Small Wars Page 8

  Meg had looked pale earlier but now, in sleep, her face was flushed. She had been coughing all day. She moved restlessly, spread out on her back, and Clara looked across at Lottie.

  Since she had been a very young baby Lottie had slept on her front with her bottom in the air and her knees tucked up, arms down by her sides and her face sideways into the sheet. It was comical and bizarre. Clara and Hal loved to watch her, and to push her over sometimes, gently, to see how she bunched up her legs again to get back into position. She was in deep sleep, clean from her bath, her lips full and open to her sleepy breath.

  Clara looked back at Meg, sat down next to her and felt her forehead, which was clammy, her fine hair stuck to it. She was always quieter, always the lesser person almost, the shadow, and Clara, feeling guilty and protective for thinking it, stroked her cheek again.

  The fever and vicious cough had started after lunch. Clara wanted to talk to Hal about it; she wished he was home. Listening for his car to turn in and stop, and Kirby’s ‘Goodnight, sir’ over the idling motor, she thought what Hal would say. (‘Don’t worry about it now. Wait until tomorrow.’) She got up, still worrying, knowing she would check again in a few minutes, and went downstairs.

  She had put Hal’s plate in the food safe, laid out the coffee things, ready, and wasn’t sure what to do with herself. She went to the back of the house and opened the door. Fresh air came in onto her face, along with Mark Innes saying, ‘Well, what, then? Limassol?’ very unhappily, and with frustration.

  She closed the door again. There was the sound of the Land Rover from the front of the house and she ran to the door – no: she made herself stop and walk so that she wouldn’t seem panicky.

  ‘Right, sir.’

  ‘Good.’

  She opened the door.

  ‘Hello, darling.’ He knew immediately. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. Meg. She’s got a temperature.’

  ‘Let me get into the house first.’ He came in.

  She took off his cap and kissed him. ‘Sit,’ she said. ‘I’ll get your supper.’

  ‘All right. Hang on.’

  He ran up the stairs and she could hear him in the bathroom, washing his hands, noisily, and then Meg started to cry.

  ‘Damn,’ said Clara, and went up too.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Hal, waiting to be told off.

  ‘Don’t be silly, she’s not well.’

  He finished drying his hands on the small towel and put it back, neatly folded, in the bathroom. Clara had gone into the girls’ bedroom. She sat in the shadows, holding Meg across her body.

  Hal stood in the doorway, looking at them: Meg’s damp hair and flushed cheek, held against the dark blue of Clara’s dress. Clara’s bare arms were around her baby, arms that were lightly golden now, he knew, in the sunlight. ‘What?’ she said to him, seeing his look.

  ‘Where’s my dinner?’

  ‘Sh! Go down.’

  He went, and sat at the table, and Clara came downstairs, fetched him his plate and the bottle of beer she’d had standing in cold water, some lemonade for herself. She sat opposite, watching him eat.

  ‘Does she have a temperature?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What else?’

  He tore the bread and made a sandwich of the slices of lamb and cold potatoes.

  ‘She’s been coughing. And she was very pale and now she’s very red. And I think she has a headache because she doesn’t like the light.’

  Hal put down his sandwich. ‘I’m leaving tonight,’ he said.

  ‘Oh – it’s tonight?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He started to eat again, not looking at Clara, letting her get used to the idea.

  ‘This is the big thing you were talking about?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long will you be gone?’

  ‘Can’t really say. Not long.’

  Clara felt tears hurt her eyes and tried to tighten her mouth. Stupid. Self-pity, she said to herself, but it didn’t help.

  ‘Will you ask for the doctor?’ said Hal, either pretending he didn’t see her face or really not noticing.

  ‘Well…I think I’ll – not worry about it, and see how she is in the morning,’ said Clara, strangled by tears, and put her hand to her face to hide.

  The sight of that was too much for Hal, who had been pretending not to notice her upset, letting her fight it. He sat there, opposite her, and his chest hurt to see her break up like that. ‘Stop it,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No – just – It’s all right. Meg will be fine. This is what I must do.’

  ‘Don’t say that! I know you must do it. I’m just being silly.’

  Hal felt helpless and clumsy, knowing he had hurt her but not what to do about it. He was still holding his sandwich. He looked around the room. ‘Clara,’ he said.

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Clara, and looked up and smiled at him.

  Her eyelashes were stuck together. He wanted to kiss her. How ridiculous that he could feel shy of her still, after being married for so long. The table was between them: he wasn’t sure how he could get up and go over to comfort her without creating a drama in some way. ‘All right?’ he said, quite cheerfully.

  ‘Yes. Better. Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’

  ‘Well, eat up, then,’ she said.

  Hal ate up, and quite soon they were back to normal, repeating comforting plans about Meg, and he was telling her his day – the bits he was allowed to tell her.

  He went outside to smoke, because it was a nice night. Clara poured him a Keo brandy, and they shared it, and the cigarette, standing on the small terrace behind the house. Deirdre and Mark weren’t shouting any more, but there was no breeze at all.

  Chapter Ten

  After the high hills there were the plains. You reached the top of a hill and expected mountains or a valley ahead of you, but instead there was the barren landscape that went away to nothing. It was enormous, foreign to all of them, and daunting that to their enemy it was home and as friendly as pasture.

  ‘Who’d be prepared to die for this?’ Kirby had said to Hal. ‘It’s just rocks.’

  Hal didn’t remind him that, by definition, they were prepared to die for it, too.

  They knew the location of the camp they were looking for. Hal had his three platoons spreading out in lines, with other battalions from the north-east and the west forming a circle. There was radio communication between them and everybody alerted to the possibility that Demetriou – Pappas – with a force of unknown size, might try to rush them, or slip out in darkness. The job was to keep the lines tight and avoid friendly-fire incidents. Some of them – not Hal’s unit – were coming through wooded areas, across the mountains where the danger of sudden ambush was greater.

  The soldiers made temporary camps on rough ground at night and kept watch. There was no chance of secrecy. It was to be a much trickier operation than the cordon-and-search before: no house had been identified, just a description of a camp that was sometimes tented but more often in caves, and the caves were hard to see. Kollias had pinpointed the camp to within a one-mile radius. The terrain was very dry and appeared flat, but the plains were punctuated by sudden deeps or honeycombed chambers in the rock that the hiders knew well and the seekers didn’t.

  The days were very long and boring, with the officers and NCOs patrolling the lines to keep them tight and, for Hal’s unit at least, no incident, but the nights were tense and they knew they were being watched. Once there was firing from the dark and the whole camp descended into Keystone Cops chaos for an hour. The firing hadn’t hit anything, and it was a miracle there weren’t casualties amongst the frightened soldiers shooting into the dark, half out of their sleeping bags. They sent armed patrols into the darkness, but the enemy had melted away.

  They were a big fat English target, and they knew it. Once Hal, having a piss outside the almost non-light of the camp, looked into the dark, with a
picture in his head of a pheasant he’d seen once, tethered as bait for foxes and flapping. It wasn’t a frightening image but a comical one, and he’d buttoned up his flies and gone back to bed, but they were bait, just waiting for the fox to strike so that they could take the fight to him.

  They had known one of two things would happen: Pappas would either try to make a break through the lines or hope to elude them by waiting it out in one of the dozens of hides. They came upon several small, recently deserted camps, and caves that had been hastily abandoned, some littered with dusty kit and even weapons, so they knew they were close.

  It was only the officers who had this overview; most of the men had hardly any idea what they were doing, or why, or how great the prize was. Hal tried to impress upon those he spoke to – usually to tear a strip off them for gaps in the lines – that they weren’t walking for hours in the glare and sharp wind for his entertainment. There was a rumour that their friends in the R—N—had let a group of four EOKA slip past them. They were leading a donkey, and had touched their caps. The donkey, presumably, had been carrying the weapons. They were young soldiers, falling for cheap tricks because they weren’t looking sharp. Hal wasn’t going to let that be his men. He worked the line tirelessly, and kept the ineffectual Grieves up to it too, when he could.

  All three battalions spent a second night under canvas in their various positions, and then moved on.

  On the third day, Hal’s company were crossing the moonscape of the rocky high plain. They were squinting in the glare and the wind was blowing dust up into their faces. Then, out of the wind, a spatter of shots was fired, spitting up dirt and fragments of rock from the ground around them.

  All of them went flat onto their bellies, trying to cover their heads. No one was hit.

  Hal, Kirby, and the two nearest them, rolled or crawled into the shelter of a wedge-shaped rock that was about three feet high and Hal, flat on his front, thought, We must be getting very close if they’re trying to engage us.

  ‘Where was that fucking from? I couldn’t see nothing ahead!’ Kirby was at his shoulder, breathing heavily.

  Time had slowed for Hal again. To his right there were six soldiers – one a lance corporal – spread out across about four hundred yards, lying flat too, but with nothing to protect them, then the ground rose up and he couldn’t see any more. To the left he couldn’t see anybody, because of the rock that was lined and ridged, the thin edges sharp against the sky.

  Hal signalled the lance corporal to get over to him with the other men and, from their position behind the rock, started firing rounds for cover. As they got up on their feet they came under fire again – high-velocity rifles. The lance corporal and the five men with him bolted towards them, trying to keep firing in something like the right direction, skidding feet first into the small safe place where Hal and Kirby were. No one hit, just a jumble of heaped-up men and weapons, boots gouging stones from the ground.

  ‘Hello, ladies,’ said Kirby and the lance corporal answered,

  ‘Very cosy.’

  There was breathing, and quiet apart from that, then more shots, not in their direction but from their own lines off to the left, and a return of fire from the unseen enemy.

  According to the map, there was a cliff ahead, dropping straight down into a narrow crevasse, but they couldn’t see it yet. They had thought there might be caves at the bottom and there was every chance, with the enemy stirred to action, that this was the main hide they had been searching for. They had poked a snakes’ nest and the snakes had betrayed themselves. Now they just had to keep the enemy engaged, send back to the radio operator, keep the lines tight and not fail.

  Still, there was no doubt they were in something of a tight spot. Hal checked his watch. It was midday exactly.

  Meg’s fever hadn’t gone down after Hal left. It didn’t go down all day, and the following day it was worse, and Lottie was not her normal jolly self but coughing as well. Clara stayed quietly at home until lunchtime, trying to read to them, with the wireless on sometimes.

  She decided it was just a normal cough and cold, sacrificing instinct to her need for calm. She didn’t notice how extreme the situation had become until at three o’clock in the afternoon she realised they were all lying in darkness because whenever she opened the flowered curtains both girls cried with pain.

  Dr Godwin was in barrack dress, and quite unofficial-looking. He had black hair, a ruddy face, and was about thirty-five. Clara showed him upstairs to the girls. He sat on the bed and said, ‘What have we here, then?’ and Clara was emotional with relief.

  He looked at the twins – into their mouths and ears, pulled up their nighties to examine their stomachs and the skin on their arms and pronounced that, in all likelihood, they had measles. Clara didn’t know of any contact with anybody with measles, but they had been in Limassol amongst crowds and on the beach.

  ‘You just need to sit it out,’ said Dr Godwin.

  He asked Clara if she had had measles and she said she had.

  ‘The rash should show itself within a day or two. There’s every chance they’ll just feel a bit poorly for a few days, and by next week you’ll have forgotten all about it.’

  Clara knew of a boy who’d gone deaf from measles, and another who had been epileptic ever since having it. She thought you could develop polio straight afterwards, but she wasn’t sure of the connection and was too frightened to ask about it.

  ‘Do you have any questions?’ he asked, with the soldierly directness that comforted and intimidated her.

  ‘No,’ said Clara. Then, ‘Except…you said “every chance” we’ll have forgotten it – but…?’

  ‘Measles is a common enough childhood illness, surely you know that?’

  Clara was embarrassed and said that she did. She was incredulous at her own meekness, and despised it. Apparently she was more concerned with showing the doctor she wasn’t panicking than asking perfectly normal questions.

  ‘You can call me out again if the fever reaches a hundred and four. Tepid baths. Water if they’ll take it. Boil it first, of course.’ He couldn’t wait to be out of the house.

  Once he was gone Clara felt outrage and irritation, and had dozens of questions for him, but it was too late. She hated him. He probably felt looking after children was beneath him and wanted to be splinting people’s legs on battlefields.

  She went upstairs, picked up the thermometer from the side table and shook it down. She put the thin glass stick under their arms, one after the other, holding each arm close to the body to keep it there, tucked into the tiny hot gap. Their temperature was 103. The room was very stuffy. She tried to make them drink water, wishing they weren’t so compliant and sleepy.

  Clara felt the overwhelming need for company, and went downstairs and out of the back door. She hadn’t seen Deirdre go out that morning. Often they dropped by each other’s houses, calling, ‘You there?’ before leaning over the low fence that divided them. Clara stepped into Deirdre’s garden, and looked into the house through the window, which was a sash, and divided into four panes. The kitchen was dim, and darker as it went towards the front of the empty house and the kitchen door. Clara knocked anyway, then, hearing one of the girls coughing convulsively, like a baby seal, and crying out, she went back to her own house.

  Adile had just arrived. Clara jumped when she saw her. Adile checked the scarf wrapped so closely around her head and said something Clara didn’t understand, pointing upstairs at the girls.

  ‘No,’ said Clara. ‘No, I don’t understand you!’

  Adile made rocking motions for ‘baby’, and then said something else.

  Clara felt suddenly that perhaps Adile had been up to see them, or had frightened them, staring at them or touching them while she was gone. She knew she was being irrational. ‘The babies aren’t well,’ she said, smiling resolutely, ‘thank you, Adile,’ and she went past her up the stairs.

  She sat with the girls while Adile cleaned. She gave herself a very stri
ct talking-to, but her babies’ eyes glittered with fever, watching her.

  Clara, going back and forth to the bathroom to rinse out the flannel with cool water, and wiping it over the twins’ shivering hot bodies, thought almost constantly of Hal. Hal, after two hours in the shallow scraping underneath the sharp rock, getting men out one by one, and word back to the signaller, didn’t think of Clara at all; if he’d heard her name he wouldn’t have recognised it.

  As he’d thought, the EOKA forces, such as they were, hadn’t had enough firepower to engage in a fight for long. Further north and west of them there had been other incidents, as EOKA, defending Pappas’s hiding place, ambushed troops, but only one casualty.

  By late afternoon Hal’s company had advanced to the edge of the crevasse. It took another hour to get troops in position all around the edge.

  It was a long slit of a place, about two hundred yards wide and ending in sharp angles at both ends. The R—N—were providing a much wider ring, a mile back, with Brens and snipers for Hal, too. Now they just had to wait. Pappas could have no thought of escape, and British morale was very high. Hal felt the determined cold sureness of his enemy’s defeat.

  The sun caught the far end of the crevasse; the caves could be seen very clearly in their blackness – small, gaping holes. As night fell, the ridged bones of rock made their own deep shadows, and the patterns were confusing, but Hal’s men knew where they were now, and even Pappas’s position, from the occasional helpful glint of the low sun on the metal barrels of guns.

  The descent needed to be examined minutely. There must be another way in, apart from virtually abseiling: they’d be picked off like ducks if they attempted that. Night fell, with no change.

  Clara had both girls in bed with her all night. She lay awake, and they coughed, whimpering their pain, coughing till they were sick even, phlegm and froth into Clara’s shaking hands. All her instincts were wrong: she wanted to wrap them up but they were too hot already; she wanted to feed them but they couldn’t eat.