Small Wars (24 page)

Chapter Seven

They drove to RAF Nicosia as the sun went down. The sky was flame-filled and violent.

Clara and Hal sat in the car with the girls between them, the luggage piled next to Kirby and behind the back seat. Hal had his arm round both girls to stop them climbing on Clara. Dressing and the walk to the car had been very slow. She was leaning back now, as if she had no muscles at all in her body, and her hands were held over herself for protection, but when he had told her she was to leave that day, she had looked at him, alive suddenly and lit up, and said, ‘Going home today?’

The bright colours in the enormous sunset faded slowly. They drove into the airfield, stopping for the sentry guards and checkpoints.

The car turned slowly past concrete buildings that had corrugated curved tops and breeze-block hangars divided by thin roads. The runways tapered into far straight distance, spotted with lights just showing, and black mountains behind.

The car stopped. Hal went round and opened Clara’s door so that she could hold on to him getting out.

They were met by a flight lieutenant and a man from the Foreign Office, who had flown in earlier that day with a minister on the plane that would take Clara home. They all stood in a tight group, lit by the big low sun, the half-disc slowly sinking.

Kirby was fumbling with luggage and pieces of paper as an RAF corporal tried to organise them. Clara was standing as if in a daze, her hands hanging by her sides, gazing at the plane – not a Valetta after all, but a twin-engined Hastings, with blocks under its wheels – waiting five hundred yards away from them. The girls were clinging to her skirts, motionless too. Hal looked at them, and then back over his shoulder towards the exit road to the gate and the sentries standing at it.

The luggage was in two piles now, his one or two things and his family’s. Kirby had started to put Hal’s back into the car, sighing at the effort.

Clara turned to him. ‘Hal?’ she said.

The man from the Foreign Office was handing over some papers to the flight lieutenant, neither of them paying his wife or himself any attention.

‘What are you doing, Kirby?’ said Hal.

‘Sir?’ Kirby paused in his labours, perplexed.

‘All of those things are going on the plane.’

‘No, sir, these ones are yours.’

‘No. All of them on the plane, please.’

‘Sir…’

‘Just a moment.’ Hal turned to the flight lieutenant. ‘I hope there hasn’t been another mess made over these arrangements. Would you check your manifest? The four of us are travelling. I’m sure it was made clear.’

The flight lieutenant blinked.

‘No, sir. I understood Mrs Treherne would be travelling with the children alone.’

‘You understood wrong. Does it seem likely to you that an ill woman would make the journey alone, with two children to look after?’

‘The manifest –’

‘See to it, then, please,’ said Hal. Then, ‘Kirby, look sharp,’ and ‘Clara, you ought to be sitting down. Lieutenant, when are we scheduled to leave?’

‘Eighteen thirty, sir.’

‘Can’t you make it any sooner?’

‘No, sir. They’re refuelling now, sir.’

‘Come on, Lieutenant, get on with it. My wife needs to sit down. Where?’

‘I’m sorry, sir. Of course. Follow me, sir.’

Hal supported Clara as they walked. She held his arm, looking up at him. As they followed the lieutenant, she said, ‘Hal?’ but Hal was turned away from her, collecting up the girls, and ignored her.

As he straightened, with Lottie in his arms, Kirby caught up with him. ‘Sir – sir?’

Hal stopped. He turned slowly. Kirby’s face, pale, for all its hours in the sun, was damp and pasty; his eyebrows were knitted together. ‘Sir. You’re not going, sir.’

‘Would you get those things loaded? Thanks very much.’ Kirby didn’t move. Hal waited, looking him in the eye. ‘That’s all, thank you, Kirby,’ he said.

Kirby turned, and did as he was told.

They were put into a hot little office where an RAF corporal was typing up letters with two fingers. They sat on a very narrow wooden bench. The girls were clambering everywhere, trying to get on Clara’s lap and being deflected by Hal. She had her eyes half shut, leaning back, but then she lowered her head and looked at him: ‘Hal, what’s happening?’

He didn’t answer. She was breathing lightly through her mouth. She rested her head again. The corporal was trying to align the forms he was typing. He was fiddling with the carriage release, exasperated, tugging at the paper. Every now and then one of the metal arms would stick, pointing upwards, and he would free it, irritable, then bash away at the keys again.

Hal waited for the phone to ring. They had the manifest, no doubt in triplicate. The lieutenant wouldn’t take long to get through to somebody at HQ. This was madness. The phone would ring – but the phone sat silently next to the typewriter, as the corporal bashed away at the keys with his two flat-ended fingers.

Hal watched the seconds going by on the clock above his head. The thin second hand sticking, moving, sticking. It was eleven minutes past six. It was eleven and a half minutes past six. It was twelve minutes past six –

The door opened. ‘Sir?’ The lieutenant looked concerned. He had a sheaf of papers in his hand. Hal’s mind was numb. ‘They’re about ready for you to board,’ he said.

Then the telephone rang. ‘Sir?’ said the lieutenant, over the loud ringing.

The corporal picked up the phone, ‘Corporal Billings…In hangar five? You must be joking. Nobody told me about it.’

‘Sir?’ said the lieutenant again.

Hal stood up. ‘Girls,’ he said, ‘come along. Clara?’

He held out his hand to her, and she took it.

The inside of the plane had been modified from military to government use. There were double rows of seats facing front, instead of benches, but the rest of it was untouched. The walls were bolted metal and very noisy when the engines started their raw deep sound.

Clara was pale, uncomfortable against the steep back of her seat. She had her feet up on a trunk that was lashed to the plane floor, as close to curled up as she could be. Hal had rolled up his jacket for her head and put it between her shoulder and the window; he sat behind her with the girls so that he could hold on to them.

Lottie put her hands over her ears and Meg reached forwards, trying to stretch her fingers between the seats to touch her mother. Hal patted the small of her back, but she pulled away from him, and went forward, to climb onto the seat in front. Hal stopped her, put her under his arm, and went forward to sit next to Clara.

‘There,’ he said, pulling Lottie up too, so that they were both on his lap. ‘Be careful of Mummy,’ he said, holding them. ‘Sit still.’ He glanced at Clara, who was resting her head on the rolled-up jacket. Her lashes fluttered closed.

Through the thick dirty glass he watched the flight lieutenant running back towards the hangar, and the short canvas straps of the rolled-up shades swung as the plane began to move. They made a wide, slowly rocking arc across the tarmac, then paused at the head of the runway.

‘Are you frightened?’ he asked.

‘No, I’m not frightened,’ Clara said, as the engines reached a pitch.

He looked ahead again. Past the pilot’s shoulder, through the glass of the cockpit, he could see the gently bobbing nose of the aircraft. Lights shone a straight path. They started along it.

As the plane lurched into its steep take-off, Hal held both girls firmly. Lottie cried out, once, at the noise, but then was quiet. The plane rose and soared. He felt the high beauty of flight mix with the sharp falling realisation of what he had done.

He looked down: no jeeps fanning out over the tarmac, no signallers spelling out his crime, nothing but the fast-rising plane and the air, bigger and bigger, around it. He looked over his shoulder, behind, to see the buildings of the airfield slanted, diminishing, the wide evening all around and beneath them. Cyprus dipped, tilted, and went away from him.

Outside the aeroplane it was quite dark; there was no sense of height, or even of speed, and inside, the main part of the plane was unlit. In the cockpit ahead of him he could see the instruments, and the pilot silhouetted. Even the radio had fallen silent, so that just the sound of the engines, soon familiar, wrapped around them.

His daughters, surrendered and delivered to him by sleep, were heavy in his arms. Clara opened her eyes. ‘I’m cold.’

It was cold, up in the sky, with just metal between them and the air.

‘Jacket,’ he said, and she took his jacket from under her head, and shifted over so that she was resting on his shoulder. She opened the stiff green wool jacket, with weak hands, and he laid it over them.

She went back to sleep, under it, almost immediately, and Hal, with the warmth of all three of them touching him, turned his eyes to the window, where nothing could be seen at all. He would not move, he must not wake them; he would have hours of night-time with them, over the sea.

PART FOUR

England, October

Chapter One

They came down the metal steps of the plane at RAF Boscombe Down, after midnight. There was a breeze, a little chilly, smelling of petrol and cut grass. The sky above was a deep, quiet dark. Everything around them – aeroplane hangars, RAF vehicles – lay in darkness too, a variety of shadows, or lone caged bulbs to light the way, and occasional night-time voices, or boots on the tarmac muffled in the late-shift feeling of the deep night.

Both children were asleep. Hal carried Lottie, and the officer who had met them carried Meg, her baby cheek on his unknown arm. ‘Welcome home, sir,’ he had said, coming up the steps to help them.

Hal didn’t know what he’d expected; he had a fugitive’s anxiety of discovery, but the officer, very young and respectful, was only concerned with their comfort.

A car rolled towards them out of the darkness, its headlights fanned across the underside of the plane.

‘Sir, madam? Come with me, please.’

Car doors were opened, loud in the stillness. The family and the officer crowded into the small car for the short drive, a brief imprisonment, the compression of feet, close breaths in the cramped cold space.

At the edge of the airfield – Hal could see the perimeter gate now – there was another building and the car stopped by it. Through the wet glass Hal saw a door open. A man was silhouetted against the lighted interior. He had a hat, a dark civilian suit, slightly stooping narrow shoulders – Clara cried out, ‘Daddy!’

She was out of the car, away from Hal – George came to meet her, steadying her – and she was in her father’s arms. ‘Darling girl. Here, here, I have the car. Just over here –’

Hal got out slowly, protecting Lottie’s head from the doorframe with his hand.

Clara walked as close to her father as she could, his arms supported her. Hal followed them, carrying Lottie, the officer with Meg next to him. At his car, George Ward turned to him. He spoke with perfect civility. ‘Hal, welcome back. You must be exhausted.’

‘Hello, sir. Not too bad.’

George didn’t meet his eye. ‘Oh, good…good.’

He knows. How could he know? Have they spoken to him?

‘Clara’s played out,’ said Hal.

‘Yes,’ he said shortly. Then, ‘Not too long now.’

It seemed to take an hour, the loading of them all and the strapping on of cases to the car. It was a Riley, built for beauty not luggage, and Hal took charge, with the flight lieutenant helping him, pulling the straps hard into tension, while George Ward stood by with his hands in his pockets, whistling through his teeth, an impractical man, and Clara sat bundled in a blanket in the back with the sleeping girls.

‘There’ll be nobody on the road, at least. Your mother waited up, of course. We shouldn’t be too long.’

Hal sat next to her father in the front. Clara spread the blanket over Meg and Lottie as the officer said goodbye through the driver’s window. Light slanted in from the open office door, striking the backs of the seats, illuminating the men in front. The back of Hal’s neck, tanned, and the hair razored close into it, gleamed where it was bleached by the sun; her father’s neck was white. Clara could just see the familiar jut of his nose in semi-profile, and pale, clean-shaven cheek. His hair, dark and brilliantined, was exactly the same as in her childhood. She closed her eyes.

The car glided past the guards, and then the sentry posts, finding the exits unhindered. It felt unreal.

Theirs was the only car on the road. They had left the camp behind and were in the deep emptiness of Salisbury Plain. The narrow road was lit just ahead by the wide yellow beams of the headlights, and inside the car Hal could see the wooden dashboard and George Ward’s pale hands on the wheel.

Outside, just nearby, was the cool enormous mass of Stonehenge. He knew the stones, had touched them, and didn’t have to see it. He thought of them rising from the bare land, and remembered his hands, hot from running, flat against the rock, when one summer day he had played amongst them as a child. He must have been very young, because for a long time he had thought the stones had been raised by King Arthur. He had pictured them, dragged across the plough and grassy fields by teams of shires, straining and snorting in their harness against the great weight as they travelled, overseen by knights. The stones had hummed beneath his hands with the magic of the long centuries.

His own house – his parents’ – was less than twenty miles to the west. The plain, in familiar vastness, was around him.

Hal felt the English night and his own soul greeting it with the quiet recognition of return, but he had stolen home uninvited. Connected and unconnected, he had cut himself off from welcome.

The Wards’ was the only village house lit up at half past two in the morning. Moira Ward had heard the car coming through the village, threw open the door to meet them and all her greetings were made in half-whispers, muted exclamations of fearful delight – Clara home, but wounded. Hal, an even bigger presence than she remembered, and the girls – so brown!

Hal and George reached into the back to pick up a girl each.

‘Mummy!’

‘Darling!’

They all hugged and whispered over one another and Hal, after surrendering Lottie to Moira’s arms, began to unstrap the cases.

The family – and Hal – went into the house and closed the door.

Inside, with more whispers, journeys up and down stairs to fetch things and feminine half-tearful kindness, they were all settled into various bedrooms, practical things saving them from the harder ones, and concern for Clara over everything. She went straight to bed – helped upstairs by her parents, with Hal behind – and gave the care of the girls to her mother.

The house went to sleep, each person, one by one.

Hal closed the door at last behind them. Clara was lying down, drifting. It was a kind room, with flowers on the walls and lace along the tops of the polished wooden furniture. He stood with his back to the door.

He was fully dressed still. The cases on the floor were dark hard battered things, only Clara’s spilling open in pretty confusion, rummaged through to find her nightdress.

Hal took off his shoes so as not to disturb her, although the floor was carpeted. He went over to the window. It overlooked the garden. He could just hear her parents’ voices through the walls, or along the wooden boards and skirtings. He opened the window, the frame stuck slightly, then smoothly rolled up with the sash-cord holding.

The night smelled of wet woods, grass and fallen leaves, with a chill to the air, sharp and welcome. There was the smell of woodsmoke too, which he had always loved. He separated that – bonfires and autumn – from the other burning smell, which wasn’t real. He could hear the slow whisper of the trees and there was water, even in the air, quiet wood and water; sap, wet flowers, soil, lawn, all living in the vague night. Some way off, he heard an owl.

He looked back at the bed. Clara’s eyes were closed. He went over to her and knelt at her side.

It was dark and he couldn’t see her clearly, but he felt her presence; the clean paleness of her skin, her hands tucked into the warmth inside the covers. She was surrounded by pillows and quilts, all the different soft things that make up an English bed. He had brought her home safely, at least.

Moira, George and the girls sat around the kitchen table, the breakfast things disordered on the oilcloth – boiled eggs, toast, teapot, the mismatched plates and cups of a life of family meals and family spillages.

‘I’ll let them sleep,’ said Moira. ‘The doctor isn’t coming until ten o’clock.’

‘Extraordinary they gave Hal leave with this Suez business,’ said George, reaching for the toast rack. ‘Even with Clara, you’d think they’d have had him stay.’

The newspaper, thick, folded over, lay amongst the crumbs and butter knives. Under Imperial and Foreign news, the inky headline said: ‘NAVY SENDING CARRIERS TO CYPRUS’. Clara’s brother, James, was on his way from Malaya, on a troop carrier in the Indian Ocean.

‘Everyone in on the fight except Hal,’ said George, wiping his mouth with his napkin and reaching for the paper again. There was outrage in his every quiet word and in each small movement he made.

Clara had suffered this unspeakable attack, James was still away, but Hal was here, unscathed. George’s dislike of Hal’s profession and, by association, Hal, had been subjugated by Clara’s happiness. Now, with her injury, it found purchase.

The twins were next to one another, in bibs, their chins barely above the table, having egg and soldiers distributed between them by Moira, who was out of practice and delighted by them.

‘Here, Meg, let Granny do it,’ she was saying, and ‘Careful, careful, well done! Mummy later. Mummy’s tired now.’

Then the telephone rang.

George stood up, brushing off his trousers, and left the room.

‘Mummy!’ said Lottie.

‘Yes, we’ll go up and see Mummy and Daddy in a minute,’ said Moira.

Then the sound of George’s feet along the passage again.

‘It was Hal’s father. For him. Had to tell him he was still in bed – he didn’t like that much. Almost slammed the phone down.’

‘Really?’ said Moira vaguely, wiping Lottie’s fingers.

Moira, Lottie and Meg knocked gently on Clara’s door and opened it. Moira let the girls go in. They were shy at first, then jumping and scrambling up.

‘Careful!’ She stayed on the landing.

Clara pulled herself to sitting, wincing at the sudden pain, and using her arms to take her weight. ‘Hello, darlings,’ she said. ‘Come in, Mummy…It’s all right, Hal isn’t here.’

Moira put her head round the door. ‘Oh? Where is he, then?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps he’s gone for a walk.’

It wasn’t until late morning, after the doctor had left, that they began to think he had gone. It was on all their minds that he wasn’t there. Occasionally one of them would say, ‘He still hasn’t come back,’ or ‘No word from Hal?’ but, apart from that, they all fell into their closeness and the looking after of one another quite comfortably.

Major (Ret’d) Peter Jameson drove from Warminster to the Wards’ village house in the Buckinghamshire valley. It was a damp October day and he had to keep wiping the inside of his windscreen with the chamois he kept in the car, a Rover, especially for the purpose. He had been sent out on these recces before, but he’d never had to chase down a major. It was mostly subalterns, once a captain. He had something of a talent for understanding. They felt understood; they came back.

It was a pretty house, he thought as he pushed open the gate, went up the stone path and knocked. A woman in an overall opened the door.

‘Good morning, sir,’ she said.

‘Good morning. I’m looking for Major Henry Treherne.’

‘Yes, sir, just a minute.’

Another woman came to the door, attractive in a dark grey wool dress. The wife’s mother, he guessed. She seemed very nervous.

‘You’re looking for my son-in-law. He’s not here.’

‘Do you know where he is?’

‘I’m sorry, you are?’

Jameson smiled as warmly as he could. ‘My name’s Jameson. Like the whisky. Major (Retired) Peter Jameson.’

‘Yes. Do you have business with Hal?’

‘Hal? Ah. Yes. Look, I’m sorry to land on you unannounced. Do you think I might come in?’

Clara was in the drawing room making scrapbooks with the girls. She sat in an armchair, with them at her feet. It hurt her to lean forward and she did it stiffly. She looked up as Moira came in with Jameson.

‘Darling, this is Mr Jameson – I’m sorry, Retired Major –’

‘You don’t need to bother with all that. How d’you do?’

‘My daughter, Clara.’

‘Hello,’ said Clara.

The little girls looked up with round eyes. Light scraps of old magazines lay about them, small brushes from the gluepot in their fists.

‘He’s looking for Hal.’

‘You don’t know where he is, I suppose?’ said Jameson.

‘Should I? I thought there must be some army…’

‘If there was, I’d know about it,’ said Jameson, his cheerfulness fading. ‘It’s rather awkward. It seems he left Cyprus with you last night unofficially.’

He noted their shock seemed genuine. ‘You didn’t know?’

‘No,’ said Clara, slowly, her eyes fixed on his face as she absorbed this.

‘Won’t you sit down?’ said Moira, and went to the door, calling, ‘George!’

Jameson sat on the edge of a chair opposite Clara.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Are you saying he isn’t on leave?’

‘Yes.’

‘But that can’t be right. He had compassionate leave. Because of me.’

‘Yes, he did –’

George came into the room. Jameson stood up and they shook hands, introducing themselves.

‘Nobody knows where Hal is,’ said Moira, by way of explanation.

‘He was here last night,’ said George.

‘But he’s not here now.’

‘Well, that’s very odd.’

‘Clara?’

Clara’s eyes were wide. ‘I don’t know. We went to sleep. I went to sleep…I haven’t –’ She stopped, looking down suddenly and fiddling with the paper scraps scattering the carpet.

‘I understand this is completely out of character?’ said Jameson.

‘Completely,’ said Clara, shortly, not looking up.

‘I just want to have a chat with him. We might be able to sort things out quite simply. But we need to find him.’

Clara began to paste glue onto the thick card pages of the scrapbook.

George spoke. His voice was quiet and deliberate, not wanting to create drama. ‘This is serious, then?’

A short pause.

‘Yes,’ said Jameson.

A quick glance passed between Clara and her mother.

‘My daughter has been through a horrible time recently. She’s still very weak. Hal will worry about her, I’m sure that he’ll be in touch as soon as – well, very soon.’

‘Have you spoken to his parents?’ said George. ‘You might want to try there.’

‘Yes. This morning. No luck.’

Moira stood back slightly, making the door available. ‘Would you leave us a telephone number, in case we hear anything?’

Shortly afterwards Jameson, taking the hint, left.