From behind the tree against which Brown leaned came Sanders. Now that he was clean and shaven the thinness of his face was startling, and from out of its even, dark-grey tan the pale blue eyes blazed with a disturbing intensity.
There came a moan from Abelson: “Here’s old creeping Jesus! Where the — hell ’a you been, Soapy? At prayers?”
He was ignored. Sanders stood at Brown’s feet and looked down at him. When he spoke his voice was taut and hard, and it trembled very, very slightly. His hands were clenched at his sides, at the end of rigid arms, so that the knuckles shone glaringly white against the bronze. His lean, narrow shoulders were hunched so that his chest was a hollow between them. He said:
“Brown! I want a word with you, Brown!”
“Speak on,” Brown said from the ground lazily. His eyes were still misted with Venetian memories.
“I would rather…” Sanders hesitated. “I would, in a way, rather have spoken to you in private… But that were cowardly! I will say it here,” he glanced round upon the others, his mouth curling, “before these… I will say it in spite of…”
Brown interrupted. He said: “For the Lord’s sake, Sanders, don’t be so intense. It’s too hot.”
Words came foaming from Sanders’ mouth. “Is there any need,” he cried, “for you to mock me before you’ve heard what I have to say to you? Listen to me, Brown! Listen! I have lain, there, behind that tree, all the while you have been talking. If it had been one of these others who had told these things, perhaps—weak fool that I am!—I should have risen and walked away, have suffered such foulnesses to go on. But it was you. Brown, who were talking. You! the only man in this small company from whom, as a man of gentle breeding, I…” He clapped, with a sudden, jerkingly mechanical movement, a hand to his forehead. “At times,” he said, and his voice now shook uncontrolled, “I feel that I can’t bear this longer… the foulness… the sordid retchings of base minds… the…”
Brown had wriggled until he sat upright, his great arms, naked from wrist to bicep, locked round his knees. He said, his deep lazy voice cutting across the trembling, whispered shout:
“What’s all this for? If you don’t like a cesspool, you’re not forced to lie with your nose in it.”
“What is it for? What is it for? You ask!” The shaking, precise voice rose to a thin but undisguised shout. “It is for you! For your sake, Brown! I implore you—think! Is your life to be nothing but a foetid chapter of brawling and drunkenness and lust. Has it been nothing but this, that here, now, probably near to your death, there is nothing for you to do but live it all again in reminiscence, letting these other dogs nose your vomit with you?”
Brown let himself fall back on his elbow. “Oh, pack up!” he said wearily. “It’s too hot to listen. And don’t shout so.” He rolled over and lay upon his stomach, tracing arabesques with his finger in the loose, sandy earth.
“But…” began Sanders on a high, cracking note.
“Close that belching trap of yours, J.C.!” Abelson followed his words with a clod of earth, which burst on the man’s thin shoulders.
Brown sat up again. “You keep quiet yourself, you pox-ridden Jew!”
Abelson stiffened. “Whassat?”
“I said,” Brown repeated, “‘you pox-ridden Jew.’ All right; all right. It’s no damn’ good… not a little bit… you gettin’ your hackles up at me. I know you’re a scrapper. I’ve seen you fight. You’re good. But you strip at eleven-two. In shirt and trousers I go fourteen-ten, an’ it’s not fat, an’ I do know a little about rough-housing. Get me?”
The Jew mumbled something in his throat and was quiet. Sanders was standing his ground. His fingers were working, coiling and uncoiling; his mouth, too, worked. There fell an uneasy silence.
“Brown,” said Sanders at last: his voice was controlled now; low and urgent. “Brown, have you ever heard of Christ?”
“Christ? Oh, yes,” Brown said. “Name’s often mentioned.” He lay once more upon his belly and was elaborating his design in the earth.
“Brown.” said the low, almost choking voice. “He was the Son ot God.”
“Not necessarily,” said Brown. “Most improbable.”
Sanders bent over him, shaking. “Do you add blasphemy to your list, then?”
Hale spoke in Morelli’s ear. “’E’s up it! Topper didn’t oughter argue wiv ’im; ’e’ll go pop in a minute. Pore sod! ’E always was queer. But ’e’s bin gettin’ queerer an’ ruddy queerer…”
“Brown’s right,” Morelli muttered. “Do the guy more good to spew it up than keep it festerin’ inside.”
“Maybe!” Hale’s tone was dubious. “Jus’ ’ave a dekko at ’im!”
Sanders was bending over Brown, who still drew in the sand. Sanders’ hands were fists, which made little awkward gestures in the air; his whole body looked as though it were set on an overpowered spring. He was saying: “But Brown … what, what, what is it that you… believe in?”
Brown left his drawing: he levered himself to his knees: he stood and leaned against the palm trunk, looking down at Sanders. He said:
“What do I believe in? … Oh, the taste and strength of wine: the loveliness of women: the feel of the sea when you swim in the Mediterranean: pints of beer in a country inn: the flapping of a sail: the weight of a fist: the colours of that ten-minute glory called sunset we shall see in an hour: steak and kidney pudding: George Brown: a horse: a child’s grin and a harlot’s hiccup: Rugby football and the smell of a beech wood in autumn: the comfort of a woman’s breasts and an old pair of shoes: strength: the asinine futility of this war: the splendid feeling of killing men: being frightened: being drunk enough to be brave: the smell of incense and the taste of bacon: toothache and triumph…”
“Stop!” Sanders’ voice had gone back to its high, cracked shout, louder than before.
“All right,” said Brown.
“Do you think it fine to mock me?” He took a step forward: his pale eyes blazed up at Brown’s above them.
“I wasn’t indulging in mockery,” Brown said quietly. “If you keep a grip on yourself and try… just try… and see that there are other points of view…”
Sanders smote his forehead again, with that strange, jerking action. “Other points of view!” he cried. “You dare to talk of points of view…” He broke off, words tangling on his tongue. He made sounds in his throat, almost sobs.
“Sanders!” came the Sergeant’s voice.
They turned. They had not heard him. He stood by the spring within six yards of them.
“Sanders!” he said again.
The man relaxed, the tautness went from him. He turned and walked towards the Sergeant, his gait unsteady. “Yes?” he said.
The Sergeant was intent upon the unravelling of a knot in the lanyard which ran from his belt to his hip-pocket. He said, without looking up:
“Just go in and sit with Corporal Bell, will you? If he moves or anything, let me know.”
Sanders went. The Sergeant’s eyes, no longer on the knotted cord, followed him until he disappeared into the hut.
The Sergeant walked over to the group. “I want,” he said, “to talk to you men.” Hale and Morelli showed signs of getting to their feet. “No, sit down,” he said. Brown, tired of standing, took this order literally. The Sergeant leaned a shoulder against the same palm and looked down at them. He said, after a pause:
“What d’you think of the position we’re in?” He turned his head to look directly at Brown.
“Sticky,” said Brown. “Damn’ sticky.”
The Sergeant looked at Morelli.
“Dunno at all,” Morelli said. “Can’t make head nor tail of it.”
“We’re done,” said Abelson. “That’s what I think. Bitched!”
The Sergeant’s glance rested on Hale, who said:
“Much as I regrets it, Sergeant, yours truly’s compelled to agree wiv Moses ’ere! We are!”
“I’ll tell you,” the Sergeant said, “what I k
now.”
VII
They waited in a long silence before he spoke.
“I know,” he said, “nothing. I’ll be open with you. I don’t know where we are. I don’t know where we were goin’. I don’t know where the Brigade is, I don’t know which way they were goin’ to move. I’ve got compass and map. But, as you’ll ’ve seen, these don’t help; not in the circumstances.”
“We are…” began Brown.
“What I said,” finished Abelson. He laughed, bewildered, and his red lips curled back from the over-white teeth. “And—! And—!”
“We are,” said the Sergeant. “If we say so. The horses ’ve been pinched. That’s Arabs. No one else on earth could ’ve got ’em away like that and not waked a soul. So we’re up against hostile Buddoos. Not Turkish Army. At present there aren’t many of ’em…”
“How not?” said Abelson.
Brown glanced at him. “Because, you bloodstained Pilate, if there’d been more than a few they’d ’ve had at us. And wiped us out.”
The Sergeant nodded. “Exactly.”
“Spoken to Jock, Sergeant?” Morelli asked.
“I have. He agrees with me that there can only be a few. He says not more than three. It’s my theory that however many of ’em there were ’ve gone off, with our goras, to their pals. They may all come back… or not.”
“Ten to one… fifty to one… they will,” said Brown.
“If nothing prevents ’em; yes. But somethin’ might. They may be a wanderin’ lot.”
“They’ll come!” Abelson smiled again. “They’ll come!”
Hale turned on him. “Fer Christ’s sake give over! Yore a bloody chorust of bleedin’ woe!”
The Sergeant said: “Well, I’ve told you. Better for us all to know.” He took his shoulder from the tree trunk and stood upright.
“But what the hell,” put in Abelson, “are we going to do?”
“We stay,” said the Sergeant, “where we are. Abelson, I’ve been hearing you blinding and cursing about too much sun and not enough pawny and all that. You ought to be happy.” He looked down into the Jew’s upturned eyes. “An’ you’d better be happy. See?” He paused a moment; then took them all into his glance again. “We’ve got to see,” he said. “We’ve got to see for miles. Observation post wanted. It’s no good from practically on the level as we are here. You think you can see everything on a desert. But you can’t. Hardly anything. When we can see we can signal. Or not, accordin’. Anyway, we’ll know.”
“We can’t slog it on foot somewhere?” Brown looked up with creased forehead.
“It’s nearly, so far as one can make it without knowing our exact position, nearly seventy miles to the nearest point of the river. Couldn’t carry the water,” the Sergeant said. “Or Bell,” he added.
Brown shrugged. “I got you, Sergeant.” He looked up at the great straight trees above him. “You could see a bit from up there.” He pointed to the still, sharp fronds that looked so stiffly artificial.
“Exactly,” said the Sergeant. “Look-outs there all day, in reliefs of one. Three sentries, in reliefs of three, all night. And we start now. Morelli!”
“Sergeant?”
“They left us the saddlery. Bring all the reins. Right away.”
“I’m the Hawk’s Eye, Sergeant. Me first?” Brown rose and stretched himself, flinging out his great arms.
“Right,” said the Sergeant.
“But I’m no gory albatross,” Brown muttered. “Ain’t got no wings, brudder.” He cast his eye up the rough, bare trunks, branchless for twenty feet or more.
The Sergeant heard him. “Morelli’s bringin’ you a tail.”
He took the great bunch of leather strips. “Start in knottin’ ’em,” he said. “Better use bowlines. Who knows knots?”
“Me.” Brown sat and began weaving the leather.
“And me.” Morelli followed suit.
There was thus in a few moments a leathern rope of sixty feet or more. “Four or five stirrup-irons,” said the Sergeant. They came and he tied them, in a bunch, to one end of the line of leather.
“Casters ahoy!” Brown bellowed, and leapt to his feet. “That’s me too, Sarge.” He took the line. “Stand clear!” he roared. The bunch of steel whistled, in an ellipse growing wider and wider as he paid out the slack, obliquely round his head, soaring above it to one side and almost touching earth at the other.
“Weeeee!” said Hale, as the weighted line, released, sailed up in a soaring sweep. “Oh, Gawd rot my boots!” The irons had fouled some fronds, hung a moment and come crashing down.
There were three more false casts, two by Brown and one by Abelson.
“You bastard!” Brown said to the leather. He took it again. He swung, for minute upon minute. He let go. The irons sailed, their brown tail behind them. They flew straight, clearly over the branch and down to earth again.
“C’est magnifique, ça!” Brown bowed to his audience. “Verree deeficult, that treek! Right away, Sarge!”
The Sergeant smiled. “Yes. Quicker the better.”
“Ach! Zo!” Brown capered; he rubbed his feet in imaginary resin, his hands on an imaginary handkerchief thrown by invisible assistants. He cocked his topee over one eye and minced up to the tree. Hale let out his shrill cackle of a laugh. Morelli clapped. Abelson made noises as of a roll on the drum.
Brown seized the double line and shook it. “Zilence!” he roared. “Zilence of the mosd abzolute there musd be while ze Brofessor his mosd marvelloz veeds do berform!”
He began to climb. By reason of the thickness of his boots and the thinness of the reins, he could not give himself aid either by clipping the line with his feet or “walking” the trunk. He climbed solely by the power of his arms.
“Gosh!” said Morelli. “That’s over fourteen stone he’s hoistin’. Strong as an ox!”
“Yup.” Hale nodded.
They watched while slowly but with seemingly perfect ease he finished his climb and got both hands on to the angle made with the trunk by the slender branch which seemed so inadequate for his weight. He looked down at them. He shouted:
“Heya! Heya! Is it da man or da monk? Applouse, pleez!” He pulled himself up and wedged one knee into the crook and put weight upon the trunk with his hands. “Veree, veree, deeficult!” he called. “Mos’ dangereuse. Ziz brave man play wiz Death for your entertainings!”
He gradually stood. He could reach other branches. He began to climb and presently found a comfortable crook and settled himself into it.
“They’re fraygile, them things,” muttered Hale. “’ll they bear ’im?”
“They’re tough as hell,” Morelli said.
The Sergeant withdrew his eyes from Brown in the tree-top. “Get these spare reins gathered up,” he said. “And you an’ Morelli, Hale, will relieve Cook and MacKay. Right away. There’s only about an hour to sundown, and the night guard ’ll be a different arrangement.”
A shout came from above. They looked up. They could see, though Brown was motionless, that an excitement had seized him.
“Hi!” He looked down for an instant and called out something their ears could not catch.
“Whassat?” cried the Sergeant, hands cupping his mouth. Hale and Morelli, beside him, craned their necks.
There came then two sounds, so nearly together that never could they tell, though all heard both, which had first come to their ears… A faint and distant “phut”… a near and appalling crackling and crashing…
“Stand clear!” bellowed the Sergeant. He thrust Hale to the left, Morelli to the right. He leapt backwards.
There was a dark rushing, ending in a thump which seemed to make the ground shake beneath their feet.
It was Abelson, farthest away, who first acted. He ran to the body and knelt beside it. He lifted the head, its topee gone. There was a neat round hole in the forehead, two inches above the left eyebrow. The edges of this hole were faintly discoloured with blood.
The Jew lifted
the head farther and crouched to peer at the back of the skull. There was another hole. He lowered the still head and limp great shoulders gently to the ground.
“My… God!” breathed Morelli. Hale made little whistles through clenched teeth.
The Sergeant, with a suddenness almost alarming, leaped over the huddled body and ran in three strides to the tree and seized the double leather line. He put his weight upon it and began to climb. He was barely off the ground when the line, with a crackling of torn and damaged wood, came down with a rush. He staggered back and fell.
Morelli, paralysis over, ran back to where they had sat by the spring. From where it leaned against a palm he snatched his rifle. He began running towards the western fringe of the knoll.
“Stand clear!” bellowed the Sergeant.
The Sergeant picked himself up. “Morelli!” he shouted. Morelli halted in his tracks, impatiently turning his head. “Come back!” The Sergeant made emphatic gestures. Morelli hesitated; then ran on. The Sergeant put hands to his mouth, “Morelli!” There was something in that shout that halted the runner: he stopped, hesitated, and turned. He came slowly back, with dragging steps. His head was bent. He dragged his rifle, the butt making in the sandy soil a groove which trailed behind him like a snake.
“Hale,” said the Sergeant. “Abelson. Get your rifles. Quick!” They ran, and returned. The Sergeant bent down and peered at the limp mass which had been Brown. He said:
“That shot came from somewhere that side.” He pointed west. “He was facin’ that way. It was a long shot. Very. Hale, go out to that side about quarter-way between Cook and MacKay. Don’t show yourself. Make one great eye of yourself. Get! … Morelli, do the same, about half-way between Hale and MacKay… Abelson, go along to MacKay and find out whether he’s seen anything. Then the same with Cook. Jildi!”
He watched them go; then turned and ran across the clearing. At the doorway of the hut he stopped and called softly: “Sanders!”
Sanders came, blinking at the light. “The Corporal,” he said, “hasn’t…”
Patrol Page 4
