The Letter Bearer

by Robert Allison

  Quite a task.

  Any of us would have done the same.

  And you tore off your insignia because . . .?

  Because when I made it back to HQ the entire area had been overrun. Officers were being interrogated.

  So you took a despatcher’s motorcycle? To make your escape?

  Haven’t I already told you all this?

  No. You haven’t told me anything.

  May I know the charges against me?

  That you could have done more, that you could have prevented tragedy.

  You want a scapegoat. That’s what it is. It’s not even fair to ask me this. Look at me. I’m at a low ebb.

  One last question: why didn’t you take the ring?

  The ring?

  Your wedding ring. Why didn’t you take it? From the locker, where you kept it with the letters. For safe keeping.

  You want me to set it all out in detail. Minute by minute, blow by blow. Well, I can’t do it. You have to appreciate what it was like. There wasn’t the time. I had to leave it. Is there anything else?

  Is that your best and fullest account?

  Yes. Am I exonerated?

  Do you think you should be?

  No.

  Though the irony is that there had briefly existed a version of him who might have argued otherwise. That same man upon whom had been visited, in a millisecond of explosive detonation, a state of grace. If only he might re-engineer that same release now. An acquittal by mine and bomb.

  But he can no longer look to a defence in fugue, the weight of recovered detail speaking too loud against him. That second lieutenant who had written his final letter of devotion being the same man who must now assume the burden of shame.

  And if at last he should make his return to her, would she even understand it? That the reliving of a single day should rule every day to come? But there was nothing you could have done differently, she might say to him. You couldn’t have changed the outcome. This in the assumption that some blame might be argued away. That those protective fictions, once so artfully built, might somehow be restored. The only consequence to such ministrations being a cruel reopening of the wound.

  Gunner, targets now at two-zero-zero-zero. AP rounds on my go, take your pick.

  All these men in his care. His fellow commanders poised in their turrets, field glasses to their eyes, each of them trusting that their squadron leader will stay calm, stay clear-headed, that he will see a way through. As though any man here could be so blanketed from fear. The very bedrock beneath them humming to the boom of their tanks’ aero engines. Every fabric and metal becoming acrid in the heat.

  Fire!

  Even now it stays with him: that wave of shock upon recoil, the entire body of the vehicle in spasm. Inkblots at once staining the sky above the forces set against them.

  Driver advance! Flat out, flat out!

  And then the rush to movement, allowing a release of sorts, a recourse to that which has become automatic, mechanical in nature. His switching of the wireless control between VHF and intercom performed with machinelike precision. His regular clicking of the microphone switch lending a beat to the chaos.

  George 1. Get your arses away from that ridge! Head for the next and keep firing. Off. Who’s that stuck over there? Get moving for Christ’s sake. Off.

  Until that most dread of alerts, bursting sharply through the headset chatter and white noise. Eighty-eight crews flanking left.

  Eighty-eight: so innocuous a term for so malevolent a weapon, the huge anti-aircraft guns able to crumple a tank like tinfoil from as great a distance as a mile and a half.

  George 1. Eighty-eights reported. Watch your broadsides everyone. Keep moving. Off.

  But already too late for one crew, the steel walls of their Grant suddenly collapsed, the explosion of on-board ammunition sending escape hatches and viewport shields spinning from the carcass. And then another claimed straight afterwards, its turret blasted upward like a kettle lid to land upturned in the dust.

  And the same fate, no doubt, for all. Any moment now. Any second. His weakening thighs and knees braced against turret walls, clouds of oil smoke obscuring any periscope view, palls of cordite stinging at his eyes. Any vestiges of resolve cancelled at once by the shell that whines overhead to burst only yards behind, spraying the hull with shrapnel.

  Jesus!/Shit, shit, shit!/Everybody all right?/We’re OK, we’re OK.

  No damage to the running gear, mercifully. But the antenna is gone, no further instruction to the squadron possible.

  Skipper! What now?

  He ought to lead them forward. That would be the better tactic. Not to allow the eighty-eight crews to pick out targets. But to embark upon that murdering ground . . .

  He shouldn’t abandon the squadron. He knows he shouldn’t. But then perhaps the others might spot his manoeuvre and do likewise.

  Driver reverse. Sharp right, sharp right!

  And already the guilt is there. That he is withdrawing a serviceable vehicle from the field. That he is doing so without regard for all those under his command. A shame that cuts even deeper as he puts his eyes back to the periscope to see another of the squadron’s tanks wheeling violently apart.

  And yet still it’s not enough. He has to be out of it, this stifling cell. He needs unconfined space, smokeless air. That shallow ridge ahead will do. He simply can’t wait any longer.

  Driver halt! Halt, goddamn it! Can’t see a thing, I need to take a look.

  But no one among his crew will copy his escape, because he is their commander and he has their trust. A reconnaissance, he had said. An absolute betrayal when he has no such intention, his only impulse being to settle himself into sheltering thoughts. The warmth of her gathered to him in the dark, the thrill of her breath across the back of his neck, the tentativeness of her touch against his cheek. The entire language of her given over to that single imploration for his return.

  And then the impact, throwing him onto his back, clapping the breath from him. The flush of searing heat across his cheeks and forearms signalling the worst before he even sees it. The Grant gutshot and killed, its flanks already choked in yellow fire.

  Bail out. Bail out now.

  Please God.

  No one emerging. No hatch opening. His terrible and undisputed handiwork.

  Under poetic law there would be a summary justice for it; an airstrike, a providential shell, some means by which he might be obliterated. But instead he knows there will be hearings and testimonies, the complete, inglorious portrait of him held up for all to see. Better to acknowledge the crime now, to throw off those emblems and insignia of which he has proved so unworthy and submit himself to the desert, to its shrouding dust and purgative winds.

  And of those collected farewells, secure in their protective locker: he will recover them if he can, his wardship of them intended not only as a contrition but an act of faith. That we endure in the words we have written and thoughts we have laid out, each of us unimpeachable in that better version of ourselves.

  Why didn’t you take the ring? she will ask.

  Because that man didn’t deserve it. That man who had a home and a wife.

  She will nod, heartbroken. And there’s nothing else you have for me?

  No, I think not. I think at last we have the final story of me.

  21

  The major’s time is up. It’s apparent to the rider even if not to Ingram himself, his advancing delirium perhaps shielding him from any deeper awareness. Over the past few days he has declined beyond any recovery, the skin purpling beneath his sunken eyes, his teeth stained from weeping gums. Most of his remaining hours spent asleep except for those moments he will awake to stare into space, an emaciated watchman, his attention commanded by something deeper in the gloom. There’s little to be done now except to watch and wait, and hope for the gentlest end.

  He begins his last day with a series of loud moans, rousing the rider from his sleep. No attempts at language but simply reflexive o
utbursts. Even so, the rider makes his best attempt to comfort, placing a calming hand on his shoulder while offering quiet encouragements. Best to sleep now. It won’t help to be awake. His efforts rewarded only with the occasional anguished outcry. ‘Why are you here?’ And, ‘What are you trying to steal from me?’

  Then the major’s attention will drift, allowing the rider to withdraw, wary of further bouts of madness. It’s in his mind to call for the guards and point out that his cellmate is already a dead man, have them remove him in advance. But guilt annuls the idea, leaving him to sit in silence and watch as the major will every so often raise up his hands to perform a slow ballet, as though to finesse himself through these final hours.

  When at last he lapses back into unconsciousness the rider gratefully reclines, hoping on his next waking to find the whole business discreetly concluded. But the dying man will not slip off so easily, a weary summons from him again breaking the stillness, once more obliging the rider to attend him.

  ‘You have to get back. Make something, build something. It’s on you, the ones who go home. Don’t you dare squander it. Don’t you bloody dare.’

  His last decree before the work of dying. A task the rider abandons him to while observing from a respectful distance. What else should he do? There are no palliatives, and the burden can’t be shared. It’s a perdition for both, in truth, the major’s protracted surrender both wearying and saddening to witness. By early afternoon his body appears in the grip of an inescapable torpor, only his eyes showing any vestiges of animation before they too paralyse, his gaze settled on something beyond the prison walls. Once the rider is certain the process is finished he tentatively feels for a pulse, then goes to the door to begin beating on it with his fist. There’s a man dead in here! Do you hear me? You need to take him away! You need to bury him!

  They don’t come, of course, one alarm as spurious as the next. There are crops to be tended, goats to milk, the order of the day already set. The rider gives up at last, and covers over the major’s face with straw while he waits for the usual ration of stale bread and grain porridge to be delivered.

  Not until he wakes from a period of slumber in late afternoon does he find the body at last taken, removed no doubt into some unmarked pit from where it will never be recovered. The tale of Major Leonard Geoffrey Ingram to become as dubious as any campfire yarn.

  Time slows after the major’s passing. It’s to be expected, with no banter or repartee to fill the hours and days. No new experiences for the rider to gather, nothing to be learnt or assimilated. Instead he is compelled to become of deeper interest to himself. The flesh is withering, perhaps even the bones reducing as in old age; things which ought certainly to be logged. And so he notes on the walls the measurements he takes of himself, building up the dimensional record. The thighbone two palms in girth, the anklebones but one. An eye orbit documented in the fleshy base of a thumb. If he places both hands about his hips then they will fail to meet only by the length of a ring finger, a distance under imminent threat of collapse. And it will continue, this diminution, until he is entirely reshaped. But into who? Witnesses would be useful. Someone with a camera.

  And then something quite remarkable. They leave the door open! On a morning otherwise quite ordinary. And not by mistake either, the gap too inviting. A trap, then. He is meant to attempt an escape, handing them a reason to gun him down, ending their responsibility for him. Well he won’t fall for it!

  He sits for a time and waits, his eyes adjusting to the pyramid of brilliance across the floor. Until it occurs to him that his captors have little need of subterfuge if they mean to finish him. Simple enough for them to commit straightforward murder and fabricate the circumstance later. Perhaps it’s not as it seems.

  He eases the door further open to look out upon a scene of surprising calm, a sparse collection of clay dwellings accompanied by several small livestock pens and a modest stable. There are goatskins hung to dry, cloths of different hues stretched from a wooden frame. An old man blithely regarding him from amid a throng of terracotta jugs, a pregnant woman sparing him a nervous glance in passing. He can hear someone humming, a blade being sharpened. In the gaps between buildings he spies the bright red of the ocean, and it takes the breath from him. That he should have allowed himself to be held here so long, starving and subdued, without ever daring to test his confinement. That he and the major had never inspired one another to greater courage.

  He is about to wander further from the gaolhouse when one of the guards scurries around the side of the building and blocks his path, at once berating him while raising the barrel of an antique rifle to his face, the odours of stale gunpowder and goat grease wafted under his nose until he is forced back to the doorway of the prison, where he folds like a pack of cards on his own joints. The Berber finishing with a high-pitched tirade before withdrawing a little way to watch, wary that the escapee might spring up to resume his flight.

  The rider shades his eyes, confused in the sun’s heat. His tormentor rested now against a wooden post, from where he idly spits tobacco juice onto the sand.

  A thoroughly rude chap, no doubt.

  Brinkhurst might have approved the epithet.

  He thinks it is because the Germans have left that he is allowed this extra freedom. If not formally or officially left, then at least maintaining a conspicuous absence. And presumably without leaving any instructions for his transportation or disposal. Perhaps there’s more to it still, rumours continually drifting in to settle about the ears of any disposed to receive them. It’s all finished! The war is done with, the Axis powers abandoning the desert! All of it communicated to the rider in a code of furtive glances, the occasional and inadvertent relay of surprise. But the British were beaten . . . quite defeated . . . How does such a thing happen?

  Generally it will be Rude Chap or one of the other regular guards – rechristened in these more cordial times as Dour Chap, Fierce Chap and Happy Chap – who will fetch him his bowls of food and fresh water. A chair fashioned from an old saddle and footstool now set out for him as his fool’s throne so that he can spend his afternoons stretched out to dry. He is given a fixed perimeter within which to exercise, his feet collecting dirt like flaccid shovelheads. Except that no one seems quite certain on the boundary, provoking regular argument over the matter, Happy Chap becoming markedly more fierce than Fierce Chap, who will invariably retreat into the most intractable dourness. Each in the end cancelling out one another’s tempers.

  The rider wonders if he might not just walk away. Leave them to their tiresome squabbles and discreetly abscond. But with what consequences? He’s clearly supposed to wait. If not for the Germans, then for the British. His captors perhaps envisaging some formal exchange, a handing over from which they will depart recompensed. If there was any way to barter his way free . . .

  But then perhaps there’s some advantage in this prolonged isolation. There are preparations to be made, things to be settled upon, if he is ever to re-enter the wider world. And foremost among them, the story of his adventure. If it should ever come to the point of cross-examination, he will need to be beyond doubt, his testimony unimpeachable. He will need to report with authority how he and his fellow soldiers had trekked bravely northward in search of Allied forces, taking casualties along the way. How he and Major Ingram had been separately taken prisoner while attempting to rejoin their own lines, the major succumbing at last to his wounds.

  And most importantly of all, how he had come – despite every care and diligence – so tragically to lose his crew. The precise circumstances of it, the exact sequence of disaster as he can best recall it. There’ll be some leeway here, of course, given the fog of war. Things will happen so quickly in the melee of battle that it’s not always possible to register events with any certainty. The mind sometimes making exclusions from the record. That filter engaged not as a mercy but as a survival instinct.

  22

  The rider learns that there is to be a renovation of his f
ormer gaol cell, and now lowly garret. Though the intent is not immediately apparent when a train of womenfolk enter one afternoon to sweep and mop the floors, any old or polluted bedding transported away with them. An eviction, perhaps? But then they return with fresh bedding and a scattering of furniture in the way of stools, a table and a small brass French paraffin stove – Garanti Inexplosible – which they set down with a ritual deliberation in the centre of the room. And then a jar of fluid, which he takes to be alcohol, handed to him by a veiled crone with seared-off fingertips, the bestowal made with an extravagant gesture of warning. Mind yourself. With this you could destroy everything!

  And still his assimilation into village life continues, those months of incarceration becoming with distance more probationary than malign. They begin to entrust him with menial tasks, each to be conducted according to the robustness of his constitution. The scraping of skins, the collecting of earthenware, the tending of a goat, the plucking of a chicken – that duty awaking in him a particular disquiet. After hearing him coughing one morning they even arrange for him a doctor’s visit, the fellow in question arriving with his tonics and victuals in a briefcase of Italian leather fastened with gold-plated clasps, like a man from the ministry come to take the minutes of his condition. A hearty massage of his chest and a lengthy monitoring of his breathing leading the official to conclude . . . what? His pronouncements eliciting a black-toothed grin from Happy Chap. An endorsement for his carers then, at least. A paragon of healing!

  And thereafter a greater transformation still, his soldier’s garments at last taken from him and burnt, fresh robes bestowed to him before he is led like an apostle to a small olive grove to spend the hours collecting fruit into a basket while meditating on the nature of his ordainment. This simpler and more pious life. And his final permission to withdraw.

  He wakes one morning to the sound of rain, the rattle of drops across the prison roof pulling him in curiosity to the doorway. Almost unreal to see the village awash, its hard earth now slicked and rutted, an alarmed mule mired at its tether, every hollow vessel in sight turned upward for collection. The skies, he thinks, almost English. And perhaps it’s that pang of nostalgia – some barely understood yearning – that decides it for him. He can’t be here any longer.