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they feel like outsiders anyhow. And when I got to know Gary, when he was brought in - he spoke about you, Mrs Wooler.’ He faced Mary. ‘I recognised your name. I used to read your pieces in the Traveller, and I know about your work before the war. I’ve been waiting here to meet you.’
    Mary was bewildered. ‘Thank you—’
    ‘Mrs Wooler, there’s something I need to talk to you about. You might be able to help me. It could be urgent.’
    George snorted. ‘More urgent than this? For God’s sake, man.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’ Kamen backed off, hands raised.
    ‘But is he all right?’ Hilda asked.
    Gary stirred. ‘You could try asking him yourself.’ His head turned, and his eyes flickered open.
    Mary grabbed her son’s hand and squeezed it, pressing it to her face. ‘Oh, Gary, my God. What a day you’ve given me!’
    ‘I’m sorry.’ His voice was very dry, cracking. ‘Mind you, I’ve not been at a picnic myself, I can tell you that.’ He turned his head to Hilda, who was suffering that odd silent sobbing again, and he stroked her face. George, standing massively, rested a hand on his daughter’s shoulder.
    ‘He got off lightly,’ Ben Kamen murmured. ‘Believe it or not. The troops are turning up raw off the beaches of France. When they come in it’s more like a battlefield dressing station here than a hospital.’
    ‘And you,’ Hilda said, stroking Gary’s brow, ‘look as if you need more sleep.’
    ‘Yeah.’ But he faced his mother, wanting to tell her. ‘Listen, Mom. They tore across the country in those tanks of theirs. There was nothing to stop them. We did nothing but retreat - a fighting retreat, but a retreat. The Brits just weren’t prepared for what hit them. I heard some of them bitching that it wasn’t like this in India. And, Christ, the things we saw. Women and kids mown down from the air—’
    ‘It’s all right,’ Mary said.
    ‘Well, we got to the coast. The Germans had us pinned. And then we heard that Guderian was coming, with his First Panzers. We all knew what that bastard had done in Poland. They say he reached Gravelines, and secured bridgeheads over the river there. He waited one day. This was last Friday. I don’t know why he paused. It let us start the evacuation. But then, on the Saturday, he came for us.
    ‘Mom, we set up a perimeter. We fought back. But it was a slaughter. You had the Panzers ripping into our flanks, and the damn Luftwaffe coming at us from overhead, and we just couldn’t get on those ships fast enough. I was in a line for three days, a typical goddamn English queue, waiting for a place on a destroyer. No food, no water, nothing.
    ‘I got away. I was lucky. The scuttlebutt here is that ten per cent might make it home, out of four hundred thousand on those beaches. That’s half the damn English army, Mom. I can’t see how much of a fight they can put up after that.’
    ‘Hush,’ Mary said, for he was becoming agitated; she tried to calm him, smoothing his brow.
    ‘He didn’t sleep for five nights, I think,’ Kamen murmured. ‘He has a lot of healing to do.’
    But Gary was still distressed. ‘I think maybe the English have lost their war already, Mom. Lost it, on the beaches of France. Next thing you know they will be here. The Nazis.’
    George shook his head. ‘They won’t come. Hitler wants an armistice. That’s what they say.’
    Gary actually laughed, though it hurt him. ‘An armistice? After all this?’
    A nurse came then, and a doctor; they administered a sedative. Mary sat with her son until he slept.
    The strange medical volunteer, Ben Kamen, waited for his chance to speak to her.

IV
    17 July
    It was another glorious day in this long, glorious summer. And in occupied France there was nothing more glorious than to be a soldier of the Reich.
    Ernst Trojan was on a rest day, and he wanted to use it well. He would have come here to Claudine’s little apartment even if not for the sex; sooner the sweet breath of Claudine