Small Wars (12 page)

‘I’ve been with Evelyn. I’ve been at her house all day. Everybody is – nobody can believe it,’ she said. She fluttered her hand up to her face, shrinking away from him, it seemed.

Hal remembered he needed to get cleaned up. He was aware of his blood-stiff clothes, and the feel of his skin. His eye was dragged to her skirt again. ‘What?’ he said.

‘Those men, the horses – how could anybody do that? How did they put it there?’

‘During the night, I should imagine.’

There was a pause.

Hal heard an engine gunning up the hill in the sleepy quiet and then, over Clara’s shoulder, he saw Kirby turning in. ‘I’d better get going.’

‘Where?’

‘Limassol. Will you be all right?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Good.’

Hal walked past her and got into the Land Rover.

Clara, watching it drive away, wiped her sweating palms on the bright skirt. The sound of the engine faded.

Evelyn leaned out of the car. ‘I told you!’ she said to Clara, but not harshly. ‘Come along now.’

Kirby drove him home without speaking to him or looking at him, leaving him his privacy. Hal changed his clothes quickly – fast enough not to notice the scrubbing of his skin and the smell – made sure everything was in order and went back down.

‘Good,’ he said.

Even at Kolossi, the tiny village nearest the garrison, there were signs of crisis. Land Rovers parked crookedly at the roadside, men with their hands up, held with guns by soldiers, the women looking on. Hal caught glimpses but didn’t stop, and Cypriots, out of their houses, followed his vehicle with their eyes.

In the orange groves the sharp smell of citrus leaves filled his head.

The first checkpoint looked to be completely abandoned. There was nobody around at all, just low concrete houses with looped electricity cables between them and rubbish smelling in the heat. A three-tonner and two Land Rovers were parked, and left there, one with the keys in it still.

‘Well, that’s fucking marvellous,’ said Hal.

They heard distant orders being given, in a house, or behind one, then a woman shouting and the banging of furniture going over, and more orders, in English.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Hal, beginning to wonder what they’d find in Limassol. ‘Let’s get on.’ Kirby pulled the Land Rover wide around the other vehicles and they drove on into town towards the port.

There was a curious exhausted tension now, as late afternoon set in. There was never any sunset in Limassol – it faced the wrong way – just more shadows. At the port, the big ships were moored out on the flat silver sea. The area between the Customs House and the water had become a yard for a holding pen and men were being loaded from that into a truck.

As the Land Rover stopped, Hal could see that the soldiers, as well as loading the men, were facing a small knot of boys and young men who were goading them and throwing sticks and bottles. Other soldiers were milling about, in pairs, with startling vagueness, and there was a lazy, sporadic violence that was too unfocused to be a stand-off, too dangerous to be nothing.

Hal stood up in the front of the Land Rover as Kirby cut the engine and scanned the crowd for Mark Innes. He couldn’t see him. He looked for McKinney, Grieves, Trask or Fry – anyone who could have been said to be controlling the situation. There was nobody.

‘There,’ he said, pointing, and Kirby started up the Land Rover again, and crawled towards the road out of the port, to the east, where the waterfront of the town began, and the sea lapped up against the wall.

They stopped again, between the crowd of boys – now staring and quiet – and a soldier, brought to quick attention by their arrival. Hal addressed the soldier: ‘Clark, is it?’

‘Maplin, sir.’

‘Who’s your section commander?’

‘Corporal Trask, sir.’

Hal asked quietly, ‘The whereabouts of Corporal Trask. Any idea?’

‘He was over there a minute ago, sir.’

Maplin was filthy and fidgeting.

‘Where’s Sergeant McKinney?’

‘I ain’t seen ’im, sir.’

‘Lieutenant Thompson?’ Blankness. ‘Lieutenant Grieves?’ Nothing. ‘Quite a day then.’

‘Sir?’

Then he saw Mark Innes coming from behind the wire pen, walking fast, smiling like somebody who’d forgotten how. ‘Never mind.’

The soldier went on, and Mark reached him.

‘This doesn’t look like much fun,’ said Hal.

‘It’s been a fucking shambles. Just getting some order back now. I sent McKinney with – Your face all right?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

‘Private Jenson died?’

‘Yes. He didn’t know anything. Half his brains had gone.’

‘Taylor?’

‘He’ll be all right.’

‘Fucking Cyp bastards.’

‘We need to get this curfew enforced.’

‘You think this is bad? Should’ve seen it earlier. The – it –’ He had a look about his eyes, slightly staring. ‘It hasn’t been a good day, Hal.’

Hal nodded. ‘It’s all right,’ he said firmly. ‘Let’s get it sorted out, shall we?’

It took hours to mobilise troops and vehicles into order. Truckloads of prisoners were deposited up at Episkopi Garrison guardroom; dozens of others were taken forty miles to the prison camp, Camp K, for questioning. Then, like soldier Pied Pipers, Hal and the other officers drove through the streets, with loud-hailers and whistles, flanked by men with Stens ready, and all around Cypriots melted away into their houses, and soldiers, remembering themselves, came out of bars and brothels and people’s homes. Hal found Corporal Trask, in a bar with three others, no barman to be seen, and drunk, helping themselves. He got him and the others out of the smashed-up bar by the scruffs of their necks and tore a strip off Trask, but kept his temper. Being angry with Corporal Trask would be like being angry with one animal in a stampede.

The rest of the city, under different command, had fared no better, but it was cold comfort. There had been a failure. Hal hadn’t been responsible for the orders, they had come from Colonel Burroughs, but he hadn’t been there to oversee their execution, and they had all forgotten themselves. They had forgotten themselves because of the loss of one man, and the wounding of one more. They had forsaken all, forsaken discipline, for some blood on the sand, horse-hoof ashtrays.

And then, at the end of that day, Hal lay in bed with Clara.

She had waited, tactfully, to see what he would do when he came in. There had been nothing to do but eat, and climb the stairs to bed. They hadn’t spoken. He had washed again, with soap, flannel, nailbrush, and shaved. The hot water, limited at the best of times, ran cold while he washed. Cold water, strong soap, the repeated scrub of the flannel, scraping. Clara sat downstairs, listening to him, waiting.

The sheets were cool. He laid his head on the smooth pillow and the cotton touched his cheek. His limbs and skin were unconstrained inside the loose material of sheets and pyjamas. It was as if these soft things were happening to him for the first time and he, like a snail torn out of its shell, smarted at the contact.

He turned onto his back. Clara turned too, towards him, her nightdress and hip slightly touching him as she went onto her side.

She rested her cheek on her hand. He couldn’t see her, but he knew that was what she always did when she turned towards him like that. He knew the line her body made then, too, all curved, like an English landscape.

He made an effort to steady himself. He would find comfort.

Without looking at her, he took his eye down her horizon – small hill for head, little steep valley into neck, hill of shoulder, deep valley to waist, lovely hill of bottom, long slope of legs, running away down to…sea? A coastline at the end of the bed? A cliff. Deep water. Not a home landscape then, an island. He felt a lurching disintegration and struggled for control.

‘Hal?’

‘Yes?’

He felt her move in the dark, and then she took his hand and held it. It was as if she held the thread that would unravel him.

He took his hand away from her.

Chapter Four

They had been told that the beach was safe. At eleven o’clock in the morning, two days after the explosion, Clara stood at the entrance to the tunnel with Lottie and Meg. They had their buckets and spades with them. She had felt a sort of reckless defiance before leaving the house – some version of the British indomitable spirit, she decided, and had felt proud of it. Now she didn’t feel proud. She felt stupid, and very frightened. The black tunnel, not much wider than a Land Rover, with the two hundred feet of sheer cliff above it, went away to its far point of light ahead.

The girls were pulling at her hands. She couldn’t go through the tunnel.

‘Come on, darlings, let’s go and play at the club.’

‘No. Let’s go beach!’ said Meg.

‘Let’s go beach’ had been one of their first phrases and remained a favourite; they went to the club every day.

Clara knew they were going to make a scene. She had, after all, packed the beach bag and brought them down here; it was only fair they should want to carry on. She contemplated manhandling them both all the way back up the path.

‘What about the horses?’ she said.

‘
No
,’ said Lottie, her face like a child’s picture of crossness: Mary Jane contemplating her rice pudding.

‘The horses miss us,’ said Clara, cajolingly.

She tried to turn them away from the tunnel, hot little hands and tipping-over beach basket making her clumsy. The tunnel had always frightened her – too small, straight and black, and too much rock above it. Whenever she walked through it, even before the bombing, she was frightened, had played echoing games with the girls just to make fun of it and prove her courage. She had dreamed once of it falling on her when she was halfway through and Hal on the outside with the children. The falling had been soft and suffocating, not the noisy rockfall of reality, but the thick foam darkness that nightmares have.

She stood there, half turned away from the tunnel, trying to avoid a fight with the twins that could only be won by force, with the path, polo field and all the dusty pointless bushes and hills around her, not pastures for playing in or grass for sitting on, just this hot-place landscape that you couldn’t properly walk in, or lie on, that seemed to stare at her. Being with the children made her feel helpless and vulnerable, heaving them about, never able to explain herself to them, but always covering up with nursery platitudes and motherly confidence that she did not feel.

She was hot and panicking and felt imaginary Cypriot eyes upon her. She had started to feel that all the time now. When she was in her bedroom she imagined them watching her house, when she was opening her front door she imagined tripwires across it and had begun to check, without letting anyone see she was doing it. Whenever she got into the car, part of her was expecting it to blow up. Every sound she heard had both a benign and a sinister interpretation, and she would have to remind herself to keep to the real world and not be drawn into her fear completely, not let it overtake her.

Sensible people always said it, didn’t they? The chances of being a victim of one of these things were infinitesimal – even when it had happened to those horses, even though that poor boy had lost his leg and would go home to his mother ruined, and the ruin would spread ripples.

She was still standing there with the children. They were quiet. Did she frighten them with her distress? Without even crying, without even saying,
I’m frightened, I want to go home, I miss my husband. I miss him even when he’s there…
Did they know, anyway?

‘Now, come along, and let’s not be silly. Those poor horses haven’t seen us for days. Let’s go and give them some apple. Do you think horses like bread?’ she said, in her mother voice.

‘Horses,’ said Meg, kindly. She was more pliant than Lottie, allowing herself to be captured.

The covered line of stables was dim and sawdust smelling. She found Private Morrison, who cared for the horses. He was eager for her company. She chatted to him, both thinking about Taylor, Jenson and the two horses that had died, and not saying a word, but he stroked the face of the horse he stood by consolingly, she thought.

He brought out one of the small ponies for the girls, and led them bareback up and down the line of stables, past the empty stalls of the dead horses, and the live ones, leaning curiously over their doors and blowing gently through soft nostrils, their eyes shining.

Clara leaned back against the wooden wall and closed her eyes. No one could see her. She sang a hymn in her mind, a quiet one, this time.
Lord of all hopefulness, Lord of all calm, Whose –

‘Hello.’

Clara opened her eyes.

It was Lieutenant Davis. He was in barrack dress, the summer version, which was longish baggy shorts and shirt, with a webbing belt, boots and socks. His legs were very white and thin and his face red from the heat, with damp hair stuck to his forehead.

‘Hello,’ she said, wondering what she must have looked like. ‘How are you?’

‘I came out for a smoke.’

‘You can’t smoke here – you’ll burn the place down.’

‘Are you…quite all right?’

Clara had been going to say, ‘Of course,’ but instead she said – quietly, so that Private Morrison wouldn’t hear her, ‘It’s too dreadful. I can’t take it in, still,’ and he answered,

‘Yes. It really was. Awful.’

The moment of sympathy between them was a relief, like a glass of cold water – soothing. Clara felt gratitude to him, and realised with shock that she and Hal had not made any allusion to it, not even this most basic recognition of what had happened.

Davis was staring at the ground, his eyebrows drawn together in a deep frown.

‘You look terribly hot,’ said Clara.

He looked up. ‘I came from the guardroom.’

‘Quite quickly?’

‘Yes.’

Clara glanced over at the girls, and Private Morrison, leading them patiently, one hand on the rope, the other on Lottie’s back. The dusty quiet air felt slow with sadness, and Morrison’s hand on Lottie’s back was gentle, his head bowed as he led her. ‘Have they found them?’ she asked.

‘Who?’

‘The EOKA who did it.’

He laughed mirthlessly. ‘No,’ he said.

Clara looked at him.

‘You sound as if they won’t.’

‘Of course they won’t. This is all…’ he gestured, ‘…this is all just…’ He didn’t have words for what it was, then. ‘It’s just punishment. It’s just a game. Back and forth.’

‘Not a nice one.’

‘No.’

There was a pause. Then, ‘Look, Mrs Treherne –’ He had said ‘Look’ to her, but he was the one looking, searchingly, right at her. ‘Look,’ again, ‘I wonder if I might speak to you?’

‘Of course.’

‘How about that cigarette?’

‘Away from the horses, then,’ she said.

‘Yes. Over here.’ He gestured some way away. ‘Do you mind?’

He was mysterious.

They walked a little way towards the trees at the edge of the polo field, where there was shade and a dog, sleeping, with Clara looking back over her shoulder at the twins, who didn’t notice her. She thought they were probably safe for now, and no one would put a mine under a tree, would they, where people seldom walked? The ground didn’t seem disturbed. They stopped. She reflected that EOKA had done what they had intended to: they had terrified her.

He lit his cigarette and offered her one, and she took it, to be companionable. She normally only smoked with Hal, after supper, and associated the fresh-lit taste with him. Davis blew smoke up into the weeping dappled leaves above them.

‘What’s your husband like?’ he said, very abruptly, then looked down at his boots.

Clara was shocked. ‘What do you mean?’

‘No, no, I’m sorry. It’s just that – I’ve been thinking of talking to him about something that’s happened. The day before yesterday. I don’t know if I should. I don’t know if there’s any point at all.’

Clara paused, considering how best to answer. ‘Try him,’ she said firmly.

He walked away from her, leaned one hand on the silver tree and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, pressing quite hard into the sockets.

‘You ought to know what he’s like,’ said Clara. ‘He’s your commanding officer.’

‘He’s your husband.’

‘We don’t want him for the same things, I shouldn’t think.’

‘Is he
fair
, though?’

‘Fair?’

‘Is he fair and does he listen? Will he listen to me?’

He was still rubbing his eyes. Clara hadn’t been smoking her cigarette and she put it out carefully under her shoe. ‘Hal says you should always be able to go to your commanding officer. It should always be the first place you go.’

‘Yes, they
say
that.’

‘Well – there you are.’

‘But will he do something? Or is it all just a sham?’

‘I ought to get back to the children.’

‘Will he listen?’

‘I don’t know! Stop it!’

He let his hand fall from his eyes, and was still. ‘I want to go home,’ he said.

Me, too
, thought Clara,
me too
, but – ‘Where’s home?’ she asked.

‘West Sussex. At least, that’s where my family are from. I’ve just – I’d just come down from Cambridge. It was because of the Greek, you see – that’s why they want me for this. Otherwise I would have just been a normal soldier for my two years. None of this Special Investigations mess, none of this interpreting. Interrogations.’

‘Well, I should think you’re very helpful. No one else can speak a word, can they?’

‘No. I’m very helpful.’

He left a silence. Then, ‘When I was on leave last time, they shipped us off to Athens – I had a week. I saw the most beautiful things. I did some sketching, which I’m awful at. I travelled outside the city and I saw the most lovely things. I saw Delphi – I’d always wanted to. You don’t know my name.’

‘What?’

‘You don’t even know my name. If we were at home, after we’d been introduced we’d call each other by our names. Don’t you think it’s extraordinary that you don’t even know my name? Don’t you think it’s actually inhuman?’

‘Well – what’s your name, then?’ She glanced back towards the stables.

‘Lawrence. Lawrence Davis. Won’t you say it?’

‘Say it?’

‘Yes. Please.’

‘Lawrence.’ Clara was embarrassed, but then, seeing his face, she softened. She wasn’t used to seeing need in a man, certainly not in Hal. She smiled. ‘How nice to meet you Lawrence Davis. People do use first names here, you know, when they know one another a little.’

Davis heard her voice soften, and saw her look kindly on him. ‘I haven’t really got to know anybody. Clara Treherne, is it?’

‘Yes. Clara.’

‘Like “air”?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good,’ he said.

‘There. Happy now?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

‘And you’ll talk to Hal?’

‘Yes. I’ll talk to him.’

Later, when Clara stepped across the lawn to Deirdre’s house, and knocked to ask if she would like to bring Roger over for cucumber sandwiches and cake on their terrace, Deirdre, looking up from her magazine, raised her eyebrows and said, ‘Oh, thanks, we might.’ Roger was playing near her feet with a small red metal truck. But then, as Clara turned to go, she added, ‘By the way, what were you chatting about so earnestly with the handsome Lieutenant Davis? This afternoon by the stables. I saw you.’

There hadn’t been Cypriot eyes watching, after all, but English ones.