Next day they heard he had gone down with smallpox and everyone who had been at the party, had to be revaccinated and kept under surveillance for a fortnight.
She whispered to herself, ‘That was a narrow escape.’
Guy, half-asleep asked, ‘What was? What are you thinking about?’
‘I’m thinking about England,’ she said.
Ten
Trench was replaced by a man called Fielding. Fielding, a little older than Simon, had a plain, pleasant face and hair bleached like Trench’s hair. He and Simon, being concomitants, should have been friends but Simon was becoming wary of friendship. His instinct was to avoid any relationship that could again inflict on him the desolation of loss. The only person whose company he sought was Ridley. Ridley had known Arnold and Trench and he let Simon talk about them so, for short periods, memory could overcome their nonexistence.
Not much was happening at that time. The Column went on sorties carrying out small shelling raids, but there was no more close action. Even the main positions were quiet so it seemed the fight itself had sunk beneath the load of August heat.
Ridley still brought gossip and news, but there was not much of it. In the middle of the month, when Auchinleck lost his command, the officers asked each other why this had happened. Ridley, who had once seen the deposed general standing, very tall up through a hole in a station-wagon, spoke of him regretfully as though, like Arnold and Trench, he had gone down among the dead. ‘He was a big chap, big in every way, they say. He slept on the ground, just like the rest of us. No side about him, they say. A real soldier.’
‘What about the new chap?’
‘Don’t know. Could be a good bloke but we all felt the Auk was one of us.’
Later in the month, the Column, on patrol in a lonely region near the Depression, came upon three skeletons, two together and a third lying some distance from them. The sand here was a very dark red and the skeletons, white and clean, were conspicuous on the red ground. The nomad Arabs had stripped them of everything: not only clothing but identity discs, papers, even letters and photographs, for these things could be sold to German agents to authenticate the disguises of undercover men.
The staff car stopped and Hardy and Martin got out to look them over. Simon, following from curiosity, was startled when Martin said that the skeletons were of men recently dead. Had they lain there long the sand would have blown over them. They might have been the crew of a Boston that had come down in an unfrequented part of the desert and managed, in spite of injuries, to crawl this far before giving up. He touched the bones with his toe and said: ‘The kites have picked them clean.’
Simon, shocked that flesh could be so quickly dispersed, remembered his friends, dead and buried, and stood in thought until Hardy called to him, ‘Get a move on, Boulderstone.’
Simon turned to him with an expression of suffering that prompted Hardy to put a hand on the young man’s shoulder and say with humorous sympathy, ‘You won’t bring them to life by staring at them.’
That evening there was no mention of the Middle East in the radio news. ‘A dead calm, eh?’ Martin said. ‘Wonder how long it’ll last?’ When he went to fetch his whisky bottle, Hardy spoke to Simon. ‘I remember you mentioning your brother, Boulderstone. I couldn’t let you take leave at that time but I understood how you felt. Have you any idea where he is?’
‘Yes, sir. Ridley says there’s a Boulderstone with the New Zealanders, near the Ridge.’
‘Right. I’ll give you a few days and you can take the staff car and look him up.’
When Simon began to express his gratitude. Hardy enlarged his concession. ‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t take a week as there’s nothing doing. But check up on his position. You could waste a lot of time scouting round the different camps.’
As soon as he could get away, Simon went to tell Ridley of his good fortune but Ridley merely grumbled, ‘What’s he think he’s doing, giving blokes leave at this time?’
‘Why? Is anything about to happen?’
‘Chaps down the line think so. Then there’s old Rommel. He’s not moving forward but he’s not exactly dropping back, neither. If his reinforcements arrive, he’d be through us like a dose of salts.’
‘That’s not likely to happen in one week.’
‘How do you know? I got a feeling it could happen any day. If it hots up, it’ll hot up sudden like.’
Simon begged Ridley to keep his premonitions to himself, saying, ‘This may be my only chance to see my brother,’ and Ridley relented enough to admit that his ‘feeling’ could be ‘just a twitch’. It occurred to Simon that Ridley’s annoyance might come from envy of Simon’s luck, or perhaps simply an unwillingness to have Simon out of his sight. Whatever it was, he began to take an interest in the vacation, saying, ‘If you got a week, you could nip back to Alex. Or Cairo, even. Which’d you rather — Cairo or Alex?’
Simon did not know. He was enticed by the thought of the seaside town, but he knew people in Cairo. Had he been granted leave during his first days in the desert, he would have wanted only one thing; to return to Garden City. Now, though he sometimes thought of Edwina, she had lost substance in his mind and her beauty was like the beauty of a statue. It related to a desire he had ceased to feel.
Here in the desert, either from lack of stimulus or some quality in the air, the men were not much troubled by sex. The need to survive was their chief preoccupation — and they did survive. In spite of the heat of the day, the cold of night, the flies, the mosquitoes, the sand-flies, the stench of death that came on the wind, the sand blowing into the body’s interstices and gritting in everything one ate, the human animal not only survived but flourished. Simon felt well and vigorous and he thought of women, if he thought of them at all, with a benign indifference. He belonged now to a world of men; a contained, self-sufficient world where life was organized from dawn till sunset. It had so complete a hold on him, he could see only one flaw in it: his friends died young.
The staff car, assigned to him for twenty-four hours, would take him first to the Ridge where he hoped to track down Hugo, then to the coast road where he could stop a military vehicle and get a lift into the Delta. His new driver and batman, a young red-haired, freckled squaddie called Hugman, had little contact with Simon. He did not expect Simon to speak to him and Simon did not wish to speak. He was wary of Hugman, as he was of Fielding, and sat in the back seat of the car, holding himself aloof. Hugman very likely thought him one of the ‘spit and polish’ officers that he despised, but Hugman could think what he liked. Simon was risking no more emotional attachments, no more emotional upsets. To excuse his silence, he sprawled in the corner of the car, propping his head against the side and keeping his eyes shut. They had started out early. Simon, anxious to be off before Hardy could change his mind, almost ran from Ridley who came towards him with a look of doom. ‘There, what did I say, sir? The gen is that the jerries are preparing a push on Alam Haifa.’
‘Christ!’ Simon threw himself into the car and ordered Hugman to move with all speed. They were out of sight of the Column before he remembered he had not reported his departure to Hardy.
As the sun rose, he did not need to simulate sleep but sank into a half-doze which brought him images of the civilized world he was soon to re-enter. He no longer could, nor did he need to, exclude women from his dreams. Now that he was due for a week of normal life, he could afford to indulge his senses a little. He remembered not only Edwina but the dark-haired girl who raced him up the pyramid, and even poor forgotten Anne returned to him become, with his change of circumstances, more real than Arnold. His attention reverted to Edwina. She was the supreme beauty although he had been too dazzled to know whether she was beautiful or not Another face edged into his mind, a woman older than the others, with a dismayed expression that puzzled him. He could not immediately recall the dead boy in the Fayoum house, but when he did he dismissed both woman and boy as intruders on his reverie. Wasn’t it enough that he had l
ost his friends?
When he opened his eyes, the Ridge was in sight. They were driving through a rear maintenance and supply area where petrol dumps, food dumps, canteen trucks, concentrations of jeeps and ambulances, a medical unit and a repair depot were all planted in sand and filmed with sand that covered the green and fawn camouflage patches. It was a skeleton town with netted wire instead of house-walls and sand tracks instead of streets. The noon sun glared overhead and men, given an hour’s respite, lay with faces hidden, bivouacked in any shade they could find. Unwilling to disturb them, Simon told Hugman to drive until he found the Camp Commandant’s truck. Both men were drenched with sweat and when Simon left the car, the wind plastered the wet stuff of his shirt and shorts to his limbs. It was a hot wind yet he shivered in the heat.
The Commandant, fetched from his mid-day meal in the officers’ mess, had no welcome for Simon. ‘How the hell did you get leave at a time like this?’
Simon, more wily than he used to be, said, ‘Only a few days, sir.’
‘A few days!’ The Commandant blew out his cheeks in comment on Hardy’s folly, but the folly was no business of his. He advised Simon to find the New Zealand division HQ. ‘About a mile down the road. Can’t miss it. You’ll see the white fern leaf on a board.’
The car, driven out of the maintenance area into open desert, rocked in the rutted track, throwing up sand clouds that forced the two men to close the windows and stifle in enclosed heat.
The board appeared, the fern leaf scarcely visible beneath its coating of sand, and beyond, on either side of the track, guns and trucks, dug into pits, were protected by sand-bags and camouflage nets. Simon realized they were very near the front line.
At the Operations truck, a New Zealand major, a tall, thin, grave-faced man, listened with lowered head as Simon explained that he was looking for a Captain Boulderstone. The major, jerking his head up, smiled on him. ‘You think he’s your brother, do you? Well, son, I think maybe he is. You’re as like as two peas. But I don’t know where he’s got to — someone will have to look around for him. If you have a snack in the mess, we’ll let you know as soon as we find him. OK?’
‘OK, and thank you, sir.’
The mess was a fifteen hundred-weight truck from which an awning stretched to cover a few fold-up tables and chairs. Simon seated himself in shade that had the colour and smell of stewed tea. The truck itself served as a cook-house and Simon said to the man inside, ‘Lot of flies about here.’
‘Yes, they been a right plague this month. Our CO said something got to be done about them, but he didn’t say what I sprays flit around and the damn things laugh at it.’
The flies were lethargic with the heat. Simon, having eaten his bully-beef sandwich and drunk his tea, had nothing better to do than watch them sinking down on to the plastic table-tops. He remembered what Harriet Pringle had said about the plagues coming to Egypt and staying there. The flies had been the third plague, ‘a grievous swarm’, and here they still were, crawling before him so slowly they seemed to be pulling themselves through treacle. The first excitement of arrival had left him and he could not understand why Hugo was so long in coming. Boredom and irritation came over him and seeing a fly swat on the truck counter, he borrowed it in order to attack the flies.
A dozen or so crawled on his table and no matter how many he killed, the numbers never grew less. When the swat hit the table, the surviving flies would lift themselves slowly and drift a little before sinking down again. He pushed the dead flies off the table and they dropped to the tarpaulin which covered the ground. When he looked down to count his bag of flies, he found they had all disappeared. He killed one more and watched to see what became of it. It had scarcely touched the floor when a procession of ants veered purposefully to it, surrounded it and, manoeuvring the large body between them, bore it away.
Simon laughed out loud. The ants did not pause to ask where the manna came from, they simply took it. The sky rained food and Simon, godlike, could send down an endless supply of it. He looked forward to telling Hugo about the flies and ants. He killed till teatime and the flies were as numerous as ever, then, all in a moment, the killing disgusted him. He had tea and, still waiting, he thought of the German youth he had killed on the hill. Away from the heat of battle, that killing, too, disgusted him, and he would have sworn, had the situation permitted, never to kill again.
The mess filled with officers but none of them was Hugo. About five o’clock a corporal came to tell him that Captain Boulderstone had gone out with a patrol to bring in wounded.
‘Has there been a scrap, then?’
The corporal did not look directly at Simon as he said, ‘There was a bit of a scrap at the Mierir Depression two days ago. Last night we heard shelling. Could be, sir, the patrol’s holed up there.’
‘You mean, he’s been gone some time?’
The man gave Simon a quick, uneasy glance before letting him know that the patrol had left camp the previous morning. Hugo had, in fact, been away so long, his batman had gone out in the evening to look for him.
A sense of disaster came down on Simon and he got to his feet. ‘They should be coming back soon. I’ll go and meet them.’
‘With respect, sir, you’d do better to stay. The wind’s rising and there could be a storm brewing.’
Simon refused to wait He wanted to move, as though by moving he could hasten Hugo’s return to the camp. He had sent Hugman to the canteen and decided to let him stay there. The corporal told him that there was a gap in the mine fields where the track ran through the forward positions into no-man’s-land and continued on to the enemy positions at El Mierir and Mitediriya. As Simon went to the car, the corporal followed him.
‘You’re not going alone, sir?’
‘Yes.’
The car, its steering wheel almost too hot to handle, stood beside the Operations truck. The corporal said, ‘Like me to come with you, sir? Only take a tick to get permission.’
‘Thank you, no. I’ll be all right.’
Even a tick was too long to wait while he had hope of meeting Hugo. The sand was lifting along the banks between the gun pits. Small sand devils were whirling across the track, breaking up, dropping and regathering with every change in the wind. The sky was growing dark and before he could reach the forward position, his view was blotted out. He had driven into the storm and there was nothing to do but pull to the side, stop and stare into the sand fog, watching for the batman’s truck to come through it. Nothing came. He got out of the car and tried to walk down the track but the wind was furious, driving the searing particles of sand into his eyes and skin, forcing him back to shut himself in the car. He was trapped and would remain trapped until the storm blew itself out.
At sunset the sand-clogged air turned crimson. When the colour died, there was an immediate darkness and in darkness he would have to remain. He could see nothing. He could hear nothing but the roar of the wind. He opened the car door an inch expecting a light to switch on but the sand blew in and there was no light. He switched on the headlamps that showed him a wall of sand. Realizing that no one was likely to see them, he switched them off to save the battery. Then, aware there was nothing more to be done, he subsided into blackness that was like nonexistence. The luminous hands of his watch showed that it was nearly nine o’clock. He climbed over to the back seat and put his head down and slept.
He awoke to silence and the pellucid silver of first light. He was nearer the perimeter than he realized. Before him was a flat expanse of desert where the light was rolling out like a wave across the sand. Two tanks stood in the middle distance and imagining they had stopped for a morning brew-up, he decided to cross to them and ask if they had seen anything of the patrol or the batman’s truck. It was too far to walk so he went by car, following the track till he was level with the tanks, then walking across the mardam. A man was standing in one of the turrets, motionless, as though unaware of Simon’s approach. Simon stopped at a few yards’ distance to observe th
e figure, then saw it was not a man. It was a man-shaped cinder that faced him with white and perfect teeth set in a charred black skull. He could make out the eye-sockets and the triangle that had once supported a nose then, returning at a run, he swung the car round and drove back between the batteries, so stunned that for a little while his own private anxiety was forgotten.
The major was waiting for him at the Operations truck, his long grave face more grave as though to warn Simon that Hugo had been found. He had been alive, but not for long. All the major could do was try and soften the news by speaking highly of Hugo, telling Simon that Hugo had been a favourite with everyone, officers and men. His batman, Peters, was so attached to him, he was willing to risk his own life to find him. And he was alive when Peters came on him, but both legs had been shot away. The sand around him was soaked with blood. He didn’t stand a chance.
‘And the rest of the patrol? Couldn’t they have done something?’
‘All dead. Young Boulderstone just had to lie there with his life-blood running out till someone found him.’
The major sent for Peters so Simon could be told all that remained to be told. Peters was a thin youth who choked on his words. ‘When I found him, he said, quite cheerfully, “Hello, Peters old chap, I knew you’d come.” ’ Tears filled Peters’s eyes and Simon felt surprise that this stranger could weep while he himself felt nothing.
Peters, regaining himself, explained that the patrol had been returning to the camp at sunset when it was attacked by German mortars. The ambulance moving against the red of the sky must have been an irresistible target. ‘They knew what it was, the bastards. And they went on firing till they’d got the lot.’
Peters, having found Hugo, could not move him because movement would increase the haemorrhage. He intended to return to the camp for help but the storm blew up, so he had to spend the night with the wounded man.
Fortunes of War Page 23
