They made a seat for him from their crossed hands, and with great difficulty descended into the valley. Although he was not particularly heavy, in their exhausted state his weight seemed like lead, and the sheer awkwardness of negotiating a steep slope in darkness, over loose rocks and spiny scrub, called for a strength and control which drained them both. By the time they reached the narrow valley, Liam was sweating and trembling in every limb, his arms burning in their sockets. Faced with the scree slope, terrified of dropping the lieutenant and making his injuries worse, Liam suggested carrying him across his back.
Between bouts of agony, the lieutenant objected thoroughly and colourfully, insisting they leave him. But rumour had it that the Turks mutilated their prisoners and that was a risk that Liam was not prepared to take.
The Queenslander ordered Liam to hold the lieutenant upright. With difficulty he did so, wincing at the groans of agony, easing him as gently as possible onto the other man’s shoulders. With Liam guiding and pulling, they managed perhaps twenty paces. Then Liam took over the burden, and with another man pushing and the corporal guiding, he managed half the slope before collapsing, his lungs on fire. Suddenly, he heard voices raised in argument above. The corporal heard them too, identifying himself before they could be mistaken for marauding Turks.
Help came quickly. Relieved of his burden, Liam found himself incapable of movement. To his shame, he had to be supported up the rest of the incline and across what appeared to be a ploughed field. With something of a shock he realized it was the wheatfield, dotted with poppies, which had looked so beautiful in the rising sun.
Fifteen
Having checked the course for the Dardanelles, Stephen took his coffee outside, yawning in the warm air, pleased by the touch of the sun on his skin. It was another limpid blue morning, with the azure hills of Imbros Isle poised between sea and sky. The kind of morning to satisfy every holidaymaker on every island in the Aegean; and after all, this was what they saved for, assiduously, all year round. Responding to it, he smiled, counting his blessings, glad that he did not have to earn his living cooped up in an office. If this job had its drawbacks, then it also had its advantages, and moments like this were blessings indeed.
Spring, and the weather was beautiful; it must have been a day like this that saw the initial attack on Gallipoli. Anzac Cove, named for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, had passed into legend, and the debacle of the whole campaign faded to nothing beside the bravery of those men who endured it.
Transcribing Liam’s diary, Stephen had begun by separating the notes relating to different years. 1914 was rapidly dealt with, while the memoranda for 1915 was fuller, but still frustratingly sparse on detail. With his eyes taking in the harsh skyline of mainland Turkey and the tip of the Peninsula ahead, Stephen wondered whether Liam had made notes at the time of dates and places and particularly violent exchanges, or if, in that depressing return to the desert in early 1916, he had checked details with others who were on Gallipoli, entering noteworthy dates in his new diary sent out from York at Christmas.
It was difficult to say. Possibly it was a combination of both, since Liam seemed the kind of man who liked to keep a tally of what was happening. But if the notes for that period were disappointingly brief in comparison to the following year, they were also shocking in their terse accounts of attacks, gains, and casualties. Set against his own general knowledge of that campaign, the diary made him wince.
Studying the chart last night, he could see why the planners in London had thought it such a good idea. It looked easy. The Gallipoli Peninsula, at the point where they had attacked, was only about four miles wide. Capture the forts either side of the Dardanelles, hold enemy shipping to ransom, and while you’re at it lads, just nip up and take Constantinople...
But with no first-hand knowledge of the terrain, and without taking into account the weeks of foreknowledge given to the Turks, it had been a disaster. Those forts were never taken, and they were stuck there from April to December, lobbing home-made bombs into Turkish trenches, dying from the heat and flies in August, and frozen to death in November, when it snowed. No fresh food or water, and supplies had to come by ship from the island of Lemnos.
The idea that ignorant men in comfortable offices in London could send other men across the world to die in conditions like that made him angry. It made him angrier still to think that little had changed.
His anger was so at variance with the beauty of the morning, it was unbearable. He went inside. An hour later, with the Dardanelles looming, he was back on the bridge, checking course and radar projections, scanning the shoreline with powerful binoculars. The Peninsula, low at its southern tip, rose in a series of ochre hills, in parts densely covered with evergreen scrub. From the sea, it had a certain rugged beauty, but the vivid pictures in his mind’s eye made him shiver. The Anzacs had landed way up on the seaward side, but what Stephen was seeing now would have been seen by Liam as he took part in the second assault on the Peninsular.
Just ten days after the original landings, he had been part of a combined British and French assault on Cape Helles at the southern tip. Stephen guessed that it must have been reasonably successful, because somehow, in the wake of hideous fighting, Liam had found time to explore the ruined fort of Sedd el Bahr. He had examined some crippled French artillery, had a swim in the sea, and the day after, ‘Had a yarn with Commander Sampson about his plane, named Dragonfly.’
Two days later, on 8th May, came a salutary note: ‘Took part in the second attack on Krithia. Gained 800 yards, lost 2,000 casualties.’
15th May, Liam was back at Anzac Cove, again landing during a concentrated shelling; and by the 20th he was fighting in the hell of Quinn’s Post, where the trenches were no more than a few yards apart. In that small area the dead lay unburied in their thousands, so numerous and so offensive that – as Liam again noted – an armistice had to be arranged for their interment. There seemed a dreadful irony in that.
Although he never remarked on minor injuries, considering the terrain, the intensity of constant warfare, Stephen could not imagine that Liam had remained unscathed. And if he had, there was always dysentery to contend with, which had been endemic, made worse by the lack of sanitation and the hoardes of devouring summer flies.
What amounted to a starvation diet had also taken its toll. For eight months those men had lived on the kind of iron rations meant to support a man in the field for no more than a few days. By the beginning of September Liam had been seriously ill. Not dysentery — although he had probably had that too – but pneumonia. He left Anzac on a hospital ship for Alexandria, arriving at the Palace Hotel, Heliopolis, on the 10th. On that date, the tall, fine-looking young man noted that he had weighed only 130 lbs. In four months Liam Elliott had lost more than three stones in weight.
Six weeks later, however, he was pronounced fit for action, and with a promotion to acting corporal, was returned to Anzac with a new uniform, an advantage many of the others would not have had. Winter came early to the Peninsula that year, and the last two months were bitter, with temperatures well below freezing. In their pathetic holes in the ground, many of the emaciated troops died of exposure.
After that, just before Christmas, had come the evacuation. A creeping retreat so that the Turks would not realize it was over and that their foes were leaving. Liam, in the firing line to the bitter end, had watched stores and food being burned on the beach while those beside him went hungry. The next day, after a bombardment which lasted six hours, he and his compatriots left Anzac Cove without another shot being fired. Within twenty-four hours, he noted, they were back on Lemnos and drilling again, three hours a day.
That terse comment was echoed, day after day, throughout the next three months. Egypt had not changed when they returned to it, but the men had. They were weary and depressed, had suffered an ignominious defeat and had watched their friends die for nothing. That they themselves had fought like the Trojans of old, that they had endured an
d ultimately survived, was not enough to raise spirits crushed by the experience. That those in command seemed not to care only added to the burden.
The entries in Liam’s diary for that period at the beginning of 1916 were short and monotonous and full of complaint. It was so indicative of malaise, Stephen’s anger had been choking as he typed up days and weeks of the same thing. ‘Drill again, food still scarce,’ was typical, as were complaints at lack of leave for the men, while officers were allowed plenty.
Later, from an active post by the Suez Canal, Liam had written over several days: ‘No food, nowhere to buy any... Digging gun-pits and trenches... No issue of water for over 48 hours, one loaf of bread between three men... Lecture by our Colonel on whether we are fit to go to France…’
Those entries in Liam’s diary were, Stephen thought, a terrible indictment of all that had passed in the name of organization. All inflicted by those at the top, men of their own nationality, on their own side. That was the worst part: it might have been more forgivable had those deprivations been suffered under an enemy hand.
With the diary in his pocket and his eyes on that brooding neck of land, so intent was Stephen that he barely noticed the arrival of the Turkish pilot. It was with something of an effort that he brought his thoughts back to the present and the job in hand.
Some hours later they dropped the pilot at Gelibolu, where the Dardanelles widen into the Sea of Marmara. They passed much Soviet and Romanian shipping, most of it merchant trade, although there were a couple of naval vessels, bristling all over with the latest military technology. Stephen photographed them just for the hell of it. Watching them slink past like greyhounds on a leash, he thought how ironic it was that Liam had fought, ostensibly, to release the Tsar’s navy from the Black Sea. But the plan, ill-conceived and unprepared for such resistance from the Turks, had failed. At this distance in time, Stephen could not help wondering what difference it would have made to the war – and the world – had they succeeded. Probably not very much. Russia had been heading down the road to revolution, even then.
After dark, Istanbul and the Bosphorus slipped by like a jewelled stage-set for the Arabian Nights; by comparison, Stephen thought, Odessa at noon was about as alluring as a banana republic on the eve of a coup. But it would have been all the same had their loading port been the best place on earth: he was too busy to go ashore, and except for Sparks, the Radio Officer, that went for his officers, too. Not so the Filipino crew. Most of them managed to spend some time ashore, and while handing out roubles before they went, Stephen stressed the need to obtain receipts for everything purchased.
Two days later, eager to get away from the armed guards and that depressing townscape, before the ship sailed, he called each of the crew to his office to collect the unspent currency.
‘You may not keep any roubles,’ he explained. ‘All you have left must be returned to the Agent. And I must have your receipts.’
The first three shook their heads in some confusion. ‘But they do not give receipts, sir.’
As the young steward outlined a female form with his hands, the two cooks dissolved into helpless laughter, and suddenly Stephen understood. But he could hardly credit it. ‘You mean Russian girls?’
‘Oh, yes, sir — very good!’
The situation afforded him the first hearty laugh for several days; nevertheless, he did wonder how to explain their purchases on the forms before him. He was left with a dual sense of admiration: for the crew’s determination and prowess, and also for the spirit of free enterprise at work in that grim Communist city. He was, however, glad to leave it.
Approaching the Bosphorus on the return journey, he related the tale in a letter to Zoe; although with Liam still on his mind, the majority of what he had written was concerned with the diary and his enclosed transcript. Only as they anchored, awaiting the boat to collect the mail, did he feel the need to add lines which were lighter and more personal. With mosques and minarets reflected in the still water, and the huge dome of Aghia Sofia rising above the city, it was impossible not to be touched by the romance of Istanbul. It was Byzantium and Constantinople, the seat of popes and sultans, a meeting place of past and present, sacred and profane; Europe and Asia facing each other across a narrow strip of water. The evening air was like velvet against his skin, perfumed and spicy, making him long for things which seemed forever destined, like the city itself, to remain just out of reach.
Describing the view and the atmosphere, Stephen was tempted, suddenly, to make her smile.
‘I have this private fantasy,’ he wrote, ‘about sailing ships and warm wooden decks beneath the stars – and this would make the perfect setting. But then I look around me, and there are no tall masts and spars, no furled sails and scrubbed wooden decks. Only functional painted steel, complete with squared-off afterdeck and bulbous bow – these days ships don’t even look like ships!
‘Why am I here? I ask myself that all the time. And if I have to be here, which it seems I must, why are you so far away? I wish we could be together again – here and now, with a good meal awaiting us at some tiny candlelit restaurant, and my very comfortable, but oh, so empty bed, to return to. So I say to hell with the warm wooden decks – better in imagination than reality!’
Reading through the last few lines before he sealed the envelope, Stephen wondered what he was saying. That he wanted her with him? There had been moments in the past when he had longed to share the delight of an experience with someone else, but never before had there been a woman with Zoe’s depth of understanding, a woman with whom he could share such things so completely. Most particularly, he could think of no other woman who would appreciate how he was beginning to feel about Liam Elliott.
His desire to talk to her on that very subject was reinforced within the hour. The boat which came to collect their letters also bore a package of mail from London. Sorting its contents into piles for different officers, Stephen’s heart gave a pleasurable leap at the sight of Zoe’s handwriting on two envelopes. Unable to resist opening them there and then, he quickly scanned the contents, gratified by her admission that life was not the same without him, that she missed him even more than she had anticipated.
But as though that path was fraught with danger, she had rapidly abandoned it for safer ground. Disappointed, Stephen returned to those comforting few lines and read them three times. He skimmed the part about some new work and her agent’s opinion, slowing as he reached a most unexpected piece of news. She had, she said, found amongst Louisa’s letters, a whole bundle from Liam, written during the war. Addressed to Edward, they covered the period spent in Egypt, Gallipoli and then France, the early letters full and vivid, later ones terse with weariness, giving the impression that much was left unsaid, and not just for the censor’s sake.
Her enthusiasm at this find sprang off the page; and also her sadness. Like Stephen himself, she was angered by the almost unimaginable horror of Liam’s experience, a horror which led him to edit his own sentences before they were written, to couch all but the lightest moments in bland phrases.
‘The strange thing is,’ Zoe had commented in her neat, italic hand, ‘that despite his obvious attempts to hide things, I feel as though I know what it is he’s hiding, and why he’s hiding it. I’m starting to feel as though I know him.’
Me too, Stephen silently agreed, drawn closer to Zoe by that common awareness. In the next sentence, as she confessed that she had even begun to dream about Liam, Stephen’s heart skipped a beat. Despite the warmth of his office he shivered, wondering whether her dreams had been as disturbing as his own. He hoped not, but for the moment he was unnerved by the coincidence.
With daylight and the return passage through the Dardanelles his reaction seemed extreme. He told himself that what they were investigating had very quickly ceased to be a mystery; identities and ambiguous relationships had been sorted out, providing clear motivation both for Liam’s abrupt departure and Tisha’s later eccentricities. Regarding Robert Dun
cannon’s paternity, Stephen could sympathize with those closest at the time. Even with two generations between, for him there had been an odd, almost drunken shift of perspective; which seemed strange because he had never known Edward Elliott. He could only imagine it was something to do with identity, with the assurance that came from knowing who you were, and where you had come from. It was not something people examined every day, but it was there, like childhood. And there must have been a world of difference, he reflected, between Edward Elliott, the poet, and Robert Duncannon, the professional soldier.
It was different for Zoe. She had experienced no sense of shock at their discoveries. Having known nothing about the family, she came to it clean, with no preconceived ideas; yet having said that, even her detachment crumbled when it came to Liam, just as his own was doing. Why?
It was a question to which there was no ready answer; or rather too many answers, all facile, none of them touching the heart of the matter, none of them explaining the long chain of coincidence.
Once out of the Dardanelles, Stephen made a concerted effort not to think about it. Since Mac was growing anxious at what seemed an obsession, Stephen dutifully accepted every invitation to darts in the bar, and even arranged a general knowledge quiz for Saturday night. At one time, he reflected nostalgically, social evenings had been organized by junior officers, the old fogies invited along purely from courtesy. But nowadays, the youngsters organized very little. A diet of television and videos had apparently made them too sophisticated for games, but games were more than simple entertainment, they made people talk. And social intercourse was important, welding bonds between strangers, easing some of the strains of the working relationship with humour. Stephen needed to know his officers, needed them to know each other; the job itself was hard enough without the added stress of isolation and poor morale.
Liam's Story Page 27
