Page 74 of These Old Lies

Charlie dashed back across the Grand Place, where Andrew and the division were still getting happily sozzled in the sun.

“Charlie!” He didn’t have time to be surprised by the happy shouts.

“Listen, chaps. Any chance you want to play knights in shining armour this afternoon?”

???

In the end it took far more than a few minutes to corral his merry band, but he also ended up with a good deal more takers than anticipated.

Once they arrived at the car, Charlie introduced his old soldiers to Millie and Gert and explained the need to climb the hill. Gert looked a touch overwhelmed by the fifteen or so men surrounding her car, but Millie was already in her element. “I feel like Queen Mary waving from her royal carriage.”

Her eyes stopped on the man that Charlie had known as Private Gittins, grinning at his friends and propped against a lamp pole with his crutch. “Gert will drive, of course, but you must join me in the back, otherwise we shall look off balance.”

As Gittins leapt into the back, and Andrew organised everyone else around the car, Charlie took up a position against the boot, getting ready to brace himself.

“Spot for one more?” Charlie turned to face a man he both recognised immediately and had not thought about in over a decade. Smythe? He automatically moved to make space, but before he could figure out what to say, Gittins called out from the back seat, “Alright, lads. Push!”

With some groans and grunts, the former men of the 1st London Territorial began to move the car forward. Had it been downhill, or even flat, it would have been fairly easy-going, but every step was a fight against gravity.

They had advanced about twenty paces when someone on the left side said, groaning, “Is someone calling out steps? I can’t see a bloody thing, and someone keeps kicking my shin.”

Mille began calling out “Left! Right! Left! Right!” with such imperious gusto that they all started to laugh and nearly lost the progress they had made.

As they settled into a rhythm, Smythe audibly grumbled, “Trust Villiers to get us into trouble.”

An entirely different type of sweat beaded on Charlie’s brow. Was this to be a repeat of the fight with Pemberton in the pub?

“You should’ve been an officer, Villiers.” That was Andrew’s voice, from up near the front of the car, words all teasing kindness.

“Nah, Villiers was worse than an officer,” Smythe answered.

If Charlie hadn’t literally been pushing a car up a hill, he would have turned and ran. Even with the car, the temptation was strong.

“What do you mean by that?” Gittins turned around in his seat. Was everyone listening to this? Could someone not step on a toe?

“Officers could ask the impossible.” There was a beat as Smythe gathered his breath. “Villiers got us to do the impossible.”

There was a wave of laughter from the men around the car.

Someone out of Charlie’s line of vision said, “Remember when Villiers convinced us to go along with the plan to dig trench lines in the middle of the night?”

“The blisters on my hands have only just faded,” Smythe called back.

“Here I was thinking your contribution was mostly whining and giving away our position to the enemy,” Charlie answered, relaxing into the teasing.

“I was making sure the rest of these idiots actually dug trenches in the right place.” Smythe’s needling of each other felt far more comfortable than the compliments of a few minutes earlier.

“I thought we would all get court-martialled that night.” The strain ofpushing was now more evident in Andrew’s voice. “Not four hundred yards away from German lines, and you were all behaving like schoolboys in the mud.”

Ignoring the ache in his back and arms, Charlie raised his head to properly look at all the men pushing this broken car up the hill, a disorienting experience of piecing together identities behind rounded cheeks, grey beards, and lined faces. Yet, there was no denying he did recognise these men, shared something with them.

Not wanting more emotion to jump out unexpectedly, Charlie craned his neck and noticed that their little parade was starting to attract a bit of attention from the French locals.

“Anglais, les idiots.”The disgusted look of the shopkeeper watching from his front window needed no full translation.

“The French never change,” Smythe muttered, low enough for only Charlie to hear.

“We should show them that we don’t either.” Charlie breathed through the weight of the next few steps and then called out, “Millie, do you think you could give some marching tunes?”