by H. E. Bates
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Sandy said. ‘Can you hold it up? Can you lift it? I’ve got to get a tourniquet on.’
He raised his hand, and then the wrist a little, but it made no difference. The flow of blood was changed but not lessened. The pain of it was still sucking and thumping from the socket to the fingers.
Suddenly he felt the pressure of Sandy’s thumbs on the arm. The two thumbs were big and violent at the first pressure. Then as they held the pressure he felt the pull of blood lessen. He thought of a test-tube under heat. The liquid pumped high in the test-tube, and then you took the heat away and suddenly the liquid fell and quietened.
He was slipping away down the slope of cold darkness again when he heard Sandy call. All this time he had not seen the aircraft. Now as Sandy called O’Connor, the voice no more than a tiny whisper, and he heard O’Connor answer from a few feet away, he realized that the Wellington was somewhere just behind his head. He heard Sandy say something about the first-aid box, and then he saw O’Connor come into the light of the moon. He heard the lid of the first-aid box open, and then O’Connor was twisting the tourniquet on his arm. In the next few vague moments all he knew was the grip of the tourniquet cutting down through his flesh, and that soon it was as if he had no arm below the elbow.
‘It’s O.K., Frankie,’ O’Connor said. ‘It’s stopped.’
He tried to say something, but there seemed to be some dislocation between his tongue, very bloodless and cold still, and his brain. This is bloody silly, he thought. He tried to get up. Too weak to lift his head he lay back and shut his eyes, and instantly the danger of the moment, the fact of the aircraft undestroyed, the parachutes, the position of all of them, struck him with terrifying force.
‘Sandy,’ he said. ‘Sandy. We must get moving.’
‘Can you move?’
‘I don’t know. I think if you get me up I could move. What’s happening about the kite? You’ve got to get those parachutes hidden.’
‘Taylor and Goddy are doing it. They’re nearly finished now.’
‘What are they doing?’
‘Busting the inside up. Trying to get the parachutes hidden.’
‘How long have we been here?’
‘About half an hour. Perhaps a bit more.’
‘But Jesus,’ he said, ‘any moment now we’ll be done for. We’ve got to get moving. We’ve got to.’
‘O.K.,’ Sandy said, ‘as soon as you feel you can move.’
He knew that this was the important thing. Somehow he had to move. The moon was still too bright, and he knew that everything, at the moment, was against them. Everything depended on whether he could move.
‘Get me up,’ he said.
‘I’ll hold the arm,’ O’Connor said. ‘I’ve got you.’
He stood up between them. He stood up and then knew, at once, that if they let go of him he would fall down. His body seemed empty. It was empty of blood and warmth and the elementary means of strength. Some time previously he had been sick down his jacket and shirt, and now the smell of it revolted him again.
‘Just hold me,’ he said.
‘Have a little rum,’ Sandy said. ‘It probably isn’t the right thing, but it might help.’
‘We’ve got to get out somehow.’
‘Sit down again until I come back,’ Sandy said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I can stand.’
Sandy went away and he stood lop-sided, leaning against O’Connor, who in turn held the tourniquet on his arm. ‘This is just bloody silly,’ he said, ‘but I can’t stand straight.’
‘You were out cold,’ O’Connor said. ‘You were gone at least ten minutes.’
‘It could have been years,’ he said.
He took a lot of the rum when Sandy came back. He drank it quickly, spilling it, feeling it beating sweetly against the sickness still acid in his throat. He was very anxious. With enormous effort he forced himself to feel better. He certainly felt warmer. The rum drove hot down his chest and seemed, in a few seconds, to stimulate the heart.
‘By the time they’ve finished in the kite,’ he said, ‘I think I could go.’
‘Are you cold?’ Sandy said. ‘What about your jacket?’
‘Just put it over my shoulders. Without the sleeves.’
Sandy put his flying jacket over his shoulders and then went away, leaving him with O’Connor. He called after Sandy that they must hurry up. It was important to get away.
‘Are you sure you can do it?’ O’Connor said.
‘You can do anything you’ve got to. I only wish to hell I knew exactly where we were.’
He felt slightly stronger by the time Sandy came back. With O’Connor holding his arm he stood for a minute by himself, his legs wide apart, hard on the ground, his teeth set, forcing himself into the new responsibility. He had to go forward now, he thought, whatever happened, and not back.
‘They’re about ready,’ Sandy said.
‘Have they done everything? Got everything? We want all the maps, compass, logs. Don’t leave anything. Have they let the petrol out?’
‘They left it till last. It’s going now. Are you all right?’
‘I’m O.K.,’ he said. ‘We ought to get going, though. We’ve got to get going.’
A few seconds later Godwin and Taylor came, carrying rations, maps, old gear from the aircraft. Now he could hear the petrol slopping and dribbling into its own pool in the ground. and could smell the odour of it in the air. He noticed the moon was already down a lot, and he was glad of the darker sky.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’re sure you’ve got everything? ALI the rations? We may lay up for days.’
‘Everything we can,’ Godwin said.
‘All right. The point is we must start walking. We must. What’s the time?’
‘It’s now three thirty-four,’ Sandy said. ‘Exactly.’
‘O.K., we can walk for an hour. We can walk till just before sunrise. Then we’ll lay up for the day. We’ll try to walk roughly west, straight into the moon. That’s as good a guide as we have. Everybody O.K.?’
‘O.K.,’ they said.
Sandy and Godwin and Taylor began to walk across the flat ground, marshy in spots and broken up by patches of sedge, where the aircraft had come down. It was necessary for Franklin to walk with O’Connor. Before moving he put his left arm in the half-closed front of his Irwin jacket while O’Connor held his shoulders. Turning, he took his first and last look at the Wellington, the big curved tail up against the light sky, the nose a little further down than normal against the earth. His conscience was quite clear. The land was so bare and open that it had seemed dangerous to him, from the very first moment of consciousness, to fire the aircraft. It seemed to him, if there must be a choice between firing it and escape, that escape was the better thing. He looked at the Wellington for about ten seconds, thinking all this, thinking very swiftly how good the kite had been and how much a part of his life she had been for so long, and then turned to walk away.
The pumping had now ceased in his arm, and the warmth had begun to flow back, slightly but positively, into his lips and face. But now when he came to walk his legs were bloodless. They seemed hollow, and when they met the earth it was as if he had pins and needles. The lack of reaction and pressure was in itself a new and stupid pain. His movements forward, across the marshy ground, were those of a man coming out of a sickbed, and they made him feel foolish and angry. All the time he could see the three sergeants about a hundred yards ahead, their flying jackets brown in the light of the moon.
‘We’ve got to keep them in sight,’ he said. ‘The sod of it is I can’t feel my feet’
‘You lost a lot of blood,’ O’Connor said. ‘Take it steady.’
He went across the marsh in painful stops and starts, leaning very slightly on O’Connor, very conscious of the foolishness, the pain and the inevitable weakness of his position. As he groped forward he made up his mind not to be silly about it one way or the other. He was very weak. He wou
ld go steady. At the same time, they had to get away. So he could keep going, foreshortening his view as he had learned to do when flying, not anticipating things, never reaching beyond the next moment.
In this way he covered, with O’Connor, two hundred yards without a break. He could see, always, the three flying-jackets in the moonlight ahead. They were light against the black earth of the marsh, itself intersected at intervals with small shallow dykes, about two feet wide, partly filled with water. Now and then the sedge thickened into large hummocks over which he could not lift his feet. When he stumbled, his big flying-boots slopping in the marsh water, O’Connor held him up. Away to the right of him, the grey leaves bright in the moon and stirring now in the silence with the first movement of wind he had detected since landing, he could see a plantation of osiers, about ten feet high, and felt himself lucky to have missed them. After they ended, the marsh went on again unbroken except for clumps of sedge and shallow intersecting dykes. All the time the moon was going down, bigger and deeper in colour, until he judged that only a little more than half an hour of light remained before dawn began to break the other way.
They walked on for twenty minutes before they saw the three flying-jackets motionless ahead. In a few moments they caught up with them.
‘There seems to be some sort of road ahead,’ Sandy noted.
‘O.K. Take a look,’ Franklin said.
‘Have a rest while I’m gone,’ Sandy said. ‘Take a little more rum.’
‘I’m all right,’ he replied.
The words came to him automatically. Standing still, he felt extraordinarily weak again. The thump of blood in his arm had begun again, either because the tourniquet was too tight or too loose, just below the elbow. Below that his arm was dead. And for the first time, standing there, his legs hollow and the morning coldness drying the sweat of exertion on his neck and back, he wondered about the size of the wound. If it was large and close to the vein there was little hope, he thought, of the blood congealing. Sooner or later it would be a problem not only for him but for them all. It must affect the speed and safety with which they went on.
He was still thinking about this when Sandy came back.
‘It’s a kind of farm-track,’ he said. ‘There’s a wire fence the other side.’
‘All right,’ Frankie said. ‘Straight over.’
‘The ground seems to rise a little on the other side. It’s the end of the marsh.’
‘That’s all right. We’ll keep going west,‘ he said. ‘About another half hour.’
‘You should take some more rum,’ Sandy cautioned.
‘No,’ Franklin protested. ‘The more often I take it the more 1’11 want it. I’m all right now.’
They went on and crossed the track. It was quite narrow and beyond the fence, where the ground rose, there was rough grass, grown thick and coarse and now burnt dry by summer. He could hear their flying-boots swishing through it as they climbed the hill. Soon, as before, the three sergeants began to go ahead, until the distance between them and himself and O’Connor was again about a hundred yards. Climbing the slope, he again began to feel unsure of himself. His legs had no substance, and the effort of putting them against the slight incline over-stimulated his heart. He could feel it knocking with immense bumps against his chest. These bumps began to reverberate in his head and then, more painfully, in his arm. He knew that he had to stop, that for a moment at least he could not go on. So he made the excuse that the bandage was loosening, and O’Connor stopped and tightened it again. As he halted Franklin felt his breath heaving up in great gasps, too loud for him to suppress, so that O’Connor heard them. ‘You should take it steady,’ O’Connor warned.
‘I’ll be all right,’ he said, ‘at the top of the hill.’
Walking forward again, slowly and with difficulty, he kept his eyes on the moon. By deliberate concentration, staring at the enormous butter-coloured face of the moon going down on the now hazy and darkening horizon, he forced himself upward in a series of stupefied efforts. There were moments when he did not know what he was doing. They came slowly to the top of the hill. The moon by that time had a fantastic enormity. It had begun to surge heavily forward, all gold and dazzling, into his face, and then recede, dark and eclipsed, away from the limit of his vision. At the top of the hill he was surprised to see the three sergeants already waiting. He had completely lost sight of them.
‘There’s a big dip of country,’ Sandy said. ‘A valley.’
‘Yes?’ He tried to go on speaking, but the words seemed swollen and could not press upward through the constriction of his throat. It was as if someone had hit him powerfully on the heart.
‘Are you all right, Frankie?’ O’Connor said.
‘Jesus, I – I – Jesus.’
‘Sit down,’ Sandy said. ‘You’ve been going strong. Sit down! ’
He was silent, gathering his strength. It was like being drunk. The faculties dimmed and receded and surged back, and in a desperate moment he fought to hold them. He felt the four sergeants silently waiting while he stood helpless on the hill-top, trying to get his speech and strength again.
They came painfully back at last.
‘It’s no use,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to get a bit farther on and find a place to hide in. I can rest when we get there. I can rest all day.’
‘You’d better have a little more rum.’
‘Just a drop.’
He kept the rum in his mouth for a second or two before letting it down his throat. It drove away the dry taste of his breathlessness. It was sweet and hot, and after a few moments he felt ready to go on.
‘Get ahead again,’ he said, ‘and see if you can’t find a place to hide in. A wood if you can. Somewhere high. So that we can watch the lie of the country.’
He watched once again the three brown flying-jackets, edged white, go ahead of him and then disappear round the curved rim of the hill. He followed with O’Connor. The moon was now slightly on his right band, so that he could not repeat the trick of watching it and so blotting out the consciousness of his pain at waking. Instead he watched his feet. It comforted him unexpectedly and enormously to watch them, to see them lumping along, huge in the flying-boots, in the rustly dry grass, and in this way he went on for another ten minutes, until his steps had begun to pump the blood painfully into his face and arms again.
When he raised his face at last it was to find the moon, smoky and red, severed in half by the horizon, and the three sergeants waiting for him under a clump of trees.
‘It seems all right here,’ Sandy said. ‘There’s a wood. Plenty of undergrowth. And we can see the valley.’
‘Get in then,’ he advised. ‘Not too far in. You’ve got to watch the approaches.’
He had never felt quite so unsure of himself as at that moment. He was vaguely aware of going into the wood, of the trees blacking out overhead the sky that had begun to grow as light now with dawn as it had been, for some time, with the moon. He was aware of lying down in this darkness, of earth cold against the short hairs of his neck and his free hand. He was aware of lying motionless and then of seeming slowly to move, weakly, not of his own volition, down into the old darkness of coldness and sweat. It gradually took him down and down, until he could feel even the pain of his arm no longer.
CHAPTER 3
WHEN he woke the day was hot and calm. He could see a jagged blade of sunlight, bright and intense, slitting the black edges of the overhanging pines. His mouth was very sick. When he moved his head from side to side it was as if it were weighted with a leaden ball that rolled from one ear to the other. He came out of the stupidity of sleep and tried to turn his body; he felt the pain of his arm, and then with a slow shock he remembered it. He looked down at himself, slantwise, as he lay, and saw that his arm had been bandaged, quite skilfully, so that his elbow was free. It lay flat on his chest, so that he could not lie on it, and was suspended by a sling of bandage. Somebody had taken his flying-jacket off and had laid it over him, but n
ow it had slipped away.
‘No need to get up,’ Sandy said.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘You’re all right where you are,’ Sandy replied. ‘We’re in the wood. It’s perfectly O.K. You’ve had ten hours’ sleep or more.’
‘Jesus,’ he cried. ‘What happened?’
‘You went clean out, and then I gave you a shot. It quietened you down, and you’ve been sleeping ever since.’
‘What time is it?’
‘About twelve.’
Franklin lay looking at the sunlight jaggedly cut by the black needle edges of the pines.
‘Where are the boys?’ he questioned.
‘They’ve gone on a sort of reccy,’ Sandy said. ‘Through the wood. It seemed a good idea to find out what sort of country it was. The wood seems pretty big. Much more like part of a forest.’
‘They shouldn’t have gone,’ Franklin objected. He was worried. ‘We should stick together.’
‘I think it’s all right,’ Sandy said. ‘O’Connor will see to that. He’s an old hand at this sort of thing. He was in France for the first eight months.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Franklin protested. ‘What we have to find out is whether we’re in Occupied or Unoccupied France. Never mind what sort of country it is.’
‘I hope to Christ it’s Occupied,’ Sandy said.
‘We’ll find that out before long,’ he said.
He sat up. The weight of his sickness seemed to rise as he himself rose. It gathered in his head and seemed to make him top heavy. Beyond the dark edge of woodland the brightness of the day jumped like a shutter, black and then intensely white again.
