Other Paths to Glory (14 page)

‘Captain Lefevre?’

There was something odd about the voice, but the oddity was overshadowed by the screaming pink-panther blazer which the speaker wore over an equally pink polo-necked sweater. At Henley Regatta it might have blended with the other rainbow colours, but here among the drab browns and greys the plump little Frenchman was like an exotic bird in a cage full of sparrows.

‘It is Captain Lefevre - Captain Paul Lefevre?’ Doubt creased the little man’s face. ‘It must be.’

It wasn’t a French accent at all - it was broad Yorkshire, almost a stage ‘Ah coom fra’ Bradford’ accent - that was what was odd about the voice. Allied to the pink blazer it almost took Mitchell’s breath away.

‘Er - yes,’ he admitted.

‘By heck, am I glad to see you, Captain!’

The doubt was replaced by profound relief.

‘Here, give us your case, then. Car’s just a few steps away round corner.’

Before Mitchell could stop him the little man had grabbed his suitcase.

‘Lefevre is it? I thought I might have it wrong when they phoned me up last night, you know.’

‘It’s pronounced “Lefever”,’ Mitchell rallied.

‘Oh, aye?’ The little man beamed. ‘Well, Lefevre or Lefever, you’re the answer to a maiden’s prayer, that’s what you are, Captain - Bob Whitton’s the name, that’s me - Cords Coaches’ Continental Manager by title - did they tell you? - and old Bert Cord’s nephew by misfortune of birth, and interpreter, garage mechanic, relief driver and bloody head cook and bottle-washer by night and day to every coach-load of trouble that comes ‘cross Channel, and that’s the truth … And don’t be put off by blazer, lad, I’m not queer, it’s badge of servitude, that’s what it is. Cord’s does everything in pink - old bugger’d have me drawers. in pink if ‘e thought I’d lose me trousers. If it breathes, get its money - if it doesn’t breathe, paint it pink, that’s the motto. Come on, then - ‘

Before Mitchell could say anything the broad pink back was presented to him and Whitton had cleared a space ahead by flailing out with the suitcase.

‘Did you ‘ave a good flight?’ Whitton shouted over his shoulder.

‘I - ah - ‘

‘I only say that out of ‘abit because it’s in book of rules. Calling it “flight” is supposed to turn bloody hovercraft into Jumbo jet. Don’t like the things, meself - might as well travel in tube-train on Underground.’

That was true enough, thought Mitchell. The hovercraft was fast and convenient, but it took all the atmosphere out of the Channel crossing, the spray blanking out everything but a few blurred yards of sea from which by some optical illusion there had seemed to rise wisps of steamy mist. It had reminded him of the canal, and he hadn’t liked the reminder.

Whitton stopped without warning, as suddenly as he had started off, so that Mitchell nearly collided with him as he turned round.

‘No, I can’t do it to you.’ Whitton dumped the case on the tarmac decisively.

‘Do what?’

‘I’ve got a coach broken down in Amiens - got to go there first, and leave you to it. Maybe if I could go along with you I wouldn’t feel so bad. But you look a nice lad - I’d expected one of your haw-haw la-di-da sort, you see, but you’re not, so I can’t do it to you. I ‘aven’t the ‘eart.’

‘The heart to do what?’ Mitchell was bemused as much by the manner as the words.

They seemed to have missed a whole stage in their relationship, progressing from introduction to intimacy without the interim of acquaintance.

‘I wanted to see look on your face,’ Whitton winked at him, ‘but there you are, I’ll just ‘ave to imagine it. The Frogs ‘ave taken finger out at last - we’ve been on to them for ages just like we’ve been on to your lot - taken it out with a vengeance, by gum! But I’ve got to love you and leave you at Amiens - leave you with Ministry of Tourism to look after you. Got to get that bloody coach back on road.’

Mitchell stared at him helplessly, stupefied by stampeding words.

‘But I’ll leave you car, lad. You can always strap yourself in if you feel scared. Maybe you won’t, though -‘ Whitton studied him for a moment ‘Do you speak French at all?’

‘Tolerably,’ replied Mitchell with caution.

‘Well, you don’t need to worry about that.’ Whitton ignored the answer. ‘You’ve got an interpreter.’

‘I don’t need one,’ snapped Mitchell. The last thing he needed was a goddamn Frenchman dogging his footsteps. ‘This isn’t the first time I’ve been over here.’

‘Oh, aye?’

Whitton’s voice hardened, as though he was disappointed by such intransigence in a nice lad.

‘Well, if I were you I wouldn’t make up my mind straight
off
like that. I’m only warning you - don’t say you ‘aven’t been warned.’ He picked up the suitcase again. ‘Come on, then.’

It was on the tip of Mitchell’s tongue to protest that he hadn’t really been warned at all, or so imprecisely that the warning was of little use. But the little Yorkshireman had disappeared round the corner ahead of him before he had time to formulate the complaint. And in any case, after Bob Whitton himself nothing could take him by surprise, he felt.

But it could.

There was no mistaking the car belonging to the Cords Coaches’ continental manager: it was a Ford Capri soaked in the same shade of pink as the blazer, so that it stood out from the cars around it as horribly as Whitton had done from the crowd in the terminal.

Only Mitchell hardly noticed it - it was seen and forgotten in the same instant.

‘May I introduce Captain Paul Lefevre - pronounced Lefever - ‘

Whitton began ponderously:

‘ - Mademoiselle Nicole MacMahon.’

He was watching Mitchell with unconcealed curiosity now, and Mitchell had no doubt that the expression on his face would be rewarding, no matter how hard he fought to control it.

He was aware of colour first, rather than features: Mademoiselle MacMahon had burnished auburn hair and incredible green eyes, the greenest he had ever seen - it was those eyes which assured him that the coppery-red of the hair was genetic rather than artificial. And then the pale skin, which made the pink of the car a crime against humanity; and finally the striking green trouser suit, matching the hair and eyes … hair and eyes and skin and suit added up to a girl to take one’s breath away - the son of girl he associated with advertisements in colour supplements… not a real girl at all.

‘How do you do. Captain?’ She extended a hand.

Mitchell looked down at the small hand stupidly. There was a smudge of dirt on the knuckle of the index finger. Come to that, the trouser suit was creased from sitting in the car and there were tendrils of hair which had fallen loose from the pinned-up coils.

‘Mademoiselle.’ The small hand was cold.

A real girl. No different from Valerie in essentials, or from any other girl. An interpreter with the Ministry of Tourism, probably as nervous at meeting the strange English captain as the English captain was surprised at meeting her.

Whitton looked at his watch ostentatiously.

‘Come on then, both of you. Goin’ to ‘ave plenty of time to get to know each other, you are. And I’ve to be in Amiens before three, or I’ll not ‘ave that coach of mine back on road before Christmas - Sunday double-time rates and I still don’t know whether they’re mechanics or statues, they move so slow. So into car with you, lass - back seat for you this time.’

The French girl shot the Yorkshireman a look of such undisguised distaste that Mitchell instinctively reached for the doorhandle himself.

‘Whoa, lad! You go up front.’ Whitton was utterly unmoved by the look. ‘Your legs are longer, and there’s plenty of room for a slip of a girl in back. So come on. Mademoiselle - let’s be ‘avin’ you, then.’

Mitchell decided he was already tired of the ‘Coom on’ exhortation himself, but the girl moved before he could make an issue of the matter.

Whitton took his arm.

‘I don’t hold with any of this women’s liberation nonsense. Nor does any Frenchman neither, I’ll say that for ‘em,’ he observed loudly. ‘But truth is, lad, she doesn’t approve of England, doesn’t that young lady. “Bloody British”, that’s what we are, I reckon - ‘ he squeezed Mitchell’s arm familiarly ‘ - though whether you may count as exception with your name I can’t say. You may be in luck, you never know, eh? But me - I’ve ‘ad a basin-f.’

Mitchell wondered as they moved off whether Mademoiselle MacMahon’s disapproval of things English dated before or after her exposure to Bob Whitton, and if the latter whether it was because Whitton was a believer in the ancient British misapprehension about French morals which rendered all French girls fair game, or simply because his bluff familiarity had been misconstrued. More likely it was the latter, plus a bit of male chauvinism, because no continental tours manager could survive long here without learning the real score.

‘Did you volunteer for this lot, then, eh? Or did they give you your marching orders?’ began Whitton directly.

Mitchell tensed as the car swept into the town, trying to adjust himself to sitting in the driver’s seat without anything to hold on to.

‘I was ordered to join the tour,’ he said cautiously.

‘Aye, that’s what I thought. Only a madman ‘ud volunteer and you know better than that, eh?’ Whitton gave a short laugh. ‘That’s Army for you … But mind you, I won’t have a word said against ‘em today, by gum - not a word. Even though you could ‘uv downed me with a feather when Old Man phoned to say you were coming. Don’t even answer our letters - too thick to see publicity value - and then give us VIP treatment when it’s almost too late. Getting a full colonel up at Ypres, the old buggers ‘ave, full-fledged colonel. And now you down on Somme. Have half the British Army helping out Cords Coaches ‘fore we’re finished, I shouldn’t wonder.’

So Colonel Butler had agreed to join the veterans’ coach tour - that was good news indeed.

‘‘Course, they took their time, your lot,’ Whitton quickly qualified his praise. ‘Missed half the Ypres part - Pilckem, Passchendaele and Hooge for sure. Have to pick ‘em up around Wytschaete and Messines, or Ploegsteert, maybe, that colonel of yours will have to. Then come across the frontier with ‘em at Armentieres.’

That had been Audley’s plan, Mitchell remembered. Butler to become an established fixture by the time the coaches left Belgium, during which part of the tour no special knowledge of the battlefields was required.

It was eerie, all the same, to hear the little man reel off those doom-laden names, to which so many thousands had taken oneway tour tickets.

‘You just run these tours for the veterans, or do other people want to see the battlefields?’

‘Other people?’ Whitton echoed him incredulously. ‘No one else wants to see Flanders and Picardy - there isn’t anything to see. ‘Tisn’t like Normandy - we run a lot of summer tours there. Lovely country and good food in Normandy, and beaches -
and
a battlefield, if that’s what turns you on. Me, I stick to the other things. Cathedrals, castles and such like, there’s something to see. Battlefields, they’re just a piece of ground, just a field - unless someone’s built a housing estate or a factory on it. Morbid too, to my way of thinking.’

‘Morbid?’

The word came out involuntarily. Someone else had said that - it had been Butler, that first time in the Institute.

‘Not those old boys, they’re different - they fought there. That gives them right to go back if they’ve a mind to.’ Whitton paused, then shot him a quick glance. ‘And I don’t mean you neither, lad; you’re in same profession, and you’ve got your orders too, come to that. And of course there’s some as ‘ave got relatives buried there in the cemeteries - that’s really all there is to see, cemeteries, dozens and dozens of ‘em.’ He sighed, looking sidelong at Mitchell. ‘To be honest, I’m glad we don’t make a profit out of ‘em - did you know we don’t make a penny on these tours?’

‘Indeed?’

But just yesterday General Leigh-Woodhouse had put it another way, Mitchell remembered: the cut-price expeditions Cords Coaches had clinched with several old comrades’ associations enabled the firm to keep all their vehicles busy in the off-season, breaking even after the holiday business had tailed off. Whitton was simply trying to create a good impression for the Army’s benefit now: official recognition was no doubt well worth having.

But he needed more information. ‘How long does it last, the tour?’

‘A week from door to door. Three days in Flanders and two in France. And you’ve got easiest bit, too - most of ‘em are a bit knackered after first two or three days. Go to bed earlier, and that.’

‘You always take them to the same places?’

‘Oh, no.’ The negative shake of the head was vigorous. ‘We take ‘em where they want to go, it’s all agreed in advance. Depends on what they were in, you see. Ypres and the Somme are the regular stops, most want to go there. Last year I took one lot up and down Messines ridge for hours - miners they were. Another lot’ll want to see the St Quentin Canal or Cambrai. It all depends where they were.’

Mitchell felt he had arrived at the vital point in the dialogue in a sufficiently roundabout manner.

‘And this group of mine, where are they going?’

‘Ypres and the Somme, same as most of ‘em.’

‘But where on the Somme?’

Whitton pointed.

‘There’s a bit of paper in compartment there, I guessed you’d want to know so I wrote it down for you.’

Mitchell unfolded the paper, which not only bore the Cords Coaches superscription but was also hideously and distinctively pink into the bargain.

Vimy Ridge -

‘They’re going to Vimy first?’

‘Aye. To see the Memorial, and that. You meet up with them there. Then Bapaume for the night.’

Bapaume, Le Sars, Guyencourt, Hameau No.
1
Cemetery, the Glory Hole, the Ulster Tower,
Prussian Redoubt Cemetery, the Serre Road Cemeteries, High Wood, Pozieres Church, Thiepval
Memorial, Newfoundland Park, Albert
…

There was one name missing.

‘Is this the lot?’

‘The lot? They won’t even manage all those, lad, I can tell you. They’re not spring lambs any more, you ‘ave to let ‘em take their time. You rush ‘em and you’ll ‘ave one drop dead on you, mark my words,’ Whitton admonished him gravely. It was obvious that sudden death among his elderly charges was one of his biggest nightmares. ‘I don’t mean that. But you’ve left out Bouillet Wood, haven’t you?’