I felt anger coming to a cold boil inside me.

After all, who the bloody hell were these people, these monkeys, to condemn one of ours? Had they been where we had been, walked our paths, buried their brothers? Rodney put a hand to my arm.

“I know, Gerald, but not today. We will be calm incarnate, we will not in any way poke any monkeys, for they will surely take their redress from our friend’s body”

He turned to our driver. “Matthew, old boy, did you by any chance succeed in your enquiries regarding the Board?”

“Absolutely, dear chap. Rather crusty, I’m afraid. Judge Advocate is a sensible chap, though; taught some of the law classes at Sandhurst while I was there, don’t you know. I will do my best to catch his eye. The Court is apparently being brought forward. Can’t have the wrong class of bumboy under the colours, what? I do believe Fyfe has got his fingers inserted deeply into this particular pie”

Ernie asked the obvious question, and Rodney shook his head in disbelief. “Is Yorkshire really that far away? The Home Secretary, Ernest, no less. Russian spies to a man, your sodomites, in his eyes, and Something Must Be Done. Our comrade is not the first, and he will certainly not be the last. I do not know what exactly the good Minister believes, whether it is in their susceptibility to blackmail or in some accompanying attraction to the Bolshevik philosophy”

He started to laugh out loud. “Matthew, imagine if that were true! All those chaps who went to Harrow, Eton or Cambridge, all playing for our old friend Uncle Joe or that new chap? Delusions, Matthew, fantasies of paranoia!”

“Absolutely, Rodney! Now, we are almost there. I will have a word with the gentle receptionists as I am, after all, still in service. Be good chaps and wait by the vehicle”

He dismounted—the old thoughts were back unbidden with my belt and boots---and strode briskly over to the soldier at the gate, who listened to him, shook his head and started to turn away. Matthew said something just then, and the scene was transformed as one soldier spun smartly on his heel and stamped to attention while Matthew spoke to him with his forehead almost touching the brim of the guard’s new-style helmet. Perhaps ‘spoke’ wasn’t quite an adequate word for the exchange. Matthew marched back to the car, smiling gently, and the barrier lifted smartly as we drove through the gates of the prison, our driver breaking into a grin once past the checkpoint.

“Ah, that does one a power of good, to find out one still has the old touch. Now, Admin is apparently over---ah, here we are. Five minutes, gentlemen”

He was back in ten, but he had an escort of a hard-faced MP and we were led briskly to a cell block once the Monkey had tried to outstare Ernie and myself and failed. What were you doing while we were killing bloody Tigers?

I could feel the despair in the walls, and it was worse than I had imagined. The Monkey went to make a comment about a single cell for people like, you know, and Ernie surprised me by replying for all of us.

“Why don’t you just shut your fucking hole?”

Rodney sighed. “Indeed. Be a good chap, do, and be silent. This man is a true hero, and you will respect him. What is your name?”

“225 Harman, sir!”

“Very good, Harman. And your own back will bear the equivalent of any unpleasantness you may wish to visit unnecessarily on our comrade after our departure. HAVE WE ESTABLISHED CLEAR CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION IN THIS MATTER, CORPORAL?”

“YES SIR!”

“That will do, then. Open up”

There was a rattle and thump as the door flew open, and a grey figure leapt from the iron bed to rigid attention. No cap, so no salute, but a sharp eyes right to acknowledge two officers…

“Mr Nolan? Ernie? Gerald? Oh shit, oh God, I’m sorry”

Matthew gave the Monkey a look, and he stamped off down the corridor as Bob slumped from his rigid stance and, well, there was no other choice I could honestly make. I stepped forward and hugged him to me as tears poured from him and his fingers dug into the back of my tunic.

I held him till he calmed, and of course even a bumboy had his dignity, and he tried to apologise, which Matthew brought an end to.

“Not now, old chap. Who is your advocate?”

“Some captain from the Pay Corps, Flanagan’s the name”

“Don’t know him. When will he next see you?”

“At Court I think”

“And when did he last---oh, for God’s sake! And when is the Court?”

“Tomorrow at two”

“Rodney, be a good chap and call that odious little screw back. We need a council of war, and that accountant chap Flanagan, and I will not support such a thing sitting on a disgusting single bed in a cell”

“Absolutely, old chap. CORPORAL HARMAN!”

Half an hour later we were in what might have been an interview room, fifteen minutes after that tea was delivered and after another half hour a bespectacled Captain Flanagan was delivered to us. He was quite indignant at first.

“This is all most irregular!”

Matthew gave him a canary-eating smile. “My dear fellow, how irregular is it to conduct a defence fairly without actually conversing with the gentleman involved? We are here at your disposal in this matter, and it will no doubt be of great assistance in expediting dear Robert’s acquittal”

“But he is to plead guilty!”

I gave Bob a stare, and he shrugged. “Not really much else I can do, lads. Sorry. Sir…”

Rodney patted his arm. “Lads will do, Bob. We are here as comrades, as friends. So, then. The evidence?”

“We were found in, well, flagrante delicto, as they say. Um, in bed”

“And the other chap?”

“Heard he jumped off back of wagon. Got a postcard from somewhere in France, but I think, I hope he made it over to States”

Matthew was nodding. “Mitigation, Captain?”

“What mitigation could there be, sir? I mean, it’s an abomination as well as a crime”

Rodney was purring now, and I saw once more the steady, safe man who had held our unit together through so many horrors.

“Well, Captain, perhaps we can manage to put our heads together for just a little while. Robert, how is your sleep?”

Five of us exchanged something without words before the man from the Pay Corps sought to ease his confusion with the obvious question. Some of the old Bob came back to life just then.

“Happen you’ve not had someone try to kill you, then, Captain Flanagan?”

He looked hard at me and I gave him a little nod. He smiled sadly.

“I know what Major Nolan is hinting at, Captain, and I think everyone else in this room has the same in them. I remember Major Folland here, back when he were a bit younger, a bit more newly minted like, and he saw the same as the rest of us. I had to slap Gerald here a couple of times when it got too much, and he still saved my life from a bloody SS bastard. You know how he did that? He took out a gun and he looked him in the eyes and shot him in the neck, and that bastard lay in the snow and sprayed blood everywhere and still took a bloody eternity to die, and just after that me and Gerald and Ernie here picked the bits of another mate out of what were left of our vehicle, and we buried him by road, and we carried on and did that sort of thing day after day, month after bloody month, and they don’t go away, your dead, not unless you’re sick in the head. They come out every night, sometimes in the daytime, and you make a joke of it, but it never leaves you. One of our crew…

“Gerald, nightmares? Ernie? Major Nolan? Major Folland? See, Captain? That’s what he meant by asking how my sleep is!”

Flanagan sat straighter. “I apologise. My own Corps is hardly known for its proximity to the front line, I will agree. But I rather think we have moved from mere mitigation to a possible defence. Gentlemen, pray excuse me for a few minutes. I need to rearrange today’s calendar so that we may discuss this in greater detail. I will also require a statement from each of you for the Board”

He was off, and Matthew was roaring with laughter.

“My God, I do believe we’ve just made an officer of our accountant!”

Four hours later, we had the draft defence, based on ‘unsound mind’, committed to paper and ready for the following afternoon’s Court. My sleep was free of visitors that night.