INDIFFERENT HEROES

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘Come almighty to deliver;

  Let us all Thy life receive;

  Suddenly return, and never,

  Never more Thy temples leave.’

  When the newly-married couple came out of the chapel, the emergency services were at work digging bodies out of the rubble. Had Claire and Terence been married in the registry office, they would have been decently removed from the incident.

  Claire vowed she would never set foot in chapel again. The flying bomb had completed the alienating process set in motion by the bomb which had killed her father. Terence was relieved to have played no part in this. Although it was important that she should share his views on all intellectual issues, he had no wish to appear a destructive element in her life.

  The wedding guests returned to Louise’s house, where Terence applied himself earnestly to the business of being convivial. At some stage in the festivities, he was alone with Alice, and took the opportunity of assuring her that, rather than losing a sister, she had gained a brother. ‘I want you to know that you will always have a home with us.’ He and Claire were still at university and had no home, but in his view it was the goodwill which mattered, the bricks and mortar could wait.

  The goodwill, conjuring up as it did the picture of the unmarried sister who must be allocated her place in the corner, disturbed Alice. Only a few moments ago. Aunt May had said, it will be your turn next, I suppose, Alice.’ She had sounded comforting rather than confident.

  Alice said to Terence, ‘I expect to have a home of my own; thank you, all the same.’

  ‘We shall all hope for that. But you mustn’t be too proud to come to us whenever you feel lonely.’ He could see in Alice the one member of Claire’s family with whom he might establish, if not a friendly, then at least a practical relationship. He was anxious to secure her as an ally.

  Claire joined them. ‘I am so glad to see you two getting together. I have told Terence how close we have always been.’

  ‘I have been telling Alice I want that to continue,’ Terence said.

  Claire looked at Alice, her eyes shining. Alice could see that she was expected to be grateful to Terence, not only at this moment, but from now on. They would not expect Louise and Guy to be grateful for each gesture of affection. Pairs had an immunity not extended to the single, from whom the due of gratitude must be exacted.

  Alice replied with as good a grace as possible, ‘I’m sure we shall all be good friends.’

  She could see that Claire had expected rather more.

  The weather was sunny, and some of the guests were sitting in the garden. In the kitchen, Judith said to Louise, ‘Why don’t you go out? I can take over in here.’ She thought Louise looked strained and supposed she had period pains.

  Louise said, ‘I’m better if I keep going.’

  Judith opened the dresser drawer to look for a tea cosy. Tidiness was not one of Louise’s merits, and she had to rummage. After a minute, she exclaimed, ‘Why, there’s a letter in here from Guy!’ She turned the envelope over as if she expected it to tell more than the names of the sender and addressee. ‘Not even opened.’ She looked at Louise.

  Louise said, ‘Put it away. I can’t read it now.’

  There was a photograph of Daphne’s wedding in the drawer: the bride and groom, Mrs Drummond, Louise, and a dark man who looked into the camera, one eyebrow raised above alert, amused eyes. Judith put Guy’s letter down on top of the photograph. ‘I guessed there was someone else.’

  ‘There’s no need for you to look like that. It’s all over. Nothing came of it.’ Louise twisted the dish cloth, grimly intent on wringing every drop of moisture from it. Judith put an arm around her shoulders. It was a gesture which these two could seldom exchange, and Louise was taken by surprise. The tears came in spite of herself.

  ‘Did you want him so much, my love?’

  ‘After it was over, I didn’t know it could be so hard, just to go on living.’ Judith accepted the words as the kind of thing all unhappy lovers say. She could not have visualized the well in which Louise had found herself trapped, nor have known how much stronger was the pull of the dark water than the distant daylight. ‘That letter . . .’ Louise was more in control now, her voice husky with the strain on throat muscles. ‘I’m terrified it’s to say Guy is on his way home. That’s the truth of it.’

  Judith said quietly, ‘It won’t be easy, even without this affair. He’s been away a long time. But once you’ve both got over the strangeness of being together again, you’ll manage.’

  ‘That’s all very well for you. You wanted Daddy back. I don’t want Guy. I don’t! I don’t want him!’

  ‘Your father and I didn’t know each other very well when we got married. We only had five days together, and then he went back to the Front. I wondered what I had done, marrying a “foreigner” as my mother put it. You and Guy have a lot to build on, even if you can’t see it that way now.’

  ‘I can only see Ivor now.’

  She had not seen him very clearly the last time they met.

  They had sat in the restaurant, the untouched food on their plates.

  ‘But why?’ Ivor shouted as if to make his voice carry above a high wind. The waitress, lolling against the wall, agitatedly chipped varnish from her nails. Louise had looked as if she had gone into a trough in a wave which obscured her vision; she was having difficulty with her breathing, too.

  He had foreseen that she would be inflexible. He had imagined himself amazed that something so adamantine should be concealed beneath the softly rounded flesh; he had heard himself shouting at her, ‘Refusing to give an inch is a sign of weakness, you do realize that, don’t you? It’s the last resort of the feeble-minded!’ She would shout back, ‘You’re well rid of me, then,’ and they would have a wild scene ending in love-making. That was how he had visualized it.

  The reality was somewhat different. There was wildness, certainly, but she was in the centre of it, without any apparent need of his presence. Her face was scoured by a harsher abrasive than the rasp of his tongue. Every few seconds she snatched for breath, but the frantic straining of her breasts indicated that she gained no relief. There was something she could not quite swallow; she tried again and again, and after each attempt she tossed her head back and blinked her eyes rapidly. How could he expect that she, engaged in this grim struggle, should be aware of him, let alone heed his words? He put his head in his hands and groaned. The waitress thought this was better than the cinema. What could he do? There was something so awesome about this distress that, although he was not lacking in conceit, he could scarcely credit himself to be responsible. The creation of such havoc belonged to realms beyond mortal man. His own grief was bitter, but so small in comparison that there was no hope of bringing it to her notice. He said, ‘Let’s get out of here’ and paid the bill, although they had eaten nothing.

  When they parted, he said, to satisfy himself, ‘I am Ivor, and I love you, Louise. I am not on a mountain top, or in the depths of the sea. I am here at Victoria Station. Won’t I do?’

  She dashed the back of her hand across her eyes. He saw that the fingers clutched a crumpled handkerchief.

  So it had ended between them.

  Judith said, ‘You will get over it in time.’

  Louise, who had by now wrung the dish cloth dry, draped it over the taps. The kitchen door opened and James edged in. Judith guessed from the aimless way he behaved that he was worried about his mother, and uneasy when she was out of his sight. ‘You can help me with the tea, James,’ she said. ‘Mummy is going to sit in the garden and have a well-earned rest.’

  Louise made a few dabs at her face in the scullery and then went into the garden. Most of the people there were friends of Claire and Terence whom she did not know. She sat on the stone steps leading down from the French windows. After a few moments, she sensed that someone was standing behind her, and looking up, she saw Jacov. He knew her too well for her to be able to hide her unhappiness from him, and she did not try
. He sat down beside her. Neither spoke.

  Louise had loved Ivor in every way it was possible for her to love. All her senses were involved with him; he was as much in the joy of the first cup of tea at breakfast as in the lilac coming into bloom in the garden. He was in the rain splashing the backs of her legs and the music of Mozart. He was in the smell of bacon cooking and the dusty sweetness of mown grass. Perhaps she exaggerated, but this was how it had seemed to her.

  Yet now . . . The sun was going behind the trees and a breeze sent a shiver down her spine. As the air began to cool, she experienced a sharp pleasure which had no other source than the smell of night-scented stocks. She was aware of the randomness of the erotic impulse. ‘I need a bridge,’ she conceded. ‘If ever I am to come to Guy again, I need a bridge.’ There are some messages the body can convey more unequivocally than words. Louise, leaning against Jacov, was conscious of a great relief.

  At the end of September, Guy was in the foothills of the Apennines. To those who followed the progress of the fighting in Europe from GHQ, a grand scheme must now seem to be unfolding. But for Guy, the war had been reduced to one solitary farmhouse. He had been put in charge of a raiding party and instructed to take the farmhouse and hold it pending further instructions. This had been achieved after a sharp exchange with German soldiers. What was expected of them, they had no idea. Nor had they any idea how the war was proceeding beyond the bounds of the farm. A week had passed and no instructions had reached them.

  Guy had written to Louise describing the kind of country through which they had passed on their journey from the south of Italy. It was a rather prosaic description, in part due to the requirements of censorship, and in part to his inability to articulate his feelings.

  It had been beautiful, of course, the country through which he had fought his way. But there was too much of it and he had come to resent it as he might have resented a woman who over-dressed on an informal occasion. On the road from Salerno, there had been lemons and oranges hanging from trees like onions. The lemon trees were a crude, nightmare green. It was a claustrophobic landscape. He remembered a road twisting endlessly with sheer drops on one side; it had gone on and on, like a thriller in which the climax is too long delayed. Sometimes he had felt tempted to walk over the edge. They had passed through small towns, stupefying in the heat, not a leaf stirring; petrified places, waiting with decreasing hope to be brought to life by rain. It had not rained for four months, they had said. Further north, there were villages clinging to hillsides, the houses close-packed, like a pattern of dominoes.

  Guy was glad to have reached the farmhouse. He was weary of travelling. As he looked from one of the shattered windows, he knew that in the scrubby fields outside Englishmen and Germans were buried. They had buried them hastily, their graves indistinguishable. It had surprised Guy to realize that as he thought of these dead men, he himself made no distinctions. The union of soldiers in death had long been a theme of poetry, but it was an idea at which he had only just arrived. With this recognition came the knowledge that the war had ceased to have any meaning for him. He was still convinced that it mattered – but to other people, in another place. Looking back, he could see that this stripping- down process had been going on for quite a time.

  His view of service life had been endorsed by films in which gallant Naval officers roused the spirits of frightened stokers, or young lieutenants in dug-outs quieted panic-stricken corporals. The advent of the Americans had offered an alternative mythology. At their camps, he had seen many films in which gallant stokers took over from frightened young officers. Majors, calm and capable on the parade ground, had proved unfitted to lead a group of men lost in the desert; in such circumstances, the immortal sergeant must take over.

  There were two Americans with him now. Somewhere in the confusion of the long fight in Italy, they had become lost and eventually attached themselves to his company. He looked at them from time to time, ready to meet any challenge they might make to his authority. At this moment, they were playing cards.

  A strange people, the Americans. Although they looked so mass-produced, they seemed to have little sense of esprit de corps. They preferred their heroes to be lone men, at odds with their fellows, proving themselves against a landscape hostile to man. Perhaps it came of living in a country where there was so much space? Whatever the reason, at this stage these two seemed no more inclined to play the immortal sergeant than Guy the gallant young officer. Here, at the farmhouse, only the fact of their being so far from home reminded them that they were soldiers.

  Guy started to attention suddenly, and at the same time one of the look-outs called, ‘Men coming across the field, sir – there, to the left.’

  Two men, not in uniform, carrying rifles much as men out for a day’s hunting might. They halted some distance from the farm and called out in Italian. Guy sent two of his men to bring them in.

  They were like most peasants, suspicious of the stranger. But they had not that look of belonging to the soil on which they stood. Their eyes made calculations which had a certain inwardness, which suggested to Guy that it was not primarily food and shelter with which these men were concerned. At first, they affected to speak only Italian. Then, after a brief exchange, one of them spoke in English. He said he was a school teacher and English was his subject. He and his companion were partisans. His hearers received this statement with some reserve: it was their experience that all Italians now claimed to be partisans. The man said they were on their way to join a band of partisans in the hills to the north. It would be a hard journey and they needed food.

  ‘We can give you food now, and we’ll talk later.’ Guy dispatched them with two of his men.

  Once they were out of the way, he looked at his sergeant. ‘How do they strike you?’

  ‘Never trust an Eytie, sir.’

  Guy looked at the two Americans. One of them said, ‘If ever a guy was a loner, it was Mussolini. He sure didn’t have any followers!’

  ‘But there are partisans to the north. We know that.’

  The sergeant said, ‘Commies, most of them.’

  The other American said wearily, ‘What the hell! So, we don’t give them food and send them on their way – what then? We shoot them?’

  Guy bit his lip. ‘I think we need more information from them.’

  When the men returned, something had been decided between them. The older man said to Guy, ‘You do not trust us? I will show you something that makes you believe we are no friends of the Germans.’

  ‘Show me something?’

  ‘You come with me. You and . . .’ He pointed to one of the Americans. ‘This is something you both should see – to tell your people.’

  The sergeant said under his breath, ‘Not on your life!’

  Guy said, ‘I’m not so sure. How far away?’

  The man shrugged his shoulders. ‘One hour.’

  Guy looked at his lieutenant, who was standing very straight, looking startled – a posture he seemed to have been holding for several days. Guy thought irritably, ‘I hope I never look like that.’ He pointed to the older man. ‘You come. Your companion stays here.’

  It was an obvious precaution. The man spread out his hands. ‘Of course.’

  Three of them went with the Italian – Guy, a sturdy young Scot who was plainly eager to come for the walk, and one of the Americans. They climbed steadily through scrub and bush into woods, and beyond, where there was only rock. At each step the land fell away behind them, and a great panorama was unrolled like a huge canvas by one of the old masters. This aerial view was at once liberating and cautionary. In the farmhouse, they had led an isolated existence. Up here, they could see the connections: a camp down in the plain; smoke spurting from a small town; a train crawling towards a bridge over the river, light sparking from gunmetal. Guy reflected on a time when men had lived in small units unaware of the existence of other units not so far away. Awareness was a burdensome thing. The Scot said it wasn’t a patch on the T
rossachs.

  Ahead, there were gashes in the rock with dust spewing out, like gaping mouths, crying for rain. They climbed up, into land that resembled a giant stonemason’s yard. At yet another gaping mouth, the Italian stopped. ‘A cave.’ A smell one might encounter at the mouth of hell emanated from the cave. Instinctively, Guy stepped back. The Scot and the American were watching him. Conformity made its last stand, and he did what was expected of him. He said to the Italian, ‘You first.’ The Italian entered the cave, and Guy followed him. It was a big, deep cave and the slanting light of the sun penetrated only a little way, but far enough to shed some light on the pile of rotting carcasses.

  The Italian said, ‘These are people of my village, not partisans. Look, Inglese – children. See the children.’

  Guy, on the threshold of the unimaginable, wondered why this should happen to him, this random encounter resulting in an experience which he, of all people, was particularly unsuited to bear. He stood there, looking down; a man brought up in a home where a misplaced ornament was a threat to order, the breaking of his school’s memorial window a symbol of disintegration. He had thrilled to the deeds of the heroes of his tribe – Nelson and Scott, Lawrence and Wingate; something of their glory had touched him and made him walk with pride. Now, he seemed to breathe a primeval corruption into his own body. As he gazed at the corpses of children, who in life were probably little different from his own, he understood that this was not the result of war, that it was something in man himself, and that he was not immune. Whatever it is that begets war, was in that cave; and he was looking down on it. And he knew that, simply by having looked on it, he was in some way part of it, not only of the dying, but of the doing.