They had confided in each other for years. It was from Ciccio that she had learned, even in childhood, about all the dark jungle of life that crowded in on their sunny playgrounds. It was to him that she went with her questions about the ways of men; he kept her informed of all the scandals of the town. They perched on the parapet above the rocks, and she poured out her story. She spoke rapidly, wondering at the feeling of relief that grew within her and warmed to real pleasure, as she unburdened herself. She became excited; her eyes sparkled as if she were describing a film that had charmed her. She heard her own voice telling of a passionate wooing, of her lover’s tenderness and adoration, of his eagerness to obey her caprices, of a sorrowful parting. She had told him to be brave, she said, but he was inconsolable; and as she spoke, tears gleamed in her eyes, for she believed herself; this had become the real memory.
She was flushed and happy when she finished, her eyes glowing reminiscently. Ciccio was watching her with a sceptical grin. He said, ‘And how much did he give you?’
She would have exaggerated, boasted of her lover’s fantastic generosity, but she had already admitted that all the money had gone on the shoes, and Ciccio would know to a lira what they cost. She answered, ‘Two thousand.’
Ciccio made a derisive noise. ‘Only two thousand. How many times did he have for that?’
‘It was not a payment,’ she said sullenly, ‘it was a gift. He wanted to give me more, to buy me clothes, but I would not let him.’
Ciccio scowled at the cigarette which he held between his fingers. ‘Very romantic! Do you think I was born yesterday? You are a fool, you have thrown money away.’
‘I did not do it for money,’ she insisted. ‘And the girls who do it for money only get fifty lire.’
‘You know a lot about business!’ he jeered. ‘A woman is glad to get fifty lire, but for a fresh girl of your age there are men who will pay much more.’
She did not answer.
‘You could make a lot of money,’ he said.
She looked at him in fascination and alarm.
‘What is the use of fine shoes when you run about in that dirty dress. It is a child’s dress. It hardly covers your knees. And what do you wear beneath it but a dirty pair of drawers? You could have silk underclothes.’
Terror and indecision seized her. She bit her lip, staring at him.
‘I know an officer who would give three hundred, for each time, for you.’
She whispered, ‘For each time?’ For so brief and pleasant a duty. For sinning – oh, for doing what all women had to do, look at them all! Her brain whirled.
‘Three hundred. Naturally, you would have to give me something.’
‘Oh,’ she murmured, hardly aware that she was speaking, ‘I would buy you whatever you liked.’
‘Fool, I am not a child. I do not want presents. I want my share of the money. Would you give me a hundred each time?’
She nodded dazedly.
‘Well, what do you say?’
She was afraid to answer. Cold little fingers of panic moved about inside her. Then a dazzling revelation came to her and drove the scared feeling away. She need never be what she had dreaded to become, one man’s beast of burden, taken in her youth from the sunshine and stabled for life in a dark hovel. She could be free, independent, like those Englishwomen in the newspaper, like those Americans in the films. She could have dresses and shoes and money of her own. Her mamma, her poor mamma with the lines of misery deep in her face, could always have bread and wine on her table, could go to church with a purse so well filled that her offerings would make the other women murmur with envy and the priest clasp his hands in admiration. Nella said, in a childlike ecstasy, ‘Take me to this officer.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
SIX a.m… Craddock opened his eyes and stirred in his blanket. He saw the open window, the sunlight on the wall; he arched his body in joyful recognition of the familiar and pleasant surroundings, of a new day. The air tasted as sharp and sweet as an iced drink in his mouth. He relaxed, unwilling to emerge from sleep, and let the sounds of awakening life come to him from across the rooftops – a dog barking, cocks crowing, the shouting of workmen, and the wordless, wavering wail of a woman’s song. Each morning he enjoyed these first seconds of languor, when the radiant world welcomed him back from the caverns of darkness, showing off to him all its beauty and tranquillity.
His mind awoke, and he remembered: this is the last time. The buoyant pleasure went out of him. He felt sick and cold. He closed his eyes and fought to expel for a few moments the leaden misery, to sink back into the blanket’s warm oblivion. It was no use; his brain was already working as remorselessly as a quick-ticking watch. He cast off the blanket and pulled on his boots.
He woke Honeycombe, went down the corridor banging at doors, packed his gear with feverish vigour; memory was amok inside him and he was trying to stun it with activity. He rolled his blanket, pulled it round his pack and fastened the straps over it, tightening them with savage energy. His equipment was piled in a corner now, ready for the march, Honeycombe’s in another. Otherwise the room was empty; all trace of human habitation and repose had vanished. His soul was empty, too. Other men were on their feet. The rooms rang with the stamping of feet, the thump of falling packs, the clatter of weapons, and impatient voices. The building which, while they had lived in it, had muffled their everyday noises with its walls, protested against their departure with a frenzy of echoes. The hunt music of the peaceful world around them, drowned by their clamour, no longer beguiled them.
Craddock stood on the landing and shouted, ‘Rise and shine! Downstairs, my lucky lads!’ His men streamed past him, grinning at him. The rush was like the noise and movement of a war dance, quickening the blood to new impulses of vigour and enthusiasm. He followed them out into the street. For a moment the cold numbness returned: this is the last time. Pride returned at the sight of the company forming up, the shuffling ranks closing into a neat, solid block of khaki that filled the whole length of the street; the straight lines of helmets swathed in dun sacking, the straight lines of rifles, the straight lines of packs, the straight lines of red faces.
It was a single organism into which all individualities and all worries vanished, self-sufficient and aloof from the untidy throng of civilians who surged around it as a tall ship is from the sea through which it cleaves. He took his post in front of his platoon.
§§§§
Seven a.m. … The sun had risen. The air, saturated with heat, became still, and shimmered with the brilliance of full morning. The men squatted in rows upon their packs, eating from their mess tins a last meal of stew which the cooks had prepared in a boiler pitched on the pavement. The captain had ordered the billet to be emptied so that the last fatigue party, which was busy now, could leave it spotless, a final reminder to its returning tenants of the ways of the British.
The civilians were all awake. Everyone was out in the street to see the soldiers go. Families crowded in their doorways, chattering with the subdued and expectant gaiety that is seen before the start of a horse-race. People hovered on the fringes of the parade and took heart, one by one, to penetrate the ranks, until the street was a disorder of khaki and black. Couples drew apart, each pair – burdened soldier and full-skirted woman – standing close together with bowed heads. Here and there could be seen a whole household crowding round a soldier, embracing him and talking volubly to him as if it were their own son who was being taken from them. Other soldiers squatted with children perched on their knees or huddled in the crook of their arms, feeding them from their mess tins.
Captain Rumbold watched the children gathering like a horde of ravenous sparrows. ‘Damn fools,’ he said to Perkington, ‘giving their food away. God knows when they’ll get their next meal. We’ll have to stop this.’
Perkington said, ‘Just you try!’
Rumbold deliberated. ‘We can’t upset ’em now,’ he said. ‘There’s only one thing to do.’ He turned to the sergean
t-major. ‘How are we fixed for grub?’
‘There’s a whole crateful of tins still unopened, sir.’
‘Tell the cook to tip it all in. Sergeant Craddock!’
‘Sir?’
‘You speak the bloody language. Tell the Eyeties to get plates and line up on the pavement. God damn it,’ he said desperately. ‘let’s have a party! Come one, come all, and bugger the income-tax! Aren’t we the bloody onions?’
Craddock spoke to the people near him. They screamed the tidings to their neighbours. There was a wild rush to the houses, and in a moment an unruly queue was jostling on the pavement. People came running with plates, jugs, saucepans, washbowls, jam tins, ornamental vases, kettles, cauldrons – anything that would enable them to carry away as big a share as possible. One small boy peered happily over the rim of a chamberpot. The cooks stirred and ladled and sweated over the steaming boiler, while the people came and went with their overbrimming portions, squatting on the pavements to join in the feast, shouting to each other in extravagant gratitude and bringing the soldiers sweetmeats, bowls of pasta and bottles of wine to make a real holiday of the occasion.
Paloma, who was standing with her arms round the shoulders of two sturdy soldiers, whispered excitedly with her companions. Without warning she rushed upon Captain Rumbold, threw her arms round him and kissed him heartily. She drew back, laughing, to view his embarrassment, but the captain seized her in a murderous hug, planted his mouth on hers and crushed her to him, lifting her strapping body from the ground as easily as if she were a child. She thrashed at the air with her legs, making choking sounds of laughter and protest in her throat, and when at last he let her down she clung to him, limp and breathless. The captain turned her round and dismissed her, amid the cheers of the company, with a slap across the buttocks. She scurried back to her admirers in the ranks, screaming, ‘What a man! If only I had known him earlier!’ The wine flowed. People were laughing and talking everywhere. For an hour there was festa in the street.
§§§§
Eight a.m. … The animation had died away. The women were quiet and nervous, the children fretted, the soldiers were oppressed by the growing heat and by the lethargy of waiting. Tiger, looking punier than ever, was panting already under the weight of his full kit. Fooks sat, tipsy and almost asleep, with his head in Paloma’s lap. Ling peered from beneath his helmet like a tortoise from beneath its shell, with the expression of a little boy who is waiting to be caned. His gear hung about him in disarray, and he held his rifle from him like something alien and unwanted. He was a comical sight among all these soldiers. His woman towered over him moaning with grief and plucking at her bosom, while the five children stared at his unaccustomed appearance with their little faces upturned in solemn silence. Craddock stood looking at the closed door of Graziella’s house. He tried to ignore the sense of loneliness that touched his heart among all these leave-takings. He felt stifled and depressed, becalmed between two states of feeling. Close behind him were all the human emotions which he feared to contemplate; ahead, near enough to beckon but still out of reach, were the pleasure and relief of action. Fearing the one and unable to attain the other, he felt merely wretched, stirred only from time to time by a wave of irrational resentment at the obstinate stare of the closed door, or by a prickle of impatience as the ordeal of waiting dragged on. He said to Honeycombe, ‘I wish to God we could get out of here.’
Old Buonocorso was shuffling among the ranks, collecting cigarettes in his hat and bestowing in return a torrent of servile thanks and farewells. Craddock watched him dully. He had hoped that Aldo’s mutilation would shock the old man back into life; he had wanted to appeal to him to take up once more his responsibilities and give these stunned, bewildered people the leadership they needed; but he felt no desire to speak to him now. He only said, dropping a packet of cigarettes into the old man’s hat, ‘Goodbye, old man. And look after Aldo, for he cannot look after you any more.’
Buonocorso said, ‘Someone will look after us. I thank you for bringing him the dog. It has given him hope.’
‘I am glad that one of you has hope,’ said Craddock harshly. ‘There is enough need of it here.’
The old man bobbed a gesture of resignation. ‘It was a beautiful thought, to give him the dog. Goodbye, and a good journey.’
Craddock looked away, across the street, at the closed door.
Nella was standing before him, pathetic in her war-paint and her high-heeled shoes. Craddock took both her hands and drew her gently towards him. He said, ‘You have come to say goodbye?’
She looked up at him with big, piteous eyes, and nodded. She whispered, ‘Graziella is weeping in the house.’ She withdrew her hands from Craddock’s and reached into the bosom of her dress. ‘I wanted her to come,’ she said. ‘Are you angry with her?’
Craddock smiled and shook his head.
She opened her hand. A silver chain lay heaped on a crucifix in the palm. ‘Will you wear this?’
Craddock nodded, and sank down on to his heels, putting his hands about her waist. ‘For you?’
‘For her.’ Nella hung the chain round his neck. ‘She says, you are not with God, but God will be with you.’
Craddock sighed, and kissed her on the cheek. She began to tremble under his hands. He straightened up and said, ‘Go back to her now.’
She hurried away, crying. As she went, Tiger stepped forward and laid his hand on her arm, but she scampered on as if she had not felt his touch. The door closed behind her.
§§§§
Nine a.m.… The ranks had been cleared. The soldiers stood stolidly over their rifles, wiping the sweat from their faces and looking with silent indifference at the crowd which fidgeted in a subdued panic on the opposite pavement. The roadway was wide and empty between them.
Into the dull timelessness of waiting there intruded a new sound; the disorderly surge of distant marching. The noise grew, and the men grinned uneasily at each other. The battalion was on the move. This was ‘A’ Company, coming along the waterfront on its way to the station. Their own turn would follow. ‘A’ Company came tramping past the head of the street, and the noise of its passing, caught up in a roaring echo between the walls of the street, stirred them.
The sound died away. ‘A’ Company must be filing into the station now. Time dragged once more. The men’s eagerness began to subside; they were oppressed by their own impatience and by the scorching heat. A hush lay on the street, broken only by snatches of whimpering and an occasional flight of hysterical laughter from among the women.
‘Company…!’
The torpor lifted from the soldiers as the words of command came to them. They slung their rifles and turned to the right. There was no time to think. Craddock felt a last, quick wrench of pain, then the ranks ahead began to move, and he moved with them, uplifted by a great flood of relief. As the men moved off, there was a moment’s hesitation on the pavement, before the people started off alongside the column, in full cry. Craddock was suddenly glad that his last memory of Graziella would not be as one of this crowd of frantic women running clumsily along the street.
There was a comfort in marching. The thunderous tramp, the rhythm of his own legs, the weight of his equipment, the sight of the pack bobbing in front of him, were all part of an old, instinctive routine which carried him along without the necessity of thought. Some of the men around him were gloomy, some were grinning and calling to their followers on the pavement, some had already relapsed into the slack-mouthed apathy of the marching soldier.
The buildings and the dusty trees moved past as in a dream. The babbling crowd on the pavement was in another world. Familiar sights had become strange again; and the soldiers, inhabitants yesterday, had become passing strangers.
Orders were shouted. The men in front could be seen coming to a stop and unslinging their rifles, and the rest of the column piled up in a disorderly halt. The khaki ranks dissolved into a mass of men squatting in the station yard. The officers hurried away; t
ime passed – ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. The men showed no signs of restlessness, but made themselves comfortable, enduring this new delay with the patience of animals. Some of the women drew near once more, but few of the men responded. They were losing the ability to recognize anything outside themselves.
They climbed to their feet again and began to file, by platoons, into the station. The dilapidated waiting rooms mocked them with echoes as they hurried through. Here and there a man hesitated, cluttering up the narrow entrance with his equipment as he looked back for a moment, panic stricken. Then he would hasten on, leaning forward beneath the weight of his gear, to emerge again into the pitiless sunlight of the platform. A tall, white wall cut them off for ever from the world which they could still hear beyond. The platform was military, with the colonel and a group of Movement Control Officers standing against the wall swishing their sticks. The shouts that echoed from one end of the platform to the other were military, as inhuman as rifle shots.
‘What platoon, sergeant?’
‘Eight Platoon, sir!’
More shouting, ‘Up the front, Eight Platoon, come on, come on,’ Craddock ran, and heard the platoon clattering behind him. There was relief in running and in feeling his pack jerking up and down against his shoulders. He opened a carriage door and bundled the men in. ‘Come on, come on, get in and don’t talk so much. Move up, there. Move up on that right-hand seat, there’s room for more. Two more. Come on!’ He slammed the door. There was relief in hearing the door slam. He opened the next door. ‘Come on, look sharp!’ He slammed the door. A third carriage. ‘Come on, come on, wake your ideas up, Ling!’ He climbed into the compartment, slammed the door from the inside and said heavily to Honeycombe, ‘Well that’s that!’ He could still feel the slam of the door inside him. The crucifix burned like an icicle in the groove of his chest. He shouted out of the window, ‘Eight Platoon all in, sir!’ Mr Perkington scurried away, with a terrified schoolboy eagerness, to report.
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