to hold off the Luftwaffe; we were some of the last to get away. The French did well,’ he muttered into his glass, ‘very well. We all did well but we were defeated, what else can you say? I was just a lieutenant then, but most of the senior officers were dead, and when at last we got orders to abandon our guns it was up to people like me to make sure that everyone got properly organized on the beach. I’d had no experience of combat anything like that before, so I remember thinking the whole time that I had to look as if I knew what I was doing, which mostly consisted of standing upright among the bullets, keeping calm and arranging the queues that were waiting to wade out to sea where the boats were. What a bloody nightmare. I wanted to dig down into the sand the whole time, but was even more afraid of being thought a coward, of being court-martialled and unable to face my family if I ever got home.’ He had turned grey, and wasn’t really talking to us at all. ‘A great many dead,’ he whispered, ‘a terrible lot, French and ours. But there was no panic hardly, no mutiny – I shall never know why not. Everyone behaved so well; they should all have been decorated, every man of them. Those bloody fighters shot them wholesale in the sea; I remember part of the water turning pink by the shore. Then I had the language problem too – try evacuating men under fire in schoolboy French. Orderly retreat, orderly retreat kept coming through from Gort at GHQ. They didn’t know what they were asking for, and the staff-work had become appalling under the pressure, a shambles. At the very end I was hit in the right foot andhad to sit down. There was another man beside me; he’d been shot in the leg. We managed to get to the shelter of a dune and lay back to rest for a time in deep sand. I tried to dress his wound, but he was losing blood at a dreadful rate. I kept telling him he would be all right, and in the end he rested his head on my lap for a time. I put my hands and cap over his face to protect him against the sun, then there was a great explosion and his chest was gone, there were only his head and legs left. I was red all over from him and my own boot was full of blood. I don’t remember after that, but it seems they came for me and took his head out of my hands and got me to the boats on a man’s back who told me later on that I was reciting the Nunc Dimittis. Of course I didn’t remember that either.’
‘Don’t take on, Colonel,’ said Goodinge, ‘it’s forty-five years ago now, all that.’
‘Not to me,’ he said. ‘It’s as if it were yesterday to me and I should add that I was terribly in love at that time. Her name was Claire, lovely Claire from High Court. She was the only girl I ever knew who could jump the great fence at Toll Shaws; she did it on Thistle, her father’s big roan, gay as a spark, looking back at me with a grin while the other men fidgeted on their hacks, biting their nails – they had told her not to be so silly as to try it. That same night at the hunt ball at Castle Carey we danced together all night, on fire with love for each other, with eyes for no one, till dawn came up to greet us with breakfast and more champagne. There were candles everywhere and much punch and music; she was an image like a dream, her long skirts collected behind her in a bustle, a pink top, an onyx against her breast on a silver chain. Blonde, she was, and straight as a little stick: it was in thirty-eight.’
‘Another drink, Colonel?’ Goodinge said.
‘Yes,’ said the colonel, holding out his glass, ‘and for the sergeant here, thank you, Goodinge.’
‘And tell me,’ I said, ‘did you marry Claire? Claire from High Court?’
‘No,’ he said steadily. ‘I didn’t.’ He lit a cigarette in the flame that Goodinge held for him. ‘She was killed, machine-gunned by a fighterin Plymouth in August 1940, on the steps of the hospital where she was working as a nurse.’
‘And did you
‘Don’t take on, Colonel,’ said Goodinge, ‘it’s forty-five years ago now, all that.’
‘Not to me,’ he said. ‘It’s as if it were yesterday to me and I should add that I was terribly in love at that time. Her name was Claire, lovely Claire from High Court. She was the only girl I ever knew who could jump the great fence at Toll Shaws; she did it on Thistle, her father’s big roan, gay as a spark, looking back at me with a grin while the other men fidgeted on their hacks, biting their nails – they had told her not to be so silly as to try it. That same night at the hunt ball at Castle Carey we danced together all night, on fire with love for each other, with eyes for no one, till dawn came up to greet us with breakfast and more champagne. There were candles everywhere and much punch and music; she was an image like a dream, her long skirts collected behind her in a bustle, a pink top, an onyx against her breast on a silver chain. Blonde, she was, and straight as a little stick: it was in thirty-eight.’
‘Another drink, Colonel?’ Goodinge said.
‘Yes,’ said the colonel, holding out his glass, ‘and for the sergeant here, thank you, Goodinge.’
‘And tell me,’ I said, ‘did you marry Claire? Claire from High Court?’
‘No,’ he said steadily. ‘I didn’t.’ He lit a cigarette in the flame that Goodinge held for him. ‘She was killed, machine-gunned by a fighterin Plymouth in August 1940, on the steps of the hospital where she was working as a nurse.’
‘And did you
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