Small Wars Page 22

  ‘Halt,’ he said. ‘Stamata. Dur.’

  And the boy halted. He was about fifteen. He rested on one foot, his forearms leaning on the handlebars, squinting at them.

  Hal walked over to him. If the other hadn’t stopped, he never would have noticed them. He was still in two minds whether to search him.

  ‘What’s in there?’ said Kirby, not expecting to be understood, but gesturing.

  The boy suddenly abandoned his pretence, and made a lunge away from them, but Kirby, nimble on his big feet, grabbed his thin arm with his big hand, restraining him.

  ‘We would have passed him,’ said Hal.

  He went to the bicycle, which had fallen in the scuffle. A bundle in a white cloth had fallen from it onto the stony road. He picked it up and lifted the corners of the cloth. Inside it was a smoothly oiled pistol, standard British Army issue, a Webley .38. The boy wriggled in Kirby’s grasp.

  Stupid, thought Hal. Stupid. Some bloody uncle, or his father or some other sneaky Cyp bastard having kids do things like this. Bloody hell. And now – He looked at the boy. Now he’d have to take him in.

  ‘Sir? What are we going to do? Take him on to Kalo with us? Where will we put him? We could go back to Epi with him.’

  Yes. It was eleven o’clock. They could take him to the guardroom at Episkopi and still be up at Kalo in time.

  The boy had gone silent and was staring at the ground. He could be in the Episkopi guardroom, in a cell there, waiting for questioning, in less than an hour.

  ‘Which village are you from?’ Hal said to the boy. ‘Where’s your mother? Are you coming with us now?’

  ‘Sir,’ said Kirby. ‘He don’t understand you, does he?’

  Hal walked off, ten feet away from them. He was still holding the pistol. He took the cloth off it. The gun was sleek and heavy in his hand. He checked the chamber. It was empty. He walked fast up to the boy. ‘Stupid!’ he shouted. ‘Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!’ He held the gun up to the boy’s temple and pressed it hard into his head, shouting, ‘Do you know what will happen to you? Do you know?’

  There was silence for a moment, just the boy staring at him, then Hal lowered the gun and walked away again. Kirby, nervous now, wiped the sweat from his face with his free hand.

  Hal stood with his back to them both.

  Kirby looked up and down the empty road and said, ‘Sir, he’s old enough to know better.’ After a moment, he added, ‘We’ve taken in kids younger than him before, sir. That gun was on its way somewhere.’

  Hal saw the other boy in his mind, the blood and water on him and the floor, his breath dragging in and out of his throat. He didn’t know if that boy had been one of his arrests – he hadn’t been able to see his face properly. He wouldn’t be able to tell one from another anyway.

  He turned back to them and came up to the boy and looked, one hand in his pocket, the other holding the gun loosely in his hand.

  This boy, this particular boy, had jaggedly cut hair, short into the neck but growing out. He had a slightly flattened nose and high cheekbones, giving his face a Slav look. He had scars on his knees. Sweat was soaking in patches through his shirt and a wristwatch with a dirty canvas strap, much too big for him, hung down over his hand. This particular boy looked back at Hal bravely.

  Hal didn’t have a choice. ‘We’ll take him back to Epi,’ he said.

  Getting back into the Land Rover, he pulled his hand from his pocket, unthinkingly throwing the small thick square of paper away from him onto the road as Kirby put the cuffed boy into the back seat.

  Clara and Gracie left the car at Eleftheria Square at eleven o’clock, walking through the darkness under the deep medieval arches as the clocks struck the hour. Clara hadn’t wanted to be on Ledra Street, but Gracie was very keen to find a new dress to impress David. His leave was at the end of the week.

  They had the children with them. The girls were in pinafores and Larry and Tommy had shorts and white shirts, Tommy with braces because his shorts always slipped down.

  Clara had no sense of being followed or watched. Her anxiety, the current of fear that had run underneath everything, had quieted recently. There were crowds here, anyway, and open daytime normality, nothing to fear. ‘I think I must surrender to the inevitable,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘It’s smocks for me from now on. I may as well get used to the idea. I can’t possibly keep on like this – look at me!’

  ‘You’ll be much more comfortable,’ said Gracie, ‘and cooler too. Perhaps we’ll find something today.’

  ‘I shall look like an old Greek lady.’

  ‘Never. Elegance always.’

  They had emerged into the inner city, and crossed the roads that circled it to enter Ledra Street, which, in late morning, was teeming.

  The women held the children’s hands firmly in the crowds.

  ‘I saw a printed organza,’ said Gracie, and – exactly at that moment – Clara heard the shots.

  She didn’t recognise them as shots. She couldn’t place the sound. It was a cracking sound – a sharp knocking – and she saw Gracie going sideways away from her and falling.

  The world slowed. Clara saw the crowds near them pull back as Gracie fell. A woman in a yellow dress was putting her hands up to her face, her handbag hanging from her wrist. An old man with a sagging belly over belted trousers threw his arms out wide. Then again, in that infinite second, the sharp high crack, and Clara felt a quick hot pricking feeling low down in her stomach.

  That’s odd, Clara thought slowly, letting go of Lottie’s hand. She heard screams. They weren’t hers. She saw that Gracie, falling, had pulled Tommy down with her into a heap on the dirty pavement. There were cigarette ends on the pavement. The strong heat was still there in her abdomen, but Clara didn’t feel any pain. She thought, Poor Tommy – then her vision was splashed with black. There were dark fireworks across her sight. She looked down, aware of Lottie’s face looking up at her, through the dark patches. She saw that her hand and the front of her dress were covered with blood. She didn’t know where it was coming from. She was falling. She saw the pavement, detailed, come up at her but didn’t feel herself hitting it.

  Like Gracie, she had kept hold of Meg’s hand, and they fell – with Lottie standing alone, watching – like people being tripped up in a race at a village fair, tumbling, and they lay, jumbled together, the blood fast pooling out, creeping shinily over the pavement.

  The mass of people reacted, pulling back in a wave, then there were sounds of panic, people looking to see where the shots had come from, but the gunman, hiding the smooth pistol easily, had walked away.

  After just a very few seconds, English people, Greek and Turkish, strangers to them, came closer. Somebody leaned down. Somebody knelt. The woman in the yellow dress tried to pull the children away, her husband helped her. Most, though, carried on walking, turning their faces away. Some covered their mouths, as if the two Englishwomen shot down were run-over dogs, to be passed with eyes averted and hurriedly left behind.

  Gracie was lying on her back, with her hips and legs twisted in the opposite direction from her shoulders. Her eyes were unflinching in the brightness. The children began to scream. It was hard to tell which ones were screaming.

  Clara’s eyes were blinking fast. She was trying to sit up and see past the black shapes in her vision, but she couldn’t seem to move at all. She was sharply aware of her children, and that she was lying down. The heat had spread out now through her hips and stomach and become the centre of her. She was trying to speak, and stuttering. A part of her could see she was lying on the street, but the rest of her was lost in it. She wanted to say, ‘My girls, please, help,’ but she couldn’t speak. She could see people leaning over her. She didn’t know any of them. There were strangers leaning over her and touching her. She couldn’t hear anything. She began to be very frightened. She thought, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no…

  It took an hour to get back to Episkopi.

  Hal
put the boy into the guardroom, hating the time it took, the paperwork. It was hard to make himself keep standing there as the sergeant on the desk fiddled with the carbon paper, clumsily, unable to adjust it so that it wasn’t creased, oblivious to Hal’s tension and the fearful boy in front of him. The air was stifling in that place. It still stank.

  ‘Just a mo,’ he said, smoothing out the creases, registering the oiled pistol, tagging it, and it was nearly another hour before they could get away.

  At last they were released, and the boy taken inside. Hal didn’t watch him go.

  He came down the steps. He got into the Land Rover. Kirby pulled away again, grumbling about the heat and his lunch being late, and Hal put his elbow out of the open window, resting his fingers on the doorframe.

  To their left, a handful of men were playing football, shirts off, a layer of dust a foot thick making it look as if they were cut off at the knee, the heavy ball occasionally flying up to shoulder height. Their shouts reached Hal over the roar of the Land Rover as it slowed for the gate.

  There came the rattle of the ball hitting the wire fence and bouncing back into the dust as the barrier sentry, instead of lifting it up, letting them go as he had let them enter, came out into the road, and raised his hand, signalling to them to pull over. He was talking to his companion over his shoulder as he walked.

  Kirby braked. ‘What have I done now?’ he said. ‘There’s always bloody something.’

  The Land Rover’s engine idled. The soldier gestured, ‘Stay!’ He began to run heavily towards them.

  Hal watched the sentry running towards them. He saw his boots in the dust, his face screwed up with intent, his Sten bouncing and steadied with one hand as he approached, and Hal felt, from nowhere, cold dread, the horror of absolute change approaching him, and when he heard what had happened, it was as if he had known it all along.

  Chapter Four

  Kirby drove him straight to Nicosia, to the hospital where Clara was. The drive, all four hours, was made in silence, with nothing to say or do except keep from falling into imagining. He had been told she wasn’t dead when he left. When he left, she wasn’t dead.

  He stared out of the car at nothing, seeing the long white road and the young boy on it, the slick pistol, wrapped lovingly in white cloth, imagining blood on his thin child’s body.

  It had been the work of a quick and vengeful God, he thought, but she wasn’t dead when he left.

  The hospital was in the centre of the city. They were being held up by trucks stopping to let out troops, soldiers with metal barriers, and the Land Rover had to squeeze between them. Neither he nor Kirby said anything about it. It was distant to Hal. He didn’t connect it with Clara or the other woman who was shot.

  They reached the hospital, in a quiet street, and stopped as a straggle of civilians, running to their houses, skidded in front of the car. Hal had an impression of the building, rising in stone above him, high; the entrance hall was vast with a polished floor. He walked across the shining floor to the desk. He did not run. He heard his voice: ‘My wife is here. Clara Treherne.’

  A soldier came over to him, introduced himself – some name, some regiment. They didn’t make him wait, they took him upstairs. There were nurses, like nuns, in white headdresses, quietly walking, the corridors were shiny too, the doors. Each one could have been hers. Passing doors, waiting to be taken to her, but then a doctor approached him.

  Hal said, ‘Where’s my wife?’

  ‘Come with me,’ said the doctor.

  ‘No. Where’s my wife?’

  ‘Please, Mr Treherne, come with me.’

  The man was Greek. Why didn’t they have a proper doctor? Why didn’t he address him properly? If he didn’t know a soldier – or how to speak to one – she was in the hands of foreigners, she couldn’t be helped, where was she?

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Dr Antoniadis.’

  ‘I want to see my wife.’

  ‘Let me explain to you.’

  ‘Christ –’

  ‘Here, please.’ The man had a hand on his arm and Hal sat down on a chair in the long white corridor with the polished floors and cool blinds all along it.

  ‘Is she dead?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I can’t, I’m sorry –’

  ‘That’s perfectly fine. You will see her. Let me, please, tell you the situation. Would you like some water?’

  ‘Just tell me.’

  ‘Your wife was shopping, with her friend, here in Nicosia.’

  Hal fixed his eyes on the doctor’s face.

  ‘She was brought here at twelve o’clock. She was shot with a revolver. A hand gun. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes. Go on.’

  ‘Twice. Here.’ He gestured. ‘In the stomach. I am sorry, sir, the baby inside is dead.’

  He didn’t care. He didn’t care about the fucking baby. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘We have stopped the bleeding. She is unconscious. It’s best if you know the situation. Please. Have some water.’

  ‘I want to see her. Now.’ Hal stood up.

  The doctor stood up too. ‘This way.’

  The door was opened. Hal stepped into the white room. The air was suffused with bright, blurred light. He smelled disinfectant, mineral and sweet. Clara was lying on the bed. Her hair was the only dark thing in the room. It looked like a vision, to Hal.

  The doctor was just behind his shoulder. Hal saw that she was breathing. A glass bottle, shining and full of liquid, hung above her. There were tubes going into her arms. Her shoulders were bare above the sheet, white bandages on her wrists, the backs of her hands. She had never been so still.

  ‘Where are my daughters?’ he said.

  ‘They are safe.’

  ‘But where?’

  ‘They are here, in the hospital.’

  Hal walked over to the bed. The frame of the bed was white. The pillows, blankets, sheets, table, floor – everything was white. Clara’s hair and lashes were dark. Her mouth was red. There was a red stain on the sheet.

  ‘She’s still bleeding,’ he said.

  They sent him out.

  He waited.

  He sat in a chair in another room and a nurse brought him water and left the warm glass in front of him. He didn’t know how long he sat there.

  Another doctor came. An older man, in a suit. ‘I’m afraid your wife is still very ill,’ he said. ‘The foetus is still inside her. Can you say with certainty how many weeks pregnant she is?’

  ‘No. I don’t know.’

  ‘The bullet entered the placenta. The main thing has been to stop the haemorrhaging, do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hal, thinking of tying off the stump of Taylor’s leg on the beach, how fast the blood pumped from it onto the sand.

  ‘We cannot think beyond keeping her stable for the moment. After that we’ll see what to do about the pregnancy. I am very sorry.’

  Hal looked at him. He had dark brown eyes behind glasses. The glasses made them seem bigger, peering at him. ‘You can call the company lines at Episkopi,’ said Hal. ‘The battalion MO there, Major Godwin, he’ll know how many weeks she is.’

  The army sent people to help him. He didn’t notice the things that were done for him. Nobody tried to make him leave.

  They let him back into the room. It was empty – just the square room like a nightmare. His stomach dropped inside him, then her bed was pushed in past him – as if he were not there, just observing – rubber wheels on the polished floor. The bed was adjusted by the nurses in headdresses, who didn’t look at him and left quietly afterwards. He didn’t know what they had done to her out of the room, if she had nearly left him or if she was safe. She was in the same position. They had changed the sheets.

  He sat down in the same chair. The doctor came in again and stood next to him. ‘You can stay here now,’ he said. ‘We will make arrangements. Try not to worry.’

  It was night-time now. He heard the wail of sirens at
sunset. There had been gunfire outside, and the bells of police cars, but now it was quieter. He began to notice the building around him a little.

  He could hear the business of the hospital, hurrying feet, voices and distant doors.

  He sat in a chair by her bed, but not too close. At intervals, he didn’t know how often, nurses would come in to check on Clara.

  The checks were private, feminine work. When the nurses opened the door Hal would go to the window, looking out, far down into the street, where small cars passed the patrolling soldiers silently, until the door closed again. Through the night there were fewer cars in the street below, then none. Then after some time, the sky was paler above the buildings. The next time the nurse came, the pink sun was above the trees and roofs.

  When she came back, it was not for Clara but for him: she had brought him tea. It was strong, Indian tea with condensed milk in a pale green cup with a saucer.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Hal, taking the cup politely, holding it in one hand near his thigh, like somebody at a tea party.

  The nurse went away.

  Strange, blank – he could hear cars again, trucks, people walking in the corridors, and there was Clara, lying there, not moving, in another day.

  Frightened hot tears blinded him. He put the cup and saucer down on the floor, spilling the tea, clumsy, and pressed his palms to his eyes to get a hold of himself – except that instead his head went down onto his hands, bent over. More tears. Like a man before an altar, afraid, covering his face, he hid from the sight of her.

  He prayed, but his prayers were just begging. He garbled silent fearful bargains behind his closed eyes, but it was too late for that. He already had God’s answer: his wife torn in half, his baby killed.

  Later in the long morning, when Clara hadn’t woken still, but had moved her hand slightly and shifted in the bed, Hal went to see the girls.

  They were on another floor, in an empty ward, sitting on the floor by a table where a sister was sewing. She handed them squares of coloured material and they pretended to sew, too. Hal looked through the glass door, down the long line of empty beds with folded blankets stacked on the ends of them, to where they were. He felt like a dead man, looking through glass into the living world.