Casualties of War: The Advocate Trilgy

by Bill Mesce

  There’s so little open ground in this part of town the city is letting us use that part of the park up by Factory Street as a neighborhood Victory Garden. Father DeStasio from St. Lucy’s has been teaching us all one end of a hoe from another. Don’t worry. I don’t think he’s trying to convert us — it’s just none of the Orthodox priests seem to know much about farming.

  Don’t forget to send something to Jerry for his birthday. I’ve been saving up my red points and might have enough gas to take the boys down the shore before it gets too cold...

  For the tenth time since he’d opened the letter he peered closely at the picture, at the three faces squinting and smiling into the sun. Fie studied its background, picking out the playground where he’d taken the boys so many times. His mind’s eye took him beyond to the field where he’d played softball with them in summer and football in the fall; he could see the old reservoir where all of them — Cynthia, too — skated in the winter; beyond that was the boathouse where they paddled in rented boats about the winding pond, looking over trees budding with spring to the spires of Sacred Heart Cathedral.

  Tears came.

  He heard a shuffling of feet in the hall and thought perhaps the Court ghosts — or an inebriated Captain Bowman — had presented themselves for a visit.

  “It’s Ricks, Major. May I...?” The door creaked open and a blade of light from the hall cut across the dusky shadows of the room.

  Harry groaned and closed his eyes.

  “Major?” The room went dark and footsteps crossed to the window. Ricks reached for the blackout curtains.

  “Whadderya doin’?”

  “I was going to turn on the light.”

  “No.”

  “I tried calling.”

  “Something’s wrong with the phone.”

  Through slitted eyes Harry saw Ricks’s silhouette cross the windows, pick the telephone receiver off his night-stand, and set it quietly in its cradle. “Is this what you’ve been doing all day?”

  Harry shrugged.

  “You want to tell me what this is about?”

  “I don’t want to think anymore,” Harry grumbled. “I’m tired of thinking. This seemed like a good way to make it stop.”

  “Is it working?”

  “Not yet. I’m still conscious. Want a shot?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Then gimme that!” Ricks handed the bottle over and Harry splashed a fresh dose into his glass.

  Ricks walked to the wireless. “Are you listening to this?”

  “Leave it alone,” Harry said.

  Ricks found a chair by the open window and sat. He leaned his head back toward the window.

  Harry fumbled about his nightstand. “I need a cigarette. I can’t find my damned cigarettes.”

  Ricks found Harry’s cigarettes on the escritoire. He stepped across the room, handed Harry one, and lit it for him.

  Ricks picked up the whiskey bottle and filled Harry’s glass halfway, then took the glass with him back to his chair by the window. “My father’s been practicing law for thirty-five years. He says, over time you discover there’s no such thing as right and wrong, just one side and the other side. Not long after I came over, I was out in the country just north of here. A German plane had gone down in one of the fields. I saw some of the people from the farms around there, people just like old Charlie Gresham, a whole crowd of them. They were marching through the village square with the head of the pilot stuck on a pitch-fork. That won’t make the newsreels back home. You can say they did a horrible thing, but we weren’t here for the Blitz.”

  “So that makes them right?”

  Ricks shrugged. He took another sip of his drink. “We can still take General DiGarre’s deal. At least that’ll finish it. Or play it out. But, whatever you decide, I’ll ride this case out with you.”

  Ricks held up his glass, Harry his bottle, and they exchanged a salute and a smile.

  “After that,” Ricks said, his smile fading, his eyes drifting to the drink in his hands, “I’m putting in my papers. I’m transferring out of the JAG. I don’t imagine Colonel Ryan’ll put up much of a squawk.”

  “Transfer to where?”

  “The 34th Infantry Division is slated for Italy. They’ll need officers.”

  Harry shook his head and climbed off the bed. He scooped up an old lace antimacassar from the back of a chair and swiped at the sweat on his forehead. “It wouldn’t be right for you to wind up pronged on some Hitler Jugend’s bayonet, Pete. What would that solve?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why?”

  “Clarity.”

  The telephone rang.

  Harry, slumped in his chair, barely heard it. Ricks crossed to the nightstand, picked up the phone, spoke briefly, and rang off. “Major?”

  Harry had lolled his head toward the window, letting the cool breeze dry the dampness on his face.

  “Major!”

  “What?” Harry snapped irritably.

  “That was the orderly room at my BOQ. They’ve been calling all over trying to find me. They have a message from Armando for me. He’s at some hospital — ”

  “A hospital?” Harry asked hopefully. “Somebody catch ’im canoodling with his girl? Or did he just open that trap of his to the wrong person again?”

  “It’s the girl. Elisabeth McAnn.”

  The liquor in Harry’s stomach coalesced into a cold lump. “What about her?”

  “I don’t know the whole — ”

  “What happened?”

  “Looks like she tried to commit suicide.”

  Harry grabbed his stomach, clapped his other hand over his mouth, and ran for the loo.

  *

  Harry remembered little of the two-hour journey: Ricks riding heavily on the accelerator of the jeep, a blur of empty road in the hoarded slats of light from the car’s eyes, pulling to the roadside several times so Harry could be sick. Chillingham had only a local doctor’s surgery, so the girl had been taken to the nearest hospital at Lewes. The signposts had been removed back in 1940 in the hopes of confusing the spearhead of what had then seemed an imminent German invasion, and now the effort was unfortunately successful in sending Harry and Ricks first up one street, then down another, until they eventually stumbled across the hospital. The lights inside barely illuminated brown tile walls and long benches alongside the admitting desk where a solitary nurse sat flipping without interest through a magazine.

  On one of the benches sat Armando Grassi, tapping his feet, drumming his fingers, and occasionally allowing his face to collapse into a silent howl like a figure from The Last Judgment. Grassi looked up at the sound of Harry’s and Ricks’s footsteps. While Ricks dealt with the admitting nurse, Harry looked over to Grassi, who squirmed in his seat as if looking for some way to submerge himself in the creaking woodwork. Harry started for him, but Ricks waved him to consult with the white-coated, silver-haired man in wire-rimmed glasses now standing with him.

  “Major,” said Ricks, “this is Doctor Pratt.”

  “How is she?” Harry asked. “Is she...?”

  “She’s alive, Major. Are you all...friends of Miss McAnn?” There was something accusatory in the way he said “friends.” “Was one of you the friend that gave her these?” The doctor held out a small pill bottle. “That’s a U.S. Army Medical Corps prescription label, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Harry looked at the bottle. “There was a boy, a pilot. They were very close. He died a few days ago.”

  “Oh.” From caustic to contrite in a single syllable.

  “How is she?”

  “She’ll be all right. In a bit.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “She’s still unconscious. I would think she’ll probably sleep on through tomorrow at least. Seems she’s been taking these pills for a while. That worked in our favor: She has something of a tolerance for them, and there weren’t very many left.”

  Harry grabbed a pencil and paper from the nurse’s desk. “Lo
ok, Doctor — what is it? Pratt? — if she needs anything, I can be reached at this number in London. If she needs anything — ”

  “I’ll be sure to call,” the doctor said. “There’s, um, one other thing, I’m afraid.” Uncomfortable now.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes, well, I don’t know how well you gentlemen know Miss McAnn...It’s just, well, I don’t know if she knew herself — ”

  “Didn’t know what?”

  “Miss McAnn was pregnant. Unfortunately, the incident instigated a spontaneous abortion. I was wondering if perhaps either of you knew she was pregnant?”

  How much can they take from you...she’d asked, days ago, on the knoll that looked down on her trysting place with O’Connell. He reached out a hand to steady himself against the admitting desk.

  “You see, it’s possible,” the doctor went on, “she may not have known herself. I’d say she probably hadn’t been any further along than six weeks or so. Perhaps eight.”

  “Doctor, you know more about obstetrics than we do,” Ricks said, “but wouldn’t she have missed...you know...”

  The doctor shrugged. “What with rationing, typical wartime stress, now you tell me about this fellow’s death...An irregular menstrual cycle wouldn’t’ve been anomalous. Actually, that’s why I bring it up at all. I’m wondering if — ”

  “No,” Harry said. “I don’t think she knew. I can’t think of any good reason why she should know now.”

  “Quite.”

  Harry faced Grassi. The little lieutenant was standing now, feet braced, face defensive yet defiant, waiting for him. Harry turned away, fought his way through the tangled blackout curtains and through the emergency entrance doors. He stood in the drive outside breathing greedily, tasting dew-dampened meadows in the dark. The night sky was clear and the fields surrounding the little clinic were bone-white under the moon.

  Grassi’s voice behind him: “You got something to say, Boss, say it.”

  “What did you do?”

  “You were painting us into a corner, Boss. We needed — ”

  “What did you do?” Harry reeled and grabbed Grassi by his collar, stumbling as he backed the lieutenant against an empty ambulance.

  Grassi shrank fearfully, but only at first. “I told her about DiGarre’s deal. I told her how you passed on it, and how if we didn’t take it we were screwed. It didn’t look like anything we said to you was going to change your mind, so — ”

  “Why didn’t you talk to me? Why didn’t you say something to me?”

  “Because I read you, Boss! Like I said, I could see once you got an idea in your hard head you weren’t going to listen to — ”

  Harry didn’t want to hear Grassi finish. “Then what happened?”

  “I thought she’d come up to London, maybe bat that big eye at you, turn on the tears, and get you to...But she just went into the other room...” Grassi let out a low whistle. “Man, the last thing I thought she was going to do...”

  Harry was seething to the point where he could barely see. He could feel his trembling hands closing into fists. “You...told...her — ”

  “Don’t get pissed at me, Boss! We had a chance — one chance — to nail both those guys and you were losing it! We could’ve got them, and you were losing it!” Then, cruelly, “She deserved to know that! And I had a right to try to salvage us! Hell, Boss,” and now Grassi’s lips twisted into an ugly sneer, “it’s not like she was ever going to get the straight dope from you, right?”

  Grassi tried to brush past Harry, and Harry pushed him back against the ambulance and cocked a fist by his ear, sighting it on Grassi’s nose.

  Grassi’s face had screwed up in painful expectation, but then it relaxed as he watched the fist, poised and quivering, finally lower to Harry’s side.

  “Come on, Harry,” Ricks warned from the emergency doors.

  “I should’ve known,” Grassi sniffed. “You don’t have the balls — ”

  Harry pulled Grassi round by his shoulder. Harry was not a skilled boxer so there was nothing pretty about the blow, but there was a great deal of heart behind it. There was a sickening crunch as his knuckles met Grassi’s jaw, and the lieutenant went airborne for a second before falling back squarely on his arse. There was another nasty crack as Grassi continued to topple rearward and his head collided sharply with the pavement.

  “Hmm,” Ricks said in quiet, approving appraisal. He went to Harry, who was cradling his throbbing right hand. “Let me have a look at that.”

  “You better have a look at him, first.”

  “Only if you insist.”

  Harry insisted.

  Ricks knelt over the figure sprawled in the dark. Harry heard a moan.

  “Well, he’ll live,” Ricks said, returning to Harry, “but I’m not sure that’s good news. Let me see that hand. Does it hurt badly?”

  “Damn!”

  “I think you’ve broken it. We better have the doctor look at it.”

  “Get him inside first,” Harry said, nodding at Grassi.

  Ricks shrugged, unconvinced, but went inside for help.

  Grassi stirred. He tried to speak but his broken jaw allowed only a low moan.

  Harry ignored him. He sat down on the curb of the drive, his hand carefully cradled in his lap. He took off his cap, hung it on his knee, and smoothed his hair with his good hand. He heard the rustle of the breeze through the hedgerows of the hospital gardens, the drone of a solitary aeroplane, a shifting of gears as a far-off lorry struggled uphill. Between these sounds was a long silence which, at that moment, he loved dearly.

  *

  I drew open the blackout curtains to vent the grim odors of intimate desperation: cigarette smoke, perspiration, liquor, tea. I was surprised to see the eastern sky tattered with a rising orange. Sunday was gone, and perhaps God along with it, leaving us to our own resources for the new week. From my flat I could see down to the Thames. The riverfront was lost beyond the roofs along the way, but I saw the explosion of wrens that burst from Big Ben at the first tolling of the hour, saw them whirl about Parliament Square till the bell had tolled six times and they resettled amongst the spires of Parliament. I lit a fresh cigarette, turned back, and tossed the package onto the table in front of Harry.

  He had appeared at my door at some godforsaken hour of the deep night, his face racked by more than the pain of his hand in its pristine cast. He shuffled in, apologizing for waking me, flushing with embarrassment at the sight of me in my dressing gown, eyes blank with sleep, balancing on one leg. He turned his back as I affixed the limb. I drew on trousers to save him the discomfort of watching the mechanism at work. Then, he spent the remainder of the night, me feeding him cigarettes and tea laced with my whiskey as he talked.

  It was more than storytelling. It was a verbal purging of the weight he’d carried too long alone; of the haunting guilt of possible missteps and miscalculations; of a course that, as he regarded it at that moment, had produced nothing but a wake of collateral damage and a growing casualty list. Upon concluding his tale he seemed to collapse in exhausted relief at having the whole bloody mess in the open. His eyes closed and I thought the poor bugger would nod off at my table. But the chimes of Big Ben spurred a fleeting thought in him and his eyes opened slowly.

  “Do you go to church, Eddy?” he asked.

  The non sequitur took me by surprise. “Hm?”

  “Church. Do you go to church?”

  I shook my head. “Did you know that the first bombards were cast by the same men who cast church bells?”

  “Bombards?”

  A fresh kettle whistled on my gas ring. I poured us each another cup of tea with its required dose from the whiskey bottle, then sat across from him at the little table. “The first cannon,” I explained. “The Chinese had used black powder to scare away evil spirits. Traders brought it to the West, where we had more temporal concerns. The old bombard was nothing more than a church bell put on its side and stuffed with powder and stone projectiles. One day
you’re building something to praise God, the next you turn it on end and make it something to send more of His worshipers into His company.”

  He was unamused by the historical footnote. His face twisted in pain and he held his cast to his chest. Whatever the good Doctor Pratt had given him for the ache of his broken hand was wearing off, and my whiskey offered a poor substitute. He looked up at me, awaiting my response to his story. I had yet to find a palatable way — palatable for me — to respond.

  “You’re an interesting man, Harry. You think the truth will set you free. But whatever it does, that’s not it.”

  He continued to await my answer.

  I took a sip of my tea and a puff of my cigarette, and then there was nothing for it but to tell him. “If I turn this story over to my editor, and if through some burst of journalistic altruism he were to actually run it, I would lose my job, he his, the publisher would suffer a blistering censure from Whitehall and quite probably be permanently excluded from military press pools. There could be a diplomatic flap between our respective governments. Have you considered, old man, how two old duffers like ourselves would fare in the dock at the Old Bailey? Violation of the Official Secrets Act and all that?”

  “I thought you wanted this story!”

  “Ach, I wanted a story. The one I had in mind had your flyboys trying to top each other off, then maybe trying to give the chop to a pair of citizens of the realm, the poor old Greshams. Scandalous, inflammatory, aye; but not seditious.”

  I had looked generals and princes in the eye before, and faced down their accusation of my being everything from a scandalmongering bedroom-peeper to the spawn of the Tawny Prince himself. I had grinned and retorted, “Sorry, laddie; simply doing my job.” But I could not bear the eyes of the poor old sod across from me just then. I could find nothing to say of solace to either of us.