Peter Guttridge - The Thing Itself

A cold, misty dawn broke thirty minutes later. If everything had gone to plan, ‘B’ and ‘C’ Companies would now be in position in town.

I could see ghostly German soldiers moving through the mist in the square around the tank. I was stiff, cold and tired to the bone. The soldiers on the ground floor of the theatre and in the buildings to either side opened fire. I saw a dozen or so Germans go down. The tank’s motors ground, its turret cranked round and I was looking down the muzzle of its main gun. I thought blankly that I was about to die. I tensed, shut down my emotions, focused on the black maw.

The Panzer fired a 75mm shell point-blank at the theatre.

I fell back a good five yards as part of the front wall gave way in a great billow of dust and smoke. When I scrambled to my feet again, coughing and deafened, I looked into the foyer and saw that at least six men were down. There was another roar, a deafening concussion and more of the wall fell in. The landing on which I was standing lurched away from the wall.

I scrambled off it and halfway down the stairs to the foyer. Another dozen men lay wounded or dead in the rubble and the billowing dust and smoke. Choking, I pulled my neckerchief up round my mouth.

From the foyer I could see the square fill with more tanks: Mark III, Mark IV and Mark IV Special Panzers. They opened fire and the building juddered as shell after shell punched it. The concussion deafened me.

I was scarcely able to breathe because of all the dust and smoke billowing around me. I fired on a German paratrooper who had climbed on to the turret of a tank as it tried to batter down the theatre walls. I couldn’t hear my own gun firing. When Spandau and rifle fire ripped around me, I realized that the wall I had been sheltering behind no longer existed.

I ducked back and returned fire.

At nine in the morning the theatre had somehow withstood the bombardment but there were only a handful of us left alive. We were in the Dress Circle, surrounded by rubble. I was coated in dust and dirt that filled my mouth, my nostrils, my eyes, my every pore.

Then the Germans blew a huge hole in the side wall of the stalls. Soldiers swarmed through it and up the stairs towards us. Not one of them reached the Dress Circle.

They didn’t try that again but the bombardment was relentless. At ten, the roof came down on us. I watched aghast as bricks, slate, plaster and beams crashed on to our heads.

Buried but still alive, I lay blinded as well as deaf. I could smell fire. With a massive effort, I struggled free of the wreckage. I couldn’t see anyone else near me. I had two grenades left in my belt. I stumbled across to the jagged hole in the wall and hurled the grenades through. I followed and fell into a side street.

I tried to suck in air but my nostrils and throat were clogged. I looked down the street. A tank blocked it. I looked the other way. A dozen infantrymen were pointing their rifles at me. I lowered my weapon to the dust.

I was hurried through the streets to a villa near the rocca . I stumbled often. I coughed and spat up the filth I had swallowed in the theatre. At the side entrance of the villa my identity disc was taken and I was handed a pitcher of water. I glugged it eagerly, spitting and snuffling to unclog my throat and nose. My ears rang but at least I could hear again.

I was taken into the villa and down a dimly lit corridor that led into a flagged kitchen. The only light came from a broad-shaded lamp hanging very low over a long table. It obscured the three people who were sitting on its far side. They all stood, but one of them stepped to the side. It was a beautiful, raven-haired woman.

‘I am the Contessa di Bocci, Captain Tempest. Allow me to introduce my husband, Count Alfonso di Bocci.’

I nodded to the count — a ruddy-faced, stout man of middle height and middle years — and he to me. She indicated the third person.

‘And this is-’

The middle-aged man standing erect on the other side of the table thrust out his hand.

‘I’m-’

He still looked how I might look in twenty years’ time.

‘We’ve met, actually,’ I said to Eric Knowles.

Watts was reeling and not just from the whisky he’d consumed. Years ago he’d read his father’s first book, based on his heroic journey across Europe to get back to England after escaping from a Nazi concentration camp. But he’d never heard his father talk about his wartime experiences and didn’t think he’d written about them. He felt an unexpected gush of pride about a man he in many ways despised.

But more astonishing than that was the mention of Chiusi. What kind of coincidence was it that Jimmy Tingley had been in this very same town to have dealings with the same family his father had been sent to protect?

Everything is connected, he murmured to himself, dialling Tingley’s mobile. It went straight to voicemail.

‘Jimmy, call me when you get this or when you can. Stay safe.’

He put his phone down on the table beside the whisky bottle, now two-thirds empty, and reached for the next exercise book.

Victor Tempest exercise book five

After the introductions I was taken to a room in a cellar where I fell on the cot and slept until evening. When I woke, I drank from a pitcher of water and coughed and spat for ten minutes. Then I stripped off my clothes and washed as best I could in a bowl of freezing water.

I ached in every bone and I was covered in cuts and welts and bruises. A suit, a clean shirt and a pair of tennis shoes had been set on a chair whilst I slept. I put them on. They weren’t a bad fit, although I felt slightly ridiculous in the plimsolls. But then I felt I had gone through the looking glass. This wasn’t the usual way captured enemy were treated.

Someone must have been watching me, because no sooner was I dressed than the door opened and an Italian militiaman escorted me back to the kitchen. The three were sitting at the table as if they had never moved. As if, indeed, they only came alive when I came into the room.

‘My suit fits you well enough,’ Knowles said. ‘I thought it might be tight on you.’

They ushered me to a seat on the other side of the table and food and a glass of wine were placed before me.

‘Perhaps I should explain that the count arranged that any prisoners be brought to him first. He is on good terms with the Germans and the German commander is clear-sighted enough to see that the count will have to come to an accommodation with the Allies when the occupying force withdraws, as it will inevitably do. But then to stumble upon you, Captain Tempest, the very man sent to protect him. Well. .’

‘You knew I was coming?’ I said, inhaling greedily the strong smell of the food set before me.

‘But, of course,’ Knowles said. ‘I have been negotiating for the arrival of someone like you for some time.’

‘Let Captain Tempest eat,’ the contessa said, laying a hand on that of Knowles for a moment.

I thanked her and picked up my fork. I was ravenously hungry. I ate quickly, washing the meal down with the rough red wine that soon had my cheeks burning and my senses swimming. The contessa had a small smile on her face as she watched me stuff my face. Her husband looked pained.

Knowles did most of the talking. He answered many of the questions I wanted to ask him. The first thing he impressed upon me was that he wasn’t a collaborator.

‘I’m no Lord Haw-Haw,’ he said. ‘I was sent to Italy before the war as the BUF’s ambassador to Rome. Mussolini greeted me warmly and the state provided accommodation for me near the Spanish Steps. But I had a change of heart and became a wanderer.’

‘A wanderer?’ I said between mouthfuls. ‘What kind of wanderer?’