Small Wars Read online

  The colonel began to ask after his father again, and one night, finishing his soup and blotting his lips, he said, ‘You certainly had a baptism of fire coming here, didn’t you? All settled down, now, has it?’

  Hal looked into his pale blue eyes and answered, ‘Yes, Colonel, pretty much quiet now.’

  ‘Good to get rid of those rogue elements, I think. Bit of spring-cleaning, eh? No more trouble from Lieutenant Davis?’

  ‘No, no more trouble there. He hasn’t come to me again.’

  But then there was the undressing for bed.

  He peeled away the layers each night, stripping his uniform to the bare skin that wasn’t nakedness for sleeping, or for his wife, or any other version of himself that he could stand. He began to spend the nights dressed, or half dressed, sometimes leaning up against the bedstead, sometimes in a chair, and then, in the morning, get up and wash and change his shirt. He found he could rest better that way, a half sleep for a half soldier, half clothed and better protected.

  Lawrence Davis didn’t know that Clara was gone until a few days after her departure. There was no reason why he would have known, but even not seeing her, he’d had a comforting mental picture of her there, in the barracks, and now she had been taken away from him. In his mind, she had become his confessor, and his fantasies about her were more romantic than sexual. They had been sexual too, of course, but Lawrence Davis was a virgin, and telling secrets to his mother was where he’d had much more experience.

  It was Deirdre Innes who told him Clara had left Episkopi. He was in Limassol buying some shoelaces and razor blades and had seen her on the street. She was carrying a basket and had big sunglasses on; she had said his name first. ‘Lieutenant Davis!’

  ‘Good morning.’ He had stepped off the narrow pavement to let her by.

  ‘Thank you. What are you up to?’

  ‘Oh, you know.’ He had held up the brown paper bag with his purchases inside.

  ‘Finding your fun in town now?’ she had said and, seeing his confusion, enlightened him about Clara’s departure.

  ‘Nicosia? Oh.’ He had felt quite lost suddenly, one of his anchors tearing free and leaving him to drift.

  ‘Bit of a contretemps with her husband, as I understood it. I would have thought she’d have told you.’

  ‘Why would she tell me?’

  ‘Weren’t you friendly?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘You’re blushing! You are!’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean –’

  ‘Men are so prissy. You were friends, weren’t you?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  Then she had looked around her and said, ‘Listen, shall we go somewhere?’

  He had been taken aback enough not to absorb her suggestion immediately. ‘I have a car if you need –’

  ‘No, not home. And I don’t mean the club either. Come on, it’ll be fun.’

  He had taken her – or she had taken him – to a bar near the cinema. He had been in a state of sweating anxiety throughout. She had ordered three large gin-and-tonics and then they had gone into the hot, pitch-black cinema and stared blindly at The King and I while she put her hand on his leg and began to rub him there.

  There was a thrill in doing what he then began to do with the wife of Hal Treherne’s 2 i/c, and she certainly took his mind off his work. To meet Deirdre Innes, in one of the more deserted coves after dark, or the vehicle park amongst the three-tonners and the Fords, was intoxicating. Having her – the secrecy, the hard obliterating feel of it, knowing she didn’t even like him – was in keeping with his new idea of himself. He wasn’t sure what he’d say to a nice girl now; he wouldn’t know how to act.

  When he thought of Clara, it was with regret and shame. She and the goddess Iris he’d left her with were like figures in a story-book that once he’d dreamed of but now had left behind, along with any fantasies about conscientious objection. Now, like Grieves, he was simply counting the days until demob.

  As for Clara, she had lost the little cameo when she moved away from Episkopi. It must have fallen into the sandy folds of a suitcase, or dropped carelessly from a dress pocket on folding. It had never really comforted her; she hadn’t known Lawrence Davis well, and the hiding it from Hal had taken any use it might have had away from her.

  Chapter Two

  Clara didn’t tell Gracie she was pregnant. In late September, at four and a half months, if she wore her belts high and loosened them, she could just about get away with it – or convince herself that she could. For such a breezy person, Gracie was very tactful. Instead of prying, she told Clara all about her husband, David. ‘He has leave in two weeks. We shan’t have time to go anywhere – it’s only a few days. Just long enough to try and feed him up a bit. David likes his grub, and he gets awfully low up there eating out of mess tins.’

  Gracie’s boys were three and five. She had two others at prep school in England. It was miraculous that her tiny body could have produced four boys and still fit so effortlessly into a girdle. Even her ankles were tiny. The five-year-old, Tommy, was learning to read and do his letters; Larry, the little one, had a scooter, which he guarded jealously and wouldn’t let the twins play with. Gracie was forever saying, ‘Now, Larry, I shall take it away from you if you’re going to be selfish,’ but not taking it away, while the twins ran after him across hot terraces and up and down the pavements of Nicosia.

  They spent most of their days at the officers’ club, avoiding the streets, which were crowded with Greeks and soldiers. The club was bigger than the one in Limassol, with a swimming pool, and they would take it in turns to go in the water with the children, or walk in the gardens and sit near the fountain in the shade of palm trees. The club had delusions of grandeur; it didn’t know what a shabby lesser outpost it was in. There were always soldiers, carrying Stens or .303s, posted at the hotel doors, and at the club, but Clara, used to living in a barracks, barely noticed them, feeling the freedom of being in a city.

  Gracie and Clara walked slowly around the garden, with the children. They stopped at one of the shaded dark green benches and sat. The traffic noise out in the city, beyond the walls, reached them, and the sounds of waiters laying tables for lunch on the terrace.

  ‘Heard from Hal?’ asked Gracie, pretending to dust small particles from her calves.

  ‘I had a letter this morning.’

  Clara had read the letter to the girls dutifully, then put it away, with all the others. There was nothing in it but trivia.

  ‘He must miss you.’

  Clara nodded.

  ‘Larry! Larry! Stop that!’ cried Gracie, as Larry vented his rage on Tommy, rushing him head first and pushing him over. The twins, pausing in their business, looked on with meek expressions.

  ‘Look at your lovely girls,’ said Gracie, getting up. ‘Why don’t I have girls?’ She ran towards Larry, her very narrow skirt making her skitter.

  Clara, in solitude for a moment, took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  She looked around her at the white-painted palm trees. Women in summer dresses with their men, mostly in uniform, went in and out of the club building, greeting one another at the pool. The sounds of their voices reached her, and the playing children. She heard a song start up inside, faintly, a wireless or gramophone in one of the rooms, upstairs. ‘Hey mambo, mambo Italiano! Hey mambo, mambo Italiano…’

  A woman at a table by the pool got up from her chair. She was wearing a yellow two-piece and she danced a little as she shook out her towel.

  What a silly song, thought Clara, and the careless beauty of the world, and herself in it, came back to her, like a mist thinning in the morning. She felt herself tremble. Small shivers touched her. She felt life. And then, again, the little tap inside her, the soft shifting of her baby. She closed her eyes.

  She could hear Gracie, quite clearly but as if at some distance, scolding her child.

  The thing about dancing with Hal, she thought, was that he looked at her all the time
and made her feel beautiful.

  Clara laid her hand on her stomach and little tapping bubbles seemed to answer her. She admired the tiny thing, spinning away inside her. It had stuck with her, hadn’t been deterred by her weakness. She hadn’t even been there, she thought, just a vessel for the carrying of it. She was rewarded by another little movement, nothing like a kick. Don’t worry, she thought. I’ll make sure you’re all right. I promise.

  She found herself smiling. She wanted to speak to it. She wanted to say, ‘Look! We’re in a nice garden, and soon we’ll go and have lunch.’

  She heard Gracie coming back towards her and opened her eyes. Gracie had Larry firmly by the hand, but he still held the scooter.

  ‘What are you smiling about?’ said Gracie.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ said Clara.

  ‘Oh, thank goodness. I knew you were, but I didn’t want to make a gaffe,’ said Gracie, and plumped neatly down on the bench, heaving Larry onto her knee. ‘How far gone are you?’

  ‘Just five months.’

  ‘Gosh, you carry it awfully well. You must miss poor old Hal. It’s been weeks.’

  ‘We argued very badly before I left.’

  ‘Oh…that’s rough.’

  ‘He was the one who wanted me to come here. I didn’t want to.’

  ‘It has worked out for the best though, hasn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose it has.’

  ‘Who’d be an army wife, eh?’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Rather stoical sort of person, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’m a terrible coward.’

  ‘Well, I think you’re marvellous,’ said Gracie, firmly. Clara had to look the other way to stop herself crying. Gracie patted her hand. ‘I blubbed every single day when I was preggers with Larry,’ she said, then, ‘that’s probably why he’s so ghastly.’

  Larry gripped his scooter harder and sulked.

  When Clara had put the girls down for their nap, she sat in the dim bedroom and took out Hal’s letters.

  There were ten. The paper was white, quite thick, from a box her mother had sent out at Christmas the year before. Hal’s writing was neat and accurate, with almost no crossings-out. He had signed each one ‘With love, Hal’. Just that, and nothing else. He talked about the weather, ‘Hellishly hot, had to put three men on a charge for sunburn’ about EOKA, ‘Been a bit busy lately. Casualties.’

  She held the letters in her hand. She remembered his letters from Sandhurst (‘Food hell. See you on the 16th’) and from Germany (‘Can’t stand this paperwork, rained all week’).

  One of the girls moved behind her, murmuring in her sleep.

  She had always had to read between the lines with Hal.

  She opened the drawer in the desk, and took out a sheet of blue writing paper that said ‘Ledra Palace Hotel’ at the top, in slightly uneven print.

  She unscrewed the top of the pen. ‘Hal,’ she wrote, hesitating between sentences. ‘I’m sorry for the extended silence.’ The ink didn’t flow at first, and the letters had gaps. ‘I hope you are well. The girls are very well, and so am I.’

  She crossed that out, and started again.

  Do you remember all the letters we used to write? I wrote many more than you. Yours are what is known as ‘opaque’, I think. But I’m out of practice now, too, and can’t seem to say what I’d like to. I feel so very badly about so many things. I did feel ‘the wronged wife’. Hal – I even hated you. I’ve had a chance to think, and I’ve cheered up rather. Ought we to talk about my coming back? You have leave in November, but it seems a long way away. Shall we speak soon? Darling.

  She stopped. Then, on a new line, she wrote again, ‘Darling,’ very deliberately, and ‘Today I went to the club, with my friend Gracie…’

  And she told him about the white-painted palms, David, whom she’d never met, Gracie and the little boys, the hotel dining room, that the girls missed the beach and that they had many more words. They could say ‘bath-time’ and ‘Look at the water’. She told him about feeling the baby moving: ‘Forget what I said about it before, please. It was wicked and not meant at all.’

  She took the letter downstairs, tiptoeing from the room, and gave it to the concierge. Then she stood, with her arms around herself, just standing still. She seemed to see Hal in front of her, in his uniform, a little dusty and hot from the day, and out of place in the hotel lobby.

  Chapter Three

  Hal sat at the breakfast table and drank his coffee, looking at Clara’s letter, lying near him. He had dismissed Adile the week before, embarrassed by having her around the house with him, a single man. A cleaning woman came in every few days. There wasn’t much to do. He didn’t make much mess.

  He looked at Clara’s looped, schoolgirlish handwriting on the envelope, which was lightweight and battered, as if it had been all the way to some sorting office in Scotland or Arabia before coming to him. Just seeing her writing undid him, as if she were reaching out her hand and touching him, and he was endangered by it.

  He put one finger on the letter and slid it towards him. He took out his pocket knife. The point found the gap, the secret crease gave to the blade. He pulled out the letter and laid it flat.

  ‘Hal,’ she had written. Then he read the crossed-out part, and seemed to see her do it. He heard her voice. Do you remember all the letters we used to write?

  This was no good. Just seeing her writing was impossible. He put his hand over the letter and looked up, out of the small window across the table from him. He lifted his hand, glancing down, and read sideways, out of the corner of his eye.

  I did feel the ‘wronged wife’. Hal – I even hated you.

  He didn’t have time now. Kirby was on his way. There was no time for this. He carefully refolded it, first along its original crease, then again and again, until it was a small, fat square, using the back of his thumbnail to force the folds. He got up and cleared his place, washing the plate under the tap and wiping the crumbs away carefully.

  As he dried his hands he heard Kirby pull up outside. He folded the tea-towel. Passing the table he picked up the letter and put it into his pocket. He left the house.

  Clara’s breakfast at the Ledra Palace with the girls was far from solitary. It was a rowdy affair. There were the other guests, and quite a few children. Waiters with thick linen cloths carried heavy hot silver pots, dodging the chairs and sticking-out feet. Clara had no letter from Hal, but a week-old copy of The Times, much read, that she was trying to glance at between buttering the girls’ toast.

  ‘No! Meg!’

  Meg had pulled a big corner from the paper, tearing off a large piece and closing her hands over it, trying to fold it in half.

  ‘All right, here, then.’ Clara helped her, folding the torn piece of newspaper neatly, once in half, twice, smoothing it with her thumb. ‘See, darling? Like that…’

  Meg patted it with her small hands, like starfish. Clara lifted one and kissed the dimples where the knuckles were.

  ‘There you are!’

  Clara looked up. Gracie was marching towards her, breakfasted already, makeup on.

  ‘Shops today.’

  The hotel was outside the old city walls. The streets within them were narrow and jumbled, more picturesque, but dirtier too. The best shops were inside the walls, though, and the main shopping street, Ledra Street, was where everybody went; it was a long straight road that ran the length of the old town.

  The road that Hal’s Land Rover was on was high and narrow, a track between villages that, without the army vehicles rolling over the baked ground, would have been little used.

  It was a white road. On all sides the island reached away from it. There were the pine-covered hills to the north, a giant falling-away to miles and miles of dry rocks, troughs and gullies to the west, and ahead, the small road ribboned downwards and there was a scattering of leaning buildings, derelict.

  Hal’s vehicle, alone, crossed the spit between the villages and Kirby drove sl
owly. Hal, next to Kirby, had his hand in his pocket with Clara’s letter, compressed, closed inside it. He had left Lieutenant Thompson’s platoon at Omodos, and he was travelling to Kalo Chorio to get to McKinney and two sections that were doing a house-to-house there.

  Ledra Street was lined with clothes shops filled with imported fashions, and cafés. Gracie loved going there, and would have gone every day if Clara had agreed. You could post your letters in the red post boxes. You could buy talcum powder, chocolates, gloves.

  They would have the car drop them at the top, near the walls, then walk down, chatting and window-shopping, saying hello to people. They always saw people they – or at least Gracie – knew: diplomats’ wives, army wives, all kinds of other English people. Clara was coming to know them too.

  ‘Here,’ said Gracie to the driver. ‘Just here, thank you.’

  The bicycles were small-looking and far away along the white road. There were two of them. Thin white dust hovered over the road and shimmered.

  Hal didn’t think anything of them, apart from noting their approach, until one of the figures, seeing his vehicle, jumped off his bike and disappeared, down the steep hill into the bushes.

  ‘Hello,’ said Kirby, and Hal leaned out to see better.

  The second bicycle stopped. They were nearer now, just a couple of hundred yards away. The boy – it was a boy – still on the bike was shouting down the hill to his friend, and the abandoned bike lay on its side.

  After a moment, the boy stopped shouting, glanced towards Hal’s Land Rover, and started towards them again. There was a basket on the front of his bike, covered by a cloth.

  Kirby stopped the Land Rover and cut the engine. They could hear the bike squeaking as the boy laboured up the stony hill towards them on the white road. He was whistling. Nice touch, thought Hal, getting out. Kirby got out, too.