A Broken Land Read Online Free PDF Page A

respect for the few he admired, and Cal had been one, was total. He had been a damn good soldier, if one too often in trouble with his superiors, resulting in a seesaw as far as rank was concerned; sergeant to private and back again like a jack-in-the-box.
    But if Cal, as one of his company officers, had been required todiscipline and demote Vince, he had also come to appreciate the feeling of having him alongside when things got sticky, because he was a real asset in a scrap, as well as a born leader in an army, like every other in the world, that could only run well by the application of its senior NCOs.
    He had also been a very handy welterweight boxer, both for the regiment and after he was discharged. Such a skill made leniency when he transgressed easy to get past the colonel, an old stick-in- the-mud and martinet going nowhere, the army always being tolerant of those showing sporting prowess, especially one who could duff up the champion of a rival regiment. He was past boxing now, a trainer instead of a fighter, if you excluded going out into the streets of London to do battle with Mosley’s blackshirts.
    ‘So what do you reckon, guv?’ Vince asked, turning to indicate the party of which he had obviously taken charge. ‘The lads want to know.’
    ‘Depends on how bad it gets. If it is really serious we’ll need to bail out.’
    ‘If this is what you told me it might be, an’ that’s what I passed on to the boys when we heard the shooting, then if there’s going to be a fight, quite a few of them want to be part of it.’
    ‘Hold on a minute, Vince, we’re talking a shooting war here, not three rounds with gloves and headgear on. Besides, they’re only kids.’
    ‘What age were you when you went and joined up?’
    ‘I’d had training.’
    ‘I recall you saying if you’d listened to the instructors you wouldn’t have lasted a bleedin’ week.’
    Vince had a real boxer’s face: a much-broken nose and prominentbones on his cheeks and under his scarred eyebrows; now it was screwed up with what seemed to be real passion, not his normal mode of behaviour, which was generally calm and jocular. The one thing that could get him really going was anything to do with fascism.
    That was why he was here with his boxers – it set him off at home and it fired him up when he talked, which he did rarely, of his political beliefs. Not in any way a joiner of parties, he was, by his very nature, a fellow who believed all men are created equal and should be treated as such.
    ‘We came here to send a message to that shit Hitler, right?’
    ‘Yes, but—’
    ‘But, nothin’! If the same sort of bastards are going to try and turn Spain into another Germany or Italy, are we just goin’ to scuttle off home an’ let them get on with it?’
    ‘I was going to say it’s not our fight, Vince, but I suspect that might not go down too well.’
    ‘It is, guv, and you know it,’ Vince responded, deeply serious. ‘It’s all our fight, just as it was in Africa.’
    The two locked eyes, but it was not a contest of wills, more an attempt to ascertain the next move. If anyone knew him well it was this man, and added to the mutual trust they had was the bond of recent experience; Vince had been with him all the way in the acquiring and running of guns, across Europe and into Ethiopia, sharing the risks as well as, it had to be admitted, often acting as the voice of common sense.
    ‘What about your gym?’
    ‘A few weeks won’t make no difference, will it, and we was due to be here a fortnight in any case. Might all be over by then.’
    ‘We don’t know what is happening, Vince, or how we can help. We don’t even know if we’d be welcome.’
    ‘One way to find out.’
    ‘March to the sound of the guns?’ Cal asked, only half joking.
    ‘That would be a start.’
    ‘Can I talk to your boys?’
    Vince nodded and Cal went towards them. He was not a total stranger, having attended the training sessions both indoors and at