CHAPTER 51
The voice was shaky, but the accent was the same. “Be so kind as to refresh my----oh, yes. Colchester? The homosexual Warrant Officer? Arkwright?”

“Wainwright. Bob. I were there as witness”

“Yes. I remember now. Tall chap, red hair?”

I laughed. “Not any more, Captain”

A croaking laugh in reply. “Maurice, please. Those days are long gone, along with my own hair, I am afraid. What can I do for you? Oh, and how is WO Wainwright?”

My silence must have gone on a beat too long.

“I am sorry, er, Gerald. It comes to all of us”

I saw no reason to enlighten him. “We were just wondering, Maurice, if you wanted to join us later in the year. Bob can’t… can’t join us, but we felt that we needed to retrace our journey of the 40s, go back to see places we did when we were younger, like. Pay respects”

“And you thought of me? Very kind of you”

“Well, you were right good for Bob, and he can’t come, and we’re organising a small group”

“I remember two Officers with you, Gerald, and another trooper. Are they in the party?”

“Yes, all three”

“Then how am I to be held worthy in such company? I was a mere accountant”

“You were man who stood up for Bob, you were man who kept him out of glasshouse, and this trip is about Bob”

And Harry, and Wilf, and even poor, stupid, fastidious Philip, and hundreds of thousands of miserable, starved bastards in Germany, and that farmer and his family, and Matthew’s mate, and so many more.

“What it is is taking ferry over from Portsmouth to France, near Caen, aye? Then down to city, up through Belgium, bit of Germany and Danish border. We’ve got a proper little bus, with a driver, his lad’s a squaddy, REME, like, so he wants a look-in on what his lad might have to do”

There was a pause before Flanagan spoke again. “I wasn’t there, Gerald, not when it was actually taking place, but I did pass through… Yes. If you give me date and place, then yes, it would be an honour. Thank you”

We made the arrangements, and on Susie’s next trip down to see her doctor, I sat with Rodney in a pretentious coffee place that had a silly Italian-sounding name and served rubbish tea.

“Contacted that Pay Corps Captain, Rodney, asked him along. Should be room in bus”

“Yes, and I have two more strangers to add, if you do not mind. Charles has expressed a desire to revisit old haunts, which is an unfortunately apt word, as has his brother. They have both returned more recently, and so they have a degree of local knowledge that will most certainly be of some use. A sort of boys’ club jolly, what?”

“Well, there’s Susie as well, Rodney. Don’t think she’d be right happy with that description”

“How is she coming along?”

“Fine, by her account. We’ve got her new passport, and she says Charles and his lad have given her first official diagnosis. She just needs second, and there’s a private clinic that’ll have a word with her for a small fee”

“Ah. I could always—“

“No, thank you, but no. I said same thing, like, and her mam, Valerie, just says not for us, and she’ll make peace properly with her daughter, and that means helping her be her daughter properly, and then she spoils it all by laughing at how the words mix up, and then she only starts crying. I do not understand women, Rodney, not at all”

He stared at his cup for a minute, then spoke without looking up. “I would have made a comment about not being without them, but I find I am missing my own lady dreadfully, and with your own circumstances it would have been churlish to say such a thing. Our lives continue, though, my dear friend. Oh my…”

I passed him a paper napkin to wipe up the slight spill of tea from the side of his mouth, and he smiled, only a little awry.

“Not quite as chipper as we were, my boy”

“None of us are, pal, none of us. Let’s take this trip, aye? While we can. Oh, look, I went out down that big bookshop you showed me, got these”

I don’t know what had possessed me, but I had managed to find some basic phrase books as well as a European road atlas. I knew Pete would most likely have his own, but I was actually looking forward to following our route in a wider context. When you are going from place to place, you only see a strip, a linear slice of map either side of your route, and it is hard to picture the wider world that extends beyond your sight. When the Canadians were clearing Antwerp’s approaches, I had only had a vague idea of what it had involved, but an initial look at the estuary’s islands had shocked me. What an awful place to have to fight. The language books, though, were different. I made a decision to use them by showing the pages to the foreigners rather than trying to pronounce the lingo.

Pete was subdued at our next meeting, which was another Sunday’s dinner at the Ship. Andrew was along, his relationship with Susie seeming to have settled into something a lot more relaxed than it had been, and my girl herself was a lot quieter now. Not subdued, just less prickly. From the moment we had first met, she had reacted almost in advance of every imagined slight, but now she seemed to be settling into her skin. I had been doing a lot of reading, as could be expected, especially about people like her, because it wasn’t something I had ever considered I would encounter. In fact, I hadn’t considered the idea full stop, but there she was now, living, breathing and undercooking my meals. What else could I do but my best to try and understand her?

Val opened the issue.

“Very quiet today, Pete”

“Yeah. Lad’s got his posting”

That didn’t sound good. I ran through the bases I could remember. “Sennelager? Bielefeld?”

“No. Bloody Afghanistan”

Charcoal flesh and shining teeth… no. “He’s not teeth, though”

Why use that word after those memories? Hell. Pete shrugged. “That’s what I’m telling myself, that he’s not going out under fire to do recoveries. It’ll be a base workshop, that’s all. Not what you had, mate”

Change the subject. “Aye, on that note, we’ve got our final numbers for trip. There’ll be me and the lass here, her two quacks, Rodney, Matthew, me, Ernie and Maurice”

Val looked up. “Who’s Maurice?”

“Er, old friend of Bob’s. Pete, he didn’t sound too well on phone”

“Not a problem, Gerald. Bus is one I use for hospital trips, got a hoist on it”

“You cheeky so and so! We’re not that old!”

That little barb seemed to break his mood, and I kept it as light as I could after that. He looked over the remains of his dinner to Susie’s mother. “You not coming, Val?”

“No, not this time. Got my own job, can’t get that much time off. Why, you asking?”

Pete looked a little flustered, but recovered well. “No, just sorting rooms in hotels and that for first few days, need to know who’s going to be there”

Val was straight to the point as she drove her daughter and me home after the meal.

“Definitely someone there, Gerald. Definitely. He going to be OK on trip with his lad away?”

I gave the only answer I could.

“I really don’t know, love”

It was quite a nice little bus, I had to admit, with no back bench seat, the space taken up with a ramp and miniature crane for wheelchairs. Val had dropped us both back at Pete’s yard, and as we boarded in the early dawn she smiled and handed a small box to her daughter.

“Sort of pressie for both of you, really. One of those digital cameras, so you can send us some decent snaps of trip. Got your laptop, girl?”

“Yes, Mam, and clean knickers!”

“Aye, well. Gerald?”

“Aye?”

“You keep her safe”

Hugs, some tears, and we were off, just Ernie, Susie and myself at first, with Pete’s young lad Ashley as second driver, then a long, long run down the A1, the M1, and so many other roads I ended up lost even after the sun was fully up. I’d never been a big driver, taking the train everywhere, so I had only a limited idea of the road layout much beyond Leeds or Doncaster. We passed the latter, then Coventry, Oxford, Winchester, so many other towns, with a couple of what Pete called comfort breaks in pretty dire motorway service areas, Susie seemingly attached by some unsuspected surgical procedure to her mobile phone. There was a first sight of the sea at last, a muddy area, buildings crowding in, and finally we came off a big roundabout with a pub next to it to be directed to join a queue of other coaches and small buses. An immense ferry stood at the quayside, but my eyes were busy looking for the rest of our party.

“Dear boy!”

I turned to take Matthew’s hand, Rodney beside him supporting himself on a polished black walking stick with a brass head. The latter grinned, slightly awkwardly.

“Not exactly the swagger stick of old, what? I would have brought my shooting stick, but, well, one-handed operation is a mite difficult. My man is over there, with a picnic”

“We stopped…”

“Gerald, dear boy, those places are crimes against manners, decency and taste. We have a kettle, a pot and fresh milk”

Ernie laughed out loud. “Aye, and I’ve brought proper Yorkshire tea!”

Rodney nodded. “I would have expected no less. Charles and Julian have departed to avail themselves of the—ah, here they come. Oh!”

Two figures were coming across the huge expanse of the vehicle waiting area, but one, Julian, was pushing another figure in a wheelchair, and there was only one person it could be.

“Rodney!”

“Julian, dear boy. Bringing your work with you?”

“Not at all, dear chap: this is one of yours, I believe. His carers spotted us, I can’t imagine how, and he is part of our little swan”

The figure in the chair grinned, and wheezed out a comment about braying toffs in a Channel ferry port, and of course it was Maurice. I took both of his hands.

“Thank you for coming, my friend”

“No, thank you for thinking of me”

Rodney smiled. “Under better circumstances than our last meeting, what?”

Maurice shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. That occasion gave something I had never really had before, and that’s pride. Not the commonest of commodities in my profession. Now, as you can see, I am… ah. You have indeed prepared well, assuming that the bus I see is ours”

Pete was just walking over to us. “Right, we’re all set to go. Boarding in about twenty minutes. These boys the last of you?”

“Aye, Pete”

“OK. You must be Maurice. Anything else we need to think about, any other special requirements apart from the hoist?”

Wheezing. “No, apart from the weakness in my legs I am fine. I am neither incontinent nor gaga”

Pete bellowed with laughter. “You’ll fit right in here, mate! Now, let’s get ourselves settled. All aboard the Skylark!”

Stop-go driving, and a passport check. A ramp down into an echoing metal cavern and then a lift to more comfortably decorated and better-lit accommodation. Fast food ignored in response to a gigantic ‘picnic’ provided in no less than three hampers by our officers. Fresh air over the open-air deck at the stern as we made our way out of Portsmouth Harbour, the old defences pressing in on the narrow exit as we passed warships old and new, my memories of a previous departure from that place shuddering with the ship’s engines as we gathered pace for the open sea.

It wasn’t only the engines, I realised.

“Susie?”

“Just a bit worried, Gerald. Nowt, really. But… Look. First time out of country for me”

“First time for me, really. Last time were a bit sort of unconventional as travel goes”

“Aye, aye, but look. Got passport, got all of that sorted, aye, but suddenly, well, I’m here, we’re going, and what if Frogs get all precious or summat like that? I mean, you can see what I am, anyone can!”

“Aye. Lass that’s taking mates to pay respects to the lost, that’s what. You’re not alone, lass. Remember? Piling rifles. More than three today. Sit by me, what can go wrong?”

She hugged me, but remained a little out of sorts until she finally fell asleep in a deck chair out on the sundeck, a book slipping from her hand as Maurice dozed beside her in his wheelchair. The rest of us found conversation stalling as we moved across the Bay of the Seine, ships scattered around us, the coastline ahead coming into view looking so different from the last time. No plumes of smoke, no artillery, just the steady throb of the engines and the cries of the gulls. No piles of dead to avoid either, as Pete steered us out of the hold onto a twisty little set of lanes towards the French passport booths, Susie’s trembling increasing with each yard driven.

He boarded the bus, the classic Frog with his moustache and silly hat, and a not-so-silly pistol at his hip. Pete said something in French to him which brought a sharp nod, our driver calling back to us “Gave him the SP on what we’re here for, lads!”

He passed down the bus, and to my surprise insisted on shaking hands with every one of us as he checked our little booklets. We were the last, and he had a seriously strong grip as he shook my hand before turning to Susie. A prolonged stare, her trembling rising to a peak, and then he smiled in the gentlest way imaginable, took her hand and kissed the back of it.

“Bienvenue en France, Mam’selle!”