From the rear a Tommy-gun-toting Canadian sergeant abruptly barks, “Schnell! Schnell! Move it, move it!” Jim looks at this ragtag river, this grey and dispirited moving menagerie of discomfiture flowing by, these castoffs of combat, and feels more sorry than triumphant, almost embarrassed. Jim meets eyes with one of the prisoners, dark oily hair parted like a schoolboy, his thin, fine-featured almond-shaped face too fragile seeming for the rigours of combat, impossibly young, looking not a day over seventeen. The soldier holds his watery brown-eyed gaze for a moment then looks back ahead, resignedly shuffling up the road to eventually end up in some prisoner of war camp in Britain or Canada or America. Jim nods at him. The boy nods back. The sergeant at the rear blows a bent-belled trumpet, a loud, sour, brassy note that pierces the air unpleasantly like the wheezy protest of a dyspeptic elephant, likely a prize captured from the Germans, and barks again, and the prisoners pick up the pace, shambling off to whatever geographic fate awaits them down the road. A series of muffled concussions rumble out from beyond the horizon, bombs from the Hurricanes that flew overhead earlier.
“Damn, that must’ve been loud as hell,” muses Riley. “If you were there, I mean.” He looks uncertain, nervous, not quite up to the task awaiting him tonight. The distant concussions of a British air raid on Rimini have settled, have vibrated through the air and through the sand under their buttocks and spent their energy, their sonic imprint washed away as though by the ceaseless lapping of the sea.
“Oh, it gets much louder, sir,” Muller says. “Much, much louder.” Riley looks ashen. He looks like me, Jim thinks. I hope he doesn’t want to talk to me again, Jim thinks, I have no idea what advice I can give him. Talk to the padre. That’s his job.
Father Maitland attempts to soothe Riley’s jittery nerves. “When you get down to it, on the field, it is mostly noise to put you off. It is ninety percent noise and ten percent effect, so long as you dig in when required and you keep alert when you move. Always remember that. So, take your mind off it now and let’s keep this game going, shall we? And McFarlane,” he looks at Jim, “are you going to let anyone else win?”
Jim grins out of the corner of his mouth as he meets the eye of the padre. “Hey, I just had to make up for last night’s losing streak.” He yawns, and is suddenly overcome by an agreeable lethargy. I could go to sleep here and never wake up and that would be just fine by me, just lie back and let the wind blow the sand over me and sift it through my fingers and toes and cover me … He finds himself in yet another hand of poker and this time loses all his money to the padre, who wins with a royal flush. I don’t know these people, he thinks to himself. I don’t know them and I doubt I ever will. He thinks again of Bly, of Barrett, of Leprenniere, of Davis, of others that he served with, served under and commanded, and realizes that he no longer really has any friends. He is too withdrawn into himself. Too tender to handle the stress and horror of combat, too distant to befriend anyone and risk losing them to war’s callous arithmetic. He eats his meals and plays cards and as he does so, he layers these experiences to earlier ones, shared experiences with those no longer with the world. Riley wants to be his friend, wants to be somebody’s friend, he’s green as the buds of spring and wants somebody to talk to … Witchewski would have insulted him were he here at the beach, would have torn him a new asshole, like when he took on some newbies before the Liri Valley battles, when that greenhorn Private Wilkes almost buckled from a case of nerves on the eve of his first battle when the guns opened up with their crash and frightening, unearthly wail—
“What if I’m wounded?”
“Well, that’s why we have medics, son.”
“What if I’m killed?”
“That’s why we have shovels. Now fall in.”
The only person I want as my friend around here is Mark, wherever he is right now, braving the skies of Europe or chasing skirts in a saloon in England. He misses the times they met together while in England, drinking in Aldershot, then in Nottingham, then a trip to Edinburgh and a stay in an inn on the coast of Wales near Swansea. He resolves to read Mark’s letters, and others from home, before marching back out into the fray tonight. One more taste of home. Mark, Mark, the only person I know from home who understands my experience fully.
More soldiers come out onto the beach, soldiers from other units billeted in Cattolica proper. The mine-free corridors of the beach are now choked with men lounging and milling about. A group of soldiers Jim recognizes as being from 1st Division set up a volleyball net nearby and begin a game of beach volleyball, leaping and twisting and arching about and knocking about a soccer ball commandeered for this game. One of the soldiers, a tall, young, muscled blonde man, is adorned with tattooes, his military experiences recorded for posterity for all to see. Emblazoned into the very vellum of his back is tattooed in blue-black ink a map of Italy, with arrows marking his advance from the shore of Sicily inland, over the Straits of Messina and upward, up the Appenine ridges of his vertebrae. The arrows terminate in the northeast near Rimini, where he is now.
It is time to leave. Father Maitland assumes the manner of a high school football coach and pierces the air with a whistle, the whistle’s sharpness out-shrilling even the seagulls. He assembles the men together and they remount their vehicles and head back to the rest village, retracing their route. Jim peers over his shoulder from the passenger seat of the jeep and watches as the beach recedes through the dingy corridors of Cattolica, soldiers and townspeople waving from laundry-draped windows, and the town itself disappears from view as the convoy rounds a hillside along the snaking country road.
20
It’s 1400 hours. Seven hours till showtime, seven hours to curtain call. Seven hours till the thunderous overture of hundreds of guns blasting in unison like a mighty crash of cymbals, rather than the haphazard shelling going on now like the testing and tuning of instruments. Nine hours till Act One, the first stage of the assault. Sixteen hours till Act Two, his cue to strut upon the stage. Act Three is anybody’s guess. This springs to mind as he awaits his turn at mail call again.
Private Glasser and Lance Corporal Coutts stand each with a sack of recently arrived mail at their feet, calling out the names of those lucky enough to receive letters and parcels. Coutts is a bearish, strong-looking man with curly hair, thick lips turned into a permanent scowl, a fleshy face, broken nose replete with the ruddiness of burst capillaries, and the bellicose, brim-browed look of a boxer. It is a wonder he is not in the infantry, Jim thinks, and then sees that Coutts can only walk with the aid of a cane. Wounded, transferred here out of his platoon, doing light duties. Ah. It all makes sense. Glasser hands out letters and Coutts hands out parcels.
“Captain McFarlane!” shouts Glasser. “Here. A letter
for you!” He hands Jim a letter. Jim’s heart pounds in anticipation.
“I’ve been popular these last couple days, haven’t I,” he says without looking at the writing on the envelope. Save that for later. I hope it’s Marianne. I hope. I hope. He is almost dizzy with excitement and a gnawing nervousness. “Thank you, gentlemen.”
“Our pleasure, sir,” responds Coutts. “Next! Lieutenant Therrien!” Jim marches briskly back down the street to the hotel and up to his room. He shuts the door and sits on his bed. He holds the letter in his hand without looking at it. Time to smoke. He has a cigarette, smoking it nervously with shallow breaths, snuffing the butt out in the smoky wine bottle. It dies with a faint hiss. Holding the letter in both hands, he finally looks down and reads the handwritten address:
To Captain James McFarlane
‘A’ Coy, 1 CIR
He recognizes the handwriting immediately and he becomes lightheaded with anticipation. To verify, he looks at the return address in the corner:
Marianne McFarlane
Ottawa, Ontario,
Canada
Finally! He tears open the letter carefully with this hand and pulls out two pie
ces of paper, neatly folded together three times over so as to fit into the envelope. His heart skips a beat. There is naught in the world but this. He reads:
Dear Jim,
I hope this letter finds you well. It is not an easy one to have to write to you—in fact, finding the right words in this instance for me is very difficult.
His heart sinks at this, and he resumes reading with a dread fatalism:
When I married you, I married you because I was deeply in love with you and you were deeply in love with me.
I couldn’t agree more.
Love is something that you have to act on instead of just say. I’m sorry Jim, but ‘I love you,’ and a kiss on the lips is just not enough when it is the only thing that you do. Yes, we’ve had some passionate times. But you haven’t proven to me that you can always be there for me. Eleven months into our marriage and you run off and join the army. Two months later you skip town and transfer to another regiment. Why? Were you that afraid of commitment to our marriage? Is it because you couldn’t live up to the duties of being a husband? You could have done something else to support this war effort. You could have joined the reserves and still answered the call of duty. Remember our arguments over this? Look at me. I joined the civil service and I didn’t have to go far away and risk life and limb to do it.
Ouch. The sting of it.
Eleven months in and you left me—you chose love of country over love of wife. I haven’t seen you in over two years, Jim. I go through every day walking on knifepoints. At night I can’t sleep for worry. When I read the headlines or hear Lorne Greene’s doom reports on the radio, I fret. You picked one of the most dangerous possible jobs in this bloody war right AFTER YOU MARRIED ME. That cut me, Jim, cut me more than I think you realize. Had we discussed this before marrying, had you at all indicated that you were thinking of serving, we could have planned differently, could have accommodated this differently. And yet, I supported you. Reluctantly, of course, but I’ve supported you, allowing you to carry on, to live out this sense of duty or this need for boyhood adventure to prove yourself. Do you know what I asked myself when you finally upped and did it, when you went to the Cartier Armoury and signed up? I asked, ‘Does he even love me anymore? Did he ever really love me?’ I know that sounds hard, and I think you really do love me, but you must understand how your decision made me feel at the time.
You send such passionate letters, Jim, that I’m afraid of loving you anymore. You’re more in love with the idea of being married to me than you are with me. When we were at home those last couple months before you signed up, we argued, argued, argued. When you came home on leave, we argued. All the plans we made together fell by the wayside. And now I’m afraid, because I fear that the whole horrible danger you willfully put yourself into when you didn’t have to will get you killed, or worse—maimed and made an invalid. I don’t want you to end up like my father. Sweet man, but missing something upstairs on account of a war that he too volunteered to fight. If you wanted to go, you should never have married me.
I am sorry. I am so sorry to bring you this news. I have no doubts that you are the fine officer that you had wanted so much to become. Wanted to become more than you wanted to be my husband. Maybe you are doing the right thing. But it was not the right thing at the right time, given my part in your life, and vice versa. You chose this path when I think you had another priority: us. And the life we were beginning to build together. I probably sound like a bitch right now to you, a heartless bitch. But you must understand me. I am leaving, I am finished with this. If it makes you feel any better, I have not found anyone else yet. That would be unfair to you if I did so without telling you. I hope that in your absence you have also remained celibate, but given your desire to run away so far from home, I cannot be so sure.
A twinge of guilt pangs through him, and he recalls for a moment the fragment of a dream he had while under the church pew at San Matteo, of waking up beside Marianne in some hotel room, yes that dream, but it wasn’t really Marianne, was it … no it wasn’t Marianne at all, that night on leave in Naples, or was it Jesi or Sorrento, that night, that nurse, Carolyn was her name, and John Barleycorn united us for a night and I was so drunk I scarcely remember … He winces from shame at this transgression and continues reading:
I feel terrible, but I can go on like this no longer. The stress of your situation is too much to bear, I am afraid.
I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry, I am so sorry, writing this letter is tearing me apart. Waiting for you has been tearing me apart. Jim, I sincerely wish you all the best, and I want this war to end, and I want you to come home safely.
Marianne
The papers waver in his trembling hands. Tears burn hot down his face. He is seized with rage and sorrow. He picks up the wine bottle ashtray and dashes it against the stucco wall. It explodes in crystalline chaos, scattering glass and sodden ash and water on the wall and swollen cigarette butts on the floor. He glances at the letter again. There is a bitter smell of soot. He looks back at the thin, tissue-like pages of the letter clamped tight in his white-boned hand. A phrase leaps out at him:
Does he even love me anymore? Did he ever really love me?
Questions each pulled upward by the hook of a question mark. He reads the questions over again, disbelieving the words:
Does he even love me anymore? Did he ever really love me?
He can hear her voice through the medium of her pen, through tonal vibrations of squiggles of ink. She berates him in his ear as though she were in the room, stalking about, arms crossed. “Do you still love me anymore? Have you ever really loved me?” He can hear her, reserved, no-nonsense, though with a touch of plaintiveness in her voice, a plaintiveness he neglected to consider when he enlisted. Reflected in her handwriting, orderly, precise, though canted to the right in a slight romantic slant and reaching outward with a curl, bringing to mind the curlicued locks of her sumptuous hair hanging over him as she kissed him from above in their bed, oft the prelude to making love. He sits on the bed. He can smell her perfume, the fruity fragrance of her freshly shampooed hair. Potpourri on the windowsill by the kitchen sink. He can smell bacon and eggs frying, he rubs her shoulders while she is stirring a pot, he is kissing her, he is taking her to bed for the first time, they are arguing, they are flirting, speaking in phrases remembered and half-remembered, half-formed and morphing impressions bubbling up from his subconscious, disremembered and re-remembered, a sensual broth formed of the sum of their experience together. Mostly, they are arguing. He avails himself of a giant, burning gulp of whiskey from the bottle from his bedside and fills his flask, along with his canteen, with more, spilling some as he does so. He finds himself walking, and as he exits the hotel into the streets clogged with men and the honking of jeep horns, he produces from his pocket again the thumb-smudged sepia-toned picture of Marianne.
21
“Damn it Jim, you really did it, didn’t you?” She looked at him through fiery eyes. They were at the kitchen table again. The kitchen had become the Kitchen Front, a line drawn through the centre of the table. He had just made a bold gambit, creeping forth across the line with his hand and snatching up the saltshaker, a bold prize, the contents of which he lightly sprinkled on his pork chops and gravy and mashed potatoes and green beans, the light of the kitchen catching the facets of the tiny granules in gemlike translucence, a score of little diamonds taken as spoils of war, the reparations of repast. She had countered, liberating a napkin from his clutches, the napkins being set roughly seventy percent on his side, at an angle. An escalating of tensions, from Sitzkrieg to Blitzkrieg, as each crossed the Imaginot Line drawn between them on the table, right through their marriage. She raised the white napkin, as if to surrender … and then promptly sniffled into it before lowering it, bunched in a ball, to the table. A feint.
“I did indeed, didn’t I?” He was wearing his service dress uniform, wool khakis smartly pressed and
correctly creased in the legs, buttons polished, and the badges of his regiment sewn into each shoulder underneath his brass officer’s stars, his wedge cap hung on an angle on the hat rack at the door along with her pillbox hat. He cleared his throat, and the grumbly sound rolled like distant artillery.
The atmosphere was so charged; the situation was such a cliché, like one of the many movies about going off to war that had been hurriedly released in recent months. “I went and did it. I had an idea and I ran through with it. I joined the army and became an officer and now I’m shipping out.” After a moment’s pause: “You know, I thought we crossed this bridge already, I thought these damned arguments were all in the past. For God’s sake Marianne, I know I’m shipping out soon and I know I’ll be gone a goodly long while, but damn it, I got this embarkation leave and we have the next five days to do as we please. Look, it’s back to Halifax for me on Wednesday, and then it’s off overseas sometime soon after that, I don’t know exactly when or where because they don’t tell us anything because it’s a war and loose lips sink ships, as they say—”
Beckoning War Page 17