David Dean: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005

“I still didn’t have any water, but I’d been away a long time so I decided we’d have to manage on a few sips of wine, if we wanted to get away. Then, almost as soon as I turned to go, I nearly fell down the family’s well. I drew up a bucket and it was sweet and cold and freaking marvellous — I can still taste it — and I filled our canteen and headed back to you.”

I said, “And I was gone, of course.”

“Not quite. I saw them take you away. I was that close.”

“Saw who take me away?”

“The two Jerries with the motorbike. The ones I thought took you prisoner.”

“You thought?”

“Yeah. It was a German bike, I could tell that from the sound.”

“All right. What then?”

“How do you mean?”

“What did you do next?”

“I kept walking towards the coast. I got to Sphakia. I had to dodge about a bit because some keen types were assembling rearguards, like that arsehole major, using the odds and sods to cover the fighting troops. I was no use to them, having no gun, but I couldn’t see explaining that, so I left them to it. It took two days to get to the beach. But once I got there it was simple, a navy lifeboat came to the edge, someone shouted, ‘Last call for the Skylark,’ and someone hauled me over the side, and then we were climbing up a rope net into a destroyer, which made a run for it. I remember we had to go between two rocks and I saw the boat ahead of us turn over when the Stukas dive-bombed it, and the one after us went the same way, but I think we were just a bit too quick for them. Then I woke up in a camp in the desert, just like you. I was there for a month, made sergeant, and posted to Eritrea to fight the Eyeties. After that it was pretty cushy.”

“You didn’t come looking for me when you were in the camp?”

“Last time I saw you, you were on the back of a Jerry motorbike. Prisoner of war, like. Right?” He waited for my reaction.

“They weren’t Jerries—”

He cut me off. “By the time I got to the camp, I’d found out what really happened, and I didn’t see the point of looking for you. Let it go, I thought.”

“What? Let what go?”

He took his time about responding to that. Then, in that flat voice soldiers use when replying to a question from an officer, he said, “While I was on the beach waiting, wondering whether to give myself up when the Jerries arrived, because it looked as if the last boat had come and gone, I wondered if we’d find ourselves in the same batch of prisoners, you and me. That was when someone on the beach told me about seeing these New Zealanders on a Jerry motorbike.”

“So you knew I’d got away.”

“I knew you hadn’t waited around, yes. Not after they offered you a ride.”

“I thought you’d gone, left me with the bread and cheese, like.”

“That why you didn’t look me up, after the war, too? You knew where I lived.”

“You took me home once, when we had a three-day pass before we shipped out to Greece.”

“That’s right.”

“Seems clear now, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose it does, yeah.” He brushed a crumb off his tie. “I’ve thought about it every day for twenty-two years.”

“And?”

“I tried to keep an open mind.”

“Now you know. Right?”

“Now we both know,” he said.

“I suppose we do.”

“Another pint?” It was his turn.

“Not this time. When’s the next race meeting?”

“Here? Couple of weeks. Why did you think I would have gone without you?”

“My foot. I couldn’t walk. You would have been stuck with me.”

“I would never have done that.” He stood up.

“No.”

“What about the next meeting here? You coming?”

“I’ll look out for you.”

“I’ll do the same.”

We travelled back on the train to Clapham Junction together, not saying much, certainly nothing about Crete. I changed at Clapham Junction for East Croydon. He stayed on the train. I offered him a hand, which he shook without standing up. “Maybe Derby Day?” I offered. “Up on the downs?” It was something we’d promised each other we would do after the war.

“If I go, I’ll keep my eyes open for you,” he said.

I got out and the train started to move. I gave him a bit of a wave, and he nodded, and then he was gone.

I didn’t see him again. I didn’t actually stop going to Sandown altogether: There was no need for that. On the other hand, there was no great urge to bump into him again.

I’m an old man now, but I still turn the whole thing over in my mind, not every day, but often.

Copyright ©; 2005 by Eric Wright.