by Rachel Hore
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Ivor muttered and, stepping over the bodies, they followed after the rest of their company.
The moon had set and they bivouacked in cold darkness behind a sheltering line of poplar trees. Paul lay listening to the whispering of the leaves as he waited for sleep to come. He’d become so worn down over the last two weeks that oblivion usually took him instantly, but tonight every time his eyelids closed, some thought or imagined sound would wrench him back to consciousness. There had been no let-up. After they’d overcome the first Italian defence they’d marched east up the dusty coastal highway under the blaze of the July sun. They’d taken the bridge at the port of Siracusa after a fierce battle in which reinforcements parachuted in had been massacred because of a series of stupid planning errors, a terrible memory that angered everybody still.
Taking Siracusa itself was easier. They had been amazed by the ready surrender of thousands of Italian soldiers, many singing cheerfully as they were led away to ships, clearly believing that their troubles were over. Paul did not wish that he was one of them; there was too much work for him to do. Instead he wrote to Sarah, describing his exotic surroundings, the big-wheeled carts painted with the faces of film stars or holy images, and how he’d helped rip down the posters and banners with Fascist slogans that covered the town’s public buildings.
Then it was time to march on to Augusta in their filthy battledress, their feet slipping with sweat in their boots, stopping sometimes to revive themselves on grapes growing in roadside vineyards or to barter cigarettes for oranges while brightly coloured birds and butterflies darted against a scorching cobalt sky.
Augusta with its whitewashed houses and pretty tiled roofs surrendered quickly, then that town too was behind them, but between the triangular vastness of Mount Etna and the coast they walked into trouble. The plain narrowed into a strip and there, finally, a German division was waiting for them. Soon Paul became habituated to a ravaged landscape strewn with the bodies of soldiers, the blackened ruins of warplanes; grew practised at diving for cover from falling shells.
As their advance slowed, the word came back. General Montgomery in frustration was dividing his army. Half were to march inland to forge a route round the great volcano. It felt a loss to watch them go, but everyone knew it to be a race against time to reach Messina at the eastern tip of Sicily and to cut off a German retreat to the Italian mainland. Now Paul’s company, amid the thousands of soldiers of the Eighth Army who remained, continued forward along the coastal strip, trying to push the Germans back. It was unforgiving territory, dotted with stone farmhouses, irrigation ditches and hiding places where the enemy’s anti-tank weapons might lurk to devastating effect. Every yard, every inch, had to be fought for and the casualties were legion.
Despite their bravery, the practised cockiness and the graveyard humour, Paul was noticing the different ways the stress of conflict was wearing them all down, whittling away any softness, or lightness. Even the youngest of them now looked much older than their years. It wasn’t simply the dirt etched into the grooves of their sunbaked faces, the scars of battle raking and roughening their skin, the weight of their tiredness, it was the loss of innocence registered in the hardness of their gaze. They’d seen horrors such as they’d never imagined from their childhood comics of heroism and derring-do. They’d seen dear friends cut down by random shards of shrapnel, or by careless bullets from their own side. They’d seen the corpses of little children and had had to avert their eyes and move on. They could see no reason behind any of these things, it was simply bad luck.
There was something else Paul was wrestling with, too. It was what the wounded German labourer had cried about Hamburg. Paul had asked the Major to find out what it meant.
Though he’d tried to put the incident behind him, the angry contempt on the German’s face sometimes rose in his mind. He realized now why he hadn’t recoiled from it, indeed, had felt a degree of sympathy. Contempt, he felt, was what he deserved, but not by reason of his origins. All he had seen and been made to do in this war had defiled and tarnished him. All right, he’d been merciful, had eased the man’s pain, but then he’d left him, had hardly noticed the bodies of the others at that farmhouse, the men and boys who would never go home.
It had been the next day that Major Goodall had broken the news to him. The RAF had recently conducted a bombing raid on Hamburg, so thorough and so brutal, it had effectively flattened Paul’s home city. ‘Our payment for Coventry,’ the Major had said grimly. ‘That’s how we’re to see it. I’m sorry, old man, but that’s how it is.’
Thirty-six
Briony had left her office door ajar mid-morning as a sign that she was open to see students, but the shuffling and giggling starting up outside didn’t sound like nervous undergraduates coming to discuss their essays. There came a knock and she watched in astonishment as the door was shoved wide and a vast arrangement of pink, blue and white flowers advanced into the room in a crackle of cellophane. The giant bouquet was carried by Les from the post room, and behind followed Debbie, who bore a packet smothered with special delivery stickers and a large grin on her face.
‘Flipping Norah,’ was all Briony could say.
‘Where shall I put them?’ Les groaned. ‘On the desk?’
Briony delved for the florist’s envelope, which she found on a prong amid some roses, and read the card inside. Then she dropped it in the bin.
‘Take them away,’ she told Les in her steeliest voice, but she held out her hand for the package from Debbie.
‘Yer jokin’, aincha?’ Les’ cropped head poked up over some lilies, his eyes black pools of disbelief, his habitual gum-chewing stilled by surprise.
‘I don’t want them, sorry. Give them to someone else, Les. Chuck them. I don’t care which.’
‘Really?’ Les’ eyes lit up with possibilities, and with difficulty he backed out of the room with his prize.
‘Is everything OK?’ Debbie looked concerned.
‘Absolutely fine,’ Briony said through gritted teeth. ‘I’m not a fan of the person who sent them, that’s all.’
Debbie’s eyes widened. She withdrew, respectfully closing the door. Briony hesitated a moment, then scrutinized the padded bag in her hands before tearing it open. As she imagined, it contained the letters that Greg had stolen from her the night before. She glanced through them quickly, judging that as far as she could tell they were all there, then pinched open the sheet of fresh cartridge paper that accompanied them.
Briony. A million apologies, but here they are, safely returned as promised. I’m looking forward to reading the photocopies and will be back in touch. I hope that you will forgive me. The flowers are but a small gesture of my immense shame. Yours in friendship, Greg.
‘Shame. Friendship,’ she hissed, scrumpling his letter into a ball. Having second thoughts, she smoothed it out and pushed it back in the padded bag with Paul’s letters in case she ever needed the evidence. At least he didn’t have copies of the entire collection, she thought with satisfaction as she stowed the package in her bag to take home.
She glanced at her watch and saw it was time for the appointment she’d made with Gordon Platt. She’d been feeling trepidation, but now Greg had made her angry. She steamed out, head high, hardly noticing several passers-by fall back as she marched across the corridor to Platt’s office. This was not the anxious wreck who’d been tried by Twitter. This was a Briony none of them had seen before.
‘Gordon, I’m sorry, but I must say no to the engagement opportunity.’
She stood squarely before him and Platt, who had been lounging in his seat, now sat up and appeared mildly annoyed. ‘Come on, Briony, you know we need to pull together here. We’re all overworked. Someone’s got to do it.’
‘Yes, but not me this time. It isn’t fair that I should. I’m supposed to have one day a week for research. I don’t know when I’ve last taken that. I’ve worked weekends most of this term.’
‘Very common. I
do myself.’
‘I’m not going to start naming names, but there are several members of staff I can think of with lighter loads who you could ask. Why not try?’
Platt raised his palms and said, ‘I think we need to calm down a little.’
‘I am perfectly calm, I assure you.’
He rose from his chair and she saw that his cords were a sober navy today. Some important meeting, she supposed, as she watched him pace the room. Finally, he turned his head with the air of a sinister parrot and said in a petulant tone, ‘If that’s your answer, then I’ll find someone else, but don’t expect . . .’
His voice died away and he waved a hand, dismissing her.
‘Don’t expect what?’ she asked, remaining exactly where she was. ‘I assure you I’ll be working as hard as ever, and I hope to be rewarded for that when my case for promotion is heard.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of suggesting otherwise,’ he said mildly, ‘but I’m not the only person on the promotions committee you need to convince. Well, I’ll say no more.’ Then, more to himself than to her, ‘Perhaps Colin has some spare capacity. I wonder.’
She left the room, closing the door quietly with a smile. Colin Crawley, the department’s last-ditch Marxist, often managed to wriggle out of administrative duties. Like Macavity the cat, when you wanted him he was never there. Privately, she wished Platt luck, while feeling light-headed with triumph at her small victory. She tried to banish the thought that though she’d won this battle the dust clouds heralding the enemy troops could be seen on the horizon. The promotions committee was the week after next.
Thirty-seven
October 1943 was wearing its way to November and Paul could not remember when he’d last lain in a proper bed. Before Italy, before Sicily? Not since they’d left Egypt, he calculated, so over three months ago. This particular morning, thuds of shellfire had torn him from a sleep that left him unrefreshed, but though he struggled from his tent with protesting limbs, his rifle already in his hands, he realized that the noise came from far away and reveille hadn’t yet sounded so he’d sunk back inside again.
Gunfire again, nearer this time, and now the thin strains of the bugle and groaning and cursing men surfaced from their tents like the dead from their graves on Judgement Day, reacquainting themselves with their exhausted bodies, testing their weight on stiff legs, apparently astonished to find that they still lived and moved. Some limped off in the direction of the latrines, others to queue at the mobile kitchens for breakfast.
Passing the officers’ tents, Paul spied Harry’s recumbent form through an open flap. On his way back from breakfast he bent and nudged him, watching him for signs of fever as he fought his way to consciousness. Harry rolled up to sitting and sipped at the mug of water Paul handed him, then splashed some on his face so that rivulets of dirt ran down it. He drained the mug, returned it to Paul with a silent nod of thanks and accepted a bully-beef sandwich with a gloomy expression. Paul left him to come to terms with the day.
It would be the same as the one before, he supposed as he repacked his haversack, which would be the same as the one before that, playing cat and mouse with German patrols in these mountains north of Naples with the fate of being shot or blown up by booby traps all too real options.
Over the last week a wintry chill had set in to make the persistent rain more miserable. All conversation seemed to be about the weather. They remembered the relentless heat of the summer months with nostalgia, for while they’d become dug in, chipping away uselessly at the German defences, floods and merciless bombardment had turned the mountainous terrain, once tree-covered and fecund, to liquid mud and the charming farmhouses to blackened ruins.
Paul read exhaustion on the faces of the men that he passed on his way to roll call. After they’d triumphantly entered Messina back on 17 August only to find the Germans had escaped, his company had crossed over the narrow strait to mainland Italy on 3 September. Then came the Italian surrender to the Allies five days later, and they’d formed part of a light force dispatched up the coast to meet the Americans, who’d made landfall at Salerno and repulsed the Germans there after a bloody and costly battle. The Allies had liberated Naples on 1 October, and when he’d entered the city the following day Paul had been shocked by the wanton destruction wreaked by the departing enemy, and the suffering of its people, the drawn faces of the children, the hunger in their mothers’ eyes.
The suffering was telling on them all now. They were being tested to their full extent. Three days ago Paul had seen another private in his company, Smithy, go under, refusing point blank to join a patrol on mine-clearance duty. Smithy had actually shaken with fear and, worse, he had cried, actually cried, this big, solid chap who at home would have been out in the fields bringing in the cows, a steady sort whom everyone had taken for one of the reliable ones, obeying orders under fire. Now his nerves were shot. Paul had witnessed Ivor Richards’ rage as he argued with him uselessly, then in frustration taunted the man and struck him with his rifle butt. It was the officer in charge who intervened. He’d sent Smithy to the medical tent, but Richards had not even been admonished. Not that Paul knew of, anyway.
Paul was worried about Harry. He had been ill with malaria, picked up in Sicily. He’d recently suffered another bout of fever, but was now dosed up and on the mend. It wasn’t simply his illness that disturbed Paul, though, it was the change that he saw in the man. Sometimes Harry’s hands shook, and if his gaze fell on Paul, he had a pleading expression. Ivor was keeping a close eye on Harry, too, Paul noticed that, but instead of sympathy his expression showed contempt.
The ground reverberated as their guns pounded the enemy’s mountain hideouts and then they were off climbing the slopes with the tenacity of goats if not their fleetness, for they had to stop frequently to test the ground for mines. Ahead of him, Clarkson, a grocer’s son from Middlesbrough, stumbled and an explosion cut off his cry. Paul averted his eyes as they passed what was left of him. Watch the path, he told himself, breathing stertorously, watch. Gunfire rattled overhead. Something struck a finger of his left hand, numbing it, but by the time he allowed himself to notice the pain and investigated, the tip beneath the nail was swollen and purple. He could still use his gun so he supposed there was no need to get it taped up.
The sight of an enemy helmet above, then a shell burst nearby made his heart leap. He raised his rifle and shot in the direction of the helmet, hopelessly, before drawing back into the shadow of a rock. Some way ahead up the winding goat path, he could see several others, Briggs and Fielding, it looked like, scampering after Ivor. They’d overrun the enemy outpost to approach it from above. He ducked and held his hands over his ears as the grenades exploded, peeped out to see a German officer loping past. Paul felled him with a single shot, then peered down the hill wondering what had happened to Harry. He’d been behind him only a moment before.
Heart in mouth, Paul set off back down the slope, scuttling from rock to tree, taking care where he put his feet. It wasn’t long before he found Harry. It was near, very near, where they’d lost Clarkson. Harry was sitting on the ground with his arms around his knees, his shoulders shaking. He’d been sick, Paul saw, his own stomach turning. ‘Harry,’ he said, dropping all formality. ‘What’s the matter, man? You can’t stay here.’
Harry did not even acknowledge him, but continued to sob soundlessly. Paul put out a hand, felt the man tremble. It must be the fever. ‘Harry, don’t worry, I’ll help you. I’ll just signal to Richards if I can. Then we’ll go back down. Get you to the doctor.’
It would be dangerous, he knew, moving slowly in this terrain with a sick man, an open target for the Germans above, but he couldn’t just leave Harry here. When he scanned the slope above him, he saw that the mist was coming down. There was no sign of the others. He made his decision and hoped it would be the right one. Certainly no other acceptable course presented itself.
Harry was reluctant to move at first and Paul realized for the first time somethi
ng shocking to him. Harry, cheerful, steady Harry, was scared. No, worse than that, he’d gone to pieces. Paul coaxed him, spoke to him in a reassuring voice then, when neither approach made any difference, explained to him sternly what they were going to do. Harry assented with a nod. They set out, Paul covering Harry’s back, keeping to the shelter of rocks and gullies as they descended the hillside.
Passing poor Clarkson was a difficult moment. Harry’s eyes squeezed shut and his limbs gave out so that Paul had to hold him up and drag him by the corpse. Shots from further up suggested a sniper, but the mist was merciful, drawing a curtain to shield them from his view. Soon it began to rain again, heavily, so the path ran with mud and their progress became a matter of sliding and falling. By the time another patrol picked them up near the bottom they were bruised and exhausted.
On arrival back at camp Paul delivered Harry to the hospital hut – an old barn – and went to report what had happened, careful to stick to Harry’s fever symptoms. He was unsure how the adjutant would respond to the problem of Harry’s nerves or whether Harry would thank him for mentioning it.
It was with some trepidation that he returned to the hospital later in the day to enquire after Harry, only to be surprised by the news that he had been discharged. Paul eventually found him sitting wrapped in a blanket on a crate under one of the stores shelters, smoking a cigarette and staring out miserably at the rain.
He greeted Paul with a nod and a raised eyebrow, but not his usual friendly smile.
‘This is a good place to sit,’ Paul said, ducking in from the rain. ‘How are you?’
‘A little better. I must thank you for rescuing me up there.’
‘That’s fine. I asked for you at the meat house just now, but you must be doing well for here you are.’
‘They gave me the usual bread pills and cut me loose. Told me they needed the bed. I say, you haven’t mentioned anything to anyone, have you?’ Harry’s face was anxious. ‘About how I was . . . up there.’
