There were no horses! Where the line had been was nothing; no beast, no rope, no peg. The saddles lay where they had, and across two of them was huddled the limp body of Pearson.
The Sergeant, after a darting glance this way and that which discovered nothing, knelt beside it. It lay face downwards the buttocks oddly thrust upward by reason of the saddle peak beneath the stomach. A dark pool, black against the light soil, was on the ground: drops to swell it dripped slow and thick from the saddle.
One hand beneath a knee, one beneath the head, the Sergeant picked it up and laid it down face upward, clear of the saddles. The eyes and mouth were staringly open: there was a great gash in the belly.
The men, rifles in hand, were round the Sergeant now as he knelt. They were silent; amazement held them. Many thought, just wakened from heavy sleep, that this waking was no waking at all, but dreams. They rubbed their eyes: they blinked: they shut their eyes and opened them again. They found they were indeed not sleeping.
“Bell!” said the Sergeant. He did not look round.
The men gazed at each other blankly. “Swelp me!” Hale said, and ran back across the clearing to the hut.
The Sergeant jumped to his feet and swung round.
“Bell!” he said. He scanned the faces. The body lay sprawled at his feet.
Abelson said, slowly: “Hale’s gone for ’im.”
All eyes went to the hut, saw Hale emerge, alone, and come racing towards them.
“Not there,” he said, panting. “Nor his rifle neither. Or bandolier.” He drew a deep breath. “There ain’t nothink there, ’cept blankets an’ the pack-saddle an’ the omeyes an’ the spare bandoliers.”
The Sergeant said: “Spread out: make a circle round this place. Each man take about twelve yards. Push through the trees to the edge and look. Got me? Don’t show yourselves. Look at the desert. Wait till I come round. And keep your eyes peeled. Get to it.”
They went. Within a minute there was no sign of them nor sound. In the clearing the Sergeant stood. He looked down at the small, grotesquely sprawling body. He stooped and turned it on its face: the wound was not pleasant to the eye.
He straightened and stood looking about him. He discovered that sweat was pouring down his back, his legs, down from his head and over his face.
From the trees at the other side of the clearing came Brown. He waved urgently. The Sergeant ran to him. Brown seized his arm and drew him into the shade of the trees. After ten yards or so he stopped, pointing. “Alive,” he said. “Just.”
At the base of the palm, as if he were calmly sleeping, lay the Corporal.
The Sergeant found another knife-wound: in the back this time. The muscles, deep and broad and lithe, had saved the man from instantaneous death. He was breathing, but quick and light and weak, like a sickly child. As they gently lifted him, the wound opened wide and dark blood gushed.
“Careful!” said the Sergeant.
They carried him, half-upright, to the hut and made a soft bed with piled blankets, and upon it laid him face downward. Brown fetched water in a canvas bucket while the Sergeant, with careful knife, cut the shirt from the torso. They bathed the wound, which seemed clean, and the Sergeant drenched it with iodine from the little bottle in his field-dressing. But the cut, four inches long at least, gaped at them and welled blood as fast as they sponged.
“Wants a stitch,” Brown said.
The Sergeant nodded. He found on the floor, in a corner Morelli’s haversack and in it one of those cases called hussif. There were needles here and thick khaki thread. He took the finest of the needles, threaded it, and dipped all into the iodine. He knelt by the prone body and began.
Four stitches he made, neatly, in ten minutes. After that they strapped the wound with bandage from the field-dressing, over it strips of the torn shirt.
“That’s about all we can do.” The Sergeant got to his feet and stood looking down at the wounded man. “You stay here, Brown. Don’t move him. But if he comes to, give him water… a little.” He walked out of the hut and into the trees behind it.
He went cautiously, dropping to hands and knees as he neared the rim of the knoll. He found Morelli, lying flat, and lay beside him.
“Seen anything?” he asked.
Morelli cursed. He had, he said, seen nothing. There was, in his opinion, nothing to see, except sand. “And there’s a helluva sight too much o’ that!” he said.
The Sergeant’s eyes too scanned the desert, and found nothing. He crawled fifteen yards and lay beside MacKay. Nothing. And so on round the circle of the knoll and the men who lay hidden in the fringe of tree-shade and coarse, rank grass growths. None had seen anything of life in the flaring sand which his gaze had raked. None had heard aught save his own movements.
Upright, the Sergeant walked back upon the tracks of his crawl. He sought MacKay.
He said, when he had found him:
“Jock, come down with me and walk round. They’ll cover us.”
“Ay!” MacKay got to his feet.
They slipped together down this, the steepest bank of their island, and cast the beginning of a wide circle about it.
They found, leading up to the knoll, the tracks the horses had made the night before as they arrived. They found, ten yards farther to the west, more tracks, leading away and out into the desert.
“Five abreast,” said MacKay.
The Sergeant was silent for a moment. He said after a long pause: “That’s that.”
They completed their circle. They found… nothing.
VI
Save for MacKay and Cook, lying one at each end of the knoll, as sentries, the men were their own masters. The day had dragged; for, though there was water here, and shade, the heat was so little abated by these amenities that even untroubled idleness would have been a minor hell; and this idleness, enforced and full of meaning which none of them had yet dared openly to face, seemed intolerable.
They had, following the Sergeant’s precept, bathed themselves and shaved. They had, since early morning and the discovery of their plight, taken in pairs the duties of look-out now filled by Cook and MacKay. They had, in turns, tiptoed into the hut to look at the Corporal, who, as yet, had neither stirred nor spoken nor opened his eyes throughout the dragging day while the Sergeant had sat beside him, watching and doing such little services as might be done. They had, many hours ago, carried the shrunken body of Pearson down into the desert and buried it deep. They sat, now, about the spring, their backs at trees, and waited for night.
“It beats hell!” Abelson said, breaking a silence. “How in the name o’—, the…”
“Shert up!” Hale looked up savagely from the pipe that he was scraping. “We’ve chewed the bleedin’ rag abaht it all the bleedin’ day. Wot bleedin’ good’s goin’ ter come aht of any more bleedin’ tittle-tattle? Chubbarow!”
“He’s right,” Brown said. “Let’s chuck it. Che sara sara.”
Hale looked up. “Wot lingo’s that?”
“Meant to be Italian.”
“Macaroni, eh?” Hale put the pipe back into his pocket. “Bin there, Topper?”
Brown nodded. “Three or four times.” His eyes wore now a lost, blank look of reminiscence.
The Cockney was persistent. “Wot’s it like, eh? I’ve ’eard they lives on macaroni an’ ving rooje exclusive. An’ wot sorta place is there ere Veenis? Used to pump a lot o’ yarn inter me when I was a nipper abaht it bein’ a town in the water; goin’ abaht in boats an’ all that. Lot o’ — tripe they do tell kids. Ever bin there, Topper?”
“Yes,” said Brown, “It is in the water, sort of. And you do have boats instead of taxis. And it stinks: in the summer it stinks like hell.”
“Worst o’ them furriners: unclean lot!” Hale raised himself upright to spit.
“Yes. And no,” Brown said. “But you forget the stink sometimes, or you get used to it, or it isn’t there or something. And then it’s marvellous. Bloody marvellous. They’ve got a moon there, a spe
cial one you can’t see anywhere else. I’m not saying it’s more beautiful than the one here—couldn’t be—but it’s… oh! absolutely different. It shines up from the water, too. Not from the surface, like ordinary reflections of ordinary moons, but right all the way up from the bottom… peering and staring and pushing great stabs of beauty up into your eyes…”
Hale reached out an arm and dug Morelli in the ribs. He nodded his head towards Brown, talking now as if to the palm fronds high above him. “’E’s off!” he whispered. Morelli nodded.
“… so damn lovely it hurts,” Brown’s voice was saying. “And the gondolas have lanterns on them, swinging and dancing… coloured lights whose rays tickle the water … and then your gondolier… or someone’s; anyone’s… starts singing. And you lie there thinking you’ve never heard anything so wonderful… They all sing. Great, dark, creamy voices they’ve got…”
“’Ere!” Hale sat up. “’Ere! ’Ow the bleedin’ ’ell can a voice be dark. I arst yer!” He sent an appealing glance round the circle.
“You shut y’r north, London,” said Morelli. “You’re an iggerunt bum. Show your manners an’ don’t cut in.” He turned himself, still sitting, to face Brown. “Topper,” he said, “what’s the dick like out in Wopland?”
“That’s it,” Abelson agreed. “What about the skirt?”
“Ne’ mind Levi!” Hale put in.
“I don’t,” Brown said. He sat silent a while, still with his eyes on the branches above him. Hale opened his mouth to speak, but Morelli thrust a quick elbow into his side, put a finger to his lips, and shook his head.
“Italian women,” Brown said, “Italian women are fat and greasy and shapeless and smell of garlic and Italian women.” He paused. “But Italian girls… an Italian girl can be the most lovely thing on this earth… Italian females should be poisoned at twenty-six. Before that age they should be honoured above all other women…
“There was a girl once,” he said “… that was an amazing business… Lisabetta, they called her. My God! she was lovely…” He broke into laughter. “That was a funny show!”
“Well, corf it up, then,” said Hale.
“You keep quiet.” Morelli pulled him down and clapped a hand over his mouth.
“I’m not sure that it would sound so damn odd as it was,” Brown said. He seemed to be talking more to himself than the others. “Venice, it was… about, um, seven years ago. There was a carnival… and Latin carnivals don’t mean anything like fête-days at Hove or Battles of Flowers at Eastbourne, believe me… The whole town … best part of it, anyhow… goes stark raving mad. I did … and they last for days… You never know how long they last if you’re in ’em, ’cos you get so be-yewtifully drunk… not a sleepy drunk or a vomiting drunk, but a splendid mad drunk; when you do damn silly things and they feel fine and look splendid; when all the colours in the world get together in your head and blaze in marvellous patterns; when you want to push houses over, and do; when you can fight like a mixture of Sam Langford, Hacken-schmidt and Cyrano de Bergerac, and make love like Juan…
“That time I’d been like that for… oh! a couple of days… I was sitting in some damn place… There was a hell of a crowd and flowers and that lead confetti you buzz out of cane-handled shovels… it stings like rain in hell… I was very, very drunk: I was sitting in a chair stuck on a table. They passed bottles up to me every now and then … I had a damn great bag of that confetti and a shovel, and I was giving ’em hell as they came in… I remember, just before Lisabetta happened, there was a great fat Jew in a pink domino: I put three shovelfuls into his clock and he went out crying… And then I finished one of the bottles and I looked down… There she was! She had just a check domino over her ordinary clothes… and a dirty one at that. And her mask was off, hanging on one string from an ear whose tip you could just see under her black… blue-black hair. I yelled something, and was going to paste her with confetti… And then, though I was so very drunk… p’raps because I was… I saw that she wasn’t in this game. That girl was frightened. Scared stiff as hell! She had great, enormous eyes… black, they were, and soft … and a body that was a blessing. And her face was grey… these Latin women can’t go white, but it’s worse than white… and those eyes were terrified. Then they suddenly… cringed. A damn’ great stiff, all togged up in a demon mask and red cloak came barging through the crowd and up to her: he caught hold of her wrist and said something, and she shook her head and tried to pull her arm away. Her lips were trembling and the grey-colour was lighter… Then… well, I dunno… I jumped off that chair and table straight on the big gink… he was about my size, but fat. He went buttocks over tip… I put my arm round the girl, and she leaned against me… I could feel her shaking… She said something; I couldn’t catch the words, but I was on to it, all right…
“Fatty got up from where he’d gone and came at me … He had his head down and his arms goin’ like a roundabout… I plonked him a snorter, and he changed his angle and lay down backwards and his nose fairly spouted from under the mask… Then, by God, the most amazing thing happened… This girl, this frightened kid, she just slid out from under my arm, and I looked, and there she was with a knife… Just as she was chucking herself on top of Fatty, I managed to grab her… She dropped the knife and threw a sort of faint…
“There was one great inferno of a row then. I had Lisabetta draped over one arm and Fatty got up and came at me again. I wasn’t free to smash him, of course, I had to wait until he was close, and he got me a couple… on the top of the head, if you please. And he was holdin’ his fists like hammers, soft part down… They didn’t hurt. I poked him hard in the guts, and gave him a peach on the chin as he doubled up… He lay about then, underfoot, with everybody walkin’ on him, his friends and all…
“The row went on… a hell of a row. Only Latins can make a row like that… There was a sort of boil in the café place, with me and Lisabetta the head, and round us the inflamed part… about twenty Italians yelling and wavin’ their arms… and round them the ordinary healthy skin, the crowd who didn’t know there was a row and went on drinking and yelling and singing and dancing and throwing confetti… All the twenty were screaming at me and each other and shaking dirty fingers under my nose and each other’s… I believe some of ’em were on my side, but, dammit, you couldn’t tell… I just stood there, with this girl still like a napkin over my arm and yelled at ’em. I said, ‘Shut up, — you!’ in every language I could think of… They didn’t take any notice and suddenly, still bein’ beautifully drunk, I saw a great deal of red…
“I put the girl over one shoulder, the left, and I went through that ring like a hot spade through a pound of butter… I don’t suppose more than three of ’em went over really, but as I remember it, it seemed that the whole lot went flying this way and that… I went on and got into the rabble of people who had nothing to do with our little piece of bother… I wasn’t thinkin’ of that, of course; in fact, I don’t know what I was thinkin’ about… Anyhow, I started scrapping everybody, making for the door…
“Not having seen the row, they didn’t like me a bit… Some of ’em, I expect, thought I was pinching the girl… They resented me… I got into a hell of a mess… Then Lisabetta came to or something; anyhow she slipped off my shoulder and stood by herself, and… just disappeared… I had to go on bein’ militant, of course, ’cos everybody was very naturally hating my guts by this time… I collected several thick ears and a thump on the eye with a bottle… luckily it didn’t break… and then I sort of felt that there’d be knives in a minute… There were. I saw one come out, then another… There was a chair… It had someone on it, very drunk, but I took it from under him… I wielded that chair, believe me… I was drunk, and fighting mad and scared… I didn’t like knives…
“I got to the door… minus three-quarters of my clothes and a good deal of skin… but I got there. I remember looking back from the doorway… Dear God! that place was untidy… I was blowing like ten grampi, and I lea
ned against the wall. A hand… a soft, warm little hand… grabbed at my wrist. It was that girl. She kept talking… a stream of it. My Italian, drunk, wasn’t up to it. But she kept pulling and pulling, so I went… She began to run, so I ran… I found she was right, ’cos just as we turned a corner I saw that café absolutely spew out men… all after my blood!
“We ran like hares… We came out by one of the small canals… There was a gondola… She shot a spray of Italian at the gondolier, and we fell into that boat and crawled into the cabin-place and lay puffing on the cushions…
“As we drifted along we heard the chase go by… Phew! I was glad they wouldn’t get me, I can tell you … Unpleasant noise they were making… She asked me, suddenly, for money. I had a lot on me… She gave the gondolier the whole fistful I’d taken out of my belt … then she came back to me again. I was sobered up a bit now, and I could get her Italian… ‘I have told him,’ she said, ‘to go on. All night. All night. He will. There is a great deal of money now in his purse.’ … He did. He went on…” Brown’s voice tailed off into silence. He said, after a moment:
“That was the most wonderful night… It was as if the world was nothing… as if there wasn’t a world… just a—a buoyancy on which one floated…” He laughed a little. “Or two, rather… I didn’t see the water, or the sky… But I felt them… I can’t explain… And we could, when our eyes got used to the darkness, see each other… just faintly…” He fell silent again.
A long pause was broken by Abelson.
“But what about it?” he said. “Did yeh…”
Hale shouted at him: “Fer God’s sake shert up, Aaron. Ain’t yer got no ’magination!” He turned his eyes on Brown. “But all ther sime, Topper, yer didn’t ought to leave us ’igh an’ dry like that?”
“They all,” Morelli said, “wants licenshus detail. You know: what you’d call ‘colour.’ An’ lots of it! You can’t give ’em too much. Bibis, bibis an’ more bibis.”
Brown was filling his pipe. He said: “They’re not goin’ to get it. What their minds run to ’ll be much more exciting than my shots at description… And anyway, I wouldn’t tell ’em.”
Patrol Page 3
