Perhaps the archdeacon is already dead.
Swann shouts again and the rider makes his throw, a weak pitch that lofts the grenade only just over the dividing brush, the resulting explosion sweeping up a wave of grit. No sound emerging through the smoke this time.
Swann cuts him a baleful glance and then lifts himself up into a run, his boots spooning sand as he tracks Brinkhurst’s retreat. The rider rises to follow but is halted at once by a tide of dizziness, the severity of it leaving him to sway as though bedded in a shifting floor. Desperate with fear, he throws himself into a stagger, reaching for balance with each step. Where are they?
Then there is Swann! On his knee again, the Thompson spitting out casings. And there, Brinkhurst, sunk behind a sandstone bulkhead, pulling frantically at his foot, as though it ought somehow to detach. And in the distance, two slender boys in tandem, canted like the dark solidi of a cave mural.
‘Give me a hand!’ Brinkhurst, tugging still at his ankle, his booted foot disappeared into a thin chasm of rock. ‘For God’s sake!’
The Italians are moving up the wadi now, throwing themselves from wall to wall, loosing off a barrage of fire. Brinkhurst yelps as a scatter of bullets punches debris from the wall above his head. With a hoarse cry he pulls his foot free and returns fire as the rider wanders past him, clinging to crags and abutments as he tries to follow the retreating Swann. There isn’t going to be time. There just isn’t.
He rounds a turn in the wadi to see a sliding trail of rock and gravel, and looks up at the lance corporal heaving himself to the top of the banking. Too steep for him to follow, surely. He totters over to the same spot and attempts to mimic the escape, his legs wading uselessly against dislodged earth. He gains then slips, slips then stumbles, grasping for some handhold. Swann looks down at him, panting, his face screwed with fatigue.
‘Umpty,’ he says.
The rider clasps the Scot’s outstretched arm, finding at last some purchase beneath his feet. He claws and scrabbles against the face, sand scuffed into his eyes, a last surge lifting him finally to the summit, where he rolls onto his back, his chest burning, his breathing short. From down in the wadi he hears Brinkhurst’s voice, shrill with pleading. He’s hurt his ankle, he can’t scale the bank! Quickly, for Christ’s sake!
Swann helps lift the rider to his feet and they hobble away from the edge as more noise erupts in the trench below, the rattle of machine-gun fire joining the echoes of pistol shots. They hear a short silence followed by a tumult of voices as the rider gazes in disbelief back to the wadi, still half expecting to see the ex-captain or Mawdsley scrambling clear. Could it possibly be true? Their company so quickly and bloodily halved? All duplicity and double-dealing at last purged?
Swann continues to lend his shoulder, drawing them both away from the commotion and back towards unbroken ground. There is no telling how much distance they cover and how quickly, but the Jebel foothills grow nearer every time the rider lifts his eyes. Soon there’ll be forest again, and hedgerow, and a thousand places in which to rest, to recuperate and to hide. The scent of blood just strong enough to keep him from unconsciousness.
A single shot causes both men to pull up and look to their rear, the sound no more than a matchstick crack at this range. But there’s nothing to be seen, the landscape as inert as the sky, leaving the rider to wonder if they might just have received the final chapter of their ex-captain. A bullet to the head perhaps, from captors immune to his sly diplomacy, his desperate attempts at barter. He would have offered them anything, promised anything, passed to them the deserters’ identities, ranks and location like the trinkets he had so jealously coveted.
‘Best push on,’ advises Swann.
The rider feels weak, nauseous, unwilling even to contemplate the rigours of the remaining journey. ‘They might know about the camp,’ he says weakly.
The lance corporal winces as he flexes his arm. ‘Count on it.’
They muster themselves for the remainder of their retreat, both looking for a final time in the direction of the ground they have fled before moving off.
It is early evening by the time the two survivors make their return to the metropolis, their ascent lengthened by frequent rest stops for the rider. Both arriving back with the expectation that their base might have been ransacked as part of some Senussi plot. But in the event they find everything exactly as they had left it, leaving both to sit in dolorous mood as Swann bathes and dresses his wounds.
‘So what happened to you back there?’ the lance corporal asks. ‘In the wadi.’
‘I lost my balance.’
‘It goin’ to happen again?’
The rider hesitates. ‘I was thinking I would leave,’ he says. ‘And not be a burden to you any more.’
‘Goin’ to wait until mornin’?’
‘First light, I’d thought.’
‘Done that letter for me yet?’
‘I can do it now, if you like.’
‘Fine.’ Swann flexes his bandaged arm and gets to his feet. ‘Leave you to it, then.’
A little relieved, the rider fetches his postbag and writing implements and sits to his task beneath a setting sun, struck by the irony that this will be the only meaningful exchange between them, both having engaged with one another as a mere necessity. He had given no thanks for his rescue, and likewise had received no censure for his cynical throw. But then the lance corporal would perhaps be the last to expect reason or excuse, his own decisions to save the Senussi boy and condemn Brinkhurst drawn from that same universe of insoluble equation and indeterminate precipice, everything submitted to the cusp of the moment. No wonder then that he cannot find his place.
Swann’s table of contents unfolded before him, the rider sets himself to the letter.
The following morning the rider wakes at dawn to find Swann already up, and the two quietly breakfast while the lance corporal takes a little while to read the completed letter. Despite the occasional frown of puzzlement and several sideways glances at its author, he gives it his unspoken sanction and proceeds to the chore of writing it out in his own hand, ink soon spattered onto his hands and shirt as he battles with a recalcitrant pen. The rider meanwhile is given dispensation to pick from the grotto a modest quantity of provisions and a gun, his choice being a weighty but reliable Mauser pistol. While making his selections he comes across the bag containing the ex-captain’s treasures and quickly sifts through it, finding nothing of practical use. Hard to think that Swann will find any of the trophies of interest either, the entire collection no doubt destined to gather as refuse among the city’s walls and columns.
His preparations completed, the rider revisits Swann to find that the official version of the letter is ready for him to accept into his postbag along with the pen and ink bottle, the lance corporal disavowing any further need for either. He casts a final look about their empty headquarters. ‘So you think you’ll stay here?’
Swann shrugs. He pulls a cigarette and lights it.
The rider offers a final ‘Good luck’, the sentiment only half meant. He pulls his postbag up across his shoulder and turns his back on the city, leaving the lance corporal to his smoke.
He makes his way up from the lower escarpment and then over the brow of the adjoining hill, following the prescribed route of descent. For the next several hours he treks across the broad sweep of foothills, ensuring that he swings well to the east of the Italians’ domain, pausing occasionally to steady his heart in the bursal faults of granite and limestone plates. In the early afternoon he broaches the last drop of land before the ocean, a craggy bulwark that runs along the sea’s perimeter, divided sporadically by waterless estuaries. He pauses on the flat clifftop, shading his eyes to look along the length of an empty coastal track. Then begins his steady climb down, elated to recognise himself as a vessel without fixed course, free at last to contrive his ideal bearing.
17
What liberty! What licence! He’s away and out of it now, unbuttoned from any
interest but his own, loosed like gunsmoke into the wind. Enough provisions to stand him for several days, a sketch of the country copied out: Benghazi to the west, rump-ward of the peninsula, Derna located eastward, the ribbon of seaboard winding out to Tobruk, Mersa Matruh and at length the port of Alexandria. The entire journey perhaps some five hundred miles, a farness of dispiriting reach given his few supplies and limited endurance. But if he approaches it with the idea of a campaign, gathering the distance in stages, then fortune might carry him on.
He walks for a time along the frontier of cliff running parallel to the shore, a rough cart track the only feature between himself and the ocean. At first he stays close to the shelter of higher ground, wary of any aerial reconnaissance, but before long he finds himself unable to resist the sea, and crosses the track to survey the pattern of coves and inlets that break occasionally into stretches of unspoilt sand. In need of rest, he finds for himself a comfortable vantage point overlooking a small bay, and he removes his weapons and kitbag to sit for a while, beguiled momentarily by the intrusions of a former life. The quiet harbour of some seaside getaway or postcard resort, the specifics of location and circumstance obscure to him, the indices of time and place not yet repaired. It occurs to him that the act of swimming might help rebuild the missing connections. But his ears are perforated, his muscles lacking the strength to push through any undertow. So he must accept for now his limitations, and be content to imagine.
A flight of aircraft passes overhead, their low-frequency drone causing him to stir. Enemy planes, to judge by their eastward path. But too far above to see him, their target in any case certain to be more pressing than any lone foot soldier. Most likely they are bound for allied shipping convoys, or the dockworks of Tobruk. Perhaps the shipping lanes of Alexandria, or the training camps and supply depots outside Cairo and Giza. How many tons of TNT to be dropped? How many millions of mines to be laid? Enough to refigure the landscape of a country, its map studied now as a means to strategy, its place names overlaid with the icons for airfields and fuel dumps. And perhaps the same now for any implicated nation, shocked and battered into transformation. Who could possibly expect to emerge from such a cataclysm unchanged? No need for him to feel estranged or set apart from the common experience. He must find his way home exactly as the rest, bewildered and unsure, encouraged by hopes of a more certain world.
He lingers to watch the surf rise against the rocks, diverted briefly by the fantasy that enough bombs might fall to sever the entire cap of land, setting it to sea like a colossal raft, bearing him homeward. Then with a gust of effort he breaks from the idea to take up his luggage, and commits himself once more to travel.
Further eastward the range of tall bluffs slides away into flat arable land, many of the plains apportioned into small and irregularly sized cornfields, putting him in mind of human skin through a magnifying glass. North of the coastal track a gathering of clay and thatch dwellings begins to multiply, and he decides it safer to move away from any centres of civilisation, the loyalties of their inhabitants unknown. In the afternoon he treks a little further inland to pick out a rest spot in the shade of a line of blossoming cacti. The profusion of flowers – which he thinks might be yellow – so great that each mast might have been garlanded to mark out some festival ground. Many of the paddles are crested with a number of small and rough-skinned fruit, and he picks several to put into his kitbag, thinking to sample them in the event of keener hunger. The rows of cacti have been set as hedgerows to divide the lands of neighbouring farmers, and he looks on as several of the harvesters take again to their labour, an aged fellow scything corn with a hand sickle, a black-shawled woman carrying a basket between olive trees. Portraits of rusticity to rival any medieval woodcut. Occasionally he receives a curious stare from those who pass by, but no one pauses to offer any greeting, a conflict between foreign powers likely no more comprehensible to them than a war in Heaven. If they might upheave themselves and make a push towards civilisation they would find their roads holed, their bridges blown and their wells salted. But most will not venture so far, sealed as they are into an existence indentured to inches of rainfall, a summer’s yield of grain. There might be a peace in such a life if one were an uncomplicated man. A man like Swann, for example, who knows himself so well that he might comfortably abstain from the wider world. But one would need to be certain in such a demission, untroubled by any ties to family or loved ones. And in composing the lance corporal’s letter the rider had only discovered further proof of himself, the casualness of the farewell entirely contrary to his own nature, his every retracing of the words leading him to marvel that he could ever have stitched himself into that same impenetrable skin:
Dear‒‒‒‒‒,
– the intended recipient having never been divulged to him –
I wanted to write and let you know not to worry when you do not find me returned home with the regiment. It is not because any harm has come to me but because I have decided to stay here. I think it is the best thing for me. This is a wide country, and once the war has blown past there will be plenty of space for a fellow of big ideas to set out his station and make a go of it. I will miss you and Hettie and granda but I will not miss the boats or the docks or the pier or the thin streets. I will not miss the low sky or the sight of fish heads mashed into the cobbles. It will not trouble me to think that I have run my last errand to MacQuarie’s stall, or that I will never again knock a man into the freezing sea at Christmas. And apart from one or two who might notice that extra quiet in my dens of habit, I do not think that I will be much missed. So let there be no upset.
I should warn however that you may come to hear reports of me that are not true and that I should not want you to believe. This is because I have resigned from the army and have yet to let them in on it. But you know how it goes with me. I have no more care for a captain’s bark than a headmaster’s clout, and I will not work against the grain of my own nature no matter what the penalty. The army is managed by a clan of ditherers with swagger canes and perfumed cheeks, and I cannot find it within myself to run and fetch and carry and die for the likes of such. We have been thrown forward and backward like a tug in high seas according to the whim and guess of these sorts, and have gathered no advantage other than to collect the odd patch as minefield or cemetery. It is the worst kind of waste, and too sad to see, and so that is why I have made myself my own man.
If the papers should come to you for any statement (or if you should feel compelled to put yourself forward in my name), I should be obliged if you might bring to their attention the following with respect to our troubles here:
i) That our boys need better equipment, including guns of greater calibre and range, so that they might at least hold their own in open contest.
ii) That we need more and better armoured vehicles, our woeful collection tossed at present into the ring to be squashed like old hats and then set to burn, with terrible consequence.
iii) That training camps should be built to a higher standard of cleanliness and safety, with less risk of infiltration by insects, snakes and especially scorpions (which are the very worst and most malicious of all creatures that scuttle or crawl).
iv) That whoever is running the whole show should be hooked from the stage as would be any inept vaudevillian and replaced with a man of foresight and frugality. A Highlander would be a commendable choice.
Other than the above, it remains only for me to wish you the most profitable and happiest of lives, and to ask of you a final favour, which is to at some point (and at your convenience) seek out Conall MacKeown, who is the eldest of the MacKeowns on Balfour Street, and to batter him enthusiastically about the face. I have thought many a time to administer this correction myself, but the job has somehow escaped me. Be assured that such a thing would be a charity not only to me but to all who have ever met him, or are yet to do so.
Finally, please do not think that I am suffering any hardship here, because I am not. Instead look to
your lanterns next time they blow out in a storm and think of me watching fireflies against a desert sky. All will be well, and for the best.
Your dearest‒‒‒‒‒,
Rolland
Not authentically Swann, of course. Certainly no version of him that friends or family would immediately recognise. But the lance corporal had nevertheless seemed satisfied with the reinvention of himself into a more erudite and expressive lout. Perhaps in the end he had simply wanted to send something back to demonstrate that he had somehow become a better and wiser man than he had been before, found amid war some well of learning and knowledge from which to invigorate and better himself. Lance Corporal Rollo Swann will indeed be going home, but as a revised version of himself, a man of letters and of scholarly perception, this palimpsest now destined to enter the collective memory. Philanthropist and humanitarian, a bluff and hearty rascal with wit to spare. While somewhere at the top of a nameless summit the real Swann might gaze out, brooding and Hyperborean, restless as an exiled king. The truth of a man lying somewhere between who he was and who he might yet become.
Exhilarated by this reasoning, the rider resolves to take up his journey once more, his path plotted out after the aspect of a natural fault, making the straightest cut possible across the broad head of land.
He walks through the afternoon and into early evening, tracking as far as he dares from the coast while keeping it in sight. Southward of his path a series of low hills rises up, their slopes and valleys dense with juniper and fine-bladed sedge, each billow of land rendered in bright copper under a fading sun. By dusk he reaches that part of the coast which falls southward again, where he tracks the ellipse of a crescent bay. Moving further up the hillside he encounters the ruins of an ancient basilica, and he approaches the site with some caution before reconnoitring the grounds, pausing only in admiration of several cracked floor mosaics. Afterwards he collects kindling for a small fire and heats a tin of M & V skilly and some water for a mug of tea, and reclines to ponder a flotilla of stars. The very spot, he imagines, where men of faith must have stood and ruminated. God now and then spied amid an unworked nature.
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