Small Wars (16 page)
Lawrence Davis wasn’t surprised when his batman came to tell him Major Treherne wanted him.
The hearings finished for the day at half past four and Davis, after going back to his quarters to change, had walked up on to the cliff-top and then made an uncomfortable slithering descent to the tiny cove next along to the east from the one below Episkopi. Sweat and tears of rage mixed with the dirt on his face. He had undressed on the small beach, and swum in the sea. He swam quite far out, to look back at the coast.
He had floated in dark salty water that was a deep blue. He reminded himself of the vastness of the globe and the breadth of human experience in an attempt to calm his misery. Being one of a billion ants didn’t comfort him today, though, not with the memory of the bare-faced lies he had told.
The sun had begun to go quietly down behind the hills as Davis dried himself and dressed. Then, back at his quarter, his batman found him. Major Treherne wanted him immediately, and he was ‘in a rare temper, sir’.
Hal was in a rare temper. He met Davis at the outside door to his office – had been waiting there, in the deepening night, for him, barely able to control himself. ‘What the fucking hell are you playing at, Davis?’
He turned and strode ahead of him, putting on the lights, with Davis following, reluctantly, until they reached his office. Once inside, he shut the door firmly, and the adjoining one to Mark Innes, too, even though there was no one but themselves in the building.
They faced one another. Davis couldn’t hold Hal’s look, and dropped his gaze, blinking with anxiety.
‘Explanation,’ said Hal.
‘I don’t know what you –’
‘No. Explanation.’
Silence.
Davis began, and his voice was weak. ‘I was persuaded that the good of the regiment would not be served by the public – what I was told would be the very public trial of Grieves and of all of them. That vilification –’
‘You were “persuaded”.’
‘Yes.’
‘And it had nothing to do with your own good? The good of the regiment is uppermost in your mind, is it?’
‘I –’
‘And your reputation as a liar, as well as a toad, are you persuaded
that
will do you any good with your fellows and subordinates?’
‘Well, I – well, no, but I’d pretty much burned my bridges in that department anyway. I’m pretty unpopular –’
‘And you thought you’d burn mine too?’
‘Sir?’
‘Never mind.
Persuaded
. By whom?’
‘My superiors.’
‘Special Branch? Major Eggars?’
‘Yes, sir. All of them. They seemed all to be in on it. They said just on my say-so the case would never get anywhere.’
Silence.
‘The witnesses, Davis, the victims,’ said Hal, very slowly, ‘did anybody go and talk to them?’
Davis seemed to shrink away. ‘We…’
‘Speak up!’
‘Yes. Last night.’
‘You went to the house on Starsis Street last night? You sought out those women, and “persuaded” them, too? And then just went ahead with the whole thing today –’
Suddenly Davis broke, appealing to him. ‘I had to! I was following orders! They made it clear I had to! We didn’t threaten them. Nothing like that! What good would it do? Making those poor women talk about it –’ He stopped abruptly.
Hal walked over to his desk. He stood with his back to Davis for a long moment, then turned to face him. ‘Lieutenant Davis, it could not be said of you that you are a man of
conviction
, could it? It could not be said of you that you are
morally courageous
. You are, in fact, a cynical, self-serving coward. Would you say that was true?’
Davis’s face began to break up. A sixth former, disgraced. ‘Sir –’
‘You have sacrificed what you know to be right to save your own skin, haven’t you, Davis, with no thought but for yourself?’
‘I was following orders, sir.’
‘You were following orders?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Not good enough. All right. Dismissed. Go.’
When Davis had gone, Hal, alone, paced his office back and forth, sifting, shifting and reshifting things in his mind, finding order, making patterns, moving and re-moving. Then he stopped, picked up his cap and left.
‘Kirby, the colonel’s house.’
‘Sir.’
He let Kirby go at the end of the road, walked fast up to the house on his own, and rapped hard on the door.
The African servant answered, just as before, but this time the colonel was visible, coming down from upstairs. He dismissed the man and stood in the doorway himself. He hadn’t been expecting visitors; he was in a pale blue short-sleeved shirt and shorts. He looked older. His hand rested on the door. ‘What is it, Hal?’
‘I need to speak to you, sir.’
‘Can’t it wait?’
‘No,’ angrily. Then, ‘Just for a moment.’
‘All right.’
They were out on the terrace again, but there were no drinks offered this time. Hal walked away from Burroughs, in the open doorway, stopped and turned back to him. ‘I want you to tell me how much you know about this,’ he said.
‘I beg your pardon?’
Hal modified his tone. ‘Are you aware, sir, of the situation?’
‘Situation?’ Burroughs asked drily.
‘This Starsis Street business, the victims have been – intimidated.’
‘Intimidated?’
‘Told not to come forward. The Special Branch have been over there, sir, and the RMPs too. Did you know that?’
‘Hal, I think you should go home. You ought to calm down.’
Hal spoke quickly, the words falling out of him: ‘I can’t believe you don’t know about it. This must have come from you.’ There was a reckless release in being able to say what he wanted. ‘This whole mess, this cover-up came from you. There’s no other way of putting it.’
‘This is highly inappropriate.’ Burroughs walked towards him. ‘I don’t like your tone. Am I to take from these questions that you are accusing me of something?’
‘I just want to know!’ He knew he was shouting. He walked away, in a small circle. Then, close to the colonel, he said in a low voice, ‘This wasn’t some
infraction of the rules
to be overlooked and indulged –’
‘
Do you think I don’t know that?
’ The colonel kept his voice almost to a whisper and his face had turned a deep red, his pale eyes shining out of it and fixed on Hal’s face. ‘Do you think I’m unaware? I’m disgusted with it, Hal, but what am I to do? Am I to drag us all through the mud?’
‘Just them! Grieves. Miller. Francke. Just them!’
‘There is no “just them”!’
‘Rape and murder – hear me? Rape and murder!’
‘Yes, and murder is a hanging offence. Even murdering a wog.’
‘Then Francke should hang.’
‘He should hang, should he? And have the world know about it? You’d throw us all to the dogs for your principles?’
‘Not
my
principles…’ Hal searched for the truths he’d never challenged ‘…not just me, the
civilised world
. You aren’t above that.’ Hal went at him in his anger. ‘You have no fucking right!’ and the older man, retreating, put his foot out to steady himself, lost his balance and stumbled, one foot slipping off the edge of the terrace onto the uneven grass.
Hal, appalled, grabbed his arm to steady him, but Burroughs pulled from his grip in outrage. His normally dry, narrow lips were wet with spit. ‘
I won’t have this!
’
Hal was standing crooked – half turned to help Burroughs, half backing off – his hands trembling with shock at himself, the sight of his superior, pulling away from him, the strange jumble of words and actions that had left them like this, in disarray. He put both hands up to wipe his face, then down to his sides and stood like that, in the cataclysm of his insubordination, eyes down, for a long moment. When he raised them, he said, as he must, ‘I have to apologise, sir.’
‘Yes.’
‘I spoke out of turn, sir. I’m sorry.’
Burroughs allowed the silence to settle over them. Hal’s eyes were wet, oddly hot. He thought of Davis, breaking up the way he had, his cowardly, trembling fear, and understood it.
At last, Burroughs spoke. ‘We’ll say no more about it,’ he said. ‘I hope you know you can speak freely to me, Hal. Within the proper boundaries.’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’
‘Regarding this matter, and in answer to your question,’ continued Burroughs, ‘I did indeed ask others to speak to Lieutenant Davis. If I need to, I will speak to him myself. I should accept some blame, too, that I allowed matters to get this far. Military law is as rigorous as civilian law, Hal. It requires more evidence than the accusations of one man to put others on trial.’
‘I see, sir. Yes.’
‘Lieutenant Grieves ought to leave Episkopi. There are a number of places he could go and be useful. It’s a pity we can’t dispense with Davis, but I’m afraid he’s not easily replaced. I think we ought to separate the others, don’t you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You can see to it.’
‘Yes, sir. I will.’
The colonel walked him through the house to the door, and opened it wide. ‘As long as lessons are learned, there’s no need for the public beating of breasts.’
Hal, facing the night, said nothing.
‘Hal? We can comfort ourselves,’ said the colonel. ‘God sees.’
Hal looked at him. ‘God?’
‘Yes, He sees, He punishes.’
Hal walked away, along the unfinished roads towards home, determinedly.
The colonel’s house was at the end of a new street, facing, and the semi-detached terrace on one side was incomplete. Hal walked past a hundred feet of white-painted wall and plaster, with doorways but no doors, empty squares of windows, and then a long black gap and sea breeze, before the buildings at the corner turned into another crescent.
Episkopi was scattered across the uneven land: barracks, polo fields, tents, stables, empty and half-built houses, and ones with people in them, going about their little tasks, all circled with barbed wire. Above him, like the glass dome of a child’s snowstorm, was the glittering sky.
Hal walked blind, aware of that high view: himself, making the short journey from his commanding officer’s quarter to his own.
What was right, and what was proper had always been inseparable, but in this perhaps one, like a Siamese twin, must be severed and destroyed for the other’s survival. If it had to be done, then he must do it.
Calming himself, controlling his thoughts, he did not understand why, instead of the cool comfort of discipline, he was suffused with heat, a weakness like drowning, the blank surprise of a poor surrender.
Clara was putting the girls to bed.
‘I’m back,’ he said, to nobody.
‘Come up,’ she called down. ‘We’re having a story – a bit late!’
Hal went up and kissed the girls, who were clean, their fine hair smelled of soap. His heavy pistol, inside its holster, rested on the edge of their beds as he leaned down to them. He stood in the doorway and waited for her.
He realised he hadn’t taken off his cap, or his belt, and did so, as Clara held the girls’ small hands together, smiling, and said for them, ‘The day is done; O God the Son, look down upon thy little one. Amen.’
Adile was tidying, finishing up before going home. Hal and Clara stood by the kitchen counter and Adile collected her bag, a string bag, that had some things wrapped in newspaper.
‘
Hoşça kalın efendim
,’ she said, quietly.
Clara, for some reason, didn’t speak to her.
‘Thank you, Adile, goodbye,’ said Hal, and Adile left. He looked at Clara. ‘Why don’t you talk to her?’
‘I don’t know.’
He put his gun, Sam Browne and cap in their usual place, out of the children’s reach, by the door. ‘Do you never talk to her?’
She didn’t answer him. He went to the fridge and opened the heavy door. He took out the glass jug of boiled water and poured himself some, and some for Clara, but she didn’t move to pick it up. He went into the sitting room and sat on the sofa, putting the wet glass on the table in front of him.
He leaned back and shut his eyes. He had his hands on his knees, with his legs open and his head back against the wall.
When his eyes were shut there was a pleasant darkness. Perhaps it was almost as good as sleeping, to rest like this. Perhaps he should forget about nights altogether and, instead, take short naps during the days. The dark was nice. His hands were too still, though. They felt much too still. He couldn’t be sure they were there. He opened his eyes.
Without moving his head he watched Clara. She was walking around the room very slowly. She had taken her shoes off. She started at the front door. She bent down slightly, to check the rubbish bin – for what, he couldn’t tell – then moved on to the large potted plant at the foot of the stairs. She looked all around the rim, and in the clay tray that the pot stood in. She wasn’t aware he was watching her from his half-closed eyes.
She went to the cupboard under the stairs, which was white-painted, like the stairs themselves, and had a small catch on it. She opened it, with a little metal clicking sound, and the door showed darkness inside. She opened it further and peered in carefully. Then she shut the cupboard and fastened it, and moved on. She checked under the small wooden table that stood against the wall. She examined the mirror. Hal wanted to say something but he didn’t dare move. He kept his head still, and tipped back, watching her step lightly on her bare feet.
Soon she was opposite him. When she glanced over her shoulder at him, he closed his eyes. When he opened them again she was looking underneath the desk, and then behind the vase –
‘What are you doing?’ he said – and she jumped.
‘Nothing.’
‘Well, you’re obviously doing something.’
His voice was hard; he didn’t recognise it but felt removed. She stood in front of him with her hands behind her back, nervously.
‘What were you looking for?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Have you lost something?’
‘No. I –’
‘You?’
‘It’s silly,’ she said. ‘I was looking for bombs.’
Hal said slowly, ‘You were looking for bombs?’