Captain

by Sam Angus

  “Nothing,” I said. “It’s nothing.” And I shook his hand off.

  “Billy…,” he began again, and I snapped back.

  “Sir,” I said. “To you.”

  Captain kept complete composure and equanimity, and said, “Sir. Are you all right?”

  A corner of the blanket was lifted. I started and sprang to one side, with a lightning shock of fear.

  “Bayliss.”

  I leaped to my feet, breathed deeply to stop my shivering. It was only Lieutenant Sparrow.

  “Bayliss. Nighttime reconnaissance. Take Pimm. Depart 16:00 hours. Turks suspected to the north. All mounted bodies approaching from the interior of the country are to be treated as enemies.” He handed me a map. I saw Captain’s eyes move from me to the Lieutenant and back again.

  “Sir.” I nodded.

  Captain watched me pack and prepare. I turned my back to hide the shaking in my hands.

  “Sir. I do not think you should go. You are not well.”

  I didn’t answer and after a while he said, “Sir, is it frightening out there on patrol?” It was the way he asked, so gently, when he knew I was so often frightened, when he knew that all of me was nothing but a honeycomb of fear, and because I regretted shaking him off earlier, and because I’d made him call me “sir” like that, that made me answer him, truthfully, or almost truthfully.

  “I still find the waiting the worst, when you’re on your own in the dark, just watching and waiting and there are sounds and noises everywhere.”

  “And in battle, sir?”

  He must’ve known the answer to that. I never answered him, never told him that if I was on foot, I had to force myself, one foot in front of the other; that every time, there was only one thing in my head: that I must get to the next trench, get to the next trench, get to the next trench—that it was still like it had been ever since I’d landed at Gallipoli, that somehow I felt if I got to that trench, there’d be Liza and Mother and Bredicot … I still couldn’t say any of that so I said nothing.

  “Sir, I am still scared,” he said. “I am still scared for you.”

  * * *

  The camels’ feet padded softly, silently, through the sand. The night seemed to me to be thick and teeming with sound and shadow. I started feverishly at nothing at all, the twitch of a tamarisk branch bringing a cold sweat leaping to my brow. Slits of moonlight glinted like bayonets amongst the rocks. I imagined clusters of Turks behind every innocent stone and bush.

  When we drew close to the point on Sparrow’s map, we stopped. An outcrop stood in rocky silhouette against the sky. We’d have vantage from there over the gully, vantage and protection for the animals. I hobbled Dolly, and crawled forward on my belly along a sandy crack between two boulders. We lay waiting for a while, Archie Pimm a little way behind me. My tunic was wet, perhaps from the dew, and I didn’t want Pimm to see my legs shaking, so I motioned him up alongside me. I breathed in and out slowly and deeply to stem the quaking. The wind drifted over us. I started with fear at each of its comings and goings. Later, when the wind dropped, the night felt strangely still, uncanny and foreboding. Each small sound was magnified. I felt I was being watched from the surrounding rocks and expected the darkness to spout with fire at any second. I strained my eyes in search of movement, my nerves and all my senses keyed to the breaking point. I thought I heard whispering voices from a clump of brushwood and kept my gun trained on it, but then I heard no other sound. It was only nervous strain, the brain playing tricks and causing me to see things that weren’t there, but when I looked again, the brushwood had changed shape and the leaves of it flickered as if they’d been disturbed. Everything was strange and shifting, pregnant and explosive.

  “Fix bayonet,” I hissed.

  “Sir.”

  I heard the slight query in Pimm’s tone, but Pimm probably hadn’t heard the sounds I had, didn’t see that the darkness was teeming and swarming. I started again—there’d been a flash of light again, moonlight on steel. I fumbled at my bayonet, almost dropped it.

  “You all right, Lieutenant?” Pimm whispered, steadying it for me.

  I snatched it from Pimm and set to with it again, but my hand was shaking, and as I held it to my rifle I felt beads of sweat burst on my temple. I was all fingers and thumbs and I dropped the bayonet, and it fell, spinning and flashing to the rocks below.

  Then my brain was quivering in my skull, my heart beating like a drum, and the night was suddenly live with movement, bullets and blades in every shadow, in every trembling leaf a band of Turks. I heard a sound from behind—something moving to the rear—they were behind, not in front—I reached for my pistol, swung my head from side to side, waved my pistol wildly into the darkness, finger jittering on the trigger.

  “Don’t shoot!” Pimm cried out.

  Somewhere a branch moved—silvery flickerings of moonlight on leaves—I spun my pistol to the front—swung it round again to the rear—Pimm sprang to his feet, lunged at me, clutched at my hand to stay my finger.

  “Don’t!” he cried again.

  The branch moved again—those flickerings—there must be someone in that bush—Jacko hidden there with sharpened steel—Jacko silent and creeping up.

  The sound of my pistol rang out.

  A figure rose from the scrub, slim arms reaching up and outward towards me. My heart stopped. The figure staggered and, in an agonizing extension of time, his legs buckled and he fell, arms still outstretched.

  Everything inside me turned pulpy and wet and quivering as I stared towards the shrub where the figure had stood.

  I rose very slowly, then staggered and stumbled towards the fallen figure; slowly, tremblingly, reached out, and felt the cloth wet with blood.

  “Is that you … sir?”

  That was the only time I ever saw fear in Captain’s eyes.

  “Oh God, what have I done? What have I done?” I cried.

  Captain’s breath was short and sort of pumping, like the breath of a sheep.

  “Here, sir,” he said, and his voice was weak, a bubbling sound coming from his windpipe but it was his “sir” that twisted my heart. He touched a hand to the crimson stain on his chest. His fingers fumbled at a button for a second or two, then his hand fell limply to the ground.

  I rocked back and forth, crying and helpless as a baby. Pimm saw the state of me and shoved me aside.

  “Sir, I’ll handle this.”

  He had a field dressing ready, was unbuttoning that bloodied tunic while I buried my head in my hands and clawed the skin of my arms with my nails.

  “It’s in his lung, sir.” Pimm’s voice was grave. “Hurry, sir. Mount. He’s still breathing.”

  Pimm gathered Captain up, and once I was on Dolly, he put him in my arms.

  “Captain…,” I whispered.

  A small smile breached his lips, his lashes sparkled as if with dew, and he mouthed something that I think was: “Sir … Look after Hey-Ho, sir…”

  Look after Hey-Ho: the very same words his father had said to Captain as he died on the beach at Gallipoli.

  “I promise,” I said. “I promise I will look after Hey-Ho.”

  PART V

  SYRIA

  OUT OF THE JORDAN VALLEY

  SEPTEMBER 1918

  I galloped with him through the dawn and through the blazing morning with all the rocks blasting like furnaces into my face, and I was wild and whirling with horror when I stumbled into camp. Chips saw the limp figure in my arms, and that was the only time I ever saw him move fast, because it was him who got hold of the stretcher and called for the Major. We fell from Dolly, the two of us, almost into the Major’s arms. I am not much given to sentimentality, but I swear there were tears in those stern eyes when he saw Captain. He raced with Captain in his arms to the Medical Station.

  When I came up, the Major tried to turn me away from the white medical tent and I tried to push him aside, but I was weak and staggering, and he led me to another white tent and told the nurses to watch ov
er me.

  I slept perhaps a whole day, and when I awoke it was with a lightning bolt, and I lurched out of that rest tent shouting and screaming. Where was he and what had they done with him? They tried to calm me and told me he’d been taken back, that he was going by train to hospital. But would he live? I wanted to know. Would he live? And no one could tell me, and they shook their heads and tried to take me back into that rest tent, but I broke free and went wildly towards the horse lines, and at some point my legs bent under me, but I went on, and I was crawling on all fours, blind with tears, scratching and scraping at the ground to reach Hey-Ho.

  “Hey-Ho!” I wept as I reached him. “Hey-Ho!” He lifted his drooping head a fraction, and he brayed, just once, and the sound of it was enough to stop the heart of any man. A good animal always knows, and you don’t have to say anything at all.

  There’s no sound in the world so sorrowful as the haw of a sad donkey and in Hey-Ho’s haw there was no smile; all the running laughter it once had was drained from it. To this day I swear that donkey never brayed again, not once.

  “I will look after you,” I whispered, and I was begging him, on all fours, looking up to him, reaching to him with a desperate pleading.

  He dropped his head. I saw the sorrow in that little donkey’s eyes. He blinked and dropped his head lower, and I saw the sorry ear that lay flat and broken on his cheek, as though it had lost its cartilage at the vital point and would never stand up again. I reached up and with a forefinger traced the wavering inky line along the tip of that ear, and then I reached for the other, the one that had once stood so proudly and was now crestfallen too, the pair of them as flat as if there were no life left in him at all.

  Hey-Ho would be my cross, his every dragging step a thing to twist and wring my heart. Guilt is a searing, scorching thing, a thing that fills you to your throat and chokes you. For the next few days, I took to sleeping in the mule lines and kept close to Hey-Ho at all times while we waited for news of Captain, but I never thought I’d be able to look into his eyes again.

  They moved us out of the Jordan Valley and up again to Amman. At Amman we were, in the unending way of the Army, reorganized, our camels taken from us to be led back across Sinai to join Lawrence’s army at Akaba. They’d been no good for the country we’d just crossed, no good for the country that lay ahead.

  Dolly had carried me over the scorching wastes of Sinai and into the Promised Land, carried me safely up and down the mountains of Moab, the swaying rhythm of her stride the undercurrent of my dreams on so many a night. Poor Dolly. I was too numb to feel the loss of her and Pirate. She’d at least be in the desert she loved, I told myself dully.

  I rode out on Dolly, one last time, from the Jordan Valley, Pirate trotting at our side. I knew, dully, that I’d never again ride out on a camel, nor on any so fine a friend. I’d not deserved Dolly any more than I’d deserved Captain.

  Major Straker and the others bid the great beasts farewell with full military honors, with much ceremony and pomp. I stood apart from them, watching, Hey-Ho at my side. The Yeomen formed a guard of honor, all presenting arms and the camels processed between them, led by their new Gyppy syces in their blue flowing robes. Dolly herself stalked through, slobbering and slavering in her usual way, high-headed and gloriously indifferent to all the panoply and pomp. I am not sure that Dolly ever thought much of me, but when I saw her go, I knew that I thought the world of her. Little Pirate trotted at her side and there were tears on my cheeks then, for Hey-Ho losing Captain, losing Dolly, losing Pirate.

  I was indifferent, after this, to all men, to all company but Hey-Ho’s. To Hey-Ho I was bound by guilt and blood. I was issued a fresh mount, a tall gelding called Caesar, who bore my detachment with grace and quietude. There was no news of Captain. Men began to turn their heads aside when I passed.

  We had to go out again, after this, to try once more to break Jacko’s line and chase him north. Only this time we were going to attack on the coast where he wasn’t expecting us. We’d made tens of thousands of horses out of canvas and poles and we’d leave all our tents and those dummy horses there in the Jordan Valley and creep away in the dead of night, westward to the sea. It was a good ploy and we fooled Jacko all right. While his eyes were still on our tents in the Jordan Valley, the largest mass of cavalry ever assembled grouped on the coast and broke through his line there. When we had all his line, from east to west, we would move on north. It would be a great chase and we Cavalry were to push on ahead, fast as we could, the Transport and Service Corps following behind. The night before we were due to move on, I went to Chips.

  “Sir.” He saluted me, and then touched his cap to Hey-Ho in the way he’d always done, ever since Gallipoli.

  “Look after Hey-Ho,” I told him. “If I can’t be with you, if I have to go on, keep Hey-Ho close to you.”

  Chips gave Hey-Ho a biscuit from the store that was always in his pocket. Hey-Ho moved his head slowly to Chips’s palm, and ate.

  “Heart’s gone out of him…,” Chips said sadly.

  “Look after him,” I repeated, irritated, not liking to hear what I already knew.

  We pushed on, over the plain of Sharon, Jacko’s line crumbling into terrified clusters, the roads jammed with his troops, guns, lorries, as they tried to race away before us. We covered huge distances, snatching our rest from time to time, three hours here, three hours there, and we moved so fast that we were often far ahead of the support lines.

  We were armed once again with our swords, and our mounts were fresh and fit. I grew reckless and wild, taunting death, firing and riding with the best of them. Each gun rattle drummed an accusation in my ears till they might bleed with guilt. I could feel the hot, whistling breath of bullets on my skin, but each skimmed by me and it seemed none could touch me. It seemed my life had a sinister, grinning charm.

  It wasn’t until Beisan that I saw Hey-Ho again. We were resting there, having ridden eighty miles in two days or so. When the support lines came up to Beisan I galloped down the column till I saw him. Hey-Ho was limping and footsore. I was wild and sick in my head by then, a fever in my blood, caught in the Jordan Valley, but also a sickness in my mind. It wasn’t a Turkish bullet that had got me: It was the poison in my blood and in my brain. I went about the camp at night with Hey-Ho, and Firkins and Merriman and the others thought me wild and strange.

  The Major had commandeered a house at Battalion HQ and summoned me there. I tethered Hey-Ho at the door and stepped inside, hoping for nothing, fearing nothing. The Major-General was in there too.

  “Bayliss,” he said. “Step forward.”

  “Congratulations,” Major Straker said, smiling.

  “Lieutenant Bayliss.”

  A full Lieutenant. I shuddered and shook my head.

  “No, sir.” I stepped back, shaking my head. “I’ve enough marks on my conscience. I want none more on my shoulder.”

  “Bayliss…”

  “What happened to Captain, sir? Where is he? Where is he?”

  The Major rose and stepped out from behind his desk.

  “They moved him by rail … we don’t know … there are no records.” He shook his head slowly from side to side. “You must forget what happened.”

  I stepped away, feeling their eyes on my back, collected Hey-Ho, and turned in the doorway, putting my hand on Hey-Ho’s head.

  “Billy…,” the Major called.

  “Odd fellow,” I heard the Major-General whisper as I left.

  Later they promoted Firkins, of all people, in my place.

  Jerusalem fell. Nazareth fell. Then Megiddo, Haifa, and at Acre our taking of Palestine was through. At Semakh, Jacko and the German gunners opened fire. We formed into line and charged we could barely see at what, for the dust and the smoke. In battle I could whittle myself to a thread, and quiet the writhing of my memories. In any space or stillness the sound of choking, the gurgling of drowning lungs, would return and make the blood in me sweep and slosh like water in a bucket. At Se
makh I would have poured my last breath into the fight and I was wilder there than anywhere, fighting dismounted and hand to hand. Major Straker rewarded my recklessness as if it were valor, and at Semakh I was awarded a military medal.

  “My medal is for Captain,” I told Hey-Ho. He looked at me, heavy-lidded, slow and unblinking, his eyes going right into the heart of me. He’d had one master and would accept no other, never loving me in the way he loved Captain. He tolerated the fistfuls of thistle I brought him, but never once nuzzled me. My behavior with him, too, God forgive me, had grown strange and erratic.

  We were ordered on to Damascus, a full ninety miles to the north. The iron will of a great General travelled through Divisional Commander, Brigadiers, Battalion Commanders, to the men, spurring us northward on the prayer of victory.

  Damascus was a long way for Hey-Ho, too long. The Service Corps, with all their provisions and pots and pans, moved more slowly than we Cavalry did, but Hey-Ho, so Chips told me one night after Semakh, was the slowest of the pack animals and had begun to trip and stumble. He’d never tripped before, and I knew then that I should be with him and watch over him.

  I requested the Major to authorize a transfer to the Service Corps.

  He refused me.

  “For the love of God, Bayliss! No.”

  “Where is he, sir? What did they do with him? Tell me—is he—?”

  The Major shook his head. “I know no more than you do, Billy.” He dismissed me with a sad and worried smile.

  I held my horse back, staying near the tail of our line, where I could see Hey-Ho. Major Straker was under huge pressure to push on. We were much slowed by all the service lines, and any animal that slowed us down was a serious hindrance. The little silver donkey had lost heart for the battle, his spirit visibly fading. We were ordered on to Kuneitra, and before that push we were together somewhere, all of us, one night.

  Chips applied to see me and said, “He can’t keep up, sir, even without a load … Kuneitra will be too far.”

  I applied once more for a transfer.