The Letter Bearer

by Robert Allison

  The rider withdraws, slogging back to his tent along with the equally criminalised Lucchi. Why should he care? It doesn’t matter where they run to, his fate will likely be the same. Death by suffocation, either in this miserable lair or in the baking cargo bed of a truck. No preferred scenario for him except the hope of a quick end, of being felled suddenly and without warning. That would be his prize of choices. And after he is gone? Then let the world burn.

  6

  Back in their tent Lucchi sits opposite the rider, his mouth turned down in comradeship. The Italian retrieves the extra biscuits from his sleeve and leans across to offer one. The rider accepts it and nods in the direction of the voices outside, his arms spread in a gesture of enquiry. What happened?

  Lucchi gathers up several implements to use as characters: Brinkhurst (he pronounces it Breenkoowursse) played by a comb, the role of Swann taken by the candle. He picks up one of the rider’s pieces of paper and folds it into a crude aeroplane for his third protagonist: ‘Italiano.’ He clears a space in the sand and scores out a rough circle, placing at its centre a crumpled sock. ‘Il luogo dell’incidente.’ The crash site. He proceeds to act out a small theatre, the comb and candle edging towards the sock then pulling back again as the paper aeroplane swoops over. The candle finally making a break for the centre just as the paper plane passes overhead, both freezing in reaction to one another. He concludes the act by picking up the comb and standing it on its end, making it violently hop. ‘Questo e tutto.’

  The same spotter plane, then, as that which overflew the camp, the pilot now able to report both the base and its vehicles. Little wonder at Brinkhurst’s dismay.

  Lucchi makes several further attempts at conversation, his conviviality perhaps encouraged by the possibility of rescue. When finally the Italian settles to private contemplations, the rider ignores the discussion outside to delve back into the postbag, searching for that one anomalous entry to the canon, that one letter written by a wife to her husband. (To be kept only by he who might hold it dear?) He takes it to the opening of the tent and into the light of the moon, where he stares at the name, finally daring to voice it beneath his breath.

  Nell. The medieval ‘Mine El’ contracted, Eleanor in the formal. The poetic declension, elocuted open-mouthed, chiming from the palate. Such a happy phonetic might pretend at memory.

  Dearest Husband,

  I was so thankful to receive your last letter, and relieved to hear that you are well and in good spirits. Receiving it was such a boost that it made me quite dizzy, and I carried it in my pockets for the entire week. I swear there’s a healing power to such things.

  It is cold here now. We have a hard frost most mornings, and sometimes thin ice on the window panes. Some say it must snow soon. The other morning the stirrup pump froze over and several of us had to attack it with tools to unblock it. Fortunately I was able to buy a winter coat very recently from our machine setter at the factory, Mr Heyse, whose mother sadly passed away earlier this year. I’m afraid I look rather a fright in it but it was certainly a bargain and keeps me quite warm. Though I do think that anyone looking out of their window that morning must have been alarmed to see a grizzly bear with a hammer.

  I made another visit to Dr Franklyn at his Walsgrave Road surgery last week, and I know it will cheer you enormously to hear that he described my health as ‘capital’ (who uses such a word now but doctors and bankers!) Of course I am still to avoid the cold and damp (which I am more than glad to do) but I am doing very well now, with my chest trouble far less worrisome than before. As I should be delighted not to see the old humbug again for the duration of the war, this is better than splendid news.

  I’m sure you will be almost as pleased to know that I managed to wheel out Ada and take her for a run the other day. Just to stir the oil and keep her in fine fettle, as you asked. Not very far of course, just through the village (I tried not to go too fast this time!) but I think she enjoyed her outing. Petrol is impossible to get now and she is running low, so there may not be many more of these excursions. Though I’m sure our neighbour Mrs Galloway will be only too pleased, as she complains Ada’s exhaust is loud enough to raise Cain.

  Generally I am doing well, and want for nothing except your soonest return, so you mustn’t worry on my account. The time spent waiting for your messages is the most difficult, and there isn’t a morning that I wake without wondering whether I shall hear from you that day.

  Thinking of you every moment.

  With all my love,

  Nell

  xxx

  xx

  It’s possible now to compile a roster of detail, facts that might elicit some recall:

  i.She is a machinist, a factory worker.

  ii.She rides her husband’s motorcycle. (A motorcycle because ‘wheeled out’?)

  iii.She is alone, with no mention of friends or family.

  iv.She suffers from some chest trouble, which has given cause for concern.

  Except that he feels no rush of familiarity. Perhaps because he has misconceived the damage to his brain. One thinks of memories as being diffuse, their signal being enrooted over such an area as might deny clean excision. But perhaps not so?

  He would consider the principle at greater length but for the tiredness that weighs upon him. It’s been a day of industry, Liebfraumilch, crème biscuits and gunmanship, and altogether too much for a dying man. Nevertheless, in that state of semi-delirium there is a scene which becomes briefly open to him: a vast hall ceilinged with conduits, vents and umbilicals, its floor decked with engines, wheels and cranks, as though the helm to a twoscore of ships. She stands in the centre on wooden duckboards, fragile against the pipes and gears of monstrous engines: planes, shapers, angle-grinders, petrol-engined ‘boneshaker’ lathes harnessed to a single spinning axle. She is slight in build, modestly arresting in feature, her hair dark in the green-hued neon under which she toils. One of many working in isolation, fastidious in mounting the pieces to the post of her lathe, cranking them forward by microincrement to be fashioned and finished. Her overalls sodden down one side from the suds sprayed to cool the workpieces, oil smeared on her cheek where she will intermittently wipe the back of her hand. He can see that she is careful and confident with those instruments presumed the equipage of men: hacksaw, rule, micrometer, spanner, wrench, eighth gauge, the Vernier protractor. And in the buckets at her feet the results of her industry: pivot pins, spools, tapered sockets, spigots, ferrules, washers, nuts, screws, bolts. In the hangar beyond they are assembling a bomber for which she has crafted the parts. And when complete, she will spare a moment of elation at it, as the means by which she might save her husband.

  The noise is ferocious, each woman contesting the whine of gears with her own song or mantra, so that when the machines cease abruptly at the letter bearer’s entrance, there lingers for an instant a profound and dissonant chorale. This too dying to leave the bearer navigating the aisles in silence, postbag across his shoulder, watched in awe by all. Until finally he arrives at her station, there to deliver to her a letter the rider imagines marked exactly so . . .

  . . . this slender deposition completely breaking her.

  He awakes with a start to find Brinkhurst sitting opposite, Lucchi now absent. Alarmed, he lifts himself to an upright position.

  ‘I sent Lucky for a walk.’ Brinkhurst scratches at his forehead, an arc of paler skin prefiguring thinning hair. The rider has never guessed at his age before. Late twenties, early thirties? Perhaps nearer forty. Men of his cast seem to have only one predetermined age, which settles upon them in youth. The brigadier gene.

  ‘Look, I don’t see you as a problem,’ the ex-captain begins. ‘I don’t want to see you as one. Swann . . .’ he scratches his jaw, as though irked by the wilful muscle there ‘. . . Swann is necessary. He’s good with the vehicles and knows the country. But with a man that undisciplined you run against the odds every day. Because he will just incessantly push his luck. And ours. We simply can’t
allow ourselves to be ruled by that kind of behaviour.

  ‘Now your fellow Coates. He’s another case altogether. A thinking man, but misguided. This idea he has of rejoining our lines, it’s complete folly. Travelling that kind of distance across open desert with limited supplies. We might have the fuel, but what about water? What if the vehicles break down? In the middle of nowhere? What then?’

  The rider leans to meet Brinkhurst’s gaze. ‘My lungs are going to fail.’

  ‘That’s Mawdsley’s opinion. But what do you say? Do you think he’s right?’

  The rider hesitates, disarmed.

  ‘I mean, do you feel worse? Do you actually sense yourself becoming worse?’

  ‘I’ve been told it will happen.’

  ‘Yes, but you’re alive, aren’t you? And you’ll probably be alive tomorrow morning. And the morning after. And the one after that. So when will it come to that morning that you’re not alive? Did he tell you that? Did he give you that time? A week? A month? A year?’

  The rider feels his balance beginning to drift. What is he being told?

  ‘Mawdsley is a fine medic’ – the words chosen with care – ‘but out here in the field it’s a case of best guess. He’s given an opinion, and you’ve accepted it.’ He softens his tone. ‘The mind can heal the body. I’ve seen it myself, even from the most terrible injuries. It happens.’

  The rider wishes he had the Enfield again.

  ‘Look, you’re one of the group, and you have a vote. Nobody will deny you that. And you need to consider your choices. It’s a question of which option gives you the best chance. Trekking across an empty desert or moving to an environment where you can rest and recover.’

  So there it is: he is to be recruited. Signed into an inner cabal, among men who have run from their comrades, who are at ease with the idea of schism. ‘You’ve put it to the vote?’

  ‘We’ll do it at first light. And then we’ll move. At the moment it looks like three to one in favour of making for the Jebel. Coates is against it. But I know him, he’ll work on Swann. There’ll be a split tomorrow. It’ll come down to you.’

  The rider drops his head. Under different circumstances the thing might be farcical. ‘What does Swann want?’

  ‘To not be commanded. Or instructed. Or advised.’

  ‘He might have chosen a better career.’

  ‘Oh, he likes the army well enough. He just doesn’t want anybody else in it.’ Brinkhurst rises and straightens his shirt. ‘Mawdsley and I, we’ll see you right. We won’t dismiss you. I hardly think you can expect the same of Swann. I think you’ve seen that already.’

  He pauses at the sound of someone outside the tent, then relaxes when Lucchi nervously enters, the Italian remaining on his feet until directed to sit. ‘You’re perhaps thinking there’s some kind of leadership quarrel,’ the ex-captain adds in afterthought. ‘But you shouldn’t.’ He bends to leave. ‘Because there is no effective chain of command out here. None at all.’

  And then he is beyond the mouth of the tent and gone.

  Lucchi throws a questioning look, enquiring with gestures on the nature of the visit. ‘Un grande segreto?’ But the rider dismisses him, still distracted by Brinkhurst’s intrigues. What after all is he supposed to believe? That he might not die? That some miraculous rehabilitation awaits if he should fall in with the right group? A ruthlessness – beyond cruel – to even taunt him with the possibility.

  Further attempts by Lucchi at conversation prove futile, and the Italian succumbs eventually to his tiredness, leaving the rider to consider those imponderables that have narrowed almost to an obsession: the volume of air he is able to draw in, the efficiency of gaseous exchange, the inexorable reduction in oxygenated blood. Reclining to stare into the dark, he imagines himself finally as some great whale spiralling to the depths, engorged with air, knowing then that he cannot drown.

  7

  There is a mist at daybreak, steamed from moisture condensed during the cold of night, which has settled about the basin of the camp. At first light a marvel, the entirety of the barricading rock dissolved. And for the rider, entering the clouds from his tent, a melancholy wonder, invoking notions of an ocean yet to be desert.

  The last to awake even at this early hour, he finds the others already busy: Mawdsley stacking blankets and clothing outside the tents, Lucchi rehousing the chickens in a wooden cage, Coates dismantling the petrol burner. Brinkhurst ever the ringmaster, clipboard in hand. Have they taken the vote? Is it decided?

  Swann emerges from the thinning mist, notebook in hand. ‘Umpty. Got a job for you.’

  ‘I haven’t eaten yet.’

  ‘This first. Be quicker with two.’

  The lance corporal leads him to the cookhouse, a single tarpaulin sheet rigged outside it to give shade to a hodgepodge of tins, boxes and packets. He hands the rider a pencil and the notebook, opened to display a handwritten inventory. ‘Need to check what’s here against what’s written down, make sure it’s right. So that Cap’n Tightarsed over there can work out the rationing.’

  The rider nods, glad at last to be involved. He reads the first few entries – 15 tins of bully 9 tins of Carnation 8 tins of biscuits 2 half-sacks of tea 12 tins of M & V skilly – and watches as Swann pulls out the respective stocks.

  ‘Is it decided where we’re going?’

  ‘Green Mountain.’

  5 packets of Italian dried minestrone 1 sack of sugar .

  ‘It’s certain then?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, were you not asked?’

  ‘I thought Coates had a different idea.’

  Swann grunts as he hefts the sack of sugar. ‘What d’you care what Coates thinks?’

  ‘Brinkhurst said there’d be a vote.’

  The lance corporal drops the sack and straightens himself. ‘A vote? That’s nice. Not much sense voting on the dead fucken obvious, is there? Next.’

  8 tins of sardines 4 tins of marmalade 1 wrap of German rye bread . . .

  ‘Scratch that,’ orders Swann on peeling open the foil. ‘Fucken bug food.’ He lobs the bread beyond the camp’s perimeter. ‘So Brinkhurst’s got you on his team now, eh? Goin’ to elect you to his war council?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Told you some shite about me, didn’t he? I knew he would.’

  The rider fumbles for a deflection.

  ‘Bet I know what he didn’t tell you. About the guy he brought with him when he came here. A tankie, Seventh Hussars, from Sidi like the rest of us. Poor bastard had taken a round through the gut. Looked for a while like he might make it but he kept shittin’ blood, shrunk away to nothin’ in the end. And you know what he said? About your new best pal there? That Brinkhurst had his unit fire on our own boys. That he panicked, just gave the order and didn’t give a fuck. That’s your great leader for you.’ He nods towards the gravesite at the camp’s perimeter. ‘So you reckon he got offered a vote too?’

  The rider notices that Brinkhurst has his eye on them from the far side of the camp.

  Swann steps closer. ‘If you want my advice, you’ll watch your back with him. Him and his bloody pet quack.’

  The rider looks again to Brinkhurst, now turned to some other business. To what purpose, then, the persuasion of last night? As a test of loyalty, a means of consolidating his influence? ‘How many are these supplies meant for?’ he asks, alarmed at his own question.

  ‘As many as there’s left to eat ’em,’ says Swann.

  And there is the truth of it, adroitly touched. A man in his position can neither give nor expect loyalty. Yet he is forced nonetheless to an allegiance, two such as Brinkhurst and Swann bound eventually to contest one another. The invidious choice of bully or conniver as confederate.

  ‘I’ll look out for you if you’ll do the same for me,’ he blurts, already mustering himself for the rebuff.

  Swann glares at him then hocks up a gob of spit. ‘Better finish that list.’

  The rider nods, relieved. So it’s done
. He’s thrown his lot in. This is your strength. This is how you survive. He looks across the camp, wondering if Brinkhurst is watching again, but finds the ex-captain’s attention commanded now by something new: a low hum resounding from the encircling rock, the frequency of it relayed like current across the stadium’s base.

  Brinkhurst’s skyward gaze gives cue for the others to do likewise, their dismay mirroring his own. By the time the plane materialises, etching itself as a slender dihedral against the dawn light, there is little to do but run. Getdowngetdownrungetinthetrenches! Swann barges past the rider to head for his tent while Brinkhurst makes for the slit trenches. Coates scans frantically for cover before rolling under the Quad. A startled Mawdsley emerges from his tent only to dart back inside.

  The plane descends a parabola of air, feathers of mist pluming at its wingtips. The rider hears somebody telling him to run. He’s not sure whose voice it is. Coates? Where is there to run to? He can’t even run, for God’s sake.

  The fighter’s cannon bursts into life, the rounds punching up brumes of grit, the sound shifting to a cacophonous rainfall as they strike metal: the Fordson, the Quad, the fuel burner, the Colosseum. The rider makes to enter the shelter of the cookhouse but thinks better of it, repelled by the thought of shrapnel spat from food tins.

  The plane completes its first pass and swoops upward, banking to begin the next run. Swann races back into the clearing carrying the Bren. He slams the machine gun’s bipod across the engine cover of the Fordson and thrusts in the curved magazine, pulling back the bolt as the plane begins its approach. He stabs the fire button, the Bren’s chatter starting up in flat counterpoint to the cannon.

  The rider feels a rush of pressure across his chest, the sensation quickly becoming a searing pain. But no blood, no broken skin. Too much for his weakened heart, then. He collapses to his knees, and then onto his side, a gaffed fish. He can hear only the roar of his own blood, see nothing above the thinning cumulus but the black dorsal of the Bren.