A Spell of Swallows

by Sarah Harrison

  ‘Rum, sir.’

  He doesn’t reply, and I pour him a shot in his tin mug and pass it over. Just as he takes it another bomb comes down, and the mug flies out of his hand, rum everywhere, all over his face, his boots . . . Then another and he gives a little yelp and huddles down.

  ‘Come on, sir. Let’s try again.’

  This time I hold the mug for him and he manages a few swallows. When I hear another aircraft in the distance I take the mug away. I never saw anyone so changed.

  ‘I’m not well,’ he whispers.

  ‘Shall I get the MO, sir?’ I ask, but I know what he’ll say.

  ‘He can’t do anything.’

  ‘You’re shaking like a leaf, sir. Maybe you’ve got marsh fever.’ That’s a phrase we use for just about anything that doesn’t involve broken skin. Any illness—it’s marsh fever.

  He shakes his head, but more in confusion than anything else. Like an animal again, some poor old moth-eaten bear in a zoo or a circus, sitting there shaking its head, not knowing what the hell’s going on.

  ‘I’ll make one of my stews tonight, sir,’ I say. This is a poor sort of joke, what I can do with bully beef, because here in the depression there’s nothing else. Nowhere to scavenge.

  Anyway, it doesn’t raise a smile, and he shakes his head again. Not long now.

  That night as it turns out. Nobody expects to sleep here, what with the cold and wet, half-expecting an air raid, and never knowing when the order will come to advance. Officially we’re still on stand-down, but it doesn’t feel like it. Everyone’s living on their nerves. This is another of those times when I could almost thank my mother. Whatever happens can’t be as bad as what she put me through. Poor Jarvis the golden boy, he’s been heading for a fall ever since he left Sheringham.

  Missing sleep isn’t so bad, I can go a long time without it. Most people doze off even if they say they haven’t had a wink. In the end it’s a quiet night and even the rain’s eased off. I’m in the tent next door to Jarvis’s, so I hear when someone comes out. This man’s trying to be quiet, taking those long, cautious strides that people do when they don’t want to be heard. Glooping in and out of the mud. I wait till the footsteps are behind our tent, moving to the right as I lie here . . . Then I get up. The bloke next to me swears a bit, but he’s not fully conscious. Dog-tired men sleep more than they think. Out I go. For the first time in weeks there’s a clear sky, stars sprinkled thick as sugar.

  It’s Jarvis all right. He’s got his cape and cap on so he could be on a top-secret lone mission, but I doubt it. I follow at a distance, trying to match my footsteps to his so he won’t hear, and ducking in and out of the tents. Once I think he’s heard me, or heard something, because he stops dead in his tracks and looks around. I catch a glimpse of his face, and he looks hunted, terrified.

  I’m sure he’s running away. But first I have to be absolutely certain, and then he has to know that I’m in on his little secret. So I follow him, all the way to the camp perimeter. Now he’s got a problem. There are sentries posted, and men standing to in the gulleys at the top of the depression. Which way’s he going to go? In the middle distance is the redoubt, with Turkish positions along and behind it, but we don’t know how many. We’re in a stand-off till we get orders . . . But what’s he doing?

  Jarvis is going on, trudging in the direction of the redoubt. I think to myself: He really is mad. One of the sentries says something to him and he replies, just flings a couple of words over his shoulder. I can see the sentry doesn’t know what to make of it. That ingrained ‘respect’ is written all over him; he lets Jarvis continue, this officer bizarrely marching towards the enemy lines in the middle of the night. He’s not going to be so lenient with me, so I stop to think.

  Jarvis may be mad, but there’s a mad logic to what he’s doing. How can you be accused of deserting if you run towards the enemy? He must be banking on getting far enough away that he can put on a turn of speed under cover of darkness. But where to? There’s just more of the same, in all directions; your chances of survival out here are nil.

  Suddenly, I know where, and I’m going to get there before him. There’s a chance he may not make it at all in his condition, but that’s a risk worth taking. I double back, through the corner of the camp. Weaving between the tents—about five hundred yards—I nearly bump into a bloke taking a slash, but he probably thinks I’m on the same errand because he pays no attention. I reach the six or seven feet of thorny bank at the side of the depression and scramble up. Because of the clear sky I can see the outline of the fort from here, like a broken tooth, thick black against the silvered dark of the horizon.

  It turns out not to be so far away, it’s smaller than it looks. Taking a wide swing at it, running and walking, tripping over quite a lot, it takes me fifteen minutes. All the time I’m thinking, We could both get shot for this but it doesn’t put me off, just the opposite. I feel a bit mad myself, mad and free. I’ve got nothing to lose.

  When I arrive it’s like a set from The Gold Rush, or a bad joke: just a false front. On the far side are some random piles of rocks with scrub growing over and between them. There’s a scrabble of claws, a tail flicks, an eye gleams and a small animal scuttles away.

  Strange as it may sound, there’s something peaceful about sitting down with my back against the wall, and looking at a view with no army in it. When people talk about the beauty of the desert this must be what they mean: what most of the time we hate it for, its utter bloody emptiness. It’s like sitting on the skin of the planet. Even with the moonlight there are no shadows out there. Except the one by this little broken wall, where I am.

  I hear Jarvis coming quite some distance away. Sound carries in the desert. From the moment I first hear him it’s a good three minutes before he arrives. He’s crashing and stumbling along like I did—the ground may look flat but it’s rough. When he’s quite close there’s the crackle of random small arms fire from the direction of the redoubt, and I hear him sniffling. Even if they are aiming at him, which I doubt, they’re not going to persist. One mad Englishman scampering off won’t bother them.

  He almost runs into the wall on the other side, and leans on it, his breathing harsh and quick. He’s only a foot away from me; he thinks he’s all alone. Now he’s here I bet he’s disappointed. Like me he’s seeing what a sad little excuse for a building this place is: not the big, romantic sheltering walls he dreamed of but a broken-down heap of stones in the middle of nowhere. Did he imagine he was going to set up house here, dig for fresh water, live on wild locusts and honey like John the Baptist? Go back to England when it was all over? Now, however crazed he is he can see what I can see—hundreds of miles of nothing on two sides, the enemy on another, duty on the fourth. Is he thinking of going back?

  There’s another snap! snap! of fire, and he scrambles over. He’s lost or taken off his cap and cape as he ran, and he lands untidily, crouching like a monkey, one hand on the ground to steady him on the stones. I just sit there and wait. He sits down with his back to me, his hands over his face, his shoulders heaving, making little sounds of despair and confusion in his throat. My, he is in a state.

  It’s ages—minutes—before he turns round, and when he does it’s on all fours like a dog, presumably because he wants to keep low. The moment he sees me, I say:

  ‘Captain Jarvis, what are you doing here?’

  That moment definitely qualifies as among the sweetest in my life. The explosion of shock on his face, and I put it there! Forget drink, this is intoxication. Sod the war, this is what victory feels like. I could die happy.

  And I damn nearly do, because the next thing that happens isn’t in the plan. He leaps on me, pounces like a wild thing, and lands full on me. The wind’s knocked out of me, I can feel wet drops raining on my face—tears and spittle and sweat—and he’s cursing and swearing. This isn’t Queensberry rules: he’s got my throat with one hand and is trying to bang my head against the wall and he’s gouging at my eyes with the o
ther. But although he’s bigger and taller than me he’s also softer, and I manage to slip sideways and grab him by his Sam Browne, unbalancing him. Then we’re rolling around like a couple of fairground wrestlers, grunting and snarling, biting and scratching. We crash down the pile of rocks and he shrieks, he’s caught his back, but it means I land on top. I sit tight astride his chest and hold his wrists down; these things come back to you.

  Gradually, we both quieten. When he’s stopped squirming I let go his wrists. He’s crying, eyes and nose running.

  ‘So,’ I say, ‘what’s the answer to the question? Sir.’

  He rolls his head from side to side.

  ‘What did you think you were doing?’

  ‘Ashe . . .’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I was using my initiative. Doing a recce. You know that.’

  ‘I don’t know if I do. This is a funny old place to spy out the enemy.’

  ‘I wanted to see . . .’ He’s distracted, his hands are moving about all the time, wiping his face, rubbing his eyes, catching feebly at the front of my tunic like a drunk trying to make a point. ‘I thought this might make a vantage point. Ashe . . . you realise that, you must realise that . . . What else would I be doing?’

  ‘You tell me, sir.’

  It’s funny but I never stop to wonder why he doesn’t ask me what I’m doing there. I’m so full of my own cleverness I let my guard drop. As he starts to speak again I see his eyes change, just like a red light, but it’s too late. His hand comes up and he’s holding an entrenching tool—nasty little bugger, we’ve often talked of the damage they could do with that serrated blade—and I feel the tip at the corner of my mouth.

  ‘Get off me you little bastard,’ he says.

  ‘Have you decided on your story, then?’ I ask.

  ‘When I do,’ he says, ‘you’ll be the last to know.’

  I’ve lost the initiative and I hate that. My mind’s racing, roaring. He’s pathetic. I caught him red-handed and he knows it. I’ve got what I wanted, haven’t I? I’m going to get up, leave him lying in his own snot, he’s pissed himself too, I can smell it, and I’m going to walk away.

  ‘All right,’ I say. And—I can’t help it—I laugh.

  The tip of the blade slips inside my cheek and I feel it rip through the flesh right up to my ear, not like butter, like raw fish or meat, all those separate fibres tearing, blood vessels rupturing. Blood like a waterfall.

  No pain, not yet. Just a single thought.

  Get out of this one, Captain Jarvis . . .

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘I was locking this door,’ she said.

  ‘A good idea.’

  ‘It’s not as if it’s used, anyway.’

  ‘No, indeed.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you.’

  ‘You didn’t. I had a thought, an idea—I’m just going down to the study to make a note.’

  She nodded. Somehow, the key seemed to have disappeared into her hand.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Give it to me, I’ll return it for you.’

  ‘Oh, there’s no . . .’ She seemed for a fraction of a second to demur, then held it out to him at arm’s length, like a child. ‘Thank you.’

  He took the key and walked away.

  ‘Don’t you want your dressing gown?’ she asked. ‘Won’t you be cold?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I shan’t be long.’

  Down in the hall, Saxon walked first to the row of hooks near the back stairs where the house keys hung, but having done so he did not put the key there. Instead he returned to the study, closed the door behind him, and turned on the lamp. Then he laid the key on his desk, straight, with its teeth pointing towards him, and sat down.

  There was something mysterious about it, as there was about any key. A key functioned both as a keeper of secrets and a means of release. Saxon had read Freud, but it did not take much imagination to see the key as a sexual symbol. Nothing looked exceptional about this one: it was a simple black iron key with a loop at one end. He placed his forefinger on the loop, and gave it a tentative push, as if it were a poisonous insect. A second later he picked it up and put it in the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk, a drawer which itself had a key, which he turned, and placed another drawer beneath the blotter.

  He sat upright in his chair, his hands on his knees. He felt a little chilly, Vivien had been right to recommend he wear a dressing gown . . . He frowned. There was no reason on earth why his wife should not decide that the door to the back stairs should be locked. Indeed, with a single male employee living in the house, it was a sensible precaution which he rather wished he’d taken himself, and demonstrated on her part commendable concern for security; and, of course, propriety.

  By the time the sky outside began to turn grey, he had not written a single word. When he eventually moved he was cold and stiff, but he nonetheless took out his notebook, more from duty than excitement, to jot down the line of poetry. But it wouldn’t come. The swallows—something about wings? Water? He cudgelled his brain but it was no good; he couldn’t remember the sequence, the nice juxtaposition of ideas. It would come back to him tomorrow when he wasn’t trying.

  What he could not forget, as he went slowly up the stairs, was that first sight of Vivien, ghostlike in the dark at the end of the landing, the key in her hand. Why had she been there, locking the door, in the middle of the night? Could it not have waited? What thought process had woken her up and prompted her? And—the terrible thought which he had been keeping at bay leapt out at him and made him flinch—from which side of the door had she come?

  Entering the bedroom he went to his wife’s side of the bed and looked down at her. She seemed deeply and peacefully asleep, but to be sure he leaned down to within inches of her face. Her lashes were motionless, her breathing long and slow. Her lower lip fluttered slightly. Eyes closed he put his own lips to her cheek, which was warm. She made a little sound in her throat and shifted her position, but did not wake.

  By his side of the bed he kneeled to pray. His attitude for prayer was usually formal—back straight, hands clasped, head slightly bowed—but now he spread his arms on the bed and pressed his face into the soft surface of the quilt. There were no words, he wanted only to abase himself, to cast himself on the mercy of God. After a couple of minutes he clambered stiffly to his feet and slumped on to the mattress, pulling the bedclothes ineffectually over his shoulder with one hand. He was utterly exhausted—from sitting up too long, from the pain of that moment’s suspicion, from self-loathing—but doubted he would be able to sleep. A few seconds later he fell into complete unconsciousness.

  Ever afterwards Vivien remembered that night as the point of no return. For though she had several times lied to Saxon ‘in thought, word and deed’ (the prayer book haunted her) in recent weeks, on that night she was telling the simple truth. She had locked the door and had hoped by doing so to lock away herself.

  Too late. She had been with Ashe. She had found him, and possessed him; taken him into her with a force and strength she never knew she had. But—and this made her shudder—he, Ashe, must have recognised that force in her, and summoned it from a distance. Her lovemaking with Saxon, the precious, complex intimacy that had always been the barometer of their affections, their secret treasure, was by comparison less than nothing. With Saxon, her pleasure as well as his was within her command. Ashe had gloried in her loss of control.

  Images of what she had done, and felt, kept flashing across her mind’s eye: her legs, stretched to breaking point—her head striking the wall, then grinding into it—her mouth feasting on that grinning scar, feeling its plushy ridges and fine, silken ripples where no hair grew—her hands kneading and clawing at her own breasts, at his . . . And all the time his silent, imperious acceptance.

  She had been, and was still, electrified. On that evening walk by the river Saxon had never been more loving nor more deserving of love, yet she had been barely sentient, riding the aftershocks. Her legs tremb
led, she had been glad to link her arm through his. When they paused to watch the kingfisher it had been a relief to stand still and lean against him as he talked on, telling her some little story that she couldn’t remember. Nothing—not the walk, nor the birds, nor the evening sunshine, meant anything to her; least of all her husband’s tender attention.

  She had had to imprison herself at night; she did not trust herself not to slip through those two narrow doors into his room, and her other self, under cover of darkness. She had intended to throw the key away. But Saxon had taken it from her, and so it remained in the house.

  The next morning Saxon overslept, and Vivien found that the key was missing from its hook in the hall. So he had not believed her. But she knew him so well, knew that he could never begin to imagine the extent of her deception or the depths to which she had sunk. He was a martyr to his own impossibly high standards: his fleeting suspicion about the key would be torturing him.

  When he eventually came downstairs he was taciturn and preoccupied. Susan Clay arrived, and he went with her to the church.

  For two days she avoided Ashe. This wasn’t difficult; he was always elusive, going about his work quietly and industriously, troubling no one, in nobody’s way. There was no doubt in her mind, now, that she would find him again. It would happen again not because they willed it but because it must.

  The key did not reappear, and she neither looked for it nor asked after its whereabouts. Though he said nothing, Saxon’s manner continued to be guarded and a little distant, and she was grateful for the freedom this allowed her to be on her own. The mere sight of her husband filled her with desolation. She remembered, out of the blue, what he had been telling her on the river bank, or at least the essence of it; the words that had meant nothing at all at that moment she took out and put together and examined, like a scientist, and recalled that it had been about swallows, diving into the river and hibernating deep in the water . . . This was sad, too, because at the time she had said something, thrown him some small compliment to flatter his eloquence, and he had been pleased and walked taller because of it. Now, through no fault of his, he was diminished in her eyes.