Small Wars (5 page)

There was no one in the outhouses, just animals. The soldiers stood with their guns held ready, looking towards the shadows, at the house and Hal walking towards it. The man who was pinned to the ground wriggled a bit under the soldier’s boot. Hal went inside.

A corporal, in a strangely domestic pose, was lighting the oil lamp on the table. He turned up the wick and the warm light grew. The Sten fire hadn’t hit anyone so there was no casualty to deal with.

‘One got out the back when we were coming in,’ said Amery.

‘Yes, let’s bring him in,’ said Hal, and Amery went out past him.

There was a woman in a corner, in her nightdress, with two children clinging to her legs, one hiding his face, the other staring, with huge eyes, at Hal. Two men lay on the floor, their arms wide and palms flat, Walsh and Leonard’s Stens at their heads. They were in their nightclothes, too, one man’s naked legs splayed and hairy, the other in baggy trousers but shirtless.

Hal’s mind was moving so fast that everything seemed to slow down, and in calmness he could absorb the detail. The room was like a photograph with all of it in focus for him to study. He saw the wooden beams disappear into the shadows of the roof. He saw the bones inside the children’s hands where they gripped their mother’s nightdress. He saw the men’s boots lined up against the wall near the stove and little pieces of bread on the table by the lamp, the crumbling walls around him and heard the breathing of each of the people in the house.

He knew the woman was screaming before the sound left her, saw the movement of the man on the floor reaching up for his child and felt Francke panicking beside him. The woman rushed at Hal, throwing her children behind her, before she saw Francke’s Sten raised to her chest, and Hal caught Francke up short with a word and put his own pistol to the head of the man who was trying to get to his child and told him to be still.

He held his hand up to the woman and looked at her. ‘Calm,’ he said, in Greek, and for a moment they were all motionless.

Amery and another soldier came back in with the prisoner in front of them. They turned him to face Hal. He knew immediately that they had found their man.

‘Are you Loulla Kollias?’ he asked, and when the man didn’t answer, he sent for the interpreter.

When Davis came in, Hal had the woman taken into the other room. There was some screaming and panic as the men tried to fight, as if they thought there was something to protect the family from. Hal kept it brief and attempted to establish names and who owned the house, the broadest of connections between them all, but the prisoners weren’t in the mood to assist him, so he had them dress themselves under guard and stood them outside to wait.

Outside, the sky was pearly and only black in the west, where there were still stars. The captured men were secured and the outhouses searched while the dogs resumed their helpless barking. The woman and her children sat in the kitchen with a rather embarrassed Leonard to watch them. Once most of the soldiers had left the house, the children cried very loudly and their wailing was a background sound to the searching.

It did not prove fruitless. There were guns in the main house – not a farmer’s hunting rifles but two Brens and a rich stock of ammunition. Hal’s men found pipe bombs in the well nearby and some dynamite stashed in a wooden crate under some grain sacks in a half-wrecked barn away from the house. With each discovery the mood took a step towards triumphant.

Searching the farm buildings took a long time; the sun was up over the high hill, hitting the mountainside and the loops of road opposite. The three prisoners were bound and marched under escort with Two Platoon, to keep them away from Andreas, who was exhausted and guilty and had been crying.

It took an hour to reach the vehicles, then they loaded up the prisoners and the weapons and headed down towards Episkopi. The engines whined and rattled over the dirt roads, grinding metal on metal in low gear, and Hal went over the things that had happened, thought about what had gone well and what he might have done differently. His plan had been sound, although it was unfortunate that in cordoning the house the soldiers were effectively disarmed, for fear of casualties amongst their own.

He was concerned for the woman and her children and, recognising humanity in himself, felt untroubled.

Hal had a boyish habit he’d never lost. He would score the outcome of things in his mind as if they were sporting results. It made him smile to do it. At school, getting news of the war in assembly or chapel, he would say in his head, England three, Germany one, or RAF, four hundred for four, Luftwaffe, all out for thirty-five. As he grew up, he knew it was absurd, wrong, even, but he still had to do it. Now, at thirty years old in a Land Rover in Cyprus he did it automatically: EOKA, out for a duck.

Looking around him, and above, he noticed that the sky was blue all over, with nothing in it but light. It was the sort of blue you might see on a ceiling with angels painted on it, now high, high above Cyprus, instead.

Chapter Seven

‘All right, Davis, thanks very much.’

Davis, the interpreter, left the room.

The interrogation cell was in the guardroom, a building that wasn’t far from the recreation ground for the troops and held corporals being punished for falling asleep on guard duty as well as Cypriots suspected of terrorism. The walls were fairly thin. The roof was metal and the cells were simply small narrow rooms with good locks on heavy doors. Loulla Kollias was in one of these.

Davis stepped out into the corridor, which had windows along it onto a yard at the back. He wanted to get away from the door because he didn’t want to hear or know what was going on. It wasn’t as if it was happening to him, but he found that his hands were sweating and his mouth was dry.

Very recently, three soldiers had been court-martialled for causing bodily harm to a prisoner. Their fate was supposed to be an example, but it was known amongst the SIB that the interrogation in question had elicited information about EOKA that, followed up, had stopped a hijack. The SIB had been encouraged, not deterred, in their methods.

Davis walked away from the closed door and along the corridor to the end, where there was another door that opened onto a small yard at the back. He went into the yard and lit a cigarette. There was a ten-foot wire fence right in front of him, and past that, a hill sloped gently upwards. It was a warm day. The sun heated his skin.

Inside the room Loulla Kollias, who was fifty-two years old, was tipped back in the chair he was bound to. The soldier fetched big metal jugs of water and wet cloths were placed over Kollias’s face, his head gripped still while the jugs were poured onto his mouth. The cloths made it very hard to breathe. The heavy wet layers filled his mouth and his throat with the water as he gagged and suffocated. It isn’t an extreme method of interrogation to nearly drown a man when you’re saving lives.

Davis waited in the yard for fifteen minutes, then he walked away from the guardroom and across the recreation ground onto the long road back towards the main garrison. Below him, along the edge of the polo field, two horses were being exercised. A woman, one of the officers’ wives, was being given a lesson, she was giggling as the horse trotted and bounced her in the saddle. Davis walked along the path and watched them and missed his home. He thought of his study in Cambridge, and afternoons spent reading, and wondered how he would ever forget these things happening here in Cyprus, or get over them.

A Land Rover was coming towards him; he recognised Major Treherne in the passenger seat and stepped aside, saluting. He liked Major Treherne, who seemed to be a good man, as far as he could tell, although it was hard to fathom soldiers – professional ones. He wondered what would happen if he were to stop him that night in the mess and say, ‘They’ve been torturing the prisoner you brought in. They nearly drown him…’ But his imagining stopped there; it was unthinkable, and anyway, he wasn’t sure what went on, he couldn’t have sworn to it in court, he was just guessing. Torture was probably a silly word, an exaggeration. His mind went around like that, excusing himself, condemning himself, lost in notions of responsibility, while the major’s Land Rover passed him, throwing up the dust.

Hal was hoping Clara would be at the beach. He nodded to the interpreter – whom he always thought a worried-looking fellow – and the Land Rover bumped over the narrow road past the guardroom to the tunnel through the rock, accelerating towards its entrance.

The darkness swallowed them very quickly. The tunnel smelled of stone and earth; Kirby had to put the headlights on, and the lighted disc ahead grew bigger as they drove towards it and then, suddenly, they burst out into the light.

The beach was very sunny. Hal saw Clara and the twins – their outlines sharpening as the glare settled – with bare legs and covered tops, playing by the water. He jumped out of the Land Rover while Kirby was still turning it on the sand to go back through the tunnel and ran towards her. ‘Having fun?’

Clara grabbed him and held onto him, full of joy.

‘I went home but you weren’t there,’ he said.

‘We were here.’

‘So I see.’

He kissed her, he wanted to make love to her and held onto her tightly, trying to let go but not able to yet.

The twins were jumping about. He looked at them at last, went down onto his knees and let them push him over. The skin on their bare legs was dusted with fine sand. He tickled them, carefully, one after another, their sand-gritty feet pressing into the palms of his hands. They giggled and choked with laughter as he put his face into their tummies and pretended to bite them, as Clara lay on her back and closed her eyes, smiling.

With the sun blinding them and the cliff above them, they played in the sand.

That evening they left the girls at home and went to the Limassol Club. The Limassol Club was where the British went for a change of scene from the mess, and to entertain their wives. It was a big white building, well guarded, in the part of town near the governor’s mansion.

Mrs Burroughs had organised a reading of
The Tempest
in the garden and had chairs set up in a semi-circle. The women had to share roles, but there weren’t very many men interested so they had whole reams of text to themselves.

The men Evelyn Burroughs had roped in were two young subalterns, and they read their parts blushingly, grateful to be asked and for the gentle attention of married women. There were lanterns in the garden with moths around them, and the dark night behind was springlike. The women wore cardigans or wraps over their dresses and held their books near the lanterns to see.

Inside, the bar was crowded, noisy laughter and cigarette and cigar smoke drifted slowly from the open doors.

Hal knew that he was tired, but didn’t feel tired. Every few moments, almost without realising, he felt a small tug on the invisible thread that tied him to Clara and glanced out into the garden.

It was good for her to have a night away from the children. He tried not to, but just occasionally he resented the strain the girls put on her. He was very proud of the way she had managed the move to Cyprus, dimly aware, and ignoring the feeling, that this was a danger time for her. He was relieved they had moved onto the base – he could sense a relaxing in her and he thought she really was happy, not just pretending for his sake.

Clara, in the garden, was enjoying herself. Hal may have had his first small triumph as a soldier, but she’d had her first triumph as a real army wife. She hadn’t cried and clung to him and told him not to get blown up. She had spent the day having lunch with Deirdre Innes, taking the children to the beach, and when he’d come back she hadn’t cried either, but laughed.

She hadn’t been listening to the reading, but was lulled by the language and her own thoughts.

That morning she’d had letters from home, and from James, now stationed in Malaya. Her mother understood it was the everyday things Clara wanted to hear about. Just as Clara wrote to her mother about where she did her shopping and the beaches, so her mother wrote back to her about a sudden hailstorm that had battered the spring flowers – she had spent a morning kneeling in the wet soil, to tie them to stakes – or a trip to London to see about finding a flat for Clara’s younger brother, Bill, nearer to his chambers in the City. She didn’t write of missing the children, or her own and George’s constant anxiety for Clara and her brother. Clara kept the letters together, and read parts of them to Hal, whose own mother’s letters were brief and tedious.

A third man came across the garden to them.

‘Ah – there you are! Does everybody know Lieutenant Davis? He hasn’t been with us all that long. He’s the interpreter attached to the regiment.’

The young man nodded to them all, not making eye contact, and Clara moved her chair a little to accommodate him.

‘How long will you be with us, Lieutenant?’ asked Evelyn, summoning a waiter.

‘Oh, I’m not sure. I go where I’m told to,’ he said.

‘We’ve run out of copies, I’m afraid, but I’m sure Mrs Treherne will let you look over her shoulder.’

‘Of course,’ said Clara. ‘Here.’ She held her book near him. He sat hunched forward, and his uniform made stiff folds across his chest. Clara smiled at him. ‘
The Tempest
,’ she said.

‘Yes, I remember. I saw the noticeboard.’

They were near the end of Act One, and took Davis’s arrival as a signal to pause. Deirdre Innes giggled. ‘I must say,’ she said to Lieutenant Castle, who was next to her, ‘you’re attempting a rather masterful Prospero!’

Deirdre Innes was flirting, thought Clara, and Castle’s attempt at masterfulness – if he had made one – had been entirely unsuccessful.

‘Ought we to move inside?’ asked Evelyn. ‘It’s a little dim out here, but rather suits the play, don’t you think?’

They all agreed to stay outside. Deirdre Innes made a show of shivering inside her wrap and holding her book nearer Castle – or the light behind him.

‘Do you know the play, Lieutenant Davis?’ asked Evelyn.

‘We did it at school.’

‘Well, jolly good, then. You can read Gonzalo.’

Clara didn’t think Davis wanted to read Gonzalo, but Evelyn was irresistible.

‘Carry on,’ she said leaning towards him, and staring over her spectacles.

Davis had a biggish, aquiline nose, and hair that fell forward. He peered at Evelyn, and his eyes, which were surprisingly large, were fearful. She nodded. He glanced down to the text and – without even the benefit of a cocktail – began.

‘“Beseech you, sir, be merry,”’ he cleared his throat several times, ‘“you have cause, So have we all, of joy; for our escape Is much beyond our loss…”’ He stopped. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I –’ and then he stopped again, blinking down at the page.

This wasn’t shyness. They had all been shy. This was some form of discomfort that stopped them all, and Clara recognised it. Lieutenant Davis was staring downwards, as if bewildered by his own silence. Clara said, ‘Poor man, he’s only just arrived. Shall I?’

Evelyn was grateful to her, and in her gratitude didn’t argue that it was a man’s role, but said, ‘Clara. Please,’ and Clara began,

‘…for our escape

Is much beyond our loss. Our hint of woe

Is common; every day some sailor’s wife,

The masters of some merchant and the merchant

Have just our theme of woe…’

The waiter brought Davis a drink. He took it and drank it down.

The little party of readers continued, quite a few cocktails were drunk, and it became what Evelyn had wanted, a Very Jolly Time, but Davis, and Clara beside him, had another experience, of shared, unspoken sympathy that was mysterious and comforting.

When the play had ended, they smiled at each other.

Clara said, ‘I’d better go and find my husband,’ and got up.

He stood up too, while around them their fellow readers gathered bags and glasses and prepared to go inside. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, which, coming out of sleeves that were a little too short, were long-fingered.

‘Are you all right?’ said Clara, thinking it was odd to be talking to a man who was younger than her.

‘Much better, thanks,’ he said, and grinned at her.

‘Oh, good,’ she said, and she walked away to find Hal.

The SIB had got their information from Loulla Kollias, not because of the near drowning or because of the beating the Turkish Auxiliary Policeman had given him, which was not severe, but because of the very kind words from the interpreter, Davis, that followed it. He had told him, as politely as he could, that if he would only tell them where Demetriou was hiding, his family would be safe and he would keep the families of others safe, too. Loulla Kollias had conceded.

He was left on his own then to sleep, but confined by physical pain and the shame of his weakness, he didn’t sleep. In the dark part of the night, after the moon had gone and before the sun came up, he died. He died of a heart-attack, which couldn’t have been prevented, and perhaps was nobody’s fault, but it was a very lonely death, and fearful.