by MARY HOCKING
He was not sick. That was really surprising. The others were sick, but he did not manage to retch anything out of his system: he ingested it.
Outside, they walked silently down to the tree line. Here, they rested. The light was still strong. Guy saw how relentlessly it exposed the stone beneath the sparse grass. He said to the Italian, ‘How did you know about this?’
‘I was on my way home. I saw the Germans going towards my village. Something here’ – he touched the back of his neck – ‘told me bad things. The partisans had been with us a few weeks ago. I ran into these woods. If I had run to the village, it might have saved someone.’
‘How could it have done?’
‘One person, perhaps two. A child? Yes, for certain. But I ran away. And I watched, up in the hills. I saw the smoke and I heard the screams. They brought them up here, men, women, children. There was shooting. Afterwards, I made myself go in. But they shoot good. All dead.’
Guy wondered how long afterwards he had gone in. But he was in no position to condemn. ‘And your companion?’
‘He is of the village, too. But he was away, hunting. We met in these woods.’
The American asked, ‘How would the Germans know about the cave?’
‘They had – how do you say – a man of . . .’ His hands embraced the landscape, making a miniature of it.
‘A local man?’
He nodded. ‘Bad man.’
The American said, ‘You?’
He did not feign anger. Perhaps he felt he had no right to it. He simply said, ‘How would I get away? The Germans leave no one behind to tell.’
The American looked away. Guy was inclined to believe the man. He had put himself in unnecessary danger by bringing them here; there was no one to corroborate his story, and he was intelligent enough to realize that blame might fall on him.
They entered the wood and walked slowly through the undergrowth. Whenever they stopped, it was silent, there seemed to be no bird life. The last of the light filtered through the trees. By the time they came to the farmhouse, the air was cool; and looking up, Guy saw that the sun and the moon shared the sky – the alpha and the omega.
That night he took a statement from the two Italians. Afterwards, he and his men argued among themselves.
The sergeant said, ‘There must be a reason.’ Once you can find a reason, you are well on your way to excusing, even to condoning. If you can’t find a reason, life is going to be that much more uncomfortable for you. ‘You can’t trust an Eytie. They were happy enough to go along with Jerry when things were going well.’
‘There were bairns there, sarge,’ the Scot said.
The sergeant was not listening. He was looking to where they had buried the Germans who had defended the farmhouse. Good fighting men, they had been, and he had respected them. A soldier stands his ground – the Italians ran away.
The Scot said, ‘How do we know it wasn’t him led the way to the cave?’
The American said, ‘He’d have a hell of a lot of trouble proving he didn’t.’
Guy said, ‘I believed him, though. Did you?’
‘I didn’t disbelieve him so much I’d want to hand him over.’
The sergeant thought the men should be detained. Guy could see that the lieutenant agreed with him. While they were debating, the Italians escaped. The soldier who was guarding them had had no very clear instructions, and was tired and confused; he had made the mistake of allowing them both to go to the bog at the same time. For form’s sake, a search was mounted for them. As he set out, the American who had been in the cave said, ‘I guess this is one movie I don’t have to see through to the end.’ No one paid any attention to him. He failed to return with the search party and they never saw him again.
Guy was later severely reprimanded for having failed to obtain sufficiently detailed statistical information; and for allowing the Italians to escape and the American to desert. He had displayed serious lack of judgement. Two facts alone saved him from court martial: his own record; and the failure of his senior officer to explain satisfactorily why the raiding party had been left so long at the farmhouse without relief or further instructions. Guy was surprisingly unconcerned about his fate. For once, he was uninterested in what those in authority thought of him. All his life he had had a certain innocence, which he had now lost. Shortly after this affair, he sustained his first incapacitating wound – a chest injury, so that it was as a physical casualty that he was treated in hospital. While all the time a change was going on inside him. Questions which he seemed powerless to resist presented themselves constantly to him.
Those who don’t let the questioning get out of hand survive, become the stable, well-adjusted people who fit into the structure of their particular society; they die in their millions defending it. These people will suffer incredible hardships and will only break down if their society is radically changed. Guy had been groomed all his life to be one of them. But breakdown can also result from an awareness of evil, which most people manage to ignore. As he lay in hospital, he tried very hard to fight his way back to that company of stable, well-adjusted people from whom he had become separated at some stage during his campaigning.
In October, Alice received her first letter from Ben. For several years he had lived in that limbo peculiar to prisoners and had only the past to write about. His letter was full of reminiscences. ‘There are times here when I would dearly love to talk to your father, argue with him. We used to laugh sometimes because he felt things so intensely – it seemed a bit embarrassing to us youngsters. But, Alice, I have learnt to value him so much. I hope I grow old like him and never learn that kind of wisdom which seems to have arrived on some lofty peak where it looks serenely down on the struggles of less composed mortals. God save me from serenity! I want to be “a foolish, passionate man” – like Yeats and your father . . .’
Towards the end of his letter, he wrote, ‘I should like to see you, Alice. It would be good to have something to aim for. What about getting yourself drafted to Ceylon.’ We’ll have a drink at that hotel everyone talks about in Colombo.’
Alice wept. Since she had been back in England, she had missed her father more than ever, and Ben’s letter made her realize the extent of her loss. She resolved that she would indeed meet Ben in Colombo. He was important to her; he was part of her family. But a meeting in Ceylon, with Ben free, looked to the end of the war. What then? Where would she go? What would she become? All her life there had been something bigger than herself to which she belonged – family, chapel, school, the WRNS. Community was important to her. She was going out with a Petty Officer who very much wanted to marry her. Apart from a strong physical attraction, they had little in common. D. H. Lawrence notwithstanding, her ideas about love and marriage had become more, rather than less, old-fashioned. She had dreamt of the love that blots out everything else; but had found that in reality the idea of two people turning in on one another repelled her. When she married, she wanted it to be part of a shared way of life, including relatives, friends, neighbours, stretching out into the larger community. It seemed hard that she should arrive at this understanding of her needs at the time of the break-up of family life.
She pinned her hopes on Falmouth, which she visited in December with Felicity. This, she told herself, was where her roots were. ‘I mean to come and live here after the war,’ she said to Felicity. ‘I’m going to write a history of my forebears.’
When she arrived, she found Granny Tippet very frail, but with the strong jaw more resolute than ever now that the flesh had fallen away; and the long-seeing blue eyes quite as unnerving. Grandchildren constantly erupted into the house. But the feel of a rooted life was not there. Perhaps this was the fault of her grandfather. Joseph Tippet, crippled by arthritis, sat in his chair by the window, looking out to the Carrick Roads, and dreaming of his days in the Merchant Navy. Alice realized that if she pinned her hopes of family on Cornwall, she must accept that her roots were made of seaweed. The thought th
at she came of a breed of rovers was not without its appeal. Her grandmother, who had been watching her intently since her arrival, said, ‘You’ve got yourself into a fine old muddle, haven’t you? You don’t know what you want.’
‘I think I want to settle down,’ Alice said. ‘But I mean to get to Ceylon before the war is over.’
‘That’s the trouble with you young people. There are too many choices open to you. I had to settle for what was offered and get on with it.’
‘But you don’t regret it?’
Alice hoped for a resounding affirmation, but all her grandmother said was, ‘What’s the point of regretting?’ She had not thought of life in terms of expectation, but rather of what was available to her: you accepted the gifts of life along with its demands. Regret was irrelevant.
Joseph sighed, ‘Ah, the China seas!’ There was such a world of longing in his voice that Alice felt she must regret it all her life if she did not get to the East.
When she left, she said impulsively to her grandmother, ‘After the war, I shall have had enough of travelling. Then I shall come here and live in Falmouth.’
‘Not you!’ Her grandmother put her arms around her. ‘I’ll tell you something, Alice. You’ll never be satisfied. Never, all your life.’
Alice, suddenly aware of how much she loved her grandmother, was alarmed at the thinness of the arms which held her. As the bus carried them into Truro, all her hopes of a life here seemed to be receding as the bus tunnelled between the high hedges. It was not so much that she wanted it less, as an understanding that Granny Tippet’s world was no longer available for her to live in.
‘I thought your grandmother was fascinating,’ Felicity said. ‘But Falmouth is the dreaded end.’
‘I must get to Ceylon, Felicity. When do you think we shall go to OTC?’
Felicity had her mind on other matters. At Truro, she insisted that there was no need for them to catch the afternoon train. ‘We shall be sure to get a hitch back. Let’s go for a drink and assess the possibilities. There must be a decent hotel somewhere.’
‘We haven’t got time, Felicity.’
‘We’ve got twenty hours!’
‘But there aren’t twenty trains.’
‘We’re not going by train.’
A stroll along the main street enabled Felicity to identify the hotel which would attract the officer trade – never a difficult task in any small town. They went first to the cloakroom, where Felicity made the most of her short, dark hair by flicking it into wispy curls across her forehead, giving a festive look to her long face so that it resembled a milkman’s horse on carnival day. She looked at Alice, who was piling up her long hair, and said sharply, ‘Come on; we haven’t got all day. Let’s go and survey the field.’
Within a few seconds she was saying to an Army captain, ‘Well, that’s very hospitable of you, I must say. Gin and It will be just the thing,’ She always contrived to sound as if she was being entertained in a private house. She looked round the dingily respectable room and said, ‘Not bad, eh?’ as if she was congratulating the captain on his choice of furnishings.
‘Not a place to stay, though,’ he warned. ‘Beds haven’t been aired since Queen Victoria slept here.’ He cocked an interested eye at Alice, who asked for beer.
His name was Rodney Stowe. He had a long face with good features, but so thin it looked as though it had been clamped in a press. The rest of his body had the same elongated, tortured appearance. Alice could imagine him in effigy, lying with fingers piously steepled in some dim cathedral recess. Felicity seemed to find him eminently acceptable. They took their drinks to a table where his companion was waiting for him. Stowe made introductions. Barney Crocker, a captain of marines, had none of Stowe’s attenuated breeding. He was a compact man with an impatient, leathery face, and a body which looked strong enough to burst out of its uniform at any moment. He and Stowe were taking refreshment prior to driving to Gloucestershire, where they both lived. Felicity, allowing some elasticity to county boundaries, said that she rode to hounds in Gloucestershire, Stowe said his family farmed there. Felicity said then he must know the Maplehursts. He said he did know the Maplehursts; whereupon Felicity changed tack smartly and began to talk about Ralph Heneker-Howell, whom he did not know. Crocker lit a cigarette, and made a pessimistic assessment of how long it would take to bed Alice.
‘Are you stationed at Falmouth?’ he asked.
‘Plymouth.’
They drank in silence for a few minutes, then he said, ‘You’d better come with us.’ He sounded resigned, but when she hesitated, he jerked his head in Felicity’s direction. ‘Your friend has it all wrapped up, anyway.’
‘Can you imagine!’ Felicity said to Alice some moments later. ‘These chaps are insisting on going out of their way to take us back to Plymouth. I call that a jolly good show.’
Crocker looked at her as though he would not be surprised were she to balance a ball on her nose. They went out to the car. Stowe held the back seat door for Alice, but Felicity said, ‘Alice has to travel in front or she gets car sick.’ In the back, she and Stowe talked about Bonnie Bravely, whom Alice assumed to be a horse until Felicity said she had married Edward Phillimore. Alice soon ceased to listen to their conversation. Barney Crocker was a typical marine driver: no doubt the marines’ assault course included a section on reckless driving.
‘I’m sorry we’re taking you out of your way,’ she said, as he slewed round a corner on two wheels.
‘Makes no odds.’ He saw little in this for himself and was in a hurry to get the journey over. The miles sped by in record time. Then, as they came towards Bodmin Moor, they got behind an army convoy, moving slowly through the narrow lanes. Crocker lit a cigarette and drove with one hand on the wheel; his swearing relied heavily on the anatomical, as befitted such a physical man. Felicity said, ‘Why don’t we stop? Stretch the cramped limbs, eh?’
They had tea at a farmhouse. The convoy was still on the road when they emerged. Perhaps it, too, had stopped for a brew-up? ‘Who the hell is in charge of this circus?’ Regardless of any traffic which might come up behind him, Crocker left the car and strode off in search of someone to browbeat. Alice walked a few paces from the road. Ahead, the land stretched away, unbroken by house or hedge, as far as the eye could see. She never stood on the edge of wilderness without a sense of having escaped from somewhere, or something. Service life had been the great liberation so why, now, should she be breathing this harsh moorland air as though her lungs had long been constricted? She realized she was becoming bored with service life; its repetitions now outweighed its capacity for surprise. The view stretched vision, and she found herself wishing it went on forever – but then that would become very boring indeed. If she wasn’t careful, life was going to resolve itself into a matter of balancing boredom and surprise. Was her grandmother right in saying she would never be satisfied?
Felicity came up behind her. ‘How are you getting on with yours? Mine’s a distinct possibility. We’re going to stop for a drink at Jamaica Inn.’
‘If we do that, we shan’t get back tonight.’
‘All the better.’
‘I thought you wanted your commission?’
‘As the most likely means to a husband. If I could get one without all that fag, I’d be only top pleased.’
‘Well, I want to go to Ceylon; and I’m more likely to do that in signals than anything else.’
‘Alice, this is very important to me. Rodney is related to the Smalls of Nether Wishford.’
They returned to the car. Neither of the two men was there. ‘A nice pickle we shall be in if they just disappear,’ Alice said.
‘Do all your family have this gift of foreseeing calamity?’
‘It doesn’t need special powers to see that this is going to end badly.’
Crocker returned, got into the car, and started the engine. It occurred to Alice that he was on her side; he could not wait to get to Plymouth and find something more promising.
>
‘Rodney isn’t here,’ Felicity protested.
‘Gone for a pee, I expect.’ He was turning the car off the road. ‘This convoy goes on for miles, but apparently there’s a minor road we can pick up about a mile and a half due west.’
By the time he had manoeuvred the car into position, Stowe had joined them. They bumped about for what seemed much further than a mile and a half.
‘I’ve always wondered what happened after the characters rode off into the setting sun,’ Alice said, as she was thrown against the windscreen.
They came at last to the minor road, which was little more than a track. As they turned on to it, Alice saw the sun going down somewhere behind her shoulder and was glad that at least they were heading in the right direction. It was nearly dark when the track ran downhill into a good-sized village.
‘And a hostelry!’ Felicity exclaimed.
It was a long, low stone building. The trucks and jeeps parked outside indicated it was much favoured by service personnel. Alice said, ‘Our turn. What are you drinking?’ The men gave their orders without demur and made for the gents. Felicity, who was close with money, departed in search of the ladies. Alice went to the bar and took her place beside a Negro soldier. The man behind the bar, a burly, bald-headed fellow, gave Alice a smile which was the more genial for seeing someone he actually wanted to serve. In most circumstances, she would have been pleased enough to catch his eye – it was usually difficult for a woman to get service at a bar. It was apparent, however, that she was now in the presence of someone even less privileged. She said, ‘This soldier was before me.’
The barman, finding her less to his liking, said curtly, ‘What are you having?’
Alice gave her order, then turned to the Negro. ‘What will you drink?’
A GI sitting near by said, ‘He’s not drinking anything, sister. Not while we’re here.’
The Negro was for departing with dignity, but he had an ATS girl with him, a little strutting hen, with frizzy peroxided hair and bulbous eyes either side of a formidable beak. She went up to the table where the GI was sitting and shouted, ‘They come over here and fight for you buggers, don’t they? They’re good enough for that!’