A FAT colonel stopped Captain Rumbold in the street. Rumbold was hardly aware at first that someone was calling him. The streets which had confronted him like a maze of white buildings on the morning, exactly three weeks ago, when he had marched in, were now as familiar to him as if he had lived here for years; and his legs took him wherever he wished to go without making any demands on his mind, which at this moment was occupied with planning the day’s training.
‘Here, you!’
Rumbold paused. ‘Are you talking to me?’
The colonel’s red cheeks were inflated with anger, and his little eyes glittered. ‘Yes, you! You’re an officer, aren’t you?’
Rumbold touched the captain’s insignia on his shoulder straps. ‘Can’t you see these?’ The colonel only stood chest-high to him. ‘I’ll bend over.’
The colonel’s flush darkened. ‘Blasted insolence! Don’t you know how to speak to a superior officer? What do you mean by gadding about the streets dressed up like that?’
Rumbold was wearing brown corduroy trousers, a blue shirt that he had taken from an Italian officer and a yellow silk sweat-rag. He was going to take the men on an exercise among some ruined houses, and there was no sense in dressing uncomfortably or in spoiling a clean uniform. ‘You’re behind the times,’ he said agreeably. ‘It’s what the well-dressed man is wearing this season. Didn’t you know?’
The colonel’s cheeks quivered with rage. ‘I’ve a good mind to have you arrested. What’s your unit?’
‘Tenth Kents. What’s yours?’ Rumbold studied ostentatiously the supply service badge in the colonel’s cap. ‘Lord’s Day Observance Society?’
The colonel fumbled in his pocket and produced a notebook. ‘You’ll be hearing more of this. Your name?’
‘Goldberg. You can call me Basil.’
‘Tenth Kents,’ repeated the colonel as he wrote in his notebook. He glared up at Rumbold. ‘You’ll be laughing out of the other side of your face in a day or two. I shall insist that you’re made an example of. I shall report this personally to your commanding officer.’
Rumbold brought his heels together and jerked his arm up in a monstrously correct salute. ‘You’ll really have to excuse me now,’ he said politely. ‘It’s been so nice!’
He marched away like a Guardsman; but, when he had turned the corner and relaxed into his normal pace, he felt less cheerful. He was not worried about the consequences of this encounter. It was the new atmosphere which it betokened in the town that made him uncomfortable. A couple of weeks ago the town had been just behind the fighting line. Now it was – he hated the words, they made him ashamed of his presence here – the Base. A couple of weeks ago there had been nothing but comradeship, a sense of recognition, among the men who swarmed in the streets. There had still been the sound of artillery in the distance, mingling with their cheerful hubbub, to unite them; a salute had been a greeting freely offered. Now the men walked about in the streets with a grudging constraint. The lorry convoys were on the move again, more and more offices, depots, hospitals, were springing up, in readiness for the next phase of operations. A horde of administrators had moved in to wind up the machine again while the soldiers waited uneasily. Provosts, staff officers, middle-aged martinets of every kind, continuing on their plush-lined odyssey from Cairo and Algiers, lurked everywhere, issued regulations, dispensed punishments and reprimands, the masters of this new order. Rumbold believed in discipline. He exacted it from his own men and he did not grudge it among his fellow-officers of the fighting army. But it irked him to see these newcomers putting up ‘OFFICERS ONLY’ signs outside every good restaurant, over the front seats in the theatres, even in the windows of the best of the barbers’ shops. This was not his idea of discipline.
‘By God!’ he said to Perkington when he arrived at the billet. ‘It’s time we were getting out of here!’
‘Yes,’ said Perkington, ‘I feel rather creepy waiting about here and wondering what’s going to happen next.’
‘Oh, Lord! You don’t want to start mooning about that. Time enough when the muck starts flying past your ears. Eh, Porky?’
Piggott looked up from his typewriter. ‘You! You don’t know when you’re on to a good thing. I’d sooner put up with a few brass hats, any day, than have those bastard eighty-eights plonking down all round.’
‘You’re getting soft in your old age, Porky. You’d better not get too comfortable. Something tells me it won’t be long now.’
‘I know,’ groaned Piggott. ‘I’ve got eyes.’
‘Why didn’t you come to the party last night?’ the captain asked Perkington.
Perkington blushed. ‘Oh, I had some reading to do.’
‘You ought to come out of your shell a bit, Perks,’ the captain said. ‘Then you won’t have so much time to worry about how you’ll make out.’ He smiled. ‘No need to be shy, you know. There’s another binge tonight. Why don’t you come?’
‘Oh.’ Gratitude flickered in Perkington’s eyes. ‘Thanks, I’d like to.’
‘I’ll show you my countess. First time I’ve ever copulated with the aristocracy. Now I know what they mean by a democratic war.’
‘Hi-aye,’ said Piggott, ‘off with the old and on with the new!’
‘She’s what Porky here would call a peach. Tall, slender, honey blonde hair, golden skin. She thinks the Germans were horrid, but some of their parachute officers were rather nice. She thinks I’m nice, too. There she was on one side of the room, and there was I on the other. About two hundred people in between. She takes a look round and comes sailing across to me with a cocktail. A little bit of backchat, and the whole thing’s in the bag. I will say this for the nobility, they’re as smooth as silk. What a woman,’ he said reminiscently. ‘She could pinch a beggar’s last crust and he’d feel flattered. You know, she introduced me to her husband, a poor little man like a monkey perched all alone on a settee. There he was, in a beautiful grey suit, he looked up at me with big, mournful eyes. He knew what I was there for, all right. And all the time she stood on the other side of him, looking at me over his head. He spoke perfect English, in a sad, polite kind of voice, inviting me to come and stay with them in their villa at Taormina, and all the time she was giving me the old eye. It was obvious why she’d showed him to me. It was her way of telling me the coast was clear. And, by God, it was, too! I stayed there till this morning and I never got another glimpse of him.’
Piggott asked, ‘What about Little Nell?’
‘Oh, her! Have a heart, there’s a limit to what a man can do. It’s time for her to run along and play.’
‘You’re a baby-snatching old bastard, aren’t you?’ said Piggott. ‘Did he tell you,’ he asked Perkington, ‘she’s only fifteen?’
‘Away with you,’ said the captain. ‘She loves it, the little bitch. They’re all the same here. Early ripe, early fade. They’re a randy lot.’
Piggott asked, ‘Did that Nella cost you much?’
‘Not a penny. All she wanted was my own sweet self. Quiet, like a little girl with a doll. Queer kid. I suppose I ought to give her a present, or something. What d’you reckon? Five thousand do?’
Perkington said, ‘I wouldn’t know.’
Piggott exclaimed, ‘Save your money, you silly old sod.’
Perkington was looking at Piggott in surprise. ‘It’s all right,’ said the captain. ‘He’s a privileged person. He’s my privy counsellor. What do you recommend, Porky?’
‘You can get the pick of the bunch for fifty lire. Give her five hundred and tell her she’s lucky to get it.’
‘That’s your job,’ said Rumbold. ‘Here’s two thousand. You can give her my love and tell her to go and blow bubbles.’
‘Me?’
‘Why not, I’m doing you a favour. You can try your own luck while you’re about it. It’s vacant possession. Girls like that don’t stay long to let. Now beat it, I’m busy.’ He turned to Perkington.
‘Don’t try so hard not to look shocked, old son. You’ve got a face like a slab of frozen cod. We’ve got a busy day in front of us. We’re going to give the troops a taste of rough stuff for a change. They won’t like it, but it’ll get their blood up. I know my men. You watch ’em!’
The two officers busied themselves with their plans.
§§§§
Wally Fooks counted the roll of notes, stowed it safely in his pocket and sauntered out of the café into the sunlit confusion of the Piazza Stesicoro.
A handsome woman, with the bleached hair and short skirts of a prostitute, crossed his path, and his bowels leaped. The sunshine struck through her light frock to reveal the whiteness and the sumptuous outlines of her body. She walked with a sway that maddened him, towards the narrow, forbidden streets at whose corners the military policemen paced. She looked back at him and mocked him with a smile, and he turned to follow her.
Today’s training among the ruins, with the thunder of grenades echoing among the broken walls, had awakened a dismal thought in him. In its first four weeks in action the company had lost nearly half its strength through death, wounds or malaria. How many of the men would be alive in four weeks’ time? Or four weeks after that? He had dismissed the thought, for no soldier likes to let his imagination roam backwards or forwards in time or to dwell on what is happening to his companions; but it had, working in the obscure depths of his consciousness, awakened Private Fooks to the futility of laying up earthly possessions. He was an audacious and industrious pilferer. It was a habit that many of the men had brought with them from civilian life, where their employers were their natural enemies. Even Sergeant Craddock would risk his rank, when on a visit to the technical stores, by winding fifty yards of copper wire round his waist and smuggling it out to sell for a few hundred lire. Most of the men stole rations or stores to sell or to give to their sweethearts. Wally Fooks was more ambitious. He had received his training on London Docks, in a daily battle of wits with the port police. He already had stowed in his kit thirty watches, packed in grease in flat tobacco tins. Today he had enriched himself to the extent of three thousand lire, by the sale of a German pistol, a pair of boots and six typewriter ribbons and suddenly, at the sight of woman’s flesh, he was overcome by the urge to enjoy while he might all the good things of life.
The woman walked past the redcaps, turned and looked back at him in inquiry. He made a furtive sign to her to wait. He looked around him. In the middle of the square was a rank of horse-drawn carriages. He went over to one, climbed into it, and explained to the driver, with much gesticulation and pidgin Italian, what he wanted to do. The cabby drew off the great black overcoat which he wore against the sun. Wally curled himself up on the floor, beneath the hood, and the cabby flung the coat over him. The cab swayed and jolted over the cobbles while Fooks huddled, sweating, in suffocating darkness. The smell was acrid and overpowering, and he felt the fiery bites of fleas on his skin. He slid to one side as the cab lurched round a corner; then he was free again, in the blinding daylight.
The woman was not in sight. He walked down the narrow street in search of her, avoiding the refuse that stank in the gutters. She must be somewhere ahead; or perhaps she was waiting for him in a doorway. She was nowhere to be seen. Other women beckoned to him, but they were drab and slack-bodied. The insolence of the woman he had followed burned inside him; he wanted what her flimsy frock had hidden, and he hunted for her.
He searched in streets, alleys and dank courtyards, until black patches of sweat stained his collar and the armpits of his khaki shirt. He turned into a street of silent, shuttered houses. No women stood in the doorways, no children screamed in the gutters. The clamour of the town came faintly to him as if through blankets. He heard his own footsteps, loud on the cobbles; and footsteps behind him. He turned and saw a Sicilian following him, loping along on short, thin legs to keep up with his own long stride. The Sicilian hesitated as Fooks confronted him, then came on. The man wore a creased and dirty suit of white duck and a Panama hat; his haggard face twisted itself, around his beak of a nose, into an ingratiating smile, but his eyes, feverish and intent, followed every movement that Fooks made.
‘Tommy want signorina?’
Fooks relaxed; he had been on guard; soldiers had been knifed in these streets. ‘Looking for a blondie. Big here. White dress. Capeesh? Know her?’
‘Sure,’ – the man had an organ-grinder-American accent – ‘I get you a fine blondie. Blondie, red hair, dark hair, French girl, Polish girl, any damn thing you want. I guess you like a drink, too, eh, Tommy? You come along with me. I show you a swell house.’
Fooks grinned. ‘House no bonna. I’m looking for someone. Beat it!’ He turned and walked on.
The Sicilian scurried after him. He plucked at the sleeve of Fooks’s shirt. ‘Aw, come on, fella. You wanna good time. I show you everything.’
Fooks shook the man off and struck threateningly at him with the back of his hand. ‘Ah-way, you shower! I don’t want no pimp pawin’ at me!’ The man continued to trot after him. Fooks halted, at the street corner. ‘Listen, useless, how d’you get out of here?’
‘Sure, you come with me, I show you. Ala-ways glad to help Tommy.’ He led Fooks down an alley and indicated an archway. ‘T’rough here, you come-a quick to waterfront.’ Fooks followed, and found himself in a dark, paved courtyard. He could see no other exit. ‘Here!’ he exclaimed. ‘What’s the idea?’
The man had backed away and was behind him in the archway.
Fooks started towards him and stopped. Two other men had come silently out of the shadows. Fooks saw the gleam of steel and understood. He moved instinctively to place his back against a wall and took stock of his surroundings. The doors and windows facing on to the courtyard were all barred. The houses had shut their eyes against any plea for help; the blank slats of wood were like closed lids. The three men came warily into the yard; one of them in a well-cut grey suit and a broad-brimmed trilby, the jowls of his face fat and purple; a second, enormous and stooping, in ragged black trousers and a collarless shirt; the man in white lurking behind them. Far away, beyond the thick silence in the yard, Fooks could hear the murmur of the town.
The men came nearer. Fooks could feel the blood beating in his temples. He heard a child’s playful shriek in the distance; the sound of water being emptied; more faintly, from within a house, the tinkle of breaking glass and the laughter of men. He breathed deeply, and clenched his fists. There was more laughter. It was full and strong, English laughter.
He threw back his head and shouted, into the enveloping silence, ‘Hi-aye! Any British about?’
His shout died among the walls. The deep little bursts of laughter continued to come to him, girls’ voices, the sound of a piano. He could hear the men and the girls laughing and singing ‘Lili Marlene’.
He gathered his breath again and lifted up his head. He shouted, ‘Bundle!’ He drew the word out into long, echoing syllables. It was the battalion’s private rallying-cry in street fights and bar-room brawls.
The men were almost upon him. In despair he bellowed again, with all his force, ‘Bundoo-oo-oo-ooll!’
The big man lunged at him, a short upward jab. Fooks struck at the man’s knife hand. The great fist was as hard as wood against his blow; the shock jolted up his arm. Fooks jabbed with his left elbow to keep a second attacker at bay and drove his boot at the big man’s knee. They had recoiled, and he was able to draw a long shaking breath and raise his fists again. He shouted once more, his voice rising almost to a scream, ‘Bundoo-oo-ooll!’
His heart leaped up within him as he heard, from somewhere behind the walls on his left, the pounding of boots on a staircase. Only the steel studs of ammunition boots could make a clatter like that. He roared joyfully, ‘Come on, the infanteers!’ A door banged open and a khaki figure dived past him at the three men. He caught a confused glimpse of a wooden club swinging up and over, and from among the whirl of bodies he heard a sickening crack and a man’s scream. His rescuer was at his side. The three men rallied. The big man’s head was streaming with blood.
‘Get back, you bastards!’ The shock of surprise almost made Fooks spew; he knew the voice. He croaked, ‘’Arry!’
Jobling advanced from the wall. The club swung in his left hand. In his right he held a pistol. He drove the three men out of the courtyard. Fooks heard them scuttling away down the street. He whispered, as Jobling came back towards him, ‘Gor blind ol’ bleeding Riley!’
Jobling asked, ‘You all right?’
‘Fine. What about you? You been playin’ a fine old game, boy.’
‘I’m all right. Gave me a bit of a turn, it did, when I heard the old war cry.’ Jobling’s voice hardened. ‘What have they done with him?’
‘Who?’
‘You know who.’
‘Broom? ’E’s in the clink. Twenty-eight days’ field punishment. Look ’ere, ‘Arry, why don’t you…’
Jobling uttered the parody of a laugh. ‘Twenty-eight days!’
‘Why don’t you chuck it? You could still get off easy. You ’aven’t got a chance if you stay on the run.’
‘Twenty-eight days! You knew my kid!’
‘What good will it do? You’d swing for it. Your ol’ lady wouldn’ even get a pension for you. The bloody misery’d prob’ly kill ’er, anyway. First Geoff, then you!’
‘Save your breath, mate. And if you see that lump of dung, tell him I’ve got this all cleaned up ready for him.’ He displayed the pistol. ‘And if anyone else comes after me, they’ll get a taste of it, too.’
‘You’re barmy! You’re bloody bomb-’appy!’
‘I know what I’m doing. If you’re a mate of mine you won’t tell anyone you saw me. Not that they’ll find me, even if you do. I’ll be out the back door of this house before you can say “knife”.’
‘’Arry!’
Jobling was gone. The slam of the door died away. The houses looked blankly upon the silent courtyard, and from the distance Fooks heard again the sound of the piano and of singing.
§§§§
Nella took the money. She felt cold and numbed. The notes that she clutched in her hand had no meaning. Nothing moved in her; everything in her being was leaden and dead. The fat little soldier was still speaking. After the freezing shock of his first words, nothing else had reached her. His voice was a faraway gabble that came without sense to her ears.
Her mind was too immature, she was too inexperienced in calamity, to react to what she had heard. There was only a thick heaviness in her head. At moments one thought peeped out of the confusion: if only she could see him: but she was too overwhelmed to give utterance to it. Her fist was clenched round the notes in a rigor like that of death; no impulse of rejection flowed from the brain; her grip was so tight that it hurt. There was only paralysis, and a core of pain in her breast.
The red face was still grinning at her. The voice assailed her, its inflections successively inquiring, expectant, insistent, resigned. Words failed the little soldier; he hung about her, looking into her face with doubt and growing embarrassment. He turned on his heels and she saw him cross the courtyard and go back into the office.
She could not move. She leaned against the wall of the porch in a stupor, all sense of time fled from her. The shadows crept about her and the glare died out of the daylight. The sweat on her body chilled. An unfamiliar coldness crept through her veins and she shivered as if visited by malaria. There was a prickling at the back of her hot, dry eyes. Her intelligence began to stir; terrified little impulses invaded her, to make a scene, to rush in upon him, to do herself violence. The woman in her spoke, but the child in her did not dare. She waited, stupidly. Soldiers hurried by, glancing at her with curiosity. Men came streaming down the stairs out of the billet and went into the cookhouse. Through the doors she heard the clatter and the subdued hubbub of a meal. The meal was over; the men came out, washed their mess tins and dispersed to their rooms. Still she waited in the porch. She could not take her eyes from the office door. Perhaps he was in there. Every time the door opened there was a great wrench of childish hope in her; each time, it was not he who emerged, and the pain rushed back into her.
How long she had been there she did not know. She had lost all desire to wait for him any more: she would have liked to creep away, but she was too weak and dizzy, and her mind was still too stupefied to set her limbs in motion. The sentry said something to her. She took no notice. He spoke again, in a firm but kindly voice. He took her arm and pushed her gently out into the street. She could not feel the pavement beneath her as she moved. She was enveloped in a sensation of dream, and she was sick with terror.
Someone else was speaking to her. She swayed in front of him. It was Tiger. Her empty face did not return his smile. He looked at her uncomprehendingly, and tried to awaken her to his banter. He was asking her to come with him; he was insisting; she felt hostile and impatient. He laid a hand on her arm. His voice was cheerful but overlaid with urgency. His grip tightened, and he tugged at her.
A spasm of fury racked her. She was on fire with pain and loathing. She tore herself from his grasp, spat in his face and ran away like a terrified animal.