Dunkirk Spirit Part 56

'The question was rhetorical,' admitted Sandy. 'But you've been very kind. Thank you.'

'I'm gonna have another scout round for some morphine, sir. I'll try and get you something to drink, as well.'

'Please. I'm very thirsty.'

'Digby tells me you're going down to the regiment on Sunday. I'm sorry I shalln't be here to see you off. I have to go over to Oban and sit on that d.a.m.n committee again. I shalln't be back until the middle of next week.'

Sandy accepted the brandy from his father and settled into the armchair. He watched as his father unscrewed the pirate hook from the end of his arm and attached an ivory cigar holder.

'When I went off to the Cape, your grandfather gave me some very sound advice.'

'Sir?'

'The trick, you see, is to take everything in your stride. Do absolutely everything that's asked of you, my boy, but never think about it too deeply. And never try to intellectualise it. It can only get you in trouble.'

'I'll remember that, sir.'

'And do try to come back in one piece. This family has the rotten habit of leaving bits of themselves behind. Pa.s.s that lighter, will you?'

'h.e.l.lo! I say, do you smoke?'

'Yes, sometimes,' admitted Sandy, turning his head to the sound of the disembodied voice. 'Socially.'

'Well, I have some Players in my top pocket. I can't actually reach them myself. Would you mind?'

'Not at all.' Sandy's left arm was strapped tightly to a splint and lay immobile down his side, so it was fortunate that the man lay to his right. He slowly lifted his right hand off the sand and flexed the fingers. It was hard to tell if the hand were black with grime or with decay. Few fingernails remained entire. Every knuckle was split and swollen.

'Captain Havercroft, Royal Engineers,' announced the man.

'Mackenzie-Knox. Lieutenant. Coldstream Guards.'

'How'd you do?'

Sandy struggled for several minutes to free the b.u.t.ton on the captain's battledress. In time he extracted a small silver cigarette case. The effort exhausted him.

'Good morning, sir,' said Lucas. 'Here's your tea. Your bath has just been drawn. It's a fine morning. And the Germans invaded France, Belgium and Holland at dawn. Major Woodward has cancelled today's training programme and there'll be a meeting of all officers and platoon commanders at oh-eight-hundred in the company office. Sir!'

'Thank you Lucas,' said Sandy.

'It's Teddy, as it happens,' wheezed the captain. 'Like the bear! Ha, ha!'

'I think we have a problem, Teddy.'

'Really? What's that, old chap?'

'I need two hands to open this cigarette case.'

The captain huffed, setting off a coughing fit. It took him a while to get the words out. 'Ah, well, that's an engineering problem. My department.'

His lungs rasped as he struggled to draw in air. 'Let me think about it for a while.' He continued wheezing and then asked, 'If you could be anywhere right now, where would it be?'

Sandy chuckled. 'In a big, gleaming white hospital with lots of pretty nurses!'

'No, no,' said the captain. 'Aside from all that, if you could choose to be anywhere? Where would it be?'

'Home, I suppose,' mused Sandy.

'Where's home?'

'Loch Katrine, just outside Oban. Do you know it?'

'No, I've never been up that way. I have been a few times to Glenrothes, for the grouse. Jolly good fun!'

'h.e.l.lo, Badger! You've been busy.'

His brother smiled. 'Sometimes,' he said, looking a tad bashful. 'Sometimes, I don't seem to know when to stop. Not thinking again. Just getting on with it.' He clutched seven or eight brace in his arms.

'Who's going to eat all those?' demanded Sandy. 'You could feed the five-thousand!'

'Ah, well,' smiled Badger. 'Not my concern. That's somebody else's problem.'

'Pa.s.s me back that case, will you,' asked the captain. His hand flapped in agitation by his side. 'Any brothers or sisters?'

'Yes, one of each. My brother Digby is six years older than me and my sister Elspeth is twenty-three. I'm the baby of the family.'

'What is she like? Pretty?'

'We don't actually talk about her any more, I'm afraid.'

'Oh no? Why's that?'

'Well, if I were to tell you, that would be talking about her wouldn't it?'

'Yes, I see what you're saying, old chap.'

'Elspeth won't be coming up for the holidays.'

'Oh, really?' asked Sandy, feigning disinterest.

'No, she's umm,' his mother hesitated. She was a woman of few words, most of which were confined to the cultivation of orchids. 'No, your sister is going to take a little rest. The doctors say her studies have exhausted her. Too much thinking. And now she needs lots of peace and quiet.'

'Are they going to lock her up again?' asked Sandy, tucking into a Victoria sponge.

'A piece of cake, old chap.' The captain tapped the open cigarette case against the side of Sandy's leg. He felt with his hand and extracted one of the Players.

'Bit exposed here, don't you think?' The captain turned his head towards the young lieutenant as another shower of hot sand dropped from the dark sky. 'And I think we have another problem.'

'What's that?'

'I don't have a light,' he laughed. 'Do you?'

05:00 Sunday 2 June 1940.

Bray Dunes, France 'More tea, Padre?' asked Midshipman Hockley.

'Yes, please. If you think we have time.'

Commander Hector Babbington, RN retired,visibly shuddered. The plan of departure had been clearly explained. There was a good hour yet before his team need make their way to the Mole. The Padre could then please himself. He rose up off the sand and went to lean against the Bren gun carrier.

'I must say, this has been a very rewarding experience,' announced the Padre.

'What has?' Binky felt the hackles rise on his neck.

'Seeing you chaps all pulling together,' smiled the Padre. 'And to see people helping their fellow man unselfishly.'

'Does it restore your faith, then?' Binky sank down on the fender.

'My faith does not need restoring. I like to think that, come what may, my faith will remain unshakable.'

'That must be very comforting for you,' said the Commander.

A few uncomfortable seconds pa.s.sed until finally Hockley felt obliged to break the silence. 'More stew, Padre?' he asked.

'Ah, no thank you, but I must say this MacConochie's really is surprisingly good,' he announced. 'What is in it, do you suppose?'

Binky, who was searching for a cigarette amid his many pockets, groaned aloud. 'Meat and veg.' He enounced the words slowly and shook his head. MacConochie's, together with bully beef, was the mainstay of the Tommy's diet and yet the d.a.m.n Padre acted as if he had never tasted it before. 'Oh, for a stiff one!' thought Binky. If he truly existed, G.o.d would conjure up something to drink in the next thirty minutes or else he might do the Padre a serious mischief.

'I wonder what the Germans have to eat?' asked the Padre, keen to fill the silence. 'Sausages, I suppose.'

'Belgian babies,' laughed Hockley.

'Oh, no!' exclaimed the Padre. 'We should never make the mistake of thinking the Germans are monsters, simply because they are on the other side. They are men of flesh and blood, much the same as us.'

'Do you really believe that?' asked Hockley. He paused while the Germans delivered a timely sh.e.l.l into one of the houses on the seafront. 'I mean, this is the second war they've started. They are surely intrinsically different. A very war-like people.'

'And the British are not?' asked the Padre.

'Well, no,' said Hockley, taken aback. 'At least we don't go around invading other people.'

'Not currently, but we certainly have in the past.'

'But that was all for a good cause,' explained the young midshipman. 'If you are referring to the Empire, we have enlightened and advanced countless peoples less civilised than ourselves.'

Now the Padre shuddered.

'And just look at the atrocities the Germans perpetrated in the last war.' Hockley rested his mug on the sand. 'Crucifying prisoners and raping defenceless women. You wouldn't catch the British doing that!'

'Oh no?' asked the Padre. Despite the dim light of dawn his face appeared to visibly whiten. 'I beg to take issue with you. You just have to ask yourself why there are so many half-casts in Africa. You don't suppose the native girls voluntarily gave themselves, do you?'

'Well, I thought they did, sir.' Hockley narrowed his brows and cast a quick glance at the Commander. 'I have a cousin who was in Cape Town a couple of years back and he said he had to beat them off with a stick.'

'Well, if that were the case,' said the Padre, stiffening. 'I can only say that, too, is a direct consequence of colonisation. Left to their own devices, their lives would be dramatically different and I dare say better.'

'But how can you say that, sir?' smirked the midshipman. 'The clergy has always been at the forefront of colonisation, converting the heathen and spreading the Word.'

The Padre held up his hands. 'Yes,' he announced. 'Yes, you are right. And they, too, have a lot to answer for. But my point is that the system of Empire as a whole is misguided. I am sure many people leave England with the best of intentions. But when they get out there, and start considering themselves better than the black man, the power often goes to their heads.'

Binky found himself wanting to explode. The image of his daughter Gertie sprang to mind. Why did so many people have to highlight the bad over the good?

'You only have to take the example of Australia,' continued the Padre. 'The aboriginal people are arguably the most civilised on Earth if you choose to judge them on their relationship to the world around them. Left alone, they would be living in perfect harmony with nature in a veritable garden of Eden, just how G.o.d intended.'

'Like the monkeys,' suggested Binky.

'No, not like the monkeys! Not like the monkeys at all!' insisted the Padre. 'But my point is, what has the Empire given them?'

'Medicine, modern technology, roads, railways, schools,' listed the Commander.

'Yes, education,' added Hockley. 'And the chance to better themselves.'

Now the Padre shook his head. 'How about loss of pride, alcohol addiction, and the Child Welfare Act?' he asked.

'The what, sir?' asked Hockley 'Do you not know that aboriginal children are being forcibly taken from their parents every day of the week?' asked the Padre to blank expressions. 'Here we are fighting the n.a.z.is and at the same time defending our own unjust laws.' He tightened his jaw. 'From the very beginning, we have treated those poor people appallingly. We have systematically disrupted their lives, stolen their land, and currently we are trying to separate their children from their family and culture!'

'But that's to help a.s.similate them, sir.'

'Is it, Mr Hockley?' asked the Padre. 'Can you honestly say their lives are better for it?'

Hockley's mouth was dry and he sipped at his tea. He resisted the urge to look at his watch. 'Well, most anthropologists would see them as amongst the most primitive people alive,' he argued. 'Surely, in the long run, they will be glad to be brought up to our level.'

'And what makes you think our level is so desirable? Just look at the world around you! The world is a mess and we only have ourselves to blame.'

Hockley shrugged and looked at his watch.

'What do we have?' asked the Padre, gathering momentum. 'Ma.s.s unemployment, hunger, miserable overcrowding, TB and polio, so many unwanted babies. Is that why we fought the last war?' He became swiftly animated. 'What happened to the houses we were promised, the better living conditions, the land fit for returning heroes?'

'But that's not why they actually fought the last war,' insisted Hockley.

'Oh, no?' asked the Padre. 'What did they fight it for?'

'Well,' mused Hockley, scratching his head. 'To fight German aggression.'

'And why do you suppose the Germans were so aggressive?' The Padre spread his arms. 'I shall tell you why. It was because they saw colonisation as a mark of progress. They, too, wanted their place in the sun. They saw it as their right as white men. Aside from a few tiny bits of Africa, they were denied their empire and had to find another way to flex their muscles.'

'It that what they are doing now, sir?' asked Hockley, letting a shower of sand settle.

'In a way, they are. If we had not treated them so shabbily at the end of the last war they would not have spent the last twenty odd years nursing a festering resentment. We should have helped the German people get back on their feet instead of bleeding them dry and laying the foundations for the radical government they have today. Only then could we count ourselves civilised.'

'And what?' asked Binky, giving up on his search for a cigarette. 'I suppose you would prefer to live the life of an aboriginal bushman, would you? Living off berries and bugs!' The Commander scoffed.