The Way Ahead Read online

  Immediately, as the fleeing Resistance group anticipated, the area became thick with SS men, Gestapo officers and pro-German French police, who flung out a wide cordon in their determination to lay violent hands on the swines, and to retake the released prisoners.

  The Resistance group was led by a man called Roget, and included two very useful and experienced SOE agents from London, code names Maurice and Lynette respectively. Bobby and Helene, in fact. This was their fourth mission to France, and each had been prolonged and dangerous. However, because Roget knew the area as well as he knew the shape of an apple, it did not prove difficult for his group to break through the enemy ring at night, and by morning they were on a barge carrying potatoes up the Marne river to the German garrison in Epernay.

  The bargee had an escort, two German soldiers, as was usual on river craft carrying supplies earmarked for Hitler’s occupying forces. Swinish French partisans had a stinking habit of boarding a barge, removing the cargo and sinking the vessel. Several of the German hunters, SS men, arriving at the river, hailed the escort from the bank, shouting questions about escaping partisans. One soldier shouted back that nothing had been seen of them.

  ‘You are sure?’

  ‘Yes! Totally!’

  ‘Well, damn you for your blindness!’

  ‘We aren’t blind, we can’t afford to be!’

  ‘Then keep your eyes open!’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘Shoot on sight! Not to kill, but to bring them down! We want the swines alive! You hear, you hear?’

  ‘Yes! Loud and clear!’

  The barge went on, under sail, its engine out of action due to a serious lack of fuel. Germany was producing only half of what it needed to maximize its war effort. The Allied bombing raids were causing disastrous damage to sources of supply.

  The hunting SS patrol raced along the bank to hail a following barge that was a dot in the distance. The two soldiers on the first vessel winked at each other, and the bargee showed a smile. All three were Roget’s men, one a 1940 refugee from Alsace, a Frenchman who spoke perfect German. The genuine bargee and his undressed German escort lay trussed and blindfolded below, Roget, Helene, Bobby and the rest of the group keeping them close company.

  The barge went on until dusk arrived, when the bow was grounded at a place gloomy with marsh and devoid of inhabitants. But it was also devoid of Germans. The partisans and the SOE agents disembarked, booted feet disappearing into the marsh. The stern of the barge swung in clear water, and all together, they pushed the bow sideways until the vessel floated off and caught the tide, taking the trussed bargee and German soldiers with it, as well as the potatoes.

  Roget, using a torch, led the way, the marsh sucking at them for two hundred yards before their feet began to tread firmer ground.

  ‘I am soaked,’ breathed Helene.

  ‘So are my feet,’ said Bobby.

  ‘I meant my feet,’ said Helene.

  ‘A small price to pay, my infant.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the luck was ours, but who is an infant?’

  ‘Slip of the tongue, considering your qualifications,’ murmured Bobby. Helene was tall, strong-bodied and robust.

  ‘Never mind, you are always very English, and I like you for that. How glad I am you were not born a German, a Nazi Boche.’

  ‘We can both thank my parents for that.’

  Whispers mutually encouraging ran up and down the line of trekking men and women, boots squelching but spirits high. Roget took them on sure-footedly, and they melted into the darkness, heading for their primitive hideout in the hills to prepare for an operation even more audacious than the one just accomplished.

  Helene’s hand touched Bobby’s. He took it, she squeezed his fingers. She was far from her parents, he far from his family, but they had each other, and they had Roget and their other French comrades.

  Chapter Three

  Mid-April

  A TRAM TRAVELLING along the Walworth Road from the Elephant and Castle came to a stop at East Street. An Army sergeant alighted in company with a young lady, he limping a bit from a gammy knee, she lithe of limbs and colourful of dress, and accordingly a fetching picture of approaching summer on this warm spring day.

  ‘Old home ground, Emma,’ observed Sergeant Jonathan Hardy, gunnery instructor to recruits at a Royal Artillery training camp.

  ‘For my family as well as yours,’ said his wife Emma, younger daughter of Lizzy and Ned Somers, and much like her mother in her attractive looks, especially in respect of her chestnut hair and brown eyes. Her face was tanned. So was Jonathan’s. She worked on a farm not far from his training camp in Somerset, and the open air of that rural county had made its healthy mark on them. ‘Mum and her brothers were all born and brought up in Walworth,’ she said.

  ‘But well gone by the time my family arrived from Sussex,’ said Jonathan, a tough sergeant and playful husband. He was twenty-five, and owned the kind of physique much admired by Emma. It has to be said that he was even more admiring of her feminine line and form. Ergo, what she liked about him and what he liked about her led to very agreeable marital togetherness. They were always able to meet once a week, on either Saturday or Sunday, and to make use of Emma’s room at the farmhouse.

  They were an engaging couple, Jonathan’s habit of lapsing into rural Sussex dialect often sending Emma potty, provoking her into having her own back by taking him off or belabouring him with rolled-up magazines. Sometimes, during their moments of agreeable togetherness, a teasing urge to take him off would rise above her palpitations, and she’d say, albeit throatily, ‘Be that your tin leg rattling, Jonathan?’

  Jonathan, wounded in action in 1941, had been fixed up with a metal knee joint. It left him with his limp, but he appealed successfully against the possibility of being discharged, and won himself a posting as a sergeant gunnery instructor down in the county he called Zummerzet.

  He was on seven days’ leave, and Emma’s employers, a farmer and his wife, had given her the week off to be with her soldier husband. They were presently staying with his parents, having spent their first three days at her parental home.

  The light of the Saturday afternoon was kind to old Walworth, softening the smoky grey of its Victorian buildings and brightening shop windows. The main road, bustling with traffic, did not seem to have suffered too badly from air raids, but Emma and Jonathan had come across heavy damage elsewhere. Many streets of solid terraced houses were rent with jagged gaps.

  ‘Come on, Jonathan,’ said Emma, ‘let’s see what the market’s like these days.’ The East Street market, known as the Lane, was still functioning, despite severe shortages of fruit and vegetables. It had been a favourite pre-war shopping place for Jemima Hardy, Jonathan’s mother, and for Emma’s much revered grandmother, known as Chinese Lady, in long-gone years.

  They entered the market. Stalls lined each side of the street, which was crowded with people looking for bargains in the way of domestic items and un-rationed foodstuff. Not that pre-war poverty still existed. No, jobs were plentiful, wages good, but the housewives of Walworth had an acquired addiction for bargains, as well as a great fondness for the market and its familiar stallholders, who had been fighting the trade setbacks of war for four and a half years. Among the crowds were a few American GIs and their Walworth girlfriends, the latter introducing the former to the atmosphere of a cockney market, and the former saying things like, ‘Well, I’ll go to Coney Island on a mule, I got to believe there’s no hamburger stalls?’

  Shoppers had their eyes open for fruit, for home-grown produce in the main, since imported varieties were scarce. Bananas, grapes and pineapples were only distant memories, but oranges sometimes miraculously turned up, and whenever they did there was a rush of feet, bodies and wide-open purses, the latter a temptation to pickpockets who had become lamentably operative in the knowledge that wartime purses were more richly laden than in former years. Much to Emma’s delight, she spotted a stall heavy with crates of dates from the M
iddle East. Two crates were broken open, the dark gleaming fruit standing in square blocks, the stallholder carving out large sticky chunks with a knife.

  ‘Dates, Jonathan, dates,’ said Emma, ‘let’s buy some.’

  ‘Right,’ said Jonathan, with the authority of a sergeant, ‘you get a pound, I’ll get a pound.’

  People had formed a queue, and Emma darted and joined it. Jonathan followed on.

  ‘Here, mind me eye,’ said a young woman, arriving at the same time. Turning, she found herself looking at a brown-faced and personable Army sergeant. Jonathan found himself close to saucy eyes and a bright orange sweater on which was a gaudy brooch bearing the name of Lola. ‘Oh, howdyerdo, sarge, excuse me hot temper,’ she said. ‘I don’t have no quarrel with the Army. You can queue next to me, if yer like.’ Somehow, she was elbow to elbow with Jonathan, and between him and Emma.

  ‘You be keen on dates, I reckon,’ said Jonathan.

  ‘Eh?’ said Lola, nicely made-up, her full-lipped mouth moistly pink.

  ‘Well, dates be a tidy bit nourishing,’ said Jonathan, with Emma more amused than put out. She knew her country bloke and his tendency to make himself sound like a village yokel. Village idiot, she sometimes said.

  ‘Here, excuse me for asking,’ said Lola, the queue moving slowly forward and other shoppers joining it, ‘but where you from?’

  ‘Durned old Army,’ said Jonathan.

  ‘No, I mean where’d you come from?’ said Lola.

  ‘Just lately, mostly from down Zummerzet way,’ said Jonathan.

  ‘I dunno I ever met anyone from there,’ said Lola.

  ‘Born in Sussex I were,’ said Jonathan, ‘according to my Ma and Pa, and they should know, I reckon.’

  ‘Crikey,’ said Lola. Emma was splitting her sides, while the stallholder was bawling compliments about his dates as he served customers a pound each. ‘I never heard no sergeant talk like you,’ went on Lola, a young lady given to offering immediate friendship to people in a queue, as long as they were wearing trousers and didn’t have tea-stained whiskers. ‘I’ve met American sergeants, y’know, and me latest is Gus, but blowed if I know where he’s got to this morning.’

  ‘Gone off, maybe, to find out where the war is?’ said Jonathan.

  ‘No, course not, he’s in the market somewhere,’ said Lola.

  ‘Then speaking friendly, like,’ said Jonathan, ‘I join you in hoping he’ll turn up sometime.’

  Lola let go a giggly laugh.

  ‘You’re a card, you are, sarge,’ she said. Yes, he’s that all right, thought Emma, and wait till I get him home. ‘Have you got any medals?’ asked Lola of Jonathan.

  ‘Only a handful,’ he said, ‘but my three stripes pay better than medals. Did you say if you liked dates?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t be queuing if I didn’t, would I?’ said Lola. ‘Nor waiting twenty minutes to get served. It’s worse than lining up for lunch at our fact’ry canteen.’ The long queue moved forward a little. ‘Here, would you like to come to a party tonight?’

  ‘Durned if that don’t be real nice of you,’ said Jonathan, noting Emma was struggling to keep her face straight. ‘Might I ask if I could bring a close friend?’

  ‘Not ’alf,’ said Lola, who hadn’t taken any notice of Emma. Well, she didn’t know the young lady on her right was very well-known to the sergeant on her left. ‘All Army blokes are welcome, and sailors too.’

  ‘My close friend is a female farmhand,’ said Jonathan, as more people attached themselves to the queue. I’ll give him female farmhand, said Emma to herself.

  ‘She from Somerset too?’ said Lola.

  ‘Regular Zummerzet dairymaid,’ said Jonathan, at which point a large body pushed in, a large finger tapped him on the shoulder, and an aggressive voice landed in his ear.

  ‘What’s your game, buddy?’

  Jonathan turned, Lola turned and Emma turned. Emma quivered. A huge American sergeant was eyeing Jonathan with glowering suspicion. Jonathan was hardly insignificant at five feet eleven, and was considered fearsome by conscripted gunners when bawling them out for being on close terms with uselessness, but the American sergeant was six inches taller, broad all over, and decked out with the mountainous shoulders of an American football player.

  ‘Did you say something?’ asked Jonathan.

  ‘Sure. What’s your game?’

  ‘I’m lining up for dates,’ said Jonathan, one half of the queue in front shuffling forward, the other half now held up.

  ‘The way I see it, buddy, it ain’t dates you’re sold on, it’s Lola.’

  ‘This lady’s Lola?’ said Jonathan.

  ‘That’s her, and she ain’t first prize in a Fourth of July raffle.’

  ‘We met by accident,’ said Jonathan. ‘Well, you never know who you might find yourself next to in a queue.’

  ‘Don’t get smart.’

  Emma quivered again. The GI sergeant’s fists looked as if they could knock large holes in an iron lamppost, and she hoped Jonathan was ready to duck. Lola made herself heard amid the noises of the market.

  ‘Now then, Gus, leave off,’ she said.

  ‘See here, Lola—’

  ‘And don’t start hollering, either,’ said Lola. ‘There’s people lookin’, and you’re ’olding the queue up. Go and buy some spuds for me mum, and some onions as well, if there’s any.’

  ‘I ain’t leaving, Lola,’ said Gus, ‘not while—’

  ‘I don’t want no arguments,’ said Lola, a mere midget by comparison with Gus.

  ‘I ain’t arguing,’ said Gus, ‘I’m letting this Limey sergeant know he’ll have trouble finding his teeth if he keeps getting fresh with you.’

  Restive people in the held-up section of the queue began to complain.

  ‘Here, what’s goin’ on?’ demanded a plump woman.

  ‘That’s it, what’s goin’ on?’ echoed a thin one.

  ‘It’s a Yank, a sergeant,’ said a fretful bloke. ‘A big one.’

  ‘Well, get ’im out of it,’ said the thin woman.

  ‘Me at my time of life and my size?’ said Fretful. ‘Ain’t I got enough troubles?’

  ‘Anyway, leave him be,’ said the plump woman, ‘I like them Yanks, and me daughter’s goin’ steady with one.’

  ‘Well, that’s her lookout, and someone’s got to shift that sergeant,’ said the thin woman. ‘I ain’t got time to stand ’ere all day. What’s he doing of?’

  ‘Having a barney with an English sergeant, it looks like,’ said a long lanky bloke, who could see over the tops of ladies’ hats.

  ‘Can’t they have it somewhere else?’ bawled a fed-up woman.

  ‘That’s it, somewhere else,’ hooted Fretful, ‘I’ve had enough aggravation round here from bleedin’ Hitler.’

  ‘There, listen to all that,’ said Lola to Gus. ‘See what you’re doing? Upsettin’ people, that’s what. ’Oppit. Go and get them spuds and onions, or I won’t put me party costume on for you tonight. Go on now.’

  What a character, thought Jonathan, talk about the female of the species at five feet four being deadlier than a GI at six feet six.

  A shadow flitted alongside the queue, a nifty hand reached, grabbed and snatched. Emma’s precious handbag, hanging from her wrist, went the way of the shadow, which materialized into a fast-running skinny bloke. Emma yelled.

  ‘Jonathan, he’s pinched my handbag!’

  ‘And right in front of my fat eyes,’ said Gus, and away he went, Jonathan on his heels. Gus tore holes in the crowds in his bruising chase, holes that Jonathan promptly filled for a split second. He could move fast, despite his tin knee. The slippery bag-snatcher eeled his way towards bomb-damaged King and Queen Street, but something like a tank caught him up and fell on him as he turned the corner. Down he went.

  ‘Oh, bleedin’ Amy,’ he gasped, ‘someone get it orf me.’

  Jonathan arrived.

  ‘You hurting?’ he enquired, stooping and tugging the handbag free.

&
nbsp; ‘Course I bleedin’ am,’ panted Slippery Sam, or whoever he was, ‘I got a bleedin’ bus on top of me, ain’t I?’

  Gus came to his feet, used one hand to pluck the geezer up and to bounce him up and down on the pavement, feet first.

  ‘How’s he doing, buddy?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re giving him flat feet,’ said Jonathan, ‘and I don’t think he likes it.’

  Gus dropped him.

  ‘Oh, yer bugger, now you’ve broke me back,’ groaned Slippery Sam. Gus yanked him up again, planted a boot in his backside and sent him careering. He did a double somersault before he came to a stop, when he then complained bitterly about gorblimey Nosy Parkers interfering with a war-crippled bloke’s way of earning an honest living.

  ‘Now what’s eating him?’ asked Gus.

  ‘Lost his teddy bear,’ said Jonathan.

  Gus roared with laughter and clapped Jonathan on his shoulder. Jonathan, fortunately, was made of sterner muscle than the bag-snatcher, and he stayed on his feet.

  ‘Let’s get back to the ladies,’ said Gus.

  The date queue was in minor uproar, Emma the centre of it.

  ‘Did he hurt yer, love?’

  ‘It’s what the war’s done, you can’t trust nobody these days.’

  ‘Oh, yer poor gal, have a good cry, if yer want.’

  ‘Where’d yer come from, love, round here?’

  ‘Yes, where’d you get yer sunshine looks?’ asked Lola.

  ‘Somerset,’ said Emma.

  ‘Crikey, you’re the one?’ said Lola. ‘Well, don’t you worry, our blokes’ll get your bag back.’

  ‘It’ll come back one way or another,’ said Emma, implying complete confidence in Jonathan and the Yankee man-mountain, although she had an uneasy feeling the skinny thief was slick enough to vanish. The loss of one’s handbag could be the loss of something very personal and private.

  Despite the happening and its aggravation, no-one had vacated the queue to go looking for a copper. The acquisition of ripe and luscious dates kept everyone standing their ground.

  A woman said suddenly, ‘They’re coming back.’

  ‘Yes, that’s them,’ said the plump woman, ‘and look, they’ve got the handbag.’