by John Harris
We started off slowly, feeling our way a little, trying to get used to driving without lights. This time, Morena drove the lorry, with Phil alongside him and Leach crouched in the back, while I followed in the Land Rover with Nimmo. I’d have preferred Phil with me, but I’d seen Nimmo’s expression once or twice and I was being careful to avoid comment.
We drove with about thirty yards between the two vehicles, watching the stony surface slide back beneath us. Nimmo chattered for a while, but eventually I felt him leaning heavily against my shoulder and guessed he’d fallen asleep. I didn’t mind because we were unlikely to be jumped, on the move at night. The following day was the one to worry about, because by that time Ghad Ahmed would have found our tracks and be following us.
With this in mind, Morena and I had decided to pick up every scrap of shale and rock that might obliterate the tyre marks, and every now and then the lorry in front turned slightly along the soft slopes of sand to run, bumping, over a patch of stony ground where the tracks would disappear. After about four hours of slow moving, with the lorry bucking and moaning and the speedometer showing we had covered about twenty-three miles, we came to a stretch of dunes. Morena stopped as we’d arranged, and I drew up alongside him.
Nimmo woke up at once, as you wake up in a train when the swaying movement stops.
‘What’s up?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ I told him. ‘Thought you’d like to powder your nose.’
Morena, with a sure instinct, had found the only dip for miles around, and while he immobilised the vehicles we brewed up quickly, with petrol on a canful of sand. Phil was still crumpled in the cab of the lorry, her head down, her short fair hair over her face, deep in an exhausted sleep.
‘Let her stay,’ Morena said, his voice gruff and fatherly.
We lit cigarettes and stood beside the Land Rover, one of us all the time between Leach and the driving seat and the weapons that lay there.
We glanced at the map in the weak glimmer of the sidelights and the glow of the stars that was brushed thin by a strip of hazy cloud, and I studied the faded pencilled comments I’d made twenty years before.
‘It’s all soft sand from now on,’ I said. ‘Undulating, with patches of scrub. We might find it more difficult.’
I looked up towards the first of the dunes that stood in front of us, as high as a house, and soft and yielding and no route for a vehicle.
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ Morena asked with a grin.
‘I expect so,’ I said with the ghost of a smile.
‘This’ll be the beginning of Katanak Dunes,’ he said. ‘There’s a bypass over to the west. I heard they built one. Goes right round the end.’
I nodded. ‘And Ghad Ahmed’ll have somebody sitting on it just to the north, waiting for us to be turned towards it by this lot.’
He smiled. ‘There’s not much of ’em this end,’ he said.
‘Too bloody much.’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. They’re not all that high.’
I grinned. ‘High enough for them not to expect us to go over ’em.’
He nodded, his eyes glinting. ‘That’s what I was thinking,’ he said.
We changed seats again, and in response to the silent appeal in Phil’s eyes as I woke her, I let her get into the Land Rover with me, while Nimmo climbed into the lorry with Morena.
The map was accurate enough and we made slow time. The ground fell into long waves like the ribs of a giant animal and we crept up them slowly, churning through the wind-blown sand. The slopes didn’t vary in angle in all their length, smooth, unbroken and silver-grey under the stars, and every time we had to stop, our feet sank in and the powdery sand ran over our shoes in a hurrying persuasive way. Then, as we progressed, the dunes grew higher and steeper so that the vehicles went up with their bonnets swinging from side to side like spirited horses, the sand shooting out from the wheels behind, the sound of the engines swelling and falling in a sustained sobbing.
The Land Rover made it without too much difficulty, but the slopes grew progressively worse, with sharply angled lips and contorted summits that had been whipped by the desert winds into strange, twisted shapes and queerly moulded tongues of sand that balanced incredibly in mid air, and the speed dropped until finally the lorry, with its higher point of balance, began to slide sideways and finally sat back on the rear axle, the back wheels sunk to the hubs in sand.
We climbed down slowly and got out the spades and the sand-mats to dig her out, with the Land Rover hitched in front to give an extra heave. Nimmo was a tower of strength and seemed to be everywhere at once, his face shiny with sweat and the beads of moisture gathered in the stubble of his beard. After a great deal of hard work, however, we seemed further back than when we’d started and the lorry began to boil and we had to wait until it cooled down, limp against its side and covered with grit and dust, the insane look of exhaustion in our eyes.
‘Look,’ Morena panted. ‘Let me unhitch the Land Rover and have a run at it. I’ll get the bastard up, you see.’
Nobody argued, because we were all too exhausted for words, and Morena climbed into the cab, his face grim.
‘If she slows, shove,’ he said.
His first run at the slope ended with the bonnet dug deep into the sloping wall of sand and the back wheels filling our eyes and mouths with grit. Morena swore softly and backed the lorry away, so that the sand ran off the bonnet like water, and in the end the slope became furrowed like a ploughed field by his repeated charges, before he finally wrestled the heavy vehicle to the top, flinging it at the overhanging lip with the engine screaming, so that it shouldn’t come to rest with both sets of wheels above the sand.
It dropped to the sand on the other side with a shuddering crash and seemed to slide sideways all the way down to the valley in a swelling bow-wave of dust that left it half buried. As Morena climbed from behind the wheel, we walked slowly back, exhausted and ankle-deep in the dust, towards the Land Rover, and as I drove it up in the lorry’s tracks in the churned sand, we caught a glimpse of a flashing light away over on the right behind us, just a sudden glow arcing across the sky, rather like a lighthouse beam, and we knew at once that it was Ghad Ahmed somewhere in the rear on our trail.
‘Perhaps it wasn’t such a bloody good idea, after all,’ Morena said with tight lips as we stopped in the valley and passed round the water bottles to moisten the parched dryness of our throats. ‘The bastards must have been able to hear us in Cairo.’
Eight
As we set off again, the slopes began to grow shallower and we were able to increase our speed a little and, as the dunes levelled off and the driving became easier once more, Phil huddled against me, warm and comforting, hugging me in her sleep, the feel of her flesh agony to me in the cool expanse of the night.
The light we’d seen had disappeared, and it seemed we’d thrown them off, but by the time we reached firm ground again it was pale in the east and a sword-blade of morning silver stretched low along the horizon. Morena climbed down from his cab as we stopped, and we lit cigarettes, catching the dry smell of the tobacco over the scrub and wild thyme as it drifted away. For a moment, neither of us spoke, just standing there smoking, a little apart from the others, cut off from Leach by his treachery, and by our age and knowledge from Nimmo and the girl, each of us absorbed in our own silent thoughts and drawn together by half-forgotten experiences.
We’d experienced a hundred dawns like this, and the memory flooded back strong and powerful as if it had happened only the day before – half a dozen men crouched by their vehicles, catching a brief vision of beauty in the cool sweet morning air. We were each moved in our own way by the timeless grandeur of the desert that was still undisturbed by man’s corroding influence, in spite of the petrol lorries and the aeroplanes and the Shell guides, in spite of the technologists with their air-conditioned cabins and their newspapers and their post offices, and the pumped water that made the international refuelling stations
into gardens. It was ridged now as it always had been and always would be, in spite of the bypasses they built round the dune country, seamed by a hundred features that had been hidden by the darkness until the ecstatic dawn changed its contours and its colours as the sun began to rise in the cloud-free sky. Even as I watched, I saw the ground grow more rugged, and the line of dunes and plains and the clumps of tall scrub appear.
‘We lost ’em,’ Morena said at last.
His voice seemed to explode like a mortar bomb in the silence, and I nodded.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We lost ’em.’
Leach limped grumbling to his post on the lip of the dune while the rest of us cooked bacon and beans and brewed tea. Phil had agreed to act as cook, and as she slopped the water from the container into the billycan, she caught it with her foot and it tilted enough to slosh a pint or two out into the greedy sand.
‘For God’s sake,’ I said sharply, ‘be careful.’
She glanced up, her eyes faintly resentful in her tired face, and, though I knew she’d been doing her best and the spilt water was an accident, I didn’t withdraw the reprimand because I knew she had to realise just how precious it was.
Nimmo stared at me for a second, then he crossed to her and took the container from her. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said quietly.
He put the can on to the stove and began to brew the tea, measuring the water in precise drops. There was a faint breeze getting up now, I noticed, a fragment of the wind that had stirred the bowl of the Depression while we’d been down there, whipping up the tops of the sandhills and covering the food with a fine gritty dust that floated on top of the tea and crunched between our teeth as we ate.
‘Remember that time when we were coming back from Bardia?’ Morena asked quietly, his eyes moving slowly round him. ‘It was blowing up just like this then.’ He looked at Nimmo. ‘We thought we’d lost your old man that time,’ he said. ‘He ran over a mine. He was lucky.’
Nimmo looked up and for once there was no irritation in his face at the reminiscence, because Morena, in his wisdom, had managed to make him feel part of it through the reference to his father.
‘What was my old man really like?’ he asked. ‘I never knew him much.’
He seemed to be seeking something to admire, and Morena nodded. ‘He was all right,’ he said firmly, in a way that made it a compliment.
‘Better than me?’ Nimmo asked with a grin that was malicious but still friendly. ‘With all my knowledge?’
Morena nodded again. ‘They always are,’ he said. ‘Still, you’ll have the pleasure of knowing that you’ll be better than your son.’
‘The way we’re shaping, I might not get the chance to have a son.’
‘Don’t let’s shout, “All is lost” till the bloody ship sinks,’ Morena growled. ‘We’ve got two good vehicles and we’re all fit and well. And you’re luckier than most. You’ve got enough good looks to pinch anybody’s girl.’
Nimmo grinned and glanced at Phil and the tired look on his face seemed to drain away.
‘Think they’ll try to rush us today?’ he asked.
‘God help ’em if they do,’ I said. ‘If we’re ready for ’em, there’s nothing more dangerous.’
Because it wasn’t hot yet, I sent Phil up to relieve Leach. It looked as though we might be in for a blow and, if we were, the sand whipping off the top of the dunes would make keeping a look-out a damned uncomfortable pastime, and I thought she ought to get her share in first before it grew too unpleasant.
As she rose slowly to her feet, tiredness showing in every movement, Nimmo scrambled up, too.
‘I’ll do it for her,’ he said quickly, but I waved the offer aside.
‘Christ, she’s tired, man!’ he said.
‘I’m tired,’ I pointed out. ‘Morena’s tired. You’re tired. It’s the one job she can do that’ll relieve us.’
‘It won’t hurt me.’
‘Phil had better do it,’ I said.
She didn’t argue and began to climb the slope. Nimmo stood staring after her, glancing at me occasionally, as though trying to weigh me up, then he turned away and sat down again. When Leach came down, Morena gave him food and tea without comment. He took it to the back of the lorry and sat down there to eat it, separated from the rest of us, and when he’d finished he cleaned his plate with sand and rolled over on to his back and closed his eyes, his face blank and expressionless and ugly. Nimmo was already asleep with the rifle cradled under him. Morena had immobilised the vehicles and was working on the leaking radiator, as tireless as usual.
I worked with him for a moment, talking desultorily, but I was restless and nervous and after a while I began to walk up the slope. Morena watched me go without comment, his face calm.
Phil was in a hollow at the top of the dune, where the wind had scooped out a little spoon-shaped dip. From where she was lying she could look out over the desert yet still be hidden from the two vehicles in the valley.
She looked up as I appeared, her face showing a fleeting anxiety, then it relaxed and she smiled her eyes startlingly blue in her brown face.
I flopped down into the sand alongside her and stared across the dun plain.
‘How much longer?’ she asked.
‘Another five days,’ I said. ‘But we might be able to break back to the road before then. If we can get to the north of Ghad Ahmed he’ll never catch us. He didn’t get away with much petrol and he’s using more than we are. It’s my guess he has to keep sending one of the jeeps to Qalam to refuel. I’ll bet he’s hopping mad at losing us.’
‘I shan’t be sorry when it’s over,’ she said. ‘Do you know what I’d like more than anything else? – to be able to pull the plug in a bath. Just to see the water actually running away to waste.’
She was silent for a while as we both stared out over the dunes, then she spoke softly.
‘Was it always like this?’ she said. ‘During the war, I mean.’
‘Most of the time.’
‘I must look like the wrath of God.’
As I looked at her, I was surprised to see there were tears in her eyes.
‘It’s just that I’m scared and dirty and worried sick,’ she said. ‘I’m not the pioneering type, I guess.’
I took her in my arms and held her close to me, not moving while her lips moved in the hollow of my neck. She was warm and eager, her mouth searching desperately for mine, but I pushed her away gently and sat up.
‘Later,’ I said.
She stared at me in silence for a while, her lips parted, her eyes hot with an angry retort, then she sighed. ‘Later. Always later.’ She drew a deep breath that seemed to go down into the depths of her soul, and gave a little shudder.
‘On that, I guess,’ she went on, sitting up with a twisted smile that was full of frustration and a faint tinge of bitterness, ‘I must expect to go from here to the North Pole.’ She drew another deep breath. ‘I’ve gotten so I feel like one of your desert rats all the time, all dust and dirt and fear.’
I said nothing and she sighed. ‘You’ve changed,’ she said. ‘You’re different.’
‘Am I?’ I said, though I knew I was. I knew I’d become different the minute things had become difficult.
‘You’re remote. You’re not the same man. There’s no warmth to you suddenly.’
The note of bitterness seemed stronger in her voice and I took her hand. She pulled it away quickly.
‘It’s so long since anyone behaved like a human being towards me,’ she said in a thin voice. ‘Sloan, poor devil, was as dusty as his work, and David – well, you saw David.’
She looked at me and managed a smile, but it was twisted and still faintly bitter. ‘I mustn’t put you off your duties, Captain,’ she said.
There was a brittle quality in her manner that worried me, but then her gaze grew warmer and the harshness went out of her voice again. ‘Why did you give me first turn up here?’ she asked.
‘Because I think there’s a blow comi
ng and I thought it would be easier for you.’
Her expression seemed to stiffen. ‘Not so you could follow me up here? Not because I was waiting for you to come?’
‘Perhaps so. I don’t know.’
She stared at me for a second, then she smiled unexpectedly and squeezed my hand. ‘Anyway, I’m glad you came.’
For a second, neither of us moved, staring at each other. Her lips were parted and her eyes were shining, but suddenly, impulsively, I released her hand and got to my feet.
‘I’d better be getting back down there,’ I said.
The taut look returned to her face and her mouth drooped, and I hurried on.
‘Ride with me when we leave,’ I said.
She looked up slowly and her eyes were cool again and she was frowning.
‘Thanks,’ she said shortly.
When I got back to the vehicles Morena withdrew his head from the bonnet of the lorry and stared at me, but he didn’t say anything.
‘How’s it going, Wop?’ I asked, for something to say.
‘It’s losing too much water for comfort,’ he said.
‘Let’s get going.’
He nodded and stirred Nimmo with his foot. The boy sat up, alert and alive at once. Leach’s reactions were different. He lifted himself to his elbow slowly, and sat for a while staring glumly at the ground in front of him, grunting and scratching and yawning, his eyes narrow and puffed with sleep. Then he rubbed his knee and inevitably began to pick at the raw spot on his nose.
‘On your feet,’ I said. ‘We’re moving.’
He got to his feet reluctantly, staring resentfully at me and past me to the Land Rover.
I sent Nimmo to fetch Phil down and they came down together, holding hands and half sliding in the soft sand as he helped her to keep upright.
‘Let’s go,’ I said.
Morena replaced the rotor arms and we began to move off. The hot sun had wheeled and the colour of the desert had changed from vermilion to rose and then to the empty greyness of ash. The morning wind fretted our faces and the glare was as bright as a looking glass, magnifying objects all round us and bringing out the surrounding desert in all its starkness. It was like a torch and everything metal about us burned the flesh, and the sweat on our shirts blackened the cloth and dried at once in the sapless atmosphere.