by John Harris
As she stared at me with her weary stony gaze, her face seemed to have grown smaller and there was an excited feverish light in her eyes so that I seemed to be looking at an aged child. She had made no attempt to keep herself tidy in the awful heat, and her hair, like mine, was plastered with a thin-caked film of yellow mud compounded of matted dust and sweat.
The sun was beginning to drop fiercely towards the horizon, and the rolling shapes of the desert were changing colour. For the first time since we’d started that morning I could see shadows, pale, purple-orange shadows that were really hardly shadows at all, and the sky seemed to be on fire with the flames leaping upwards as the sun sank lower, turning the white glare of the day into the dulled salmon of evening. Soon it would be dark and if Ghad Ahmed was going to make a last attempt at us this would be his opportunity. By tomorrow I hoped we’d be near enough to Breba for him to be frightened away.
The sun was still strong but with the glow of old copper, and the sand was a thunderous orange below it. Morena stopped, guessing somehow what was on my mind, and we shuffled together into a group. There were a few muttered words of advice, but neither Phil nor Nimmo seemed to be listening or to care, and when we shuffled off again, in the same order, in no time we were strung out once more, Morena leading and trying to set a pace because we knew we had to keep moving steadily; then Phil and Nimmo, both of them dawdling as her strength gave out; and finally me, determined to remain rearguard, yet not wishing to push her more than necessary.
Every now and then as I saw Nimmo stumble I felt a swift surge of pleasure, as I imagined him having to accept help from me. But then it died immediately as he recovered and, every time, the old fear started in me again that he was standing straighter than I was, that his breathing was more easy. We were all flagging now and I was wondering, in fact, if I hadn’t possibly driven us all too hard.
Phil was staggering now with exhaustion, but in the distance I could see the sand in soft blown ridges where a vehicle couldn’t manoeuvre and felt we’d be safer there, and wouldn’t allow her to relax.
‘Please,’ she begged, her face haunted, her eyes moving hopelessly, her hands knuckled and rigid by her sides. ‘Can’t we stop?’
‘Another hour,’ I said my mouth tight.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Nimmo said, ‘can’t you see she’s had it?’
‘One hour,’ I repeated. ‘Then we’ll all stop.’
‘You bastard,’ Nimmo growled. ‘I ought to blow your bloody head off with this rifle.’
It was cruel, but I had no alternative. My own legs were as sloppy as sponges, but I could see Morena standing on the slope of a dune, his feet up to the ankles in soft sand, the rifle trailing from his fingers, waiting for us.
Nimmo glared at me, then he took the revolver from Phil’s waist and buckled it round his own, and we set off again.
The air was cooler now and I felt a little better, but I knew that Phil couldn’t keep going much longer, and I had to decide the dividing line between safety and over-exhaustion, because she had to be on her feet for the next day.
‘Give her a drink,’ I suggested to Nimmo, but he shook his head.
‘It’s finished,’ he said. ‘It’s all gone. We drank it this afternoon.’
‘You prize bloody fool!’ I felt choked with anger. ‘You deserve everything you’ve got. All we have now is what I’m carrying. Without water you can end up as dry as a prune.’
‘She needed it,’ he said fiercely.
‘She’ll need it a lot more tomorrow.’
‘I think you’re a prize bastard,’ he said in a low grating voice and he seemed very young as he spoke.
He turned away quickly and took her arm. For a while they walked together, then she seemed to push him away, as though she were determined that I shouldn’t have the satisfaction of seeing her in need of help, and we began to walk in a single file again that gradually grew more and more strung out.
It was just when we were at our lowest ebb, with our heads down and dull with misery, strung out across the side of a dune, that I heard the sound of the jeep’s engine. Straightening up, I saw it come roaring over the crest towards us, with Ghad Ahmed himself by the driver.
Immediately Phil’s head rose and she started to run, staggering to her left out of the line, her feet kicking up the sand – blindly, in a state of panic and half dizzy with exhaustion, knowing only that the jeep was an enemy.
The light was bad and as I stumbled after her the jeep came between us. For a moment I wondered what the hell they were doing, then I realised they’d seen we’d not got the money with us and that if they could grab her they could force us to tell them where we’d buried it. They were trying to cut her out, just as you’d cut out a wild animal from a herd, just as the tanks had tried to get into the columns of soft-skinned vehicles during the war and cut out bunches of them for slaughter.
I fired the rifle at the racing jeep, but the light was bad and my eyes seemed to be whirling in my head and I couldn’t see it properly. Morena was on top of the dune, looking down, but he was shooting into the shadows and hadn’t a cat in hell’s chance of hitting anything.
‘Phil,’ I croaked, trying to warn her, but my throat was so dry I couldn’t make my voice come.
The jeep had almost caught up with her by this time, and Ghad Ahmed was standing up by the driver. This was his last chance, he knew, and it looked as though he was going to pull it off.
I saw Phil look over her shoulder and, trying to keep an eye on the jeep, collapse as the dragging sand gripped her tired feet. Then, as the vehicle roared up towards her, I saw Nimmo lift the rifle to his shoulder in a swift movement and pull the trigger.
The jeep was just slewing round as the rifle fired, with the sand spraying from the front wheels like a bow wave, and it looked at first as though Ghad Ahmed had been thrown out by the swift turn, then I saw from the way his body fell that there were no longer any living muscles and no living brain to warn him, no living instinct to help him save himself. He fell like a limp sack full of wet straw, and I saw his body hit the sand in a puff of dust and bounce in a flat leap, then it rolled over, all arms and legs, and came to a stop right in front of Phil.
As she sat up, her hand over her mouth, a thin scream escaping her, the jeep stopped and I heard Morena’s rifle crack, and the windscreen shattered. The men in the jeep stared backwards to where Ghad Ahmed’s body lay, then I heard the engine race, and the wheels kicked the sand as it shot off, rocketing and lurching over the dune.
I was the first to reach her as she sat up, her face grey-yellow with caked dust, her eyes dilated as she stared at Ghad Ahmed.
I stopped in front of her as she scrambled to her knees. She had unfastened her shirt to let what air there was cool her body, and I could see she was wearing nothing underneath. It was open to her waist and barely concealed her breasts, and as I stopped in front of her she pulled it across and tucked it into the waistband of her trousers, her eyes blank with dislike.
‘Keep away from me,’ she said in a flat dry voice.
I stared at her for a second, then I turned towards Ghad Ahmed. Nimmo’s bullet had hit him straight between the eyes, smashing in the bridge of his nose. He was as devoid of feeling and emotion now as the sand he lay on.
As I straightened up, Nimmo ran up and caught Phil in his arms, and she clung to him like a frightened child, sobbing, her face in the curve of his neck, while his hands moved gently along her spine.
Morena came slowly towards me, and stopped by Ghad Ahmed.
‘There’ll be no more trouble now,’ he commented. ‘Not without him. They hadn’t the guts.’
‘We’ll stop here,’ I said. ‘We’ll rest. We’ll try to make up a bit of ground during the night when it’s cool.’
We left Ghad Ahmed where he was lying and moved over the dune into the next valley. I opened a couple of tins of bully beef and shared out the water. Only Morena bothered to thank me, and as we finished we sat in two groups again, repr
esentatives of two generations.
I could just make out Phil and Nimmo sitting together, her head against his shoulder, and could hear them muttering. Nimmo was the hero of the hour. Without doubt, his shot had saved her, had saved us all probably, and there was a taste of bitterness in my mouth at the thought that it hadn’t been mine.
Morena seemed to guess my thoughts. ‘It’s only youth running to youth,’ he said gently. ‘Their generation’ll never understand ours, any more than the next one will understand theirs.’
After a while they stretched out together, while I sat unsleeping, hearing little sighs and shuffles and movements like a bird fluttering its wings, and I knew that even in their exhaustion they were reaching out for each other, as a panacea against injustice, loneliness and weariness.
Nothing had made much difference. Strength had had nothing to do with it and never would have, nor had courage and endurance. Dumbly, I wondered how I could have been so blind as to think they mattered and, curiously, as the realisation came, I felt easier in the acceptance that Phil was beyond reach forever.
The glow of the old moon was just appearing when I woke them. There was just enough light to see by, and I could tell their bodies were close together, and Nimmo’s arm was round her. They didn’t move apart as I stirred them, but merely turned their heads and stared at me unashamedly, as though defying me to comment. I said nothing and moved on to Morena, and we all had a sip of water and began to move off almost as the last sliver of the moon came over the lip of the dune.
After a while the sand gave way to a thin rock strata with the stone lying in flaked stripes of blackish brown. The dying moon was full in our faces as we walked and it glinted on the grains of quartz and porphyry that made up the desert, and the black shadows of the dunes lay athwart our path like great bottomless ditches that had to be bridged, so that as we descended into them the moon disappeared and we were in darkness, and as we climbed the other side, struggling against the soft sand, we seemed to emerge into life from the pit of hell. The silence was terrifying and my head felt vacuous and large and it was agony to stay awake.
We stopped again just before daylight. Inevitably, Phil and Nimmo lay down together, holding each other close and sinking into sleep with the sure knowledge of the young that someone older was being responsible.
We allowed ourselves a swallow of water each before we moved on. There was only a little left in the canteen now, but I knew we were within striking distance of safety at last.
The sun was just rising and the plain was absorbing the colour of the approaching day as we set off, Morena first, as before, myself bringing up the rear. Nimmo and Phil no longer made any attempt to keep in single file and they walked alongside each other, almost within touching distance, so that Nimmo could help her when the dragging sand made her stumble.
We moved like cripples now, even Morena walking stiff-legged, his head hanging, the rifle trailing through the sand. I guessed we must be within reach of Breba by this time and ought to see it some time after the sun had reached its height, and I was spurred on by a feeling that we shouldn’t die. I knew we deserved to get through and I felt we would.
The sun came up behind the purple distances in masses of pink fire that feathered off in great rays against the misty blueness of the sky. Then the naked scarlet ball of the sun appeared, and I knew that in two or three hours it would be there behind us and to our right, blistering our brains, addling every thought we tried to make.
We all looked like clowns now, with brown-black faces with staring eyeballs, and pinky-white mouths where our dry tongues had licked the salt from our lips. We walked with our shirts open and I could see the white shape of Phil’s body and the slenderness of her waist with a maddening clarity.
The sun was clear of the desert floor now, and its reddish fire was changing to copper that would change again to molten brass and then to a white-hot glare. The heat haze that had lain in the valleys began to disperse and the long torment began again, drying the sweat on our flesh even as it started through the pores.
Once Phil stumbled and fell, sprawling on her side and rolling over on to her back, her eyes closed against the sun. As we gathered round her, Nimmo gently drew the open shirt across her body, his eyes angry as he looked up at me and Morena, then he lifted her against his knee and forced a little water between her cracked lips.
I knelt in front of her. ‘Only a few more hours,’ I said. ‘Then you can rest. We’ll go on and fetch help.’
We got her to her feet and stumbled on, rising like ghosts from the ground, but within half an hour she was on her knees again, half sitting in the sand, her head hanging, her hands at her sides. Nimmo helped her to turn and sit, her legs sprawled in front of her.
‘You bastards!’ he muttered as we approached. ‘You heartless bastards!’
Morena stared at me, his eyes red-rimmed with lack of sleep, and jerked his head in the direction of the north. Then he peeled off his shirt and I saw the flesh of his shoulder was puffed and ugly and I wondered how he’d endured the pain.
‘Here,’ he said to Nimmo. ‘You can make a bit of shade with that. Just enough to get her face out of the sun. It’ll be some sort of relief. We’ll leave the canteen. We’ll be back by tonight.’
Neither of them thanked us as we moved away. From the top of the dune I saw Nimmo had his shirt off, too, and had made a three-sided tent with the rifle to support it, so that the sun was kept from her head and shoulders, and he had the water bottle in his hand and was sponging her body with his handkerchief to bring a little relief.
Morena and I kept going all the rest of the morning. We didn’t even stop for rests, just plodding steadily on towards the north, staggering a little now, heads down, aware of blinding headaches as the glare split our eyeballs. Walking in the increasing heat, I began to wonder if it were all a dream, and as the moisture evaporated from my body I even began to think I was twenty years back. I’d walked once before, and, as I grew weaker, the two incidents seemed to merge together and I found myself constantly jerking my head up in alarm as I started from a half-sleep of exhaustion, staring at the horizon on the look-out for the Germans.
I was almost done now and because Nimmo had stayed behind I’d never find out now who could endure most. It had been a stupid childish whim that had sprung from bitter jealousy, but now, weakened and half demented by the sun, the fact that it was not answered – one way or the other – nagged at me in a way that seemed to exhaust me as much as the walking.
The light came off the empty flatness with a white and murderous brilliance, in long waves that drove sharp stabbing knives through the retinas to the brain, so that from time to time the glare became ash-grey and I felt I’d gone blind. There was no green anywhere that meant water, no human or animal trail in that vast emptiness.
I could tell without looking when we’d reached the after-noon, because the sun started to take on a beating hammer-stroke that banged against the skull, and I walked with my eyes shut, muttering to myself to keep myself going, nostrils dried, tongue swollen, the sun raging at us like a wild animal.
It was Morena who stopped first. He was walking just in front of me, plodding heavily forward, almost as though, in spite of his injuries, he were untouched by the ordeal, so that I envied him his endurance, then suddenly he weaved a little, stopped, and fell flat on his face.
I got down beside him with blurring eyes and creaking knees, feeling my joints would never move properly again. He opened his eyes as I rolled him over and I saw the sand was stuck round his mouth and on his tongue. The bandages had come loose and were hanging limply round his shoulder and the lips of the wounds were scarlet and inflamed.
At first I thought he was dead, then his eyes opened.
‘Go on,’ he said in a steady voice. ‘You go on.’
‘Don’t be a bloody fool. Got to stay with you.’
‘Go on. Go on.’
I took off my shirt and stuck the rifle into the sand by his head. Then, h
anging the shirt on it, I pinned it down with piles of sand at the corners, so that there was the faintest scrap of shade for his face.
I had to go faster now, because they’d all be dehydrated soon unless I found help.
He was sleeping or unconscious when I stood up and faced north again. Once or twice I glanced back and could see the blurred dot on the sand that was Morena growing smaller with every step. Then I topped a rise, and as I descended to the other side I was alone and terrified at the emptiness.
The heat leapt out like an assassin, knocking me off-balance, the glittering vicious waves of light skimming off the surface of the desert with unutterable cruelty, so that I couldn’t escape the pain of the dazzle as it shimmered in front of my eyes. My tongue felt like a leather ball in my mouth and every step forward was an exertion so that I kept saying to myself I’d never get back the energy I was using. It was like sleep, I kept thinking. A night out of bed was a night lost out of your life. A year in the desert without laughter and happiness and lovemaking was a year out of your life. This was the same. Not one ounce of the energy I spent would ever be returned.
I was a dumb, blind, anonymous figure now with screwed-up eyes, struggling northwards because it was the only thing left to do. Once I fell and lay there, clutching the hot sand, thankful for rest, then I realised I wasn’t supposed to be resting at all, and struggled to my feet, lurching and staggering, the merciless sun resting on me like a leaden weight. Then I saw patches of scrub and suddenly, unexpectedly, birds – little brown birds fluttering out of a grey-green patch – and I realised they were the first signs of life I’d seen. For a moment I thought I was going mad because the light seemed brighter than ever and my body felt shrivelled to mere skin and bone and stringy muscle, then I heard one of the birds call out, jarring and remote, and I knew it was real and that I’d made it.