A Spell of Swallows

by Sarah Harrison

  Saxon concentrated hard for some minutes, then said aloud: ‘Amen.’

  But by that evening his prayers, and Vivien’s less formal but more desperate ones, had not been answered. They had scoured the house and garden, the cellar, sheds and garage. They had walked round the village, circulating his description and asking people if they’d seen the dog (no one had) and if they would kindly keep an eye out for him. Not wanting to upset Susan, they did not call on the Clays, but knew it would be only a matter of time before they heard. Everyone had been most kind and concerned—almost too much so, Saxon thought. He hoped the dog’s disappearance was not assuming too great an importance, especially in view of the next day’s solemn proceedings.

  It was this uncomfortable sense of disproportion that led Saxon to abandon the search first, and return to the vicarage at about eight, leaving Vivien to call on one or two more houses and walk back via the river-bank path in the hope that the dog might be wandering somewhere there. (He made a small addendum to his earlier prayers: that his wife would not come across her pet, floating, dead, in the water.) Every effort had been made. Enough was enough.

  By the entrance to the churchyard he paused to admire again the memorial, in all its simple dignity. He would rise early tomorrow and complete and polish his sermon. In the absence of Lady Delamayne and her irritating manner it was possible to feel more genuine gratitude for her contribution. As to the choice of reader, whatever the Delamaynes’ faults they were experienced in the matter of public occasions and Saxon had no option but to trust their combined judgements.

  Some time later, when it was almost dark, John Ashe left Mrs Jeeps’s house and went for a walk. With his small haversack over his shoulder he turned right out of his lodgings and set off along the High Street in a westerly direction, but after a hundred yards or so he turned right again down one of the alleys that led to Back Street, and walked the opposite way, in the direction of the vicarage.

  It was a perfect late summer’s evening, the sky a deepening shade of violet, through which the whole panoply of constellations were softly beginning to appear, a pinprick at a time. The dappled tracery on the pale, luminous face of the moon seemed clear and close enough to touch. The darkening hill beyond the village, with its black crest of trees, was large and mysterious. Walking past the backs of the houses, their small lights and small lives, he felt a scornful pride. Not for him!

  Just as he passed the Clays’ yard their back door opened and he quickened his stride. At the end of Back Street he turned right for a third time, emerging on to the High Street with the church opposite, about twenty yards to his left. He crossed the road and walked swiftly across the new-mown grass between the graves. In the gathering dusk they reminded him of kneeling people, lining his route. Once on the north side of the church he cut across the churchyard at an angle, heading for the far corner where the smooth short grass disappeared into a tangle of brambles beyond which lay the wood, the same that bordered the vicarage garden. Ashe negotiated the hedge of thorns with giant strides, legs lifted high, but even so his forearms and ankles were scratched by the time he’d reached the other side.

  Here, amongst the trees and swamped by the tangle of long-dead twigs and branches were a handful of ancient, neglected graves. He doubted whether the Mariners, or even their very keenest parishioner, knew or cared that they were here—the area had reverted to nature. He himself had only come across them in the course of fairly determined exploration. The furthest one, and the most densely covered, was in the form of a stone coffin or sarcophagus, the lid of which tilted at a very slight angle, allowing an aperture of about half an inch.

  This was the one which Ashe approached. He laid his haversack on the ground and grasped the heavy lid with both hands.

  MESOPOTAMIA

  I’m in a shell-hole in the desert. My back’s against the side, so it’s like sitting in an armchair. Everything’s very quiet. The sky’s full of stars. The air’s cold and clear, my breath’s smoking. The only place my skin is broken is these fucking blisters.

  My companions are two dead men, and one as near as makes no difference. One of the corpses fell into the hole headfirst, he looks like he’s trying to tunnel to Australia. The other one landed across my legs and when I pushed him off he settled on to his side as if asleep. He’s a Sikh, I can see where his long black hair’s neatly combed up at the back of his head, below his turban. The third bloke’s sitting opposite me, we’re looking at each other over the heads of the others; so he’s company of a sort—but there’s nothing in the way of conversation. The only sound he makes is a sticky, crackling noise when he takes a breath, which is about once every five seconds; I counted. His face is shiny in the moonlight, like a waxwork, and his eyes are open, but they’re dull and fishy; if he can see me at all he doesn’t care.

  Just as well. I’m thinking I ought to do something, but to be honest it’s the first peace I’ve had all day. I was thrown in here by shell-blast, and must have been out cold for quite a while. One of my ears feels as if it’s had cement poured in, but a bit of deafness never hurt anyone. I turn my head so my good ear’s against the bank; that way I pick up less of that nasty gargling from over the way.

  It’s odd to think that around me here in this hole in the desert two—nearly three—tragedies have occurred. Several families will never be the same. How ironic. My parents don’t even know where I am, and wouldn’t care if they did, and I’m alive, never more so. These three probably have mothers and fathers who love them. Maybe wives and children, too. They’re out there in Surbiton, or Simla, or wherever, worrying about these men, but they don’t know what’s happened. Not yet. But I do. Twenty years from now, in who knows what sort of world, they still won’t know much except that this person was killed in the war. They won’t know about the desert, or the shell-hole, or the great big fucking shambles that led to this moment. And they won’t know about me, John Ashe, the survivor who sat here with them tonight under the stars . . .

  A bit late in the day I’m doing it—having serious battle-thoughts; getting philosophical. And suddenly I realise that while I’ve been having them, the gargling’s stopped.

  I’m alone now, and I need to get moving. I turn over on to all fours and everything screams with pain. I may have escaped the shrapnel and the bullets but I was thrown through the air like a human cannonball. And it’s freezing! While I was lying still I was numb, but now everything hurts. I put my hand up to my deaf ear to check it hasn’t fallen off. It feels like a piece of meat that’s been grafted on to the side of my head. My movement’s caused a minor disturbance among the other occupants and one after another they change position. The Sikh flops on to his back, the tunneller slithers down to join him, causing a minor landslide of sand and stones. His collapse nudges the gargler who slips gently to one side like a drunk at a party. They’re all in a heap now, every mother’s son: a load of battle rubbish. To help me clamber out I brace my foot against the pile of bodies—it’s surprisingly stiff already.

  I remind myself to be careful. It’s a clear night and if memory serves the Turkish vantage point is no more than a few hundred yards away. So I pull myself over the lip of the crater on my belly and lie there, looking around. A lizard’s-eye view.

  It’s extraordinary. What I can see is hundreds, thousands, of other human lizards scattered over the desert in the moonlight. Some perfectly still, some crawling, others, like me, lying with heads raised, staring about in disbelief. In the shell-hole I’d been insulated by the walls and my partial deafness, the insistent, intimate rattle of that dying man’s breathing. Up here I can hear, and the air’s full of sighing and moaning, like the wind, though it’s completely still. In the middle distance a scream goes up, then turns into a feral howling and yelping . . . Some poor bugger can’t stand it, but doesn’t want to go.

  Seems it’s been carnage. And now I’m beginning to get my bearings, I can see the Arch up ahead, and the hillocks, the Turkish redoubts, black on softer black, the first s
low seepage of dawn; it must be between four and five. So our lines are behind me. I’m in no-man’s land, me and God knows how many others, of both sides by the look of it.

  We’re not all lizards out here. I can just make out figures moving quietly among the bodies, medical orderlies, leaning down to give what help they can. No idea if they’re Turkish or ours, but it’s good to know someone’s getting help. I can’t just stay here, I’m going to start moving back. The sand’s cold and clammy. I’m thirsty. I begin moving round the shell-hole, hand over hand, one leg dragging after another in a kind of swimming motion. I don’t feel particularly strong, so by the time I’m on the far side of the hole I’m panting and light-headed and I’ve no idea how far I’ve got to go. I seriously consider going back in the hole and watching the stars fade and the sun come up . . . The trouble is, once that happens it’ll be hotter than hell and if I’m thirsty now—

  I keep going. It’s like negotiating a graveyard, one where the bodies have been dug up and left lying on the surface with holes and ditches in between. I don’t know which is worse, the dead bodies or the ones that look dead and aren’t. I crawl through patches of slimy matter, which clogs the sand and trails stickily through my fingers. Blood, viscera, vomit, faeces—the effluent of the battlefield. Faces look at me as I slither by, some of them with unlit eyes: gone, dead. Others twist and gape and croak, asking for something that I can’t give. One man roars and lurches violently, his arm falls heavily across me and I have to struggle to escape. I’m terrified that he’ll give me away and I’ll get blasted.

  A hundred yards feels like a mile when you’re on your stomach, but I get used to it. After a couple of hundred yards I don’t care about the sights and sounds and the stuff underneath me, I just keep going. I’m black and filthy and single-minded, a creeping thing. But when I hear a voice I recognise, it stops me in my tracks.

  ‘Ashe! Over here! Ashe!’

  I turn my head this way and that. There’s a man to my right with a bundle of chewed, clotted rags where his leg used to be, but it’s not him . . .

  ‘Ashe! For pity’s sake . . .’

  I look the other way and suddenly I can see him—Jarvis. He doesn’t seem to be injured, he’s scrabbling his way towards me, his face is twisted, almost unrecognisable, so that if it wasn’t for the voice I wouldn’t have known it was him.

  ‘Sir—are you all right, sir?’

  ‘They’re coming, Ashe.’

  ‘Who’s coming, sir?’

  ‘Arabs—behind you!’

  I sneak a glance over my shoulder and now, of course, it’s obvious. Those ministering angels of mercy are the Buddhoos going about their business. That’s not water they’re carrying, it’s knives. And when they bend down it’s slice, chop, rummage. They’re having a field day. If they want a ring, they take a finger.

  The nearest one’s about fifty yards away.

  ‘We’re sitting ducks, Ashe!’ moans Jarvis. He’s got a hold of me now, his fingers dig into my arm. It’s funny but what gets me the most isn’t the knife-wielding Arab looters getting closer by the second, but the sight of Jarvis so reduced. I don’t care if he’s a coward—who isn’t?—but I don’t want to have to see it. He’s broken the invisible barrier, and with it the rules of the game. I can see that what bothers him is our helplessness. It bothers me, too. We’re neither of us armed. We can only lie here and hope we’re not the unlucky ones.

  ‘Quiet, sir,’ I say. It’s an order and he takes it as one. ‘Lie face down keep your ring hidden.’ He’s got a nice signet ring with a green jade stone. He presses his face into the sand. I don’t have anything worth taking.

  Now the nearest Buddhoo is close enough that we can hear what he’s doing. Jarvis whimpers and I push him roughly; he turns on to his face with his arms bent up under him, so he looks dead. There isn’t time for me to move as well.

  That knife will either have our number on, or it won’t.

  Chapter Nine

  On the morning of this most solemn occasion Vivien could think of little but her lost dog. Though Saxon was far from unsympathetic, he could hardly be expected to demonstrate much concern, preoccupied as he was with the forthcoming day’s events. She tried hard to put the matter in its proper place, but her thoughts kept wandering, obsessively, to where the animal might be and how he might be suffering—hungry, thirsty, perhaps injured, certainly pining for the people and places he knew. Ashe, for instance, wouldn’t he miss Ashe? The dog was like her familiar, following Ashe when she couldn’t, displaying feelings she herself had to hide. With the dog’s absence that link had been severed! She was distraught.

  Without drawing attention to herself, she went out after breakfast and took another look round, calling his name quietly. Once she thought she heard an answering sound but it was indistinct and not repeated and she was obliged, reluctantly, to put it down to hopeful imagination.

  Returning, wretched, from this fruitless expedition she heard clearly, from the front of the house, the sound of voices other than her husband’s, chief among them Felicity Delamayne’s. Of course—the introduction of the officer who was to read the roll of honour! Joining them all in the drawing room in her present state was out of the question. And she wasn’t even changed! She was already weeping as she flew upstairs, and once in the bedroom she cried as she hadn’t done since she was a child. Where was he?

  Where was Ashe?

  She heard the Delamaynes leave, and went downstairs, slipping first into the dining room. From this window she could see people were already beginning to assemble near the memorial, a clump of respectably clad dark figures in the brilliant sunshine. A small boy kicked a stone; another charged to kick it back and was pursued and restrained, caught by his mother’s hand on his sleeve. A cuff was administered to both boys. A group of old men stood together doggedly, some leaning on sticks.

  A lone figure entered the picture and stood apart, between the graves at the edge of the churchyard.

  Almost faint with relief, she stepped back from the window. At the same moment the voices from the far side of the hall became louder as Saxon and his guest emerged from the drawing room. Her head was still swimming as she went out to meet them.

  ‘Vivien—I wasn’t sure where you were.’

  ‘I was getting ready.’ To her own ears her voice sounded brittle and forced, but he appeared not to notice anything. ‘And here I am.’

  Ashe remained where he was, well away from everyone else. He had long ago acquired the animal skill of assumed invisibility, and was by now a past master. If you kept perfectly still and perfectly silent people didn’t notice you. Or if they did they received the unspoken message that you did not wish to be noticed, and behaved accordingly. In this, his threatening appearance was an asset; everyone was quite happy to let sleeping dogs lie.

  Mrs Mariner came out of the vicarage drive, and went to stand with the others. She looked pale, her eyes puffy. Ashe touched the biscuit in his jacket pocket. Saxon and the captain waited for a couple of minutes once Vivien had gone. Then, each in their uniforms, they walked side by side out of the vicarage gate and to take their places beside the memorial.

  ‘It’s very good of you to do this,’ said Saxon quietly.

  ‘It’s a pleasure, Padre. Honestly, a privilege.’

  With this tall young man by his side Saxon was suddenly vouched an insight, only the merest glimpse, into the pride and pleasure that might go with having a son. And with it another, still more poignant one, which he prayed would remain with him and inform all he was about to say and do.

  The village, he noticed, still tended to congregate according to unwritten rules of class and social distinction. At the front of the loosely assembled congregation Saxon saw Vivien, at the end of the row, near the Clay family, and the Delamaynes, dead centre. On his own, in the churchyard, stood John Ashe.

  Saxon stepped forward. All faces were tilted expectantly upward, but now, at last he felt calm, and confident of his ability to fulfil those expec
tations. When he began to speak his voice was clear and resonant, with an unusually warm timbre for which he had not striven.

  ‘We are gathered here, on this beautiful morning, with three purposes. To dedicate, to commemorate, and to celebrate. Yes, celebrate . . .’

  In the summery air, fragrant with roses and new-mown grass, nothing stirred as Saxon spoke, There was no sound—no car, no train, no animal, no bird, not so much as the hum of a bee, or the flicker of a butterfly.

  ’. . . himself a survivor of one of the recent conflict’s most testing campaigns, to read aloud the names of every one of those from this village who did not return, and whom we hold in our thoughts today. Eadenford’s roll of honour.’

  The captain stepped forward and removed his cap. Snapped to attention, the cap held in the crook of his arm.

  ‘Thomas Abel . . . Henry Axelrod . . . Percy Beem . . . Edward Egerton . . . Samuel Clay . . . Arthur Clay . . . Daniel Firth . . .’

  As the names were spoken, Ashe gathered the surrounding stillness around him so that his invisibility became complete.

  ‘Horace Hillicr . . . Malcolm Jeffs . . . Peter Lodd . . .’

  This much was certain: Jarvis hadn’t lost his touch. He stood before the people of Eadenford like a prince, or an ambassador, representing in an idealised form all the men who had been robbed of their lives. Ashe could feel—as Jarvis himself surely must—the powerful wave of gratitude that rushed from the congregation toward him as he stood there on the rising ground next to the sparkling stone cross.

  In less than two minutes it was over. A long silence, followed, broken only by the odd muffled sob. Jarvis remained at attention, his gaze fixed on a point in the middle distance, his face a patrician mask, stoical and noble. All eyes were upon him, except for when, here and there, a handkerchief moved, a hymn sheet fluttered, a hand was lifted to a face, a head leaned on a neighbouring shoulder.