Small Wars Page 23
The little girls were squatting, like people around a campfire, playing amongst the coloured felt near the legs of the sister, who bent down to them lovingly. Hal was far away, through the door, down the long line of beds. They looked the same, as far as he could see. They looked peaceful, intent. He watched them for a little, flinching when they moved in case they saw him and were frightened. Then he went back to Clara.
In the middle of the day the first doctor, Dr Antoniadis, came and spoke to him. He put a hand on his shoulder. ‘What is your Christian name?’ he said.
‘Hal.’
‘And my name is Giorgios. We have a lady downstairs, she is asking for you.’
Evelyn Burroughs was standing in the middle of the vast lobby. Hal met her on the shining floor, stopping two feet away from her. He realised he was dirty and that he hadn’t shaved. Evelyn was wearing a hat. Her nose was red. ‘Hal, I’m so sorry.’ She didn’t meet his eye. ‘I came as soon as I could. Is there any news?’
‘Not at the moment.’
She looked at the floor. ‘Good Lord. What a thing,’ she said quietly.
They stood in silence.
‘Now,’ she said, her briskness was ironic, ‘I’ve taken a room at the Ledra Palace. I shall collect the girls, if that’s all right with you, and we’ll go back there as it’s home to them already. We’ll try to make things as normal as possible, shall we? I shan’t tell them anything. They’re too little. They had an awful fright but I gather they’re quite cheerful now.’
‘Yes. Good. Thank you.’
‘I’ll keep popping by. And you’re not to worry. Everybody is doing their best. How are the doctors?’
He couldn’t speak; he was diminished. It was all he could do to stand there.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘we’re making sure she has the best care. I promise.’
She reached out a gloved hand, and put it on his, hanging at his side. She could have been his mother, closer than his mother had ever been, as close as anybody, as he had been to the soldier, Jenson, as he died, as close as he was to Clara when he was inside her. They had no secrets, no privacy.
‘You look done in,’ she said. ‘If you change your clothes, and have a shave, you might feel better. Why don’t you come with me?’
‘Not now,’ he said, trying to smile but wincing at the impossibility.
‘I’ll have some things sent over for you. I’m sure they’ll let you have a room, or somewhere to change and clean up at least. A lot of people were brought in last night, after everything that went on, but I’m sure they’ll find somewhere for you.’
He didn’t know what she meant – after everything that went on.
In the afternoon Kirby – like a visitor from a different life – brought him a holdall, with clean clothes. They met in the lobby where Hal had spoken to Evelyn. Kirby was embarrassed and kept his eyes on the floor, shuffling and out of place. He didn’t say a word apart from ‘Sir’ as he handed it over.
Hal shaved and changed his shirt in a long, tiled bathroom with a rubber curtain around the bath. The room echoed as he tapped the razor on the basin edge. The baby was dead inside her with a bullet in it. He didn’t know how they would get it out.
Afterwards he sat by her bed again, regretting the brief time away from her. In the afternoon she opened her eyes and looked at him, then closed them again.
In the evening the siren sounded for the curfew. Hal watched the streets clear as the nurses made intimate changes to her unmoving body. He heard the drips being changed. The glass bottles knocking against each other, instruments on the metal trolley. He watched the soldiers far below in the street. They looked like toy soldiers.
When he was a child, home from school for the holidays and alone again, he had played toy soldiers. His armies were vast and loved. At the back of the house, on the first floor, was a long landing, with doors on one side and cold windows on the other. The wooden floor had a runner down the middle, with brass fixings at each end, worn patches where the stitching had faded and gone. Hal would lie on his tummy with the lined-up battalions, their cannon and cavalry, all the flags, the minute courageous figures of his dreams. Above him, painted soldiers looked down from dull gilt frames all the way along the landing. They had seemed to smile at him. He had not felt alone. He had been surrounded by legions. But now it came suddenly and coldly into his head that, really, there had been nobody else there with him at all.
They brought a camp bed into the room and he slept on it, flat on his front with his arms thrown out, like a baby learning to walk, a sleep like death. He woke up at two when she said his name, but she hadn’t moved; he was frightened he had dreamed she’d said his name because she was dying, and he was awake after that.
He lay in the dark listening to her breathing. Her breath was shallow. He journeyed with her, each breath, in and out, then they waited together – too long – until once more, in…
Her hand had been cool when she’d come in from the garden with the flowers. She had smiled and held it out to him. ‘Yes. Clara,’ she’d said. He had felt the rain from the wet flowers on his fingers.
Her small breath travelled in and out. At their wedding they had walked under shining swords. He had made promises to her and the promises had held at first, untested. But when she had come off the ship to meet him, she had been so bright, and she had followed him. He had taken her into this place, and then he had deserted her.
The hours of the night went by fearfully and in dishonour.
The next day she was awake some of the time and they said words to each other. Hal didn’t say any of the words he really had in his head. He said, ‘Hello,’ and ‘Ssh’.
She looked out of her dark blue eyes softly, but her voice was a whisper. ‘The girls?’
‘They’re fine. Don’t worry.’
‘Gracie? Gracie died.’
He held her gaze, nodded.
She seemed to wander. ‘Am I all right?’ she said. ‘Is it all right?’
Her tongue was swollen, trying to lick her dry lips. The nurse dabbed at than with wet cotton wool. Hal felt it was an intrusion to watch, and looked away.
He spoke to her mother, in England, on the telephone in Dr Antoniadis’s office. Moira and George had been told already, by the army, and the shooting was in the English papers – in the news all around the world. She had been told what time his call would come, and answered the telephone immediately it rang.
‘I’m sorry George can’t come to the phone,’ she said. ‘He just can’t bear to.’
She was brave, asking him questions that he had a feeling she had written down first. Hal pretended confidence, reassuring her, waiting while she cried and recovered. He expected her to blame him, was prepared for it, and would not have defended himself, but Moira was subdued; her misery was beyond blame. She asked after the girls.
‘They’re well. They’re fine.’
‘Thank you, Hal,’ she said. ‘Thank you,’ and Hal, in his shame, couldn’t answer her.
The next day they measured the risk of infection against the risk of more haemorrhaging and decided to operate. The operating theatre was on the fourth floor. Hal watched while they made her ready, but didn’t follow when they took her away. He stood in her empty room blankly, as the sound of the nurses, and the wheels of the bed, went away from him down the corridor.
Evelyn came for him. She took his arm, linking hers through his, and walked him out of the hospital into the street. They sat in the dining room at the hotel. It was where Clara and Gracie had sat – he didn’t know – and Evelyn ordered food for him. He ate some of it.
‘There’s no reason to suppose it won’t be all right,’ she said.
After lunch they walked back to the hospital and sat together, waiting. There was dust in the sunlight.
Evelyn took a paperback from her handbag. ‘Shall I tell you what it’s about?’ she said.
‘Please.’
‘Well, so far, we’ve met a fearfully glamorous viscount – it’s
set in the late seventeenth century, you see, and he’s throwing away his fortune on wine, women and song until one day he meets a beautiful heiress…’
Clara did not die that day. She lived. They cleared out the torn placenta, her damaged womb, ovaries, and the foetus, which would have been almost eleven inches long, had it been stretched out, and a boy.
The patching up of a body is fairly crude, a matter of closing holes and sealing tubes, cutting away the things that are no longer needed; they had to put a lot of blood into her veins for all the blood she was losing.
The cut, from her navel to her pubic bone, was sewn neatly closed, but messier and wider where it met the bullet wounds. It was dressed with pads and gauze. When they told him she was alive, Evelyn cried, as if unused to it, turning her face away from him. Hal shut his eyes and saw an infinity of relief.
It occurred to him to thank his dead son for protecting his mother; if that was a man’s first duty, that small life had performed it. There was more honour in its sacrifice than in any action of Hal’s since his own conception.
Chapter Five
Then there was the telling. She had been in an in-between place, protected. He thought she was too weak still, and would have never said it out loud but ‘The baby died,’ she said, on the morning of the fifth day. ‘I don’t think it was ever going to stay. What did they do with it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Was it a boy?’
‘Yes.’
‘I knew it was a boy.’
Her forehead was sweating. She was very pale.
Hal was close to her. He couldn’t look at her face but dropped his head to avoid her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
She slept after that.
The next afternoon, Hal brought the girls in to see her. They overlooked him in their eagerness to get to her. He had been right; they were unsettled by his reappearance. Clara had asked him to bring her makeup in, too. They waited outside for her to brush her hair and put on red lipstick. Evelyn had sent a bed-jacket with him, made of Greek cotton.
Hal kept the girls from climbing on the bed. Lottie tugged at her mother’s hand, jumping, while Meg stood close to her with her fingers in her mouth, listening.
He watched them, guarding her jealously from their love.
She fell asleep suddenly, and the girls were frightened. Hal was frightened too, and wanted them gone. ‘Meg, kiss your mother, it’s time to go home,’ he said. The word ‘home’ was wrong, of course.
He pulled the girls from her, pushing them out of the door, not caring if they cried. He looked up and down the empty corridor; there was no nurse. He pushed the door against their small bodies. She hadn’t wakened. He went back to the bed, with the girls crying in the corridor, and felt her head. It was both hot and cold. Quickly, quickly –
In the corridor he picked up one child and grabbed the other’s hand.
‘Come along, Mrs Burroughs now.’
He went down the empty corridor, feeling his panic in his chest. At the end of the corridor he saw a nurse. He knew this one, she didn’t speak English – he thought suddenly of Davis; he would know the right words.
‘My wife,’ he said, pointing, ‘my wife. Should she be asleep all the time? Please? Can you go? Can you check on her?’
The nurse smiled at him. She was going the wrong way – she hadn’t turned round.
‘Clara Treherne,’ he said, pointing again. ‘Please –’
She nodded kindly. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’
He took the girls down to Evelyn and left them with her. They cried and had to be carried, wriggling. Hal didn’t have any feeling for them.
‘How is she?’ said Evelyn, trying to wrestle them from him.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, turning to leave.
‘Hal, this is Captain Wallace, from Brigade HQ.’
‘Yes?’
The captain, a pale man of about twenty-six with white lashes, stepped forward and saluted him.
‘Major Treherne, would you be able to come with me, sir?’
‘Now?’
The girls’ cries made it hard to hear. Lottie gave a scream. Evelyn was trying to leave with them and Hal was distracted.
‘Here,’ he said, picking up Lottie round her middle and following Evelyn, who held Meg firmly by the hand, towards the entrance.
‘Thank you,’ said Evelyn. ‘It’s just to the car.’
The captain followed them, at Hal’s shoulder. He was embarrassed. ‘Sir, I’ve orders to accompany you to HQ, if it’s convenient. There are a few things to sort out with your leave, sir, paperwork –’
‘It isn’t convenient.’
Captain Wallace opened the doors of the hospital for them and Hal and Evelyn got to the kerb, where a car and driver were waiting.
‘My goodness, what a handful!’ said Evelyn.
Hal bundled Lottie into the back of the car.
‘You ought to go with him, Hal. It’s just boring old procedure –’
‘I’m terribly sorry, sir, but we won’t take up much of your time, sir,’ said the captain, holding the door of the car, and looking at Evelyn, struggling with Meg, as if he’d never seen a child before.
‘All right. Yes. Come on, then,’ said Hal, slamming the door after them.
The car pulled away and the girls’ screams couldn’t be heard.
‘Is Mrs Treherne feeling better, sir?’ asked the captain.
Hal nodded, but did not answer. The man had no business asking him.
It was a very short drive. Brigade HQ was a colonnaded building near the Archbishop’s Palace.
Hal followed Captain Wallace into the peace of the shadowy entrance. Sentry guards saluted them. After the white foreign hospital the change in surroundings was profound. They entered corridors that were panelled and warm; their feet made an ordered rhythm. Typewriters could be heard in anterooms from the long corridors, which were lined with trophies and smudged photographs of past ceremonies. Even needing to get back to Clara, the arms of familiarity encircled him, as if lulling him into a dream state.
They came to a door.
The captain knocked twice and opened it.
The brigadier stood up.
‘Brigadier Bryce-Stephens, this is Major Treherne,’ said the captain, saluted again and left.
Hal stepped into the room.
‘No need to stand on ceremony. Please. Sit down.’
Brigadier Bryce-Stephens was about fifty, his uniform, thick with medals, immaculate and at odds with his face, which was very tanned. A broad nose that had been broken at some point and re-set poorly.
‘Can I say how sorry I am about what has happened to your wife?’ His voice had the short flattened vowels of an aristocrat.
‘Thank you.’
‘We’ve been doing everything we can here to make things run as smoothly as possible for you. I’ve spoken to Colonel Burroughs, at Episkopi, several times. Needless to say, everyone there has been eager for news. Mrs Burroughs has been a help, I understand?’
‘Yes, she’s been very kind indeed.’
‘Can we offer you anything to drink? A cup of tea? Something stronger?’
‘No. Thank you.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I should get back.’
The image of Clara, slipping away from him into mysterious sleep, played in front of his eyes. It didn’t have the urgency it had before.
‘I understand. I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for you. The funeral for Mrs Bundle will be on Friday. Will your wife be well enough to attend?’
Three days.
‘I don’t think so. She can’t sit up properly.’
‘We’ve received a number of cards from well-wishers. I shall have them sent on to you. Many of them are from England, not just people in the services. The general public…’ He adjusted a pen on his desk. ‘I don’t know how much you’ve had a chance to think about what might happen next.’
‘Sir?’
‘No. She’s going home.’
It was as if someone else had said it for him. The decision had been made.
‘We’ll need to arrange transport for her. She won’t find a sea voyage very pleasant. I’ll see what I can do to get her back by air. I’ll have a word with the RAF, see if we can cadge a lift on a Valetta.’
Cadge a lift on a Valetta.
‘Will it go directly back?’
‘I would have thought so. Although with this Canal business, everything’s rather up in the air at the moment, you understand.’
‘She’s not at all well.’
‘Of course she won’t travel until she’s strong enough. Have they said when they’ll discharge her?’
‘No.’
‘Which brings us to the question of your leave. I understand you were due a week, but not before the middle of November.’
‘Yes.’
‘The incident happened on Friday. Your company is on ops this week?’
‘Yes, sir, for the next week and a half.’
There was silence.
‘A shame things didn’t fall the other way.’
‘Sir?’
‘There was rioting in Limassol yesterday. We’re spreading ourselves pretty thin at the moment, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate. Egypt –’
‘There was rioting?’
‘Yes. The schoolchildren. Not any more.’
Hal spoke quietly: ‘The schoolchildren were rioting in Limassol.’ He didn’t know why he repeated it, just to hear the sound of the words in his mouth, he thought, picturing the schoolchildren, his men trying to stop them.
‘It’s calmed down now.’
‘Fatalities?’
‘None I’m aware of.’
‘And here?’
‘It was unfortunate here. Things got a little overheated. It was a despicable and cowardly act. EOKA deny all knowledge, of course, but it’s hard to believe it was coincidence that the wives of British Army officers were the targets. It’s been difficult for our boys to control themselves as they ought. As I say, it’s all calmed down now. We’ll lift the curfew tonight. Feeling was running high, after what happened to Mrs Bundle and to your wife. You know.’