A Blind Man's War

by David Fiddimore

  I bought two jerrycans of petrol from David, and topped up the Humber’s great tank from one of them. The other one went in the boot. I had bloody nigh eighty miles to cover, and precious little time to do it.

  This time there was no table groaning with food waiting for me at the end of the rainbow. Just a ruined church in honey-coloured stone. It was overgrown by native climbing plants, and looked like one of those follies the nobs once planted at the ends of their gardens. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood would have loved it. I didn’t, because I was hungry and thirsty, and it had too many nooks and crannies to hide anyone who bore me ill will.

  Father Adonis sat in a deckchair in a square of daylight in the ruined nave. There was another alongside him. Light was pouring into the place through great open gashes in its walls and roof. It actually didn’t look that safe a building to me. We shared the place with several lazy goats, which dined from the shrubs and scrub threatening to engulf the structure. He had put out the chairs to catch the rays through most of a missing gable end. He was dressed differently. Still as a priest, but not a black-skirted fusilier. He looked less like a giant bat in a top hat than the last time we had met. I flopped alongside him and asked, ‘Is that your walking-out gear? Priest in mufti?’

  ‘No, Mr Bassett. Not today. Today I am just an ordinary Catholic. You do not arrest Catholics. Why did you need to see me? If you wished to withdraw your offer, you are too late. It has already been accepted.’

  ‘No. I’m happy about that. I wanted to ask you about something else. One of my army colleagues has taken a few days’ leave, and gone away without telling anyone where he went. That is worrying. The police are asking questions about him, and that is even more worrying. When I made my own enquiries yesterday one person told me that perhaps I should pray, and another that I should go to church more often. I thought I could see a connection between the two, and decided to ask the only dodgy priest I know.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Precisely. I’m sure you know Pat Tobin – every crook around here does. Do you happen to know where he’s buggered off to?’

  Father Adonis, however, was still catching up.

  ‘You think I’m a dodgy priest?’

  ‘Exceptionally, and one of the few people on this bloody island who seems to know what’s going on. So help me now – and put me in your debt.’ He gave that a minute’s silence for solemn thought, like Armistice Day, before he responded.

  ‘Are you thirsty?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘I have some beer.’ He reached down alongside, to a new-looking galvanized iron bucket that had six bottles of Keo in it sitting in iced water. I’d been wondering when he was going to mention that. My tongue was hanging out. He opened a bottle for each of us. I said, ‘Thank you,’ but ungraciously added, ‘I didn’t think Orthodox priests drank alcohol.’

  ‘Why not, Mr Bassett? We’re not Muslims. You British have very odd notions about foreigners, you know.’

  ‘I’m sorry, and I’m Charlie, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Perfectly.’ He shut his eyes, and sat in apparent peace for a minute. Then he said, ‘I love the sun on my face and my arms. I couldn’t live anywhere else.’

  ‘Surely, no one could make you.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘My superiors could send me wherever they pleased, even to your benighted country. But the Turkish Cypriots could have us all out long before then.’

  ‘Surely not? There’s five times as many of you, as there are of them – the maths is against it.’

  ‘I think you’ll find you should have said math – but even so mainland Turkey is poised to invade the moment we and you Brits turn our backs. Life for an Orthodox priest won’t be easy here then.’

  ‘But you didn’t join up for an easy life, did you?’

  He actually smiled before he replied.

  ‘No. I became a priest because my mother wanted it.’

  ‘I joined the RAF despite my mother’s wishes. She was sure that I would be killed over Germany. As it turned out she died in an accident before I even got there. Her and my sister both. Why am I telling you this?’

  ‘Because I am a priest. It is in our nature to be listeners. Go on, if you wish. Do you miss them, your mother and sister?’

  ‘Of course I do. Time doesn’t help.’

  ‘Why would you think it should? If you love someone time is meaningless.’

  The most surprising people teach you the things about life you should have worked out for yourself.

  He gave me another bottle of beer. I thanked him. We drank in silence for a while, and then I asked, ‘I’m sorry to return to the reason for this meeting, but—’

  He interrupted before I got any further: ‘He had a small Fiat car liberated from the Italians after the war, filled up with enough food and water to last two men a week . . .’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘Up into the Troodos. You Brits can’t seem to stay away.’

  ‘Why? What for?’ Never ask another question until you get an answer to the first one, Charlie: one of my interrogation trainers taught me that.

  ‘To find your lost army pilot, of course. No one else is going to.’

  ‘Why would he do that, if everyone else has given up on the man?’

  ‘Because they were cousins, brought up in the same street. They went to school together, like Tony and I. Didn’t you know that?’

  ‘No.’ Neither did any other bugger, I suspected. ‘But thank you for telling me, anyway. Do you know even roughly where he went?’

  ‘Up around Kampos, that’s a big village a long way south or south-west of Lefka – very bad country. The man had been seen there, or if not him, some other wandering soldier. I told Pat that myself.’ I think that was the first time he admitted directly that he knew Tobin.

  ‘How far am I behind him?’

  ‘Three days. He may not welcome pursuit – you know that?’

  ‘That’s a chance I’ll have to take . . . And thank you again for telling me.’

  ‘It’s a favour I’m doing for Tony. It’s the way things work out here.’

  ‘It’s the way things work anywhere, believe me.’

  ‘Shall we have the last beer? The air will get colder shortly – the tide is about to turn.’

  Metaphor, I suppose. It took another fifteen years, the way things ran out in Cyprus. Adonis was right about the Turkish invasion . . . and the tide still hasn’t turned.

  Eventually we stood, and folded the deckchairs like two old pensioners on Margate beach. Adonis picked up his bucket as well, which now contained six upturned empty bottles. I asked him, ‘What do the police want you for?’

  ‘How well do you know your history, Charlie?’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Henry the Second and Thomas à Becket.’

  ‘The turbulent priest?’

  ‘That’s me, of course.’ He smiled, and looked younger.

  ‘Surely you don’t think we’d murder you for it?’

  ‘Why not? You have form for it, after all. Isn’t that the phrase your policemen use?’

  The slang had sounded incongruous, coming from him.

  As we shook hands and parted, I said, ‘If I can help at all . . . ?’ It was probably a rash offer to make.

  ‘I’ll remember, Charlie,’ and that was it. I’m sure that he had minders around us during the meeting, but they were very good. I didn’t get a sniff of them.

  Four hours later I stood under a tepid shower at the hotel David Yassine had called Tony’s just to confuse everyone. I washed off a hundred and fifty miles of road dust, and changed into clean duds. Then I went downstairs to phone Collins. It was half past seven in the evening and he was still at his desk.

  ‘Mr Watson asked me to find out where Corporal Tobin has scuttled off to,’ I told him.

  ‘I thought it could be something like that. Did you find him?’

  ‘He’s gone up into the Troodos to find that pilot. On his own.�
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  ‘Then he’s off his head, isn’t he? We’ll end up burying both of them.’

  ‘I’m going after him in the morning.’

  That provoked a nice peaceful silence. I began to hum that Sidney Bechet number ‘Petite Fleur’.

  ‘OK. What do you want?’

  ‘A decent gun in case I mess it up. I usually talk my way out of trouble but I can’t speak Cyppo.’

  I thought that Collins’s silence meant that he was trying to work out how best to say no. In fact he was making a technical judgement.

  ‘A silenced Sterling and fifty rounds? That do you?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll get it delivered early tomorrow, and if you fuck up we’ll say you stole it.’ He was taking a big chance, and Red Caps don’t usually take chances. He asked, ‘What transport are you using?’

  ‘Watson’s Humber.’

  ‘That’s as good as you’ll get. Let me know how you get on.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good luck, Charlie.’

  Steve was behind me; she had whispered up in bare feet. I turned and kissed her cheek as I replaced the telephone. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to do. She must have heard our sign-offs, because she asked, ‘Good luck doing what?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. I have to meet someone tomorrow, and Collins is worrying about it already. He’s an old worry guts.’

  ‘It’s because he’s a worry guts that he lived long enough to get old.’

  ‘I’ll remember that.’

  Her arm was curled lightly around my waist, and mine hers. Neither was a mark of possession . . . something more like reassurance. Like the way a cat rubs up against you as it passes, in order to say I’m here.

  ‘Why did I get the black spot?’ I asked her. ‘Not that it counts – it wasn’t a proper black spot.’

  ‘Why wasn’t it?’

  ‘In the book they cut it from the flyleaf of a Bible – which is about a million years’ worth of bad luck. I wouldn’t wish that on you anyway.’

  ‘Thanks. You got it because I saw you holding hands under the table with that goofy air hostess.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ve known Alison since she was sixteen – friend of the family. Her stepfather’s a sumo wrestler. He’d tear me to pieces if I hurt her.’

  ‘I know. We spent an hour together in the garden this morning, deciding what’s best for you. You know she loves you, don’t you?’

  ‘But not in a way that adds up to marriage and babies. I think I sort of grew into her elder brother without noticing it. Is that what you think?’

  ‘Yes. We both do. You can give me the black spot back now – it’s changed its mind.’

  We had got as far as the bar, and hopped up on stools. Jessie was behind it. She put a bottle of Keo in front of each of us: no glasses.

  ‘What did you decide was best for me?’

  Steve took a long contemplative swig at her bottle, and said, ‘I am, apparently, but I’m still not convinced.’

  ‘Are you dancing tonight?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why don’t you take me out to your favourite restaurant, then let me spend the rest of the night convincing you.’

  Full bloody circle. It had been the sort of thing I’d say to a girl when I was back on the squadron: we would all come on to them with heavy lines. Don’t get me wrong; I was always sure that I was going to make it – was going to be one of the survivors – but still frightened that I mightn’t be. Talking to the old guys these days I realize that most of us felt the same, although at the time I thought I was the only one scared stiff every time I climbed up into an aircraft.

  I was a lucky man. Steve was probably the only good-time girl in Cyprus who knew where to find an old-fashioned English fish-and-chip shop. The proprietors were second-generation Cypriot Italian, and there were chequered oil-cloth tablecloths and brown vinegar shakers on the small tables. The radio was tuned to an Italian long-wave station, and the music drifted in and out with the signal – like waves on a shore. ‘Amami se vuoi’ was one of the songs. I asked Steve, ‘Do you know what that means?’

  ‘Yes. Love me if you want to.’

  Perfect answer. It made me laugh. She didn’t laugh back. One of those odd serious moments that can embarrass you both.

  ‘Can you speak Italian?’

  ‘Yes, and French and Afrikaans. You?’

  ‘I can’t even speak English.’ That wasn’t quite true: I’ve always been good at picking up languages on the trot. I don’t know why I lied, except that it seemed important to identify things she could do better than me. I can’t remember the rest of the songs. We followed our supper down with more beer, then went back to the hotel and went to bed.

  Someone was asleep on the back seat of the Humber when I went out to it in the morning. That was odd because I was sure that I’d left it locked the night before. And I still had to unlock it to get in. There were two Sterlings in the passenger-side wheel well and neither sported a mag, although one was silenced. I wondered what sort of mob would use a silenced sub-machine gun anyway. A big pack of heavy-duty canvas stuffed with magazines and ammo left precious little space for a passenger’s feet. That didn’t worry me because I didn’t intend to take a passenger anyway.

  Thirdlow sat up, smiled and yawned. And stretched. She had small breasts, but they still jiggled.

  ‘Seen enough, or shall I do it again?’ she asked coldly.

  ‘Sorry. At this time of the morning my brain stops whenever I’m this close to a very beautiful woman.’ I couldn’t think of another get-out and, thankfully, she liked it and smiled. She wasn’t very beautiful, of course, and we both knew it – but she liked being told. ‘How long have you been out here?’

  ‘Since six. You don’t start early, do you?’

  ‘I thought a big civvy saloon driving around up in the mountains might attract too much attention early in the morning. At least there might be a bit of traffic now.’ She nodded and bit her lip.

  ‘You could be right. We don’t want to broadcast our presence.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘You and I. Captain Collins thought you’d be better off with someone who can use a Sterling, as well as the gun itself.’

  ‘I can use it. I had a course three years ago.’

  ‘And they thought you were useless. I know – we looked at your papers last night.’

  ‘Were you ordered, or are you a volunteer?’

  ‘Bit of both. If I hadn’t suggested it Captain Collins would have said he was coming along himself, so I volunteered to stop that.’

  ‘Why?’

  She pushed a strand of blonde hair away from her forehead.

  ‘Army business, Charlie – not yours. Are we going to sit here discussing military policy all day, or are we going to get your pal?’

  She had a nice determined, straight mouth. I also thought she had the look; was probably a better soldier than most of the men I’d met. And there was no arguing with her, so it was an easy decision to make.

  ‘You coming up front, or going back to sleep?’

  ‘Give me a second, and I’ll be with you.’

  The Hawk had an automatic choke, so she was a great starter. I toyed with the idea of driving off whilst Thirdlow was changing seats, but for all I knew she had a girl’s gat in her khaki shoulder bag, and would shoot out the tyres before I moved ten yards. Besides, the old Humber had a great big bench seat of polished, slippery leather across the front – it would be interesting to see how she coped with sliding along it every time we changed direction. That was my excuse, anyway.

  The first time I made a hard right she almost ended up in my lap, snorted with laughter but didn’t make the same mistake again. I noticed her hand as she reached for the car radio, and tuned it for a talkie programme – maybe she didn’t do music. Her fingers were small and slim. Fingernails short and perfectly manicured. Killer’s hands. Maybe things would be OK.

  More than two hours later, as we cr
ossed a humpy bridge over the Setrachos river she taught me a lesson I’d never forget as long as I live. I’d slowed for the bridge, and then accelerated away from it past a wide T-junction on our left. The random shots also came from our left – a scattering of them; maybe half a dozen. One smacked into the boot, and I hoped it hadn’t found the jerrycan of petrol I had stowed there. I shouted out, ‘Bastards!’ and floored the throttle pedal. I’ve already told you the Humber could shift when she felt like it.

  Thirdlow was already bending to clip a mag on the silenced Sterling. When she saw a field entrance ahead – we were probably still just in sight of our ambushers, or at least our dust plume was – she shouted, ‘Stop! Turn here!’

  I stopped because I was too stunned by the power of command to do anything else.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Turn. Go back.’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘Do as you’re bloody well told, Charlie!’

  She was the one with the gun in her hands, so I did what I was bloody well told. If you shout loudly enough at me it works every time.

  The shots had come from an olive grove raised away from the road above a low stone wall. The twisted old trees were not much bigger than bushes. One guy was already on the road, and three were scrambling down to join him. Thirdlow launched herself over the back of our seat and into the back. It’s funny what your mind notices and remembers when it’s going flat out: her knickers were a creamy yellow. I heard her frantically winding the window down on the side of the car nearest the olive grove. Then she leaned out of the window, and swept them away with a full burst of nine mil. It was a controlled summary execution: she got all three, and none got up again. One rolled out of the raised grove and into the road. The man already on the road had turned to face us as I drove towards him. He crouched, and aimed a big automatic pistol at us. I crouched down myself, reasoning that the big Humber engine block between us would give me a chance. I didn’t need one as it happened, because he never pulled the trigger. He rose up again as he saw his three pals go down, and jumped for the side of the road. I must have been doing seventy when I hit him. I think he was thrown at least ten feet in the air by the impact of the car, and my brain made those little photographs we wished we could forget, and never can. Even in the air I could see that his body was fundamentally broken: that was before he came down across a dry-stone wall.