Weaver

'No worse than you,' she said defiantly.

'What happened to your hands?' He took her hands and turned them over; his own hands were caked in dirt. 'You need to do something about these blisters. We've got a bit of ointment somewhere.'

'Do you want a cup of tea?'

He followed her back towards the kitchen. 'Is the gas on, then?'

'No. But I was thinking of building a fire.'

He shook his head. 'No time for that. Look, let's just have something quick. I need to get back to work. And you need to get out of here. Out of town, I mean.' In the kitchen he put his helmet and gas-mask on the wooden table, opened a few buttons of his uniform jacket, and washed his hands in the sink.

They began to make a rough breakfast together, glasses of milk, slices of bread with a pale scrape of margarine and elderly cheese.

She said, 'The Germans, I suppose.'

'Well, they've landed at Pevensey and near Bexhill, and to the east between Hastings and Rye. Actually they're all along the south coast. Today they'll be trying to get more troops across, I should think, and supplies, although the bulk of the second echelon will come over tonight. And those already landed will be consolidating.'

'And coming here.'

'That's the best guess. We're supposed to evacuate what's left of the civilian population. Let's see if we can get a bit of news.'

He went off to the parlour, and came back with his home-made wireless in its shoe box. He set it on the table, held up an earpiece scavenged from an old telephone, and began to fiddle with the settings. This home-made crystal set, by some process which non-scientific Mary regarded as a miracle, didn't need any power.

'Ah,' he said. 'There's Alvar Lidell. I wonder where he is now. They were talking about moving the BBC out from London to Bristol…' His voice trailed off as he listened. He sat at the table, chewing his bit of bread, his face emptying, the old phone earpiece clamped to his head. Mary sat with him and waited.

'Well, there we are,' he said. "'The Germans have invaded Great Britain. In due course they will be driven out by our Navy, our Army and our Air Force. The Prime Minister, Mr Churchill, has emphasised that the ordinary men and women of the civilian population will have their part to play…' He listened further. 'Sounds like they're panicking a bit in London. They're moving the civil servants out to Lancashire and Wales. The government is talking to the Americans about "increased cooperation, whatever that means. We could do with a few tanks and guns, never mind cooperation.'

'Maybe they're doing deals,' Mary said.

'Your ambassador Kennedy thinks we should surrender.'

'Yeah, but we don't all agree with him. The US has no interest in seeing Britain fall to the Nazis. I know Churchill exchanged military bases in Newfoundland and the West Indies for a pack of old destroyers. Maybe they're working on something like that.'

George grunted. 'Nothing comes free with you lot, does it? Oh. The King is moving out of London, and his family. That's a bit of a blow to morale.' He put the earpiece down. 'Well, that's that. Look, Mary, just clear off. The trains are out. If you can, head out of town along the A-ROAD towards Battle. The police are organising convoys there, to be driven up towards London and the north.'

'I was thinking of sleeping a bit.'

'Sleep. God, I could do with a bit of that. Not just now. The next hours are critical.'

She nodded reluctantly. 'All right, George. Look – the others, Hilda and Gary-'

'I haven't heard from them since Friday. Seems like years ago.'

'I left a note in the Anderson shelter. Said we should meet at Battle, if the opportunity arises.'

He nodded. 'Not a bad idea.'

'What about you?'

'It's my job to stay here, Mary. I'm a copper.'

'Your German is lousy.'

'I'll be fine. And so will you.' He took her hand, carefully avoiding her burns. 'You're brave. If you're an example of what Americans can do, the sooner you're in this war the better.'

'Brave? I think I'm just numb. I'll pay for all this one day.'

'Well, so will Hitler.' He'd finished his bread and cheese. He glanced down at his crystal set. 'Of course I can't take this.' He slipped off his boot, and without hesitation brought it crashing down like a hammer on the components of the set. 'Right, that's done. Come on, Mary, let's find you that ointment.'

XIX

Leutnant Strohmeyer had a map. He spread it out on Pevensey's dewy ground. Strohmeyer was a tough, humourless soldier who had served the Reich's armies across Europe, from Poland to France. And now here he was sitting before a camp fire in the ruins of this ancient fort in England itself. When one of the lads dared to make a comment on this, Strohmeyer said only, 'Funny old world, isn't it? Now shut up and listen.' He began to outline the day's objectives, Day S Plus One, for these elements of the Twenty-sixth Division.

It was another filthy, drizzling morning. Ernst, wrapped in his blanket, cradling the rifle he had been cleaning since dawn, tried to focus on what Strohmeyer was saying.

He never would have believed he would sleep so well, tucked up in a corner of this dismal old fort under no more cover than a tarpaulin. Yesterday, the day of the crossing, had been a vivid, unreal day, a day of a kind he imagined he would never experience again, no matter how long his war lasted. He supposed the raw tension of it had carried him through. But he had woken this morning to find that he was still here, he really was in England, and now he had to get through the first of what might be many days of combat. He felt drained, exhausted, even shivery; he woke with no energy. Even the men with him were strangers; in the turmoil of the landing he had become separated from the men he had trained with in France, and he knew nobody here.

He kept thinking of Claudine. He longed to be lying with her in her apartment in Boulogne, her long limbs beside him in the bed, so that she could soothe away the aches of his body and the trauma of his bruised mind.

The man next to him whispered, 'What's he saying? I can't see the wretched map.'

Another replied softly, 'Marching. That's all you need to know, lads. When the Panzers come over in a day or two they'll rip about the place. But until then it's just us, and it's foot-slogging. Best not to know how far.'

So they stood, and began to form up.

Elsewhere in the fort, Ben Kamen and a couple of other prisoners from the observation post at Pevensey were roughly woken by coarse German shouts.

They rose stiffly. They were given cups of water to drink, and told in German to make their toilet in the corner of the room, if they needed it. Ben, not wanting to stand out, affected not to know any German – his bit of cheek yesterday had earned him a clubbing – and he acted dull, slow and baffled like the rest. In fact it wasn't hard, as his head was still throbbing from the blow he had taken yesterday.

They had been given nothing last night. No food or water, no blankets. Ben had slept in his clothes, huddled on the cold stone floor of one of the converted rooms. All night he had had broken dreams, glimpses of past and future, of the type that had so intrigued Rory and Julia back in Princeton. But none of them made any sense, and none was any comfort.

One prisoner, a burly Canadian, drank a bit of the water and spat it out. 'Horse's piss,' he yelled at the German corporal who had brought it. The corporal actually replied quite politely, in calm German, saying that the man's rights would be protected when the German army had the resources to grant them, and that in the meantime his best course was to behave with self-respect.