“It was you that brought back the helmet,” he said. “You always came back with something. It doesn’t matter, it was all a long time ago.” There was no point in staying longer; he and Thompson had nothing to say to each other; they had been through a terrible time together but it might as well have been a summer stroll.

  “There was a Benson,” Thompson said suddenly. Something slightly gloating or salacious had come into his face. “I remember you,” he said. “You was the one dressed up as a tart. Did you like putting them things on? You liked it, didn’t you? They said you should of been a tart.”

  “Who said that?” He watched Thompson help himself to more whisky with the fumbling, parodic deliberateness of the very drunk. “It was just an act,” he said. “That was our act. It was part of the show. Walters dressed up in a straw boater and blazer and white flannels but that didn’t make him the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.”

  “Thass different,” Thompson said. “Thass not a tart, is it? Well, live and let live, I always say. Walters, yeh, I remember him. Silly bugger. You sang that song. Walters copped it there.”

  “He was blown up,” Benson said. “Trod on a mine.”

  “Silly bugger. Mines and mortars, it was them what did the damage there.” His mouth had fallen a little open and Benson saw the slow movement of his tongue. “I always remembered that silly bugger,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Benson said sharply. “Why do you call him that?”

  “Course I remember.” Without any warning at all, Thompson raised his head and began to sing in his thin, nasal tenor:

  “Every little movement has a meaning of its own,

  Every little movement tells a tale …”

  Benson watched the mouth move as it went through the chorus. He was aware of a feeling almost of sacrilege, hearing Thompson sing this song which had belonged to Walters and himself. This merged into a sense of the terrible strangeness of the white face before him with its crimson blemish, rapt in its singing. This same mouth had closed softly round a dead finger, the tongue licking and salivating, loosening the rigor mortis with warm spit, sucking with the patience of a lover, working to elicit the throb of the sliding ring. And the ring in his mouth still, the treasure on his palate, he would come crawling back … Benson was possessed with wonder at this sucking love of Thompson’s, in the dark night of the Wadis, alert all the time for sounds that might mean danger, a gathering or a silence. It was impossible to believe almost; yet it had happened – this mouth had done those things.

  “He turned the lights down low

  And she looked at him like so

  Every little movement tells a tale.”

  Thompson ceased. His eyes drooped. The exertion of the singing had increased the asthmatic wheeze of his breath. Benson understood now why he had paused so between the lines of his hymn, thought he knew too, with sudden pity, why Thompson should choose to go for his supper into that appalling brightness of the station cafeteria. He heard the other mutter something indistinguishable.

  “What?” he said.

  “Over the water,” Thompson said. “Just over the water.”

  “What did you mean just now? What was so stupid about Walters?”

  “He could of stayed behind, couldn’t he?”

  Contempt was back in the slurred voice; it was contempt that had kept Walters preserved in his memory all these years and Benson was suddenly grateful for it. “Stayed behind?” he said. “Who told you that?”

  “He could of had a transfer. Before the break-out. But the silly bugger wouldn’t go.”

  “But nobody was transferred,” Benson said. “Nobody stayed behind.” He was bewildered. “Except Slater,” he added.

  “We didn’t have no bleeding choice, did we? Mackintosh heard them talking, that was my mate. He picked things up from driving the officers round.”

  “But he never told me …” Benson said. “He never said anything – you must be mistaken. Who signed the papers?”

  Thompson’s eyes almost closed, jerked open again with a look of startled suspicion. “They better not try it again,” he said. Looking all the while at Benson he reached across his body with the right hand, slipped it inside his coat, tugged a little. The hand came out holding a shortish, broad-bladed knife with the hilt on one side only, like a bayonet. The blade was clean, oiled-looking, with a dull lustre on it.

  “Is that the same—?”

  “Kept it all these years.” Thompson’s voice was mumbling, awed. He turned the knife slightly in his mottled paw and light flexed along it. His head drooped, reared up again. He said, “They better not fucking try.”

  In that evil-smelling room, hazy now with smoke, in the faintly lapping light, the fabulous gleam of Thompson’s knife confused Benson’s eyes. Looking beyond it, he caught Brenda’s gaze fixed on him, her eyes softly shining, like glass.

  “British-made,” Thompson said virtuously. “None of this wog muck. In them days it meant something. In them days you could be proud to be British.” With fumbling movements he restored the knife to its place on his person. Then abruptly, as though the successful achievement of this had released him, his head fell back against the sofa, his mouth opened and a loud sonorous sound, half-sigh, halfsnore, broke from him.

  Benson remained seated on his box, looking with amazement at the white, open-mouthed face before him, lost in sleep. His back was aching, he felt nausea from the whisky and the bad air; but he could not bring himself to leave yet, as if even now, even in face of the other’s insensibility, he might find some further clue, something that could seem like evidence for the amazing thing he had just been told. Because of course they had all hoped in a way to stay behind, especially when the show had turned out such a success, hoped that it would be transferred to Naples and all of them along with it, a groundless hope but quite irrepressible, kept alive by whispers and rumours. In the event only Slater himself had gone, with the rank of acting Captain, Officer i/c Entertainments.

  Sitting there, listening to Thompson’s painful breathing, the occasional musical rasps caused by insomniac Brenda, faint crepitations from the heated metal of the stove, he tried to recall the night Slater had spoken to him about his idea for the show. They had been relieved, after how long he could not remember, but the feeling was always the same, hasty exchanges between the platoon commanders, stumbling away in the dark, single file, through the slippery gullies. They had talked near the harbour, in among the wrecked houses. There was a moon but the moonlight was hazy because of the smoke generators round the Beachhead perimeter, they made hissing sounds like escaping gas. Supply ships out at anchor in the bay, visible intermittently through this milky haze of moonlight and smoke. The smoke was filthy, he suddenly remembered, the carbonised oil of it got into your hair, throat, nostrils … Have you got a few minutes, Benson? Yes, sir. Confident accent, voice of our rulers. Sure, despite the courtesy, of full claim on your time. His face in the moonlight narrow and handsome, fatigue smoothed away by the eagerness of his idea. He was, let’s see, three or four years older than me. I want to get a sort of concert party together.

  Just as he spoke there was a flash of gunfire from further along the coast, then a whole series, soundless, like glimmers of summer lightning rapid and sustained. His face caught some light from it. The men are bored. He was still saying this when the thunder of the guns came. Yes, that was the order of things, first the flashes, barely time for half a dozen words, then the crash of the barrage. Thuds of the explosions out in the German lines like the strokes of a padded hammer. This was only March still, but we had started the softening-up process, bombardment of the German positions. That went on until the break-out.

  Lieutenant Slater smiled through it, waiting to resume. When it died away he repeated that the men were bored, professional entertainers rarely came to the Beachhead, what did the men get but a few old films always breaking down? There was a need for it. Yes, sir. They would put on their own show, just the members of the unit – to begin with anyway. He was going to see the Company Commander about it next day. I wonder if you’d care to come along? Yes, sir. Concealed order really. He had thought it all out. Better to go with one of the men, it looked more representative. I suppose I felt flattered. He didn’t ask me to be in it at first.

  No objection in any case, none that I remember. The Company Commander probably thought we were mad. Burroughs, his name. Major Burroughs. Next step is advertising. Notices to the NCOs in charge of billets. Anyone who thought he had any talent could attend for an audition – Slater did the auditions. Your only talent is wanking, the Sergeant told Crocker. But even Crocker found a place on the show, he helped with the lights. Assistant Stage-Manager, he called himself – wanting, like all of us, a title, a claim to indispensability, with that hope we all shared, Al Jolson, Baxter the baritone, the man who was such a marvellous whistler – he only lasted two or three performances, whistled a few tunes, did some bird imitations – the Comic Teuton, the Cockney Comedian, name of Fox, I think, Walters, me. All of us. And only Slater was held back. Not to be wondered at. We were just the performers. We strutted on that stage below the rubble of Anzio, as we sweated in the Wadis, for the benefit of our overseers. But not Walters – not if Thompson could be believed. If this thing he had been told were really true, Walters had acted for himself, he had died in his own person, even though in travesty, face blacked, making those terrible noises.

  Not you either, he thought, looking at Thompson’s oblivious face, listening to the harsh breath. You toiled to no one’s enrichment but your own, sought to please no one but yourself. You had the licence to kill and pilfer, all you needed. That’s why you were so alone. Mackintosh, the driver’s name. How could stray words, overheard so long ago, retailed in drunkenness by someone else, whose mind was going, how could such words be believed? Only Thompson’s contempt gave them any credence. He would have told me, he thought. If he had been offered something like that he would have told me. Like that day, the stream bed deepened, we were down a few feet, four feet, five feet below the surface. Walters just behind me. Usual relief at being below ground, usual fear of ambush – there were zealots like Thompson on their side too. What were we doing, why were we there? Something to do with getting water. Dangerous if so, because the containers were awkward to carry, hard to stop them clanking – you never went for water in the night. The banksides were overhung with bramble and there were bees in the white bramble flowers. April? The ditch got deeper. It veered away, followed a course of its own, those watercourses never went for long in the direction you wanted to go. So there was unknown space widening above us as we went deeper. We found a sort of recess, a place where the bank had fallen away, making a narrow chamber, just big enough for the two of us. We crawled in there and stayed for a bit, close together, talking in whispers. Down here, twenty feet below ground, with that fearsome, unknown space above us, we felt safe for a while. For a while only – like the brief, excited immunity of childhood hiding places before the fear of your own existence drives you back to what you know. Walters took his helmet off. His face was pale, exhausted, with sweat coming down at the temples. He whispered to me. We-are-getting-the-whiphand-over-the-Jerries. Mouthing the words elaborately, imitating one of the officers who actually did say things like that. Righty-Ho, we called him. Bodies close together, we talked in whispers about our homes and the days before the war and what we were going to do if we got through it. He would have told me …

  He looked in disbelief at the sleeping man on the sofa. Thompson’s head was thrown back, exposing the thin tendons of his throat with the adam’s apple pricking out the skin like a thorn. Some merciful shift in position had eased that difficult breathing; he was silent now. The eyes were not closed completely; light from the lamp elicited a faint gleam from between the lids. This, and the silenced breath, made his look of death complete.

  Benson stood up, cautiously flexed his cramped limbs. His head felt heavy and his eyes were sore. He looked at his watch: it was half past two in the morning. There was no point in rousing Thompson now, asking him more. His temper was uncertain, he would be fogged with drink and sleep. In any case, he couldn’t take any more of Thompson tonight – or ever, probably.

  He looked round the room, at the cracked ceiling, the gashed walls, the barricaded windows, the poor debris of boxes and bedding. Ears flattened, Brenda slept at last in her cage. It was difficult to believe they were in a populous city of an advanced nation: it was like some ruinous outpost. Others too, he thought, remembering the quarrelling voices, the baby’s cry. Thompson was below ground still, sleeping the exhausted sleep of someone returned from patrol, from a night sortie, as he might have slept after returning with the German helmet that misty morning when Crocker got the blood in his hair. But there were no spoils now; he had his knife to guard a gutted room.

  The lamp had begun to flicker and Benson had a moment of confusion, thinking of the leaping fire he had seen while he was lingering on the waste ground. He ought to put the lamp out, the stove too. But Thompson might be cold. He stepped round the sofa, went over to the pile of bedding, picked up by the edge a tattered blanket. Fastidiousness, a reluctance to touch the material any more than necessary, caused him to tug at the blanket sharply, thus disturbing the pile. Half-folded between the wall and the stained pillow he saw a magazine with a face on the cover. Obeying an impulse of curiosity he picked it up and laid it flat on the quilt Thompson used as a matress. It was the Observer Colour Supplement and the face was that of Salvador Dali. In the dying bursts of light Benson looked for some moments at the protuberant eyes and waxed moustache of the charlatan Spaniard. Then Thompson stirred and caught his breath with a harsh, choked sound and Benson turned back towards him hastily, guiltily. Gently, with a sudden feeling of tenderness, he laid the blanket over Thompson. He found the small wheel at the side of the stove and turned it to the off-position. He blew down the glass to put out the lamp, then groped his way down the passage, catching the goldfinch’s cage with his foot, hearing the bird flutter in the darkness.

  The night outside was completely silent. Thinking of nothing much, concerned only to put one foot in front of another, Benson made his way back through the courtyards of the Estate, through the deserted streets beyond.

  2

  When he arrived home he was exhausted. He lay down on the bed without bothering to undress and fell asleep immediately. In tangled dreams he came upon a mild-faced sheep trapped in thick mud, attended a police ball where policemen in uniform played twanging tunes on their teeth. Through these strange vibrant sounds he heard a woman’s voice raised in loud bursts of weeping and he was searching for the voice through the rooms of an abandoned, collapsing house. He could not discover where the sound was coming from, it was everywhere around him. Then he understood that the house itself was uttering these bursts of lamentation, like salvoes – he could see the sparks of the weeping showering through the sky. Like splinters, like shrapnel … He opened his eyes on broad daylight, remembering unwillingly Thompson’s bleached face, Brenda’s soft, inquisitive gaze.

  He was briefly surprised to discover that he still had his coat and shoes on. I’m going to pieces, he thought. His head ached and he was generally aware of being dirty, dishevelled, degenerate. He made strong coffee and drank it as hot as he could and felt almost at once considerably better, ready to negotiate the shower: a certain alertness was needed for this, as he had discovered from experience, the vagaries of the antiquated immersion heater making some nimbleness of footwork necessary if one wasn’t to be scalded or chilled.

  He stayed a long time under the finally regulated jet, eyes closed, letting the hot water deluge his head and face, run over his motionless body. Under this healing stream he began to think again about the night before. Some of Thompson’s remarks had been distinctly odd. He seemed almost to expect me. No, not that exactly, but he didn’t seem surprised. Suspicious, as if I had designs on him, until he got too drunk to care. He didn’t believe it was an accident, my being there. Was it just because I had come prepared with the whisky? No bloody good sending people with whisky. Of course, Thompson is a bit mad now – always was perhaps, maybe that’s why he flourished so in circumstances of madness.

  Drying himself, putting on clean clothes, making yet more coffee, he continued to go over these puzzling aspects of Thompson’s behaviour. Then there was the magazine. The Observer Supplement was hardly the sort of reading matter one would readily associate with Thompson. Verisimilitude, yes, a valid point, but we have to remember that the man was mad … There had been nothing else, no other books or papers. He would hardly have bought it. Probably picked it up in some litter bin in the course of his scavenging, brought it home to read. It had been tucked away there against the wall as if with an intention of concealment.

  What remained of the morning he spent on his researches. He had been trying from the available figures to establish the extent of the Atlantic slave-trade in the eighteenth century as carried on by all nations, but comprehensive figures were extremely difficult to assemble. Fage’s estimate of seven million shipped to the New World during the century seemed low to him: in the desire to avoid exaggeration too much allowance had been made for the interruption of the traffic by European wars and the upheaval caused by the American Revolution. Benson could not believe the trade had suffered to that extent; it was too lucrative. Perhaps an average of a hundred thousand slaves a year, with the English of course supplying at least half, probably more. Say sixty thousand. Liverpool would have had the lion’s share, certainly in the latter half of the century – in 1800, which seemed an average sort of year, it appeared that Liverpool had sent one hundred and twenty vessels to the African coast as against London’s ten and Bristol’s three.