“No,” I said. “But I’ll help you look.”
“You on your own?”
“I had a mate,” I said. “He went off to find some water, a couple of hours ago. He must have come back and gone off again. He left me this bread and cheese.”
“Which way did he go?”
I pointed.
“There be dragons,” he said. “You won’t see him again. The bastards are ahead of us and on both sides. This is the last road out.”
The man in the sidecar said, “Get in behind me. We’ll drop you off with the first ambulance we pass.”
I didn’t know much after that. They gave me some water, which I drank too quickly and brought up. Then I passed out. I remember lying on a stretcher; there was a rowboat, then a ship, then I woke up in a camp in the desert, where I spent the next two months getting fit again.
Now, drinking tea between races in Sandown Park (Last Call came seventh out of eight), listening to my story, Billy said, “Did you look for me in the camp?”
“No, I didn’t,” I said. “I was afraid I would find you alive and in one piece.”
“You thought I’d left you there and gone ahead on my own?”
“I didn’t know, did I?”
He said, “Let me get a bet on this last race. Then let’s have a pint at the bar.”
I said, “The bar closes right after the race.”
“Then we can go over to the bleeding pub by the station, can’t we?”
I could see what he wanted, a chance to think, mostly. I thought I would give him fifteen minutes, enough time to collect his winnings and come and find me. He was back five minutes after the race. “No luck?” I asked.
He held up some notes. “Ten quid,” he said. “Paid for my afternoon.”
We turned and walked across the course towards the railway station. “We can do this another time,” I said.
“Unless you’re in a hurry, I’d like you to hear my story, too,” he said. “Been twenty-two years.”
The pub was nearly empty. We settled down in a corner with a couple of light ales, and he started in right away.
“About a quarter of a mile away from us there was what looked like an empty farmhouse, but I’d seen a shadow cross the yard. There was no one about when I reached the farmhouse. I turned the kitchen upside down looking for something to bring you back but all I could find was a crock of olives. I walked through every room and didn’t find anybody home, but I was sure I’d seen that shadow so I did the old trick of slamming a door, then sat down to wait. Soon the trapdoor I hadn’t noticed lifted itself from the kitchen floor and a head poked out, an old woman. I got my foot under the trapdoor and kicked it open, and the old woman started screaming, then blubbing, and there were a couple of kids down there, as well as the goats by the smell of it, and they all got into it. I made shushing noises and when she quietened down I pointed to my mouth and she passed up the bread and cheese I left you and a bottle of wine. Wine would have been a mistake in our condition, of course, but I couldn’t make her understand I wanted water, so I left with the bread and cheese, which I brought back to you, and I took off again with the canteen to find some water. Halfway back, I heard a commotion coming from the farmhouse and I went close enough to see a party of Jerries pushing the old woman and the kids into the yard. Then they set fire to the house. It was so bright I was afraid I would be seen, so I waited until the soldiers had gone, leaving the family to watch their home burn. I suppose, when it was cool enough, they could still go down to the cellar. I don’t know.
“I still didn’t have any water, but I’d been away a long time so I decided we’d have to manage on a few sips of wine, if we wanted to get away. Then, almost as soon as I turned to go, I nearly fell down the family’s well. I drew up a bucket and it was sweet and cold and freaking marvellous — I can still taste it — and I filled our canteen and headed back to you.”
I said, “And I was gone, of course.”
“Not quite. I saw them take you away. I was that close.”
“Saw who take me away?”
“The two Jerries with the motorbike. The ones I thought took you prisoner.”
“You thought?”
“Yeah. It was a German bike, I could tell that from the sound.”
“All right. What then?”
“How do you mean?”
“What did you do next?”
“I kept walking towards the coast. I got to Sphakia. I had to dodge about a bit because some keen types were assembling rearguards, like that arsehole major, using the odds and sods to cover the fighting troops. I was no use to them, having no gun, but I couldn’t see explaining that, so I left them to it. It took two days to get to the beach. But once I got there it was simple, a navy lifeboat came to the edge, someone shouted, ‘Last call for the Skylark,’ and someone hauled me over the side, and then we were climbing up a rope net into a destroyer, which made a run for it. I remember we had to go between two rocks and I saw the boat ahead of us turn over when the Stukas dive-bombed it, and the one after us went the same way, but I think we were just a bit too quick for them. Then I woke up in a camp in the desert, just like you. I was there for a month, made sergeant, and posted to Eritrea to fight the Eyeties. After that it was pretty cushy.”
“You didn’t come looking for me when you were in the camp?”
“Last time I saw you, you were on the back of a Jerry motorbike. Prisoner of war, like. Right?” He waited for my reaction.
“They weren’t Jerries—”
He cut me off. “By the time I got to the camp, I’d found out what really happened, and I didn’t see the point of looking for you. Let it go, I thought.”
“What? Let what go?”
He took his time about responding to that. Then, in that flat voice soldiers use when replying to a question from an officer, he said, “While I was on the beach waiting, wondering whether to give myself up when the Jerries arrived, because it looked as if the last boat had come and gone, I wondered if we’d find ourselves in the same batch of prisoners, you and me. That was when someone on the beach told me about seeing these New Zealanders on a Jerry motorbike.”
“So you knew I’d got away.”
“I knew you hadn’t waited around, yes. Not after they offered you a ride.”
“I thought you’d gone, left me with the bread and cheese, like.”
“That why you didn’t look me up, after the war, too? You knew where I lived.”
“You took me home once, when we had a three-day pass before we shipped out to Greece.”
“That’s right.”
“Seems clear now, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose it does, yeah.” He brushed a crumb off his tie. “I’ve thought about it every day for twenty-two years.”
“And?”
“I tried to keep an open mind.”
“Now you know. Right?”
“Now we both know,” he said.
“I suppose we do.”
“Another pint?” It was his turn.
“Not this time. When’s the next race meeting?”
“Here? Couple of weeks. Why did you think I would have gone without you?”
“My foot. I couldn’t walk. You would have been stuck with me.”
“I would never have done that.” He stood up.
“No.”
“What about the next meeting here? You coming?”
“I’ll look out for you.”
“I’ll do the same.”
We travelled back on the train to Clapham Junction together, not saying much, certainly nothing about Crete. I changed at Clapham Junction for East Croydon. He stayed on the train. I offered him a hand, which he shook without standing up. “Maybe Derby Day?” I offered. “Up on the downs?” It was something we’d promised each other we would do after the war.