James Hawkins - Missing - Presumed Dead

“Daphne — I said, what happened?”

The mushroom went round and around the plate rim, faster and faster, but there was no way out.

“Daphne?”

She stopped, stabbed the mushroom angrily with her fork and looked straight through him, focusing somewhere far off in the distance — somewhere in the past. “I was cold, wet, miserable and scared to death. My partner … my friend … hit a power line. Electrocuted — dead. He had the maps. I wandered — lost, disorientated, hungry for two or three days — then the guns started.” Her eyes closed as the barrage went off in her mind and she sat silent until the noise had faded.

“A young French woman, my age, was lying by the side of the road covered in blood, screaming,” she said as she re-opened her eyes, but her voice was as distant as her gaze. “She’d been shot or hit by shrapnel.”

Mandy Richards was back, her crimson chest stippled with shreds of green blouse. And her killer — blood and snot dribbling out of his nose — his face more ghastly than the mask that had been pulled off. And now another face had got stirred into the horrific mental morass — the Major’s face, or what was left of it: half a shattered jaw strung up with wire and a few rotten teeth set at crazy angles.

But Daphne was having her own nightmare.

“When I bent down to see if I could help I realised she had a baby, wrapped in a fluffy blue blanket soaked in blood. ‘Take my baby — please take my baby,’ the poor girl was screaming.’ ‘Where to?’ I said. ‘To my mother — Mama — she will take care of him. Please, please take him.’ She paused and stared over Bliss’s shoulder at a blank wall, waiting for the pain to abate — hoping she might wake before the worst. ‘Where is your mother?’ I asked,” — the horror movie refusing to stop in her mind. “And she gave me the name of the town … I couldn’t believe my luck. It was the town where I was supposed to be and it was still behind enemy lines. I was desperate … I had to get there … I still had my job to do. Without me our artillery would just destroy the whole place.”

Burying her head in her hands Daphne tried shutting out the images, then gave up and confronted herself with the facts. “I took her bicycle and put my radio in the wicker carrier, you know the sort that all French bikes have … and … ” she paused again, fighting off the memory, hoping it had never happened — hoping it was only a movie. “And …” she tried again. “And … I wrapped her baby in my shawl … and …” The words wouldn’t come.

Bliss shook off his own demons and helped out. “And the baby …?” he asked.

“I put him in the basket on top of the radio.” There, I’ve said it. Now finish the story. “And I rode away. ‘Good luck,’ she called, ‘Bon chance — Bon chance. Tell my mother I’ll be home in a day or so,’ she cried. ‘I’ll be home as soon as the guns have stopped. Tell her not to worry.’”

She sat silent for a few moments, still staring through the wall as images piled up in her mind and she sorted them in order. “A British soldier tried to stop me at a checkpoint. He was sure I was French. Of course, I looked French — that was all part of the training. We had French instructors — girls our own age who had escaped or been in England at the start of the war. With the French it’s not just the language, it’s the way you stick out your bum and pout; the way you sniff everything; the way you use your hands to talk.

“‘Cor blimey, Miss, you sound as though you’ve just come off Brighton beach,’ he said.

“‘Let me through or I’ll …’” She paused, “Well, you can imagine what I said.

“‘Ere,’ he said, ‘You’re English, ain’t you?’

“‘Of course I’m English you bloody little twerp,’ I said, though I wasn’t quite so polite.

“‘Well I’m blowed,’ he said. ‘But you can’t go through there, Miss. The h’enemy’s up ahead. They’ll mow you down,’ he said.

“‘Get out the way,’ I said, shoving him off.

“‘I’ll shoot,’ he shouted.”

Then she smiled in memory. “‘What’s your name?’ I said. “‘Corporal something-or-other,’ he said.

“‘Right Corporal,’ I said. ‘If you shoot me, I’ll wrap that gun round your bleedin’ head and when I get back home I’ll tell your mother what you did. Now bugger off.’” Bliss’s broad grin ended in a chuckle as she continued.

“I couldn’t believe how quiet it was as I cycled up that road, as if the guns were holding their breath, I even heard a bird singing — in the middle of a battle, a bird — incredible.” She paused at the memory, re-creating the sound in her mind. “Then I saw my first Germans, camouflaged, scuttling into the ditches and aiming. I stopped and got off — didn’t know what to do, then I thought … wave something white. I had to use my knickers in the end, I didn’t have anything else white. ‘Achtung! Achtung — Stoppe,’ they shouted. But I just kept going until a machine gunner took out my front wheel. I couldn’t leave the bike — the baby and my radio were in the basket, so I got up and pushed it with one hand, waving my knickers in the air with the other — what must they have thought of me — a desperate prostituee with a wobbly front wheel I guess. I kept shouting ‘Let me through’ in French. ‘My baby needs his father.’”

Bliss was breathless with anticipation, “What happened?”

“There were six of them, only boys really — young hoodlums. Today they’d be spraying graffiti on bridges or dealing grass in the Hauptstrasse Burger Bar, but somebody had got them up as soldiers and given them real guns with live ammo, so they felt pretty big. One of them spoke French, badly. ‘What do you have in there?’ he asked, pointing his gun at the basket. ‘My baby,’ I said. ‘I live over there and I want to go home, my husband is waiting for his dinner and my baby needs feeding.’ I don’t think he understood, and one of the others kept screaming, ‘Shoot her — just shoot her.’ Then one of them said something crude. My German wasn’t very good but I knew what he was suggesting ‘Look,’ he said, ‘She’s got her knickers off already.’”

The main course arrived, served on wooden platters, and Bliss started to eat, silently, dying to tell her to continue, but, sensing the fragility of her condition, left her to choose the moment. Daphne had yet to start her turkey and was pushing pieces of it around her plate, then she slammed her knife and fork onto the table making him jump. “I don’t know why I feel I have to explain …” she began, her fists clenched in fierce anger.

“You don’t,” he said soothingly, and reached out to comfort her. But they both knew that she did have to explain — that she would explain — that she needed to explain.

“I wish they had raped me — all of them,” she began again, her voice subdued, and with the words came tears. She wiped them with her napkin then carried on crying and talking at the same time. “It wouldn’t have mattered — not really. I would have got over it in time.”

“They didn’t rape you?” he asked kindly as she paused to wipe her eyes again.

“No,” she sniffled. “They took the baby. One of them picked it out of the basket. I thought they’d see the radio — I couldn’t let them see the radio, so I started screaming, ‘ Donnez-moi mon bebe — Give me back my baby — Give me back my baby.’”

“‘Do you want your baby?’ he said, holding it high in the air, taunting me.”

“‘Give me my baby,’ I cried.” And her eyes found the distant spot again as she fought back the tears.

“He threw the baby — not at me — at one of the others, but a shell exploded and he turned just at the wrong moment. He wasn’t looking.” She paused to wipe her eyes and blow her nose, then looked right into Bliss’s eyes. “They just walked away — ‘It doesn’t matter — we’ll all be dead tomorrow,’ one of them said.” She hesitated for a moment to compose herself, then, more calmly, continued. “I was surrounded by death yet that baby meant everything to me — I’d promised his mother you see.” The tears came again and she started to get up. “You’ll have to excuse me, Dave,” she snivelled. “I’m just a silly old woman. I’ll be back in a minute — fix up my face.”