CHAPTER 54
The next morning I had a hangover, of course, but we all did, so while Pete did something with the bus engine we pushed Maurice down the street in his chair for another look at our little garden. The café had done us a continental style breakfast which actually included a lot of sliced meats and cheeses rather than just funny bread and jam, so said hangover was ebbing, at least in my case. I could have murdered a bacon sandwich.

Ashley was quite apologetic that morning, seeming a little bowled over by the welcome given to us by the local people.

“Son, look at it this way. Where do you live?”

“Out at Foxwood”

“Newer estate, aye? With Mam and Dad?”

“Yeah, looking for us own place, though, me and Stacey. My girl, that is. It’s a bit boring out there”

I nodded. “Right, lad. You got a local pub?”

“Dick Turpin”

“OK. Now, imagine you’re about ten. Who do you live with at home? Just Mam and Dad?”

“Aye, ‘Chelle moved out a year ago”

“Big sister?”

“Aye”

“Right, there you are, ten years old, and suddenly the sky falls in. There’s explosions, bombs, feels like end of world, and then the place is full of foreign soldiers. They take everything that’s not nailed down, they take your neighbours away, some of them they shoot in front of you, just like that. Your pub becomes theirs. And they’re there for four years. Four years in which food gets shorter, and you don’t get school, and people you know disappear in the night and are never heard of again. And after four years, suddenly, they all clear off. Can you imagine that?”

“Aye. Seen films like that”

“Right, then. The reason they leave is because they’ve been pushed away by another set of foreigners, who’ve come to help you, and when the first lot clear off they smash everything they can, take owt that’s not nailed down, and then…”

I looked across at the dip behind the hedge, remembering what I had heard about the farmer and his family, how they wouldn’t miss any of the food Wilf had cooked up for us.

“Then they come back, with more tanks, and more bombs, and this time they shoot your Dad and they rape your sister and your mother before shooting them, until finally they’re forced out again and you’re left to pick up pieces with a few folk who managed to hide well enough not to get found, not to get killed along with all the others. And you bury your dead, and you bury the dead lads that came to help you, and you might one day stop hating, but you never, ever forget a debt. That’s what this is, Ashley”

I walked over to the middle of the lane, pointing at the tarmac. “I shot a man here, son. Just like Ernie said. I watched him kick and writhe and spray blood all over ground, all over snow, and then I ran up and shoved muzzle of revolver into mouth of another man, and if I had remembered to cock the thing again I would most likely have shot him as well, and I see their faces in the night, and Mr Nolan, and Mr Folland, they have their own faces in the night, I’m sure of it. You’ve seen films, son. It wasn’t like that”

Maurice wheezed “Yes, Ashley. I wasn’t here, because my job was shuffling papers somewhere safe, but trust me I have seen enough of the effects of this on others less fortunate than me”

He paused for breath, and I looked at the shell-shocked face of the boy. “You weren’t to know, son, but you do need to think a little. We’ve got somewhere worse coming up in a day or three, and when I say worse, well, I can’t think of any other way to describe it. You’ll know more about that place, I’ll wager”

We took another cup of tea with our lady friend Marie in her spotless kitchen before a round of cheek-kissing and handshakes from the Mayor and what seemed like every adult not at work, and they insisted on putting several cases of beer into the luggage spaces of the bus. We were soon on a much wider road heading for Liège and the German border. Pete was driving for that leg, and I was half asleep next to young Susie, who took my hand.

“I never really understood till now, Gerald. I mean, that night we met, that were a revelation, but this is so much more, dunno, visceral? Those people, some of them were there and, well…”

She squeezed my hand. “Don’t you ever think ill of yourself again, you stupid old hero. Now, I am going to put some sounds on and get some sleep. I’m not used to nights that mad”

“You’ve had a few of those recently with your young man, lass!”

“Aye, but, well, stayed a bit more sober recently. Don’t…”

She squeezed my hand again. “Gerald Barker, you didn’t just liberate this place, if you see what I mean. I got a life from you, and it’s the life I should have had by rights, but without you, shit. That young man, well, I get to fancy him same way as any other lass fancies her lad, not like they said at school, not as a puff or a bumboy, and it’s a bit like pushing against a locked door, and it opens. Got to be careful not to fall, aye?”

She turned to look me in the eye, tears ready to fall. “My young man, as you call him, is the finest lad I’ve ever known that isn’t sitting in this bus. I’m pretty sure he really did start out with me as a bet with his mates, like, but that isn’t what it is now. Yes, I know what we said first day, but we’re past that and that’s the point: I don’t care how we started. Point is where we are now, and he treats me as his lass, and no more and certainly no bloody less than that. I think, Gerald, love, and I mean that word, really mean it, aye? I think, love, that we are getting to same place with you as I’m at, able to see ourselves as we are and not how we think others see us. That’s no small thing, my love. You are a good man, Gerald, one in a fucking million, so don’t you ever forget that, and because of that I’m just an ordinary lass with a decent job and a nice boss, with mates at work and a boyfriend I…and a lad I love to bits who makes me feel wanted and happy and REAL”

She turned away, fumbling with her handbag for tissues, and then she simply pulled her headphones on to shut me out, turning her gaze out of the window.

She still held my hand, though.

We stopped for lunch just into Germany, somewhere near Aachen, and Ernie called out to Rodney “Remember that speech you gave us?”

Rodney muttered something about ‘what speech’ and Ernie repeated back to him his words about not arriving as liberators.

“What were it you said? ‘We have killed their sons and husbands’, weren’t it?”

“Oh yes! I do recall some wag opined that we hadn’t killed enough of them”

“Aye. Percy Scott, that were”

“Ah yes”

Ernie sighed. “Copped one up by Hamm did Percy. Think he’s up in Hannover now. What a shitty war. Here, what’s food like here?”

Sausage and chips, in the end, though Susie had what she called a schnitzel and Ashley a burger. We got a few funny looks from the serving staff, but we didn’t care. We’d done our work well a few years ago, and Susie had made that plain. It was hard to hate, though, for these didn’t seem the same folk as the one I had killed, or those at that place we were heading for. Trust in humanity, Gerald Barker, trust in common decency.

Ashley had the wheel as Pete snored in a back seat, and we made good time on the endless motorways I remembered from our mad dash up to Denmark. We crossed the Rhine north of Cologne, with much less fuss than we had had in 1945, skirted Dortmund and headed towards Paderborn. The country looked clean and prosperous, and I found it hard to reconcile with my memories of burning vehicles and massed columns of marching prisoners. Pete had arranged rooms near a place called Schloss Neuhaus, and he explained that the whole area had been a massive British Army garrison for decades. Matthew nodded.

“Yes, absolutely dear boy, although I am told of one remarkably tactless billeting arrangement. I spent some years in Sennelager and Osnabruck, both very near here. Ashley, my boy, are you familiar with cap badges?”

“What do you mean, Mr Folland?”

“Ah, the callow youth of today. Gerald, the castle—the schloss—in Paderborn was chosen as the headquarters for the 17th/21st Lancers. You are familiar with their regimental badge?”

“Aye, Matthew. Ashley, skull and crossbones, like, with banner reading ‘or glory’. Seen that one?”

“Oh aye! So what were problem, Mr Folland?”

“Quite simply, dear boy, that all of these fine young men in their black berets with a skull and crossbones insignia were stationed in a place that had been till then occupied by the SS. Caused some confusion among the local populace, what?”

Pete was laughing out loud at that one. “Tell me that was deliberate, mate!”

Matthew just grinned. “My lips are sealed, dear boy. Now, a stroll around the castle and then I rather believe we require an early night. We have heavy work ahead of us tomorrow”

It was the part I had been dreading, but it had to be faced. Susie told you what you are, Gerald Barker. Time to prove it.