by John Harris
Fortunately, thank God, Cozzens thought, the Minister had now gone so that at least he had room to move. With him had gone Forester Hobbins, cynically assured of a hearing when he got home, and only the Bishop of Harwick of his unwanted guests remained.
The Bishop had emerged from the Intercontinental Hotel to announce that he had made a change in his plans. He had stood before Cozzens, a tall ascetic-looking figure, playing for all he was worth the part of a man of God who was aware of earthly things.
‘I have decided,’ he had announced, ‘despite my personal feelings, that I have a duty to those boys down there.’ He had indicated a sandbagged post and a group of Cozzens’ soldiers behind a machine gun. ‘While what I have to say publicly might encourage the Khaliti it might not encourage them, and I have decided it should be kept back until things have resolved themselves a little. I shall stay here. It might help the women to be brave if they see me.’
Pompous bastard, Cozzens had thought. It wouldn’t make a damn’ bit of difference. He wondered cynically how much Harwick’s decision was due to the fear of a bomb in his plane; because, immediately afterwards, he had driven to his hotel through streets that stank of burning, past huddled groups where British and Khaliti soldiers held the crowds back so that the ambulances could pick up the injured and the dead, and had hidden himself behind the boarded windows and locked doors. If any of the Khaswe wives wanted to see him, Cozzens thought, they’d have to drag him out by the scruff of the neck, and certainly the Bishop’s presence hadn’t done much to help Charlotte Pentecost survey her bleak husbandless future. When he had seen her last she had been full of the high hurt rage of youth.
In the shabby flat she occupied in the old town, Charley Pentecost remembered her conversation with Cozzens. Male talk of a lifetime had rubbed off on her and she knew enough about military operations to realise that Cozzens had been altogether too vague when he had claimed it shouldn’t be long before the Khaliti army had her husband safely at the coast.
She had insisted on seeing him and she had been far from satisfied by his answers.
‘They’ll be sending fresh bods from England.’ Cozzens had seemed to be writhing inside at the lie he was offering her. ‘We need them, Charley, because we’re too thin on the ground at the moment to move. Until we get them the Sultan won’t dare send anybody north.’
She had not been slow to notice that he made no promises of relief. ‘What happens when they arrive?’ she had asked. ‘What about Billy?’
‘That’ll be different.’ Cozzens had still been careful to make no promises.
‘But at the moment, nobody’s doing anything?’
He had been unable to meet her eyes. ‘I’m afraid that as orders stand the only person who can do anything is the Sultan,’ he had admitted. ‘A lorried force from Dhafran. Wintle’ll nip in and fetch ’em out.’
‘And the Toweidas? Without Billy?’
‘They’d have to leave, too.’
‘Surely that would mean the Sultan giving up the frontier?’
‘Yes. That’s what it would mean.’
‘I can see him doing it.’
Cozzens had had the grace to look uncomfortable. ‘Under the circumstances,’ he had offered, ‘would you like to go home? I’m sure I can arrange it quickly for you.’
She had stared at him bitterly. ‘Not likely,’ she had said. ‘I’m staying here till Billy’s safe.’
She shifted uncomfortably in her bed, wondering just how long it would be safe to go on occupying the flat. Pamphlets reminded her of her danger every day – ‘Do not take the same route twice’ – ‘Avoid youths on bicycles’ – ‘When shopping do not face the shop’ – and she knew that the airport had been closed since a BOAC Trident had collapsed on its belly as a neatly-placed bomb had blown out one of its oleo legs. It had not caught fire but it would take a long time to clear, and remained, crumpled and scarred, a monument to the failing grip of Sultan Tafas. Fortunately, no one had been killed but not long afterwards the front doors had been blown off the reception building and the bar in the lounge had gone up, scattering whisky and arrak and studding the walls with splinters of glass. Three buses and two cars had also vanished in flowers of flame and the VC10 flights from London and the Caravelles from Paris and the big Boeings from America had been diverted to Cairo; and the British Embassy now stood bleak and scarred with flame, where a mob of students had thrown petrol bombs through the windows. Because it was built of concrete they hadn’t managed to raze it to the ground but they had done a great deal of damage and the British Ambassador was now sharing a back room with one of his secretaries, while lesser mortals were crowded into bathrooms, kitchens and storerooms.
She drew a deep breath. She had a shrewd idea her husband was in a sticky spot and she longed to be shot of Khalit, out of the country with him and her children, and away for a while from the harsh world of political feuds. Yet she had not complained. She and Pentecost were more than merely wife and husband. They were excellent friends who cared for each other’s opinions and she always felt a heel when she set her fears on paper. It had taken courage to embark on marriage at all, she remembered. There had never been a settled home, never any hope of proper and steady schooling for their children, always shabby furniture in someone else’s flat, and always – because they were forever on the move – having to sell cars at knock-down prices and buy them in the next place on a sellers’ market. As long as she could remember, they had reeled under the weight of their overdraft but, since every other Serviceman seemed to suffer from the same trouble, until Pentecost was tossed out on a pension or managed to reach the higher ranks where it was easier, she had endured it without feeling hers was a special case.
Curiously, though, it wasn’t the discomfort or the penury that troubled her. Though it was fashionable to deride duty and to regard soldiers and their wives as stupid, people like her believed in such things, because their families always had. It was the loneliness that upset her and the jumped-up types who thought because she was married and alone she was fair game for their wandering hands.
Suddenly the futility of the whole thing hit her. After all they had endured, no one had the right to ask them to endure this latest insult to their intelligence without trying to do something about it.
6
The Bishop of Harwick was rather startled when a pretty young woman descended on his hotel in what was clearly a furious temper.
‘My child,’ he said in his most unctuous voice, ‘I can hardly enter the politics of the affair.’
‘Of course you can,’ Charley snorted. ‘What I want isn’t tea and sympathy but practical help.’
The Bishop eyed the tray he had provided for her on her telephoned request for an interview and realised he had made a mistake.
‘I’ve heard of you,’ Charley said. ‘I’ve read about you in the newspapers. I’ve even seen the things you’ve written and seen you talking on the telly. It seems to me, though, that protest isn’t enough. I’m tired of people protesting. The whole world must be full of marching columns of half-wits carrying banners and placards, all driven on by people who aren’t really involved. I want to see a few less protest marchers, a few less banners and a few less placards, and a bit more involvement by the people who say they’re concerned.’
‘But, I am involved and I am concerned.’
‘How?’ Charley demanded. ‘Protesting? Seeing a Minister or two? How about offering to meet the Hejri holy men and discussing it with them? How about getting hold of a gun and going up there to fetch my husband out?’
The Bishop decided that perhaps she was a little overwrought. Carrying a gun would help no one. And as for meeting Hejri holy men–!
‘You could even go home,’ she went on, ‘and find out what the Government’s intentions are. You could start shouting about it on the telly. There are plenty of cameramen about. Alec Gloag would give you five minutes, I’m sure. You could even punch someone on the nose.’
The Bishop looked s
tartled and she went on angrily.
‘Why shouldn’t a Bishop punch someone on the nose?’ she asked angrily. ‘You’ve announced you’ve decided to stay here to be of help to anyone who needs you. Well, I need you, and if the Bishop of Harwick punched a Cabinet Minister or two on the nose, the whole world would want to know why.’
It was irrefutable logic but the Bishop didn’t see it that way. ‘I’m a man of God,’ he pointed out ‘Not a pugilist.’
‘There have been other men of God,’ she said sharply, ‘who weren’t afraid to take up arms when they had to. All through history. There was one in my father’s regiment in the last war – I’ve heard him talk about him. He thought the Nazis were such a lot of bastards it wouldn’t matter if he joined the army and got hold of a gun. There was that parson at Pearl Harbour – the Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition chap. I’m tired of emotional blood-baths. I’d like to see someone put down his banner and pick up a club for a change. If you can’t do anything for me, my lord Bishop, I’ll try the Sultan himself. I’m told he likes pretty girls.’
7
The day had been tiresome and troubled and Pentecost’s fear that the Hejri would soon notice how they could overlook the fortress from the spurs of the Urbida Hills had been correct and there had been a great deal of sniping. One of the Toweida Levies had been shot in the eye as he peeped through a loophole, and Pentecost’s rat-like charger and two goats had been killed. They had had to set to work at once to build shelters along the ramparts, and one of the Toweidas had been killed and two more wounded before they had succeeded in hiding the men at the embrasures. Pentecost had got everyone – officers, NCOs and civilian – working with tents, canvas, timber, torn-off doors, rush matting, corrugated iron, boxes and sacks of earth. But while the men on duty could not now be observed, it was still possible to see into the yard of the fortress, and getting to the men’s quarters still necessitated a frantic dash from one side to the other.
By the grace of God, their water supply was safe. The well was deep. It would have been a fatiguing business, however, hoisting enough every day for the garrison of over three hundred together with the civilians, women and children, but someone had seen fit in the past to build a tank and install a pump, so that it was possible to pump the water up, and allow it to run to the various taps about the fortress by its own weight.
As the iron legs were built into the wall of the fortress, though, they were as good as a ladder and, as they had half-expected, the attack, when it came, was directed at the water tower. There was a wild rattle of rifle fire and the sound of running feet in the darkness.
‘Here they come,’ Fox said grimly. ‘Eyes down for the count!’ As the alarm bell went and the firing started, Pentecost went himself to the rampart by the tower. He was under no delusions and, unlike some of them, didn’t underrate his opponents. Fox vanished to the main gate and Minto and Stone to the other two walls. Chestnut waited with the reserve, and Bugler Owdi, awed by the new responsibility the siege had laid on his shoulders, was blowing the ‘Assembly’ in the courtyard, his face shining with fervour as his eyes flickered over the running figures he had summoned.
It was hard to see where the bullets were coming from and they could only shoot back at the flashes of the Hejri rifles, and Pentecost walked round the ramparts with Fauzan, the old man cuffing the excited Toweidas as they fired at shadows. Beebe appeared alongside them from the radio room as they waited. He was basically a good-tempered man despite his outburst on the first day of the siege and he was still sufficiently troubled by the death on his conscience to feel that, with the radio silent, he owed it to Pentecost not to sit still and do nothing. Ever since the start of the siege he had sat alone in the little dungeon-like room where Chestnut had erected his equipment, silent and angry and still chafed by guilt.
‘Anything I can do?’ he demanded brusquely.
Pentecost blinked at him. ‘I can’t afford to have a foreign national killed to satisfy the pride of a Hejri sniper,’ he said. ‘I suggest you keep your head down, Mr Beebe.’
The faint pompous overtones of the speech – as though Pentecost felt he were only a nuisance – irritated Beebe.
‘You’ve got another think coming, son,’ he said. ‘If those bastards out there are aiming to kill Luke Beebe, he’s aiming to stop ’em.’
‘Can you use an automatic weapon?’
Beebe’s face fell. ‘I guess not,’ he said. ‘But all Yanks know how to shoot.’ He hoped he was right but he was none too certain because he’d heard that there were more Americans killed on the first day of the hunting season than there were deer.
Pentecost gave him a small tight smile. ‘Then I suggest you see Sergeant Chestnut, Mr Beebe, and ask him to enrol you in the reserve.’
‘That’s not a trick to keep me outa the way?’
‘Not for a moment. We shall need all Chestnut’s people if anything dramatic develops. But, since they’re not immediately involved, it’ll give you time to pick up the rudiments of a Lee-Enfield rifle.’
‘OK,’ Beebe nodded. ‘I’ll see Chestnut. I hope I can understand him.’
As he vanished, the firing increased and bullets began hitting the ramparts. Chestnut appeared with a couple of Toweidas dragging one of his fireballs, a four-foot bundle of faggots, shavings and brushwood, all soaked with paraffin, and loosely wrapped in one of the plastic covers from the store.
‘She’s all ready, sorr,’ he said as the Toweidas hoisted it to the ramparts.
The firing swelled up again then they heard the chink of stones outside the fortress.
‘The bastards are coming up the legs of the tower,’ Chestnut whispered. ‘Now, sorr?’
‘Yes, Sergeant I think now.’
‘Right, sorr! You, MacNab! You, Doig! Over with it!’
Chestnut struck a match and the fireball flared into a livid flame and, assisted by the Toweidas, Makna and Dayik, he pushed it over the ramparts. The whole side of the fortress was lit up at once, and they could see the Hejris scattered about the plain, shooting up at them. Immediately, firing broke out from the embrasures and they saw one or two shadowy figures fall.
It was obvious an attempt was being made to blow the tower down and Pentecost pulled the pin from one of their few grenades and, leaning out, tossed it down. There was a flash and an iron crash from below and they heard screams as they drove off the dynamiters, but almost immediately there was a tremendous roar and they saw the tower lurch and pieces began to drop off. Flakes of rust and old paint and fragments of wood came down on them with a shower of dust, and a small girder, torn loose by the blast, fell with a clang and a clatter of rusty bolts into the courtyard. They heard someone yelp with pain in the darkness below and when the smoke and the dust had cleared they saw that the tower, although it hadn’t fallen, had canted heavily on one side.
‘Didnae manage it, sorr,’ Chestnut said cheerfully. ‘Ah’ll gae down to ma reserve, though, just in case.’
As they grinned at each other, they heard Minto’s voice from the courtyard below them, and leaning over, saw him lying on the ground alongside the fallen girder with his left ankle at an awkward angle.
He was trying to pretend in the modesty of pain that he was all right, and they realised he’d been running up the steps when the explosion had occurred and the falling girder had hit him. They had just reached him when they heard the Hejris outside begin to scream.
‘Hold it, Freddy!’ Pentecost said, bolting for the stairs to the ramparts again. ‘Back in a moment!’
Through the embrasures, he couldn’t make out at first what had happened. He could see Hejris running towards the fort and firing had started from Lack’s outpost in the stables. Then he heard Chestnut shout behind him in the courtyard.
‘Sorr! Mr Pentecost, sorr! Yon explosion’s blown a hole in ma radio room!’
Turning, he ran down the steps to the courtyard again, where Minto was painfully dragging himself clear of the steps. A Toweida Levy, his clothes covered
in dust, was staggering through the open doorway of the radio room, his face dazed, and, beyond him, in the semi-darkness, Pentecost saw Chestnut and his men already firing. The door had been blown off and the shattered transmitter scattered across the floor. There was a hole in the wall where the window had been and already several Hejris were inside.
Chestnut seemed to have things well under control, however, and Pentecost waited in the background, letting him have his head. Beebe was there and Pentecost saw him pick up a rifle from a Toweida who had stumbled away yelping with pain, and fire into the radio room.
‘Missed the sonofabitch,’ he said furiously.
‘Get yon heid o’ yourn doon, Mr Beebe!’ Chestnut screeched at him in his high mad voice. ‘An’ get oot o’ ma way! Ye cannae keep the bastards back on your ain!’
Beebe backed away sheepishly, then Chestnut waved his men forward and they rushed for the door, firing as they went. Beebe, hanging on the edge of the fight, wondering what to do, saw Pentecost alongside him.
‘Sandbags, I think, Mr Beebe,’ Pentecost said quietly. ‘Perhaps you’ll help me scrape up a few of the drivers and clerks.’
The Martini on the rampart above them cracked twice on its improvised carriage and then it was all over, with Chestnut crouching among the rubble of the wall firing out at the fleeing Hejris. There was a corpse wearing a battle dress and another in robes and one of the Toweidas holding his head in a corner.
They worked through the hours of darkness, with Beebe kicking and swearing at the reluctant clerks and drivers to force them to fill sandbags. Then Pentecost discovered metal lockers in the store which had once been used to keep the ants from the clothes of European soldiers and they were dragged out, filled with rock and soil from the courtyard and stuffed into the gap in the wall, with ammunition boxes filled with stones and even the ancient bound copies of The Illustrated London News and The Graphic from the garrison library which were thick enough to stop a bullet. Only when the hole was filled did Chestnut back away, his lean fanatic face grimy and covered with sweat. Pentecost passed him a water bottle.
