A Game for Heroes. Jack Higgins
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fingers twisted into my hair. Dance for us, then, little black pig. The Welsh side of him coming out in the famous old song.
And then, when I was fourteen, I caught him up on the top meadow, rolling in the hay with Simone who was doing her level best to put his eyes out. I hit him with everything I had and got a broken nose for my pains. Not a very gallant showing, but when he had gone, she cried over me and kissed me for the first time, which seemed to make up for everything. She was seventeen then, two years older than me and at that age it can seem an insurmountable gap normally, but from then on there was no one else in the world for either of us.
He was wearing a blue serge suit a size too large, a white polo neck sweater and army boots and the combination somehow made him seem clumsy and uncouth. He was frowning uncertainly and paused about five yards away. ‘Owen, is that you?’ I didn’t say a word and he shook his head in a kind of wonder. ‘A colonel they tell me you are.’
‘That’s right,’ I said.
He grinned suddenly, the same old familiar leering grin. ‘Little Owen – little Owen Morgan. I’d never have recognized you.’
‘Dance for us little black pig.’
The smile left his face and he stared blankly. ‘What’s that?’
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘They tell me you were on the island till three weeks ago. Tell me about it.’
‘Not much to tell.’ He shrugged. ‘I saw my chance of skipping in a fishing boat and took it. I knew most of Brittany was in Allied hands now, see?’
‘How did you know?’
‘Ezra told me, Ezra Scully. Kept his radio right through the occupation. Listened to the BBC regular.’
‘I understand that most of the locals were moved to Guernsey six months ago?’
‘That’s right. It was after they went that the frogmen moved in.’
‘Why were you kept on?’
He shrugged. ‘They needed a couple of pilots for the harbour and the passage. You know what Le Coursier can be like. They was always losing boats, see.’
‘So they kept you and Ezra?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Who else?’
‘Jethro Hughes is still on his farm with his son, Justin. The Jerries need milk, just like anyone else. And old Doctor Riley – they’ve kept him ’cause they don’t have enough Army doctors to go round.’
‘And the Seigneur?’
‘Killed in the shelling last year, but she’s still there – Simone. She’s Seigneur now.’
‘Is that why they’ve allowed her to stay? Because she’s Seigneur?’
‘Maybe, I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘Whore would be a better name for her, her and her fancy man, Steiner. Seigneur? Jerrybag more like.’
My own voice, when I answered him, seemed to belong to someone else, to come from outside of me. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Simone – Simone and this fancy man of hers – Steiner. A sergeant-major, that’s all he is, but they treat him like he was the Führer himself.’
‘You’re lying,’ I said.
‘Lying, is it? I’ve seen them plenty of times, I can tell you, and her posing for him with nothing on and there’s a sight for you, believe me.’ And then he remembered and a slow, sly grin seeped across his face. ‘I was forgetting, wasn’t I? You was sweet on her. Poor Owen – poor little Owen Morgan. You’d like to have a go at her yourself, eh? And I don’t blame you, boyo. By God, I could give her something to remember.’ He started to laugh and gave me the same old half-contemptuous dig in the shoulder I remembered so well from boyhood.
I slapped him hard across the face and my voice, when I spoke, was my own again. ‘People don’t really change, Joe, do they? You always had a foul mouth.’
He touched his face in astonishment, a kind of wonder there and then rage broke through like hot lava bubbling to the surface. He came in with a rush, intent on the kind of beating he had been fond of handing out in the old days.
But times had changed and if he hadn’t, Owen Morgan had. I didn’t give him any kind of chance. My right foot caught him in the groin, a blow that could have crippled him for life had I not been wearing rope-soled beach sandals. He doubled over with a cry and my knee lifted into his face, straightening him again.
He lay on his back, knees-up, writhing in agony and I squatted beside him. ‘Don’t look now, Joe, but I seem to have broken your nose.’
He glared up at me, hating still through the pain and I got to my feet, turned and found Master Sergeant Grant standing on the other side of the wire. When I got close enough he sprang to attention. ‘The lady sent me down, Colonel. She says if you want to eat, you’d better come now.’
‘Fair enough.’ I nodded towards St Martin who was sitting up, both hands between his thighs. ‘Stay with our friend there till he can walk, then bring him up. We’ve still some talking to do.’
His hand flicked up in a superb salute, his iron face showed nothing as he turned and went through the wire and I left him to it and started up the path.
I paused half-way, my heart pounding, but not from fatigue. Was it true? Could it possibly be true? No, I could never believe it – never. Hatred for Joe St Martin rose like bile into my mouth. I think if I had gone back to the beach I might have killed him then, for the black Celtic rage that was a heritage of the Welsh side of me took possession as it had done before on occasions of great stress. It required a real physical effort to keep me climbing up the track towards the house.
3
I suppose the most obvious difference between Fitzgerald and myself was to be found in the fact that my father had been born in a two-roomed cottage and had earned his living, at least in the beginning, as an inshore fisherman, whereas Fitzgerald was the son of one of the richest merchant bankers in America and would one day succeed him. Handicap enough for any man you added to it all that New England tradition. Looking back on it all now, I see that I should have been kinder to him, but a man is what he is, moulded by everything that has ever happened to him and change is difficult. Fitzgerald was branded in a way that only the very rich can be so that even Princeton must have been superfluous and I was a black little Welsh-Breton peasant in spite of my father’s money and Oxford and far too handy with a knife for the kind of gentleman who thought it was sporting to stand up like a man to have his face pulped by someone who could box better than he.
I took the knife out now, sprung the blade and threw it underhand all in one quick fluid movement. It quivered gently in the wooden post at the end of the verandah five feet above the ground.
I grinned at Henry as I went to retrieve it. ‘And I’d lay you odds I’m the only half-colonel in the British Army who can do that.’
Fitzgerald was sitting on the verandah rail, drinking his coffee. He cleared his throat. ‘Rather more difficult in the dark, sir, which after all is when one is more likely to want to use a trick like that. You know the sort of thing – night landing and sentry on the cliffs. We used to practise with our eyes blindfolded at the Commando Depot at Achnacarry. Remember, Sergeant Grant?’
Grant had been playing batman and stood at ease by the door. ‘I don’t recall anyone being much better at it than you, sir,’ he said dutifully.
It was a challenge of sorts and I took it, but for my own dark reasons. I knew he could do it before he made the attempt, for he was not the sort of man to accept failure