“I thought you were bored with Brenda and Zita.”
“Only because they always had Trimmer around.”
“Ah,” said Ian. “Oh.” He twiddled with things on his desk. “What’s all this about Glasgow?” he asked.
“Oh, that,” she said. “That was nothing. That was fun. Not a bit like what’s going on now.”
“Now the poor beast thinks he’s in love.”
“Yes, it’s too indecent.”
VIII
On 31 May, Guy sat in a cave overhanging the beach of Sphakia where the final embarkation was shortly to begin. By his watch it was not yet ten o’clock but it seemed the dead of night. Nothing stirred in the moonlight. In the crowded ravine below the Second Halberdiers stood in column of companies, every man in full marching order, waiting for the boats. Hookforce was deployed on the ridge above, holding the perimeter against an enemy who since sunset had fallen silent. Guy had brought his section here late that afternoon. They had marched all the previous night and most of that day, up the pass, down to Imbros, down a gully to this last position. They dropped asleep where they halted. Guy had sought out and found Creforce headquarters and brought from them to the Hookforce commanders the last grim orders.
He dozed and woke for seconds at a time, barely thinking.
There were footsteps outside. Guy had not troubled to post a look-out. Ivor Claire’s troop was a few hundred yards distant. He went to the mouth of the cave and in the moonlight saw a familiar figure and heard a familiar voice: “Guy? Ivor.”
Ivor entered and sat beside him.
They sat together, speaking between long pauses in the listless drawl of extreme fatigue.
“This is a damn fool business, Guy.”
“It will all be over tomorrow.”
“Just beginning. You’re sure Tony hasn’t got the wrong end of the stick? I was at Dunkirk, you know. Not much fuss about priorities there. No inquiries afterwards. It doesn’t make any sense, leaving the fighting troops behind and taking off the rabble. Tony’s all in. I bet he muddled his orders.”
“I’ve got them all in writing from the G.O.C. Surrender at dawn. The men aren’t supposed to know yet.”
“They know all right.”
“The general’s off in a flying-boat tonight.”
“Not staying with the sinking ship.”
“Napoleon didn’t stay with his army after Moscow.”
Presently Ivor said: “What does one do in prison?”
“I imagine a ghastly series of concert parties—perhaps for years. I’ve a nephew who was captured at Calais. D’you imagine one can do anything about getting posted where one wants?”
“I presume so. One usually can.”
Another pause.
“There would be no sense in the G.O.C. sitting here to be captured.”
“None at all. No sense in any of us staying.”
Another pause.
“Poor Freda,” said Ivor. “Poor Freda. She’ll be an old dog by the time I see her again.”
Guy briefly fell asleep. Then Ivor said: “Guy, what would you do if you were challenged to a duel?”
“Laugh.”
“Yes, of course.”
“What made you think of that now?”
“I was thinking about honor. It’s a thing that changes, doesn’t it? I mean, a hundred and fifty years ago we would have had to fight if challenged. Now we’d laugh. There must have been a time a hundred years or so ago when it was rather an awkward question.”
“Yes. Moral theologians were never able to stop dueling—it took democracy to do that.”
“And in the next war, when we are completely democratic, I expect it will be quite honorable for officers to leave their men behind. It’ll be laid down in King’s Regulations as their duty—to keep a cadre going to train new men to take the place of prisoners.”
“Perhaps men wouldn’t take kindly to being trained by deserters.”
“Don’t you think in a really modern army they’d respect them the more for being fly? I reckon our trouble is that we’re at the awkward stage—like a man challenged to a duel a hundred years ago.”
Guy could see him clearly in the moonlight, the austere face, haggard now but calm and recollected, as he had first seen it in the Borghese Gardens. Ivor stood up saying: “Well, the path of honor lies up the hill,” and he strolled away.
And Guy fell asleep.
He dreamed continuously, it seemed to him, and most prosaically. All night in the cave he marched, took down orders, passed them on, marked his map, marched again, while the moon set and the ships came into the bay and the boats went back and forth between them and the beach, and the ships sailed away leaving Hookforce and five or six thousand other men behind them. In Guy’s dreams there were no exotic visitants among the shades of Creforce, no absurdity, no escape. Everything was as it had been the preceding day, the preceding night, night and day since he had landed at Suda, and when he woke at dawn it was to the same half-world; sleeping and waking were like two airfields, identical in aspect though continents apart. He saw himself dimly at a great distance. Weariness was all.
*
“They say the ships left food on the beach,” said his sergeant.
“We’d better have a meal before we go to prison.”
“It’s true then, sir, what they’re saying, that there’s no more ships coming?”
“Quite true, sergeant.”
“And we’re to surrender?”
“Quite true.”
“It don’t seem right.”
The golden dawn was changing to unclouded blue. Guy led his section down the rough path to the harbor. The quay was littered with abandoned equipment and the wreckage of bombardment. Among the scrap and waste stood a pile of rations—bully beef and biscuits—and a slow-moving concourse of soldiers foraging. The sergeant pushed his way through them and passed back half a dozen tins. There was a tap of fresh water running to waste in the wall of a ruined building. Guy and his section filled their bottles, drank deep, refilled them, turned off the tap; then breakfasted. The little town was burned, battered and deserted by its inhabitants. The ghosts of an army teemed everywhere. Some were quite apathetic, too weary to eat; others were smashing their rifles on the stones, taking a fierce relish in this symbolic farewell to their arms; an officer stamped on his binoculars; a motor-bicycle was burning; there was a small group under command of a sapper captain doing something to a seedy-looking fishing-boat that lay on its side, out of the water, on the beach. One man sat on the sea-wall methodically stripping down his Bren and throwing the parts separately far into the scum. A very short man was moving from group to group saying: “Me surrender? Not bloody likely. I’m for the hills. Who’s coming with me?” like a preacher exhorting a doomed congregation to flee from the wrath to come.
“Is there anything in that, sir?” asked the sergeant.
“Our orders are to surrender,” said Guy. “If we go into hiding the Cretans will have to look after us. If the Germans found us we should only be marched off as prisoners of war—our friends would be shot.”
“Put like that, sir, it doesn’t seem right.”
Nothing seemed right that morning, nothing seemed real.
“I imagine a party of senior officers have gone forward already to find the right person to surrender to.”
An hour passed.
The short man filled his haversack with food, slung three water-bottles from his shoulders, changed his rifle for the pistol which an Australian gunner was about to throw away and, bowed under his load, sturdily strutted off out of their sight. Out to sea, beyond the mouth of the harbor, the open sea calmly glittered. Flies everywhere buzzed and settled. Guy had not taken off his clothes since he left the destroyer. He said: “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, sergeant, I’m going to bathe.”
“Not in that, sir?”
“No. There’ll be clean water round the point.”
The sergeant and two men went with him. There
was no giving of orders that day. They found a cleft in the rocky spur that enclosed the harbor. They strolled through and came to a little cove, a rocky foreshore, deep clear water. Guy stripped and dived and swam out in a sudden access of euphoria; he turned on his back and floated, his eyes closed to the sun, his ears sealed to every sound, oblivious of everything except physical ease, solitary and exultant. He turned and swam and floated again and swam; then he struck out for the shore, making for the opposite side. The cliffs here ran down into deep water. He stretched up and found a handhold in a shelf of rock. It was already warm with the sun. He pulled up, rested luxuriously on his forearms with his legs dangling knee deep in water, paused, for he was feebler than a week ago, then raised his head and found himself staring straight into the eyes of another, a man who was seated above him on the black ledge and gazing down at him; a strangely clean and sleek man for Creforce; his eyes in the brilliant sunshine were the color of oysters.
“Can I give you a hand, sir?” asked Corporal-Major Ludovic. He stood and stooped and drew Guy out of the sea. “A smoke, sir?”
He offered a neat, highly pictorial packet of Greek cigarettes. He struck a light. Guy sat beside him, naked and wet and smoking.
“Where on earth have you been, corporal-major?”
“At my post, sir. With rear headquarters.”
“I thought you’d deserted us.”
“Did you, sir? Perhaps we both made a miscalculation.”
“Have you seen Major Hound?”
“Need we go into that, sir? Wouldn’t you say it was rather too early or rather too late for inquiries of that sort?”
“What are you doing here?”
“To be quite frank, sir, I was considering drowning myself. I am a weak swimmer and the sea is most inviting. You know something of theology, I believe, sir. I’ve seen some of your books. Would moralists hold it was suicide if one were just to swim out to sea, sir, in the fanciful hope of reaching Egypt? I haven’t the gift of faith myself, but I have always been intrigued by theological speculation.”
“You had better rejoin the remains of headquarters.”
“You speak as an officer, sir, or as a theologian?”
“Neither really,” said Guy.
He stood up.
“If you aren’t going to finish that cigarette, may I have it back?” Corporal-Major Ludovic carefully pinched off the glowing end and returned the half to its packet. “Gold-dust,” he said, relapsing into the language of the barracks. “I’ll follow you round, sir.”
Guy dived and swam back. By the time he was dressed, Corporal-Major Ludovic was among them.
Ludovic was now clothed and, Guy observed, wore on his shoulder-straps the badges of a major.
“You have been promoted in the field?” said Guy.
“This is not a day for strict etiquette,” said Ludovic.
Without speaking further, they strolled together into Sphakia. The crowd of soldiers had grown and was growing as unsteady files shuffled down from their hiding-places in the hills. Nothing remained of the ration dump. Men were sitting about with their backs against the ruined walls eating. The point of interest now was the boating party who were pushing their craft towards the water. The sapper captain was directing them in a stronger voice than Guy had heard for some days.
“Easy… All together, now, heave… steady… keep her moving…” The men were enfeebled but the boat moved. The beach was steep and slippery with weed. “… Now then, once more all together… she’s off… let her run… What ho, she floats…”
Guy pushed forward in the crowd.
“They’re barmy,” said a man next to him. “They haven’t a hope in hell.”
The boat was afloat. Three men, waist deep, held her; the captain and the rest of his party climbed on board and began bailing out and working on the engine. Guy watched them.
“Anyone else coming?” the sapper called.
Guy waded to him.
“What are your chances?” he asked.
“One in ten, I reckon, of being picked up. One in five of making it on our own. We’re not exactly well found. Coming?”
Guy made no calculation. Nothing was measurable that morning. He was aware only of the wide welcome of the open sea, of the satisfaction of finding someone else to take control of things.
“Yes. I’ll talk to my men.”
The engine gave out a puff of oily smoke and a series of small explosions.
“Tell them to make up their minds. We’ll be off as soon as that thing starts up.”
Guy said to his section: “There’s one chance in five of getting away. I’m going. Decide for yourselves.”
The men of his Intelligence section shook their heads.
“How about you, corporal-major? You can be confident that no moral theologian would condemn this as suicide.”
Corporal-Major Ludovic turned his pale eyes out to sea and said nothing.
The sapper shouted: “Liberty boat just leaving. Anyone else want to come?”
“I’m coming,” shouted Guy.
He was at the side of the boat when he noticed that Ludovic was close behind him. The engine started up, drowning the sound which Ludovic had heard. They climbed on board together. One of the watching crowd called, “Good luck, chums,” and his words were taken up by the few others, but did not carry above the noise of the engine.
The sapper steered. They moved quite fast across the water, out of the oil and floating refuse. As they watched they saw that the crowd on shore had all turned their faces skyward.
“Stukas again,” said the sapper.
“Well, it’s all over now. I suppose they’ve just come to have a look at their spoils.”
The men on shore seemed to be of this opinion. Few of them took cover. The match was over, stumps drawn. Then the bombs began to fall among them.
“Bastards,” said the sapper.
From the boat they saw havoc. One of the aeroplanes dipped over their heads, fired its machine-gun, missed and turned away. Nothing further was done to molest them. Guy saw more bombs burst on the now-deserted waterfront. His last thoughts were of X Commando, of Bertie and Eddie, most of all of Ivor Claire, waiting at their posts to be made prisoner. At the moment there was nothing in the boat for any of them to do. They had merely to sit still in the sunshine and the fresh breeze.
So they sailed out of the picture.
IX
Silence was all. Ripeness was all. Silence swelled lusciously like a ripening fig, while through the hospital the softly petulant north-west wind, which long ago delayed Helen and Menelaus on that strand, stirred and fluttered.
This silence was Guy’s private possession, all his own work.
There were exterior sounds in plenty, a wireless down the corridor, another wireless in the block beyond the window, the constant jingle of trolleys, footsteps, voices; that day as each preceding day people came into Guy’s room and spoke to him. He heard them and understood and was as little tempted to answer as to join in the conversation of actors on a stage; there was an orchestra pit, footlights, a draped proscenium, between him and all these people. He lay like an explorer in his lamplit tent while in the darkness outside the anthropophagi peered and jostled.
There had been a silent woman in Guy’s childhood named Mrs. Barnet. He was often taken to visit her by his mother. She lay in the single upper room of a cottage which smelled of paraffin and geraniums and of Mrs. Barnet. Her niece, a woman of great age by Guy’s standards, stood and answered his mother’s inquiries. His mother sat on the only chair by the bedside and Guy stood beside her, watching them all and the pious plaster statues which clustered everywhere round Mrs. Barnet’s bed. It was the niece who said thank you for the provisions Guy’s mother brought and said, when they left: “Auntie does so appreciate your coming, ma’am.”
The old woman never spoke. She lay with her hands on the patchwork quilt and gazed at the lamp-stained paper on the ceiling, a paper which, where the light struck it, revealed a
sheen of pattern like the starched cloth on the dining-room table at home. Her head lay still but she moved her eyes to follow the movements in her room. Her hands turned and twitched, ceaselessly, but very slightly. The stairs were precipitous and enclosed top and bottom by thin, grained doors. The old niece followed them down into the parlor and into the village street, thanking them for their visit.
“Mummy, why do we visit Mrs. Barnet?”
“Oh, we have to. She’s been like that ever since I came to Broome.”
“But does she know us, Mummy?”
“I’m sure she’d miss it, if we didn’t come.”
His brother Ivo had been silent, too, Guy remembered, in the time before he went away, sitting all day sometimes in the long gallery doing nothing, sitting aloof at the table while others were talking, quite alert and quite speechless.
In the nursery Guy had had his own periods of silence. “Swallowed your tongue, have you?” Nanny would ask. It was in similar tones that the sister addressed him, coming in four or five times in the day with a cheerful rallying challenge. “Nothing to say to us today?”
The lame Hussar who brought round the whisky-and-soda at sundown lost patience sooner. At first he had tried to be friendly. “Tommy Blackhouse is two doors down asking for you. I’ve known Tommy for years. Wish I could have joined his outfit. Rotten show their all getting put in the bag… I caught my little packet at Tobruk…” and so on. But when Guy lay mute, he gave it up and now stood equally silent with his tray of glasses waiting while Guy drank.
Once the chaplain had come.
“I’ve got you listed as Catholic—is that right?”
Guy did not answer.
“I’m sorry to hear you aren’t feeling too good. Anything you want? Anything I can do? Well, I’m always about. You’ve only to ask for me.” Still Guy did not answer. “I’ll just leave this with you,” said the priest, putting a rosary into his hands, and that was relevant to Guy’s thoughts for the last thing he remembered was praying. They had all prayed in the boat in the days of extremity, some offering to do a deal: “Get me out of here, God, and I’ll live different. Honest I will,” others repeating lines of hymns remembered from childhood; all save Ludovic, godless at the helm.