Small Wars (9 page)
It struck Hal as surprising, when he saw the photograph, that the prisoner was looking into the camera. He would have thought he would turn away but, like a lone member of a losing team, he conformed and looked into the lens with a depressed expression, recording his role for posterity.
They’d had to open up the mess to drink, because it was closed at one o’clock in the morning when the trucks rolled in, but there had to be some sort of celebration, none of them was ready to turn in. They’d sorted out rum rations for the boys – the whole of the camp was lurching into life out in the barrack room and none of the officers was ready to go either. So the watchman was hauled from his bed and a barman found. The light switches threw the place into semi-brightness and now they were drinking – drinking and breaking out the cigars.
This was exactly where he wanted to be. There was just this, drinking, remembering the triumph, and the knowledge in the back of his mind that he would be home later, with his wife. Hal wasn’t much of a drinker; he’d drink along with whoever he was with, but he didn’t have in himself that need to push things further that he saw in other men. There had been times when he was younger when he’d got stupid drunk and enjoyed himself, except for the illness the next day, but now all that was less interesting to him, except as a good way of loosening up sometimes.
Everybody else was pretty fairly all-out drunk, though. Grieves was slack with drink and it was only the wall that was holding him up. Mark Innes was with Hal; they were having pleasingly aimless conversations that were emphatic and trivial, laughing at each other’s jokes and happy with themselves. There was enough smoke to make the bar seem like being inside a cloud up a mountain somewhere, and even with the doors open it didn’t shift. The heat came off the bodies of men near him too, most of whom had cleaned up somewhat since getting back to the camp, but were not all dressed as they should be. That in itself lent sharpened energy to the place, like having mud on your boots after hunting but standing in the drawing room. Hal had washed his hands and face but he could feel the dirt from the rocks and the wind up on the high plains in every crease of his skin. It had blown in behind his ears and the place where his neck touched his collar. He could smell the last three days on himself: the sweat, not just under his arms but coming up from his clothes, the dirt off his boots, and the smell of burning too, the clinging smell that at first had been so foreign but now felt part of him. They all smelled of it. The spring night coming in didn’t clear it any more than it cleared the cigarette smoke.
Mark Innes was going on about some private or other, and the boils he had on his neck, something to do with pus and it was funny and disgusting and they were both laughing stupidly but all the time, flashing in Hal’s eyes in the dim, smoky room, were fragmented pictures of his victory; he thought Mark had that too, and perhaps everybody did, but no one could say it, or knew how to. He was in the mess bar, and it was night, and full of men, but then his mind would flash blue sky at him, or the sound of rockfalls, echoing up from the crevasse, or sudden black smoke that smelled of meat – not meat: bodies and burned hair. All at once he needed to get back to Clara. He hadn’t felt the lack of her while he’d been away, but he felt it now, in the muscles of his stomach whenever he thought of her. He didn’t have her face in his mind, just this need for her. Mark and he were joined by some others and somebody started to play the piano, a silly drawing-room song, with filthy words put to it, and the cigar smoke hung in wraiths, like ectoplasm, over their heads.
He went soon after, passing Grieves, who was face down on a table in the corner – he patted his shoulder, and Grieves suddenly heaved himself up. His face was dead white. ‘Jesus. God,’ he said.
Hal, who had felt unusually well disposed towards him, shuddered and went on by.
He left them – all the rest of them – happy and drinking, and wandered around looking for Kirby outside but couldn’t find him.
It was very dark on the drive and hard to tell whose vehicle was whose, and he was a little drunker than he’d thought, now that he was out in the air. He felt irritated, not being able to find Kirby. He cursed him and went through the cars and Land Rovers, looking and getting more and more frustrated, and finally back inside to get keys from Sergeant Burns, who took care of transport for the officers. All of this took about twenty minutes. Hal’s impatience was fighting with his euphoria and making him short-tempered. Burns was drunk and annoying. He had to get to his office at the other end of the building for the keys, and Hal followed him along the corridor, cursing his back. In the small dark office, Burns fumbled with rows of keys on nails with numb fingers.
‘Bloody hell, man, can you get on with it?’
‘Sorry, sir, coming up,’ said Burns, managing to speak and move his hands at the same time.
Why did everybody move so slowly? It was a miracle the bloody army ever got anything done, with cripples like Burns in charge of essentials.
‘Here – it’s a Ford.’
‘Well, which bloody –’
‘Reg – regi…’s on the ticket label.’
Hal thought Burns might fall over. ‘Try and sober up, Burns.’
‘Sir.’
Hal took the key, with its brown label on a string and the registration written in pencil, and left him, walking fast down the corridor, out of the main entrance to where the vehicles were. The sounds of shouting and singing from the bar reminded him of his happiness, the music and his thoughts crowding round and round in his head, as he found the car and pushed the key into the lock – Empire 500 runs, not for no wicket, this time, and he shouldn’t think of it like that, but Empire 500 for
two
, it was 500 for fucking two, and EOKA all out. EOKA all out anyway…
The engine fired and turned over. He pulled away from the mess and up the hill. The Ford’s suspension was shot and the gearstick needed a whack to jolt it out of second, but the cool air felt good on his face through the open window. It wasn’t far.
The unfamiliar car entered the empty road.
He stopped by his house, left it and went straight up the path, anticipating the feel of her, and of being home, so that he could taste it.
The door opened when he was halfway up the path and Clara was there. He had wanted her, and there she was. ‘Hal!’
He took her, buried his face deep into her neck so he could smell her; she was almost insubstantial in her cleanness. He got both arms round her, aware of his uniform, thick and rough between them, and thinking how narrow she was and that he was pleased she didn’t have a bra on because she was in her nightdress.
‘Hal –’ she sounded cracked and upset; he kissed her.
‘Hello,’ he said.
Her mouth was beautifully soft. He wanted her very badly. He’d forgotten to close the door. He backed up, and pushed it shut with his back, not letting go of her, and Clara drew her head away from him, bending uncomfortably to look up at him and said, ‘Hal – listen. The girls haven’t been well –’
‘Are they better?’
‘A bit – but –’
‘Thank God.’ He kissed her again and she kissed him back but not properly.
‘What?’ he said, stopping, feeling embarrassed, the embarrassment hardening. ‘What?’
‘Darling,’ she said, ‘you’re home –’ but she made it sound sad.
He kissed her again to block out the details interfering with his wanting her, and the wanting came back. He put his hand up onto her face and rubbed the flat of it over her cheek, across her eye and hairline and kissed her harder. He wanted to get her onto the floor, or back her against something, he had to feel the inside of her mouth and get into her, and he felt her breath fast in his mouth as he kissed her.
Then she pushed him away with both hands, quite angrily. He stopped and looked at her, or tried to: there wasn’t really enough light to see her face by.
‘Hal! Will you please! God –’
‘What?’
‘It’s been ghastly,’ she said. ‘It’s been awful.’
‘The girls,’ he said. His voice sounded far away.
Both their voices sounded as if they were on the wireless with the volume turned down. It was unnerving.
‘Yes! The girls, Hal. We haven’t left the house – I haven’t known, I’ve been so frightened –’
‘Do you want me to see them?’
‘No!’
‘Well, what?’
‘The doctor came. They’ve got measles.’
‘Just that?’
‘Hal, I haven’t slept!’
‘Silly.’
‘They’ve been coughing, they’ve been terrible –’
She stopped, staring at him, and he could see her looking at him, but couldn’t seem to recognise her frustration. It didn’t mean anything to him. His own self was overwhelming him and everything else was far distant.
She turned furiously away from him and went up the stairs. He took a breath, and followed.
The white door to the girls’ room was ajar, and he followed Clara into his own bedroom. No light was on, just the slightly paler windows behind her. He stood in the doorway as she took off her thin dressing gown. She wore the white cotton nightdress she always wore. The room felt extraordinarily small to him, and very clean. He was too big for it, and not welcome.
‘Well, shall I look at them?’ he said.
‘No!’
She was half turned away from him and doing something to her hair – why would she do that now? Lifting her arms to do her hair was an invitation. Her face was turned away from him, he could only see her body, stretching up. She looked vague, her hair a dark cloud, the nightdress misty white, with no smell and no noise, as if she weren’t really there. He felt something like panic. He was suffocating in it.
He took the two steps towards her and took her arm, it felt solid, his hand held her bare arm, his other brushed cotton, cool, not hard enough, he took hold of her –
‘Hal,’ she said.
His hand was on her waist, needing more, needing to feel something more than this small vagueness. If he kissed her, if he could touch her better –
She wasn’t strong, and it was very easy to move her back to the bed and then he pushed her down, leaning down to kiss her and pressing her shoulders backwards. There.
‘Hal!’
Again, the volume turned too low for clarity. He heard his voice, from nowhere, ‘They’re all right, then?’
‘Who?’
‘The girls –’ and he put his hand under the cool cotton of her nightdress, up onto her thigh that felt secret, well known and beautiful to him. This was real at last, this made her real. She opened her legs for him, or he opened them.
He got his belt off, and the holstered heavy pistol slipped to the tiled floor with a clunking sound. It was quick and easy now to undo his trousers and he kept his hand on her neck – soft, pulsing – while his other hand got him close to her, he pushed inside her suddenly; it was so hard not to grip her very tightly and push deeper, not to be rough, just to have her quickly and be as far into her as he could. She made a noise. She sounded so far away to him. They were too low off the bed. He had to pick her up with two hands around her waist, staying inside her, and pushing her back from the edge so he could do it easier to her, and have both of their bodies on the bed –
‘No. No – Hal – stop,’ she said, and for strange halting seconds his mind absorbed that she was crying and he took that and mixed it with his need for her, her breath on his fingers, her clean skin, all the other parts of her that were his, and he lost it there.
He needed her badly. She loved him. He wouldn’t make her cry, but he pushed very hard into her, pressing his cheek against hers, and felt her breathe faster just by his ear. It felt so sweet, but her body seemed to go away underneath him, not firm and pressing up to him, as it normally did.
He needed to be far deeper into her, all of him inside her, taken in, he closed his eyes and pulled her up onto him and kept his fingers on her face feeling her lips on his fingertips, and then sharp need went through him that was like rage, and he forgot about being careful with her.
In slow half-sleep, Hal heard Clara washing herself and the girls, and going downstairs.
When he got up it was later than usual and the room was hot. He had breakfast with a strange out-of-time feeling, because the rest of them had been up before him and he’d been away. The girls, their faces mottled with faded red, were playing at his feet, refusing their breakfasts, and Clara was trying to make them eat, worrying. Hal drank his coffee, watching them.
Clara came over to him and kissed him on the forehead, with her hands on either side of his face. Her dark blue eyes were infinite; he couldn’t fathom them.
‘Is everything all right?’ he said.
She spoke carefully. ‘Yes, Hal. It’s all right.’
After that she was very busy with the girls.
Adile was cleaning downstairs and Clara went upstairs.
The bedroom smelled different from the rest of the house. It smelled of the night before. She looked around the room. It must have been coming up from the sheets where he had lain on them. The air was thick and burned-smelling. She went to the bed, pulled the sheets from it and bundled them up in the corner, and then she opened the window wide.
She thought that it wasn’t as if he’d hurt her very much – she’d had two children hadn’t she? There was no need to make a fuss about it.
She breathed in, putting her hand up to push her hair from her forehead, but the same smell was on her hands – she pulled back from it, sickened.
She went back from the window, into the bathroom, and washed her hands very carefully with the hard soap. She dried them on the towel and put the towel into the basket to be washed, but on the landing, she caught the smell again, through the open bedroom door. The clean air from the window was blowing it through the bedroom onto her.
She closed the bedroom door. The room could still be aired with the door shut, she thought.
Episkopi, July