SIX a.m… Craddock opened his eyes and stirred in his blanket. He saw the open window, the sunlight on the wall; he arched his body in joyful recognition of the familiar and pleasant surroundings, of a new day. The air tasted as sharp and sweet as an iced drink in his mouth. He relaxed, unwilling to emerge from sleep, and let the sounds of awakening life come to him from across the rooftops – a dog barking, cocks crowing, the shouting of workmen, and the wordless, wavering wail of a woman’s song. Each morning he enjoyed these first seconds of languor, when the radiant world welcomed him back from the caverns of darkness, showing off to him all its beauty and tranquillity.
His mind awoke, and he remembered: this is the last time. The buoyant pleasure went out of him. He felt sick and cold. He closed his eyes and fought to expel for a few moments the leaden misery, to sink back into the blanket’s warm oblivion. It was no use; his brain was already working as remorselessly as a quick-ticking watch. He cast off the blanket and pulled on his boots.
He woke Honeycombe, went down the corridor banging at doors, packed his gear with feverish vigour; memory was amok inside him and he was trying to stun it with activity. He rolled his blanket, pulled it round his pack and fastened the straps over it, tightening them with savage energy. His equipment was piled in a corner now, ready for the march, Honeycombe’s in another. Otherwise the room was empty; all trace of human habitation and repose had vanished. His soul was empty, too. Other men were on their feet. The rooms rang with the stamping of feet, the thump of falling packs, the clatter of weapons, and impatient voices. The building which, while they had lived in it, had muffled their everyday noises with its walls, protested against their departure with a frenzy of echoes. The hunt music of the peaceful world around them, drowned by their clamour, no longer beguiled them.
Craddock stood on the landing and shouted, ‘Rise and shine! Downstairs, my lucky lads!’ His men streamed past him, grinning at him. The rush was like the noise and movement of a war dance, quickening the blood to new impulses of vigour and enthusiasm. He followed them out into the street. For a moment the cold numbness returned: this is the last time. Pride returned at the sight of the company forming up, the shuffling ranks closing into a neat, solid block of khaki that filled the whole length of the street; the straight lines of helmets swathed in dun sacking, the straight lines of rifles, the straight lines of packs, the straight lines of red faces.
It was a single organism into which all individualities and all worries vanished, self-sufficient and aloof from the untidy throng of civilians who surged around it as a tall ship is from the sea through which it cleaves. He took his post in front of his platoon.
§§§§
Seven a.m. … The sun had risen. The air, saturated with heat, became still, and shimmered with the brilliance of full morning. The men squatted in rows upon their packs, eating from their mess tins a last meal of stew which the cooks had prepared in a boiler pitched on the pavement. The captain had ordered the billet to be emptied so that the last fatigue party, which was busy now, could leave it spotless, a final reminder to its returning tenants of the ways of the British.
The civilians were all awake. Everyone was out in the street to see the soldiers go. Families crowded in their doorways, chattering with the subdued and expectant gaiety that is seen before the start of a horse-race. People hovered on the fringes of the parade and took heart, one by one, to penetrate the ranks, until the street was a disorder of khaki and black. Couples drew apart, each pair – burdened soldier and full-skirted woman – standing close together with bowed heads. Here and there could be seen a whole household crowding round a soldier, embracing him and talking volubly to him as if it were their own son who was being taken from them. Other soldiers squatted with children perched on their knees or huddled in the crook of their arms, feeding them from their mess tins.
Captain Rumbold watched the children gathering like a horde of ravenous sparrows. ‘Damn fools,’ he said to Perkington, ‘giving their food away. God knows when they’ll get their next meal. We’ll have to stop this.’
Perkington said, ‘Just you try!’
Rumbold deliberated. ‘We can’t upset ’em now,’ he said. ‘There’s only one thing to do.’ He turned to the sergeant-major. ‘How are we fixed for grub?’
‘There’s a whole crateful of tins still unopened, sir.’
‘Tell the cook to tip it all in. Sergeant Craddock!’
‘Sir?’
‘You speak the bloody language. Tell the Eyeties to get plates and line up on the pavement. God damn it,’ he said desperately. ‘let’s have a party! Come one, come all, and bugger the income-tax! Aren’t we the bloody onions?’
Craddock spoke to the people near him. They screamed the tidings to their neighbours. There was a wild rush to the houses, and in a moment an unruly queue was jostling on the pavement. People came running with plates, jugs, saucepans, washbowls, jam tins, ornamental vases, kettles, cauldrons – anything that would enable them to carry away as big a share as possible. One small boy peered happily over the rim of a chamberpot. The cooks stirred and ladled and sweated over the steaming boiler, while the people came and went with their overbrimming portions, squatting on the pavements to join in the feast, shouting to each other in extravagant gratitude and bringing the soldiers sweetmeats, bowls of pasta and bottles of wine to make a real holiday of the occasion.
Paloma, who was standing with her arms round the shoulders of two sturdy soldiers, whispered excitedly with her companions. Without warning she rushed upon Captain Rumbold, threw her arms round him and kissed him heartily. She drew back, laughing, to view his embarrassment, but the captain seized her in a murderous hug, planted his mouth on hers and crushed her to him, lifting her strapping body from the ground as easily as if she were a child. She thrashed at the air with her legs, making choking sounds of laughter and protest in her throat, and when at last he let her down she clung to him, limp and breathless. The captain turned her round and dismissed her, amid the cheers of the company, with a slap across the buttocks. She scurried back to her admirers in the ranks, screaming, ‘What a man! If only I had known him earlier!’ The wine flowed. People were laughing and talking everywhere. For an hour there was festa in the street.
§§§§
Eight a.m. … The animation had died away. The women were quiet and nervous, the children fretted, the soldiers were oppressed by the growing heat and by the lethargy of waiting. Tiger, looking punier than ever, was panting already under the weight of his full kit. Fooks sat, tipsy and almost asleep, with his head in Paloma’s lap. Ling peered from beneath his helmet like a tortoise from beneath its shell, with the expression of a little boy who is waiting to be caned. His gear hung about him in disarray, and he held his rifle from him like something alien and unwanted. He was a comical sight among all these soldiers. His woman towered over him moaning with grief and plucking at her bosom, while the five children stared at his unaccustomed appearance with their little faces upturned in solemn silence. Craddock stood looking at the closed door of Graziella’s house. He tried to ignore the sense of loneliness that touched his heart among all these leave-takings. He felt stifled and depressed, becalmed between two states of feeling. Close behind him were all the human emotions which he feared to contemplate; ahead, near enough to beckon but still out of reach, were the pleasure and relief of action. Fearing the one and unable to attain the other, he felt merely wretched, stirred only from time to time by a wave of irrational resentment at the obstinate stare of the closed door, or by a prickle of impatience as the ordeal of waiting dragged on. He said to Honeycombe, ‘I wish to God we could get out of here.’
Old Buonocorso was shuffling among the ranks, collecting cigarettes in his hat and bestowing in return a torrent of servile thanks and farewells. Craddock watched him dully. He had hoped that Aldo’s mutilation would shock the old man back into life; he had wanted to appeal to him to take up once more his responsibilities and give these stunned, bewildered people the leadership they needed; but he felt no desire to speak to him now. He only said, dropping a packet of cigarettes into the old man’s hat, ‘Goodbye, old man. And look after Aldo, for he cannot look after you any more.’
Buonocorso said, ‘Someone will look after us. I thank you for bringing him the dog. It has given him hope.’
‘I am glad that one of you has hope,’ said Craddock harshly. ‘There is enough need of it here.’
The old man bobbed a gesture of resignation. ‘It was a beautiful thought, to give him the dog. Goodbye, and a good journey.’
Craddock looked away, across the street, at the closed door.
Nella was standing before him, pathetic in her war-paint and her high-heeled shoes. Craddock took both her hands and drew her gently towards him. He said, ‘You have come to say goodbye?’
She looked up at him with big, piteous eyes, and nodded. She whispered, ‘Graziella is weeping in the house.’ She withdrew her hands from Craddock’s and reached into the bosom of her dress. ‘I wanted her to come,’ she said. ‘Are you angry with her?’
Craddock smiled and shook his head.
She opened her hand. A silver chain lay heaped on a crucifix in the palm. ‘Will you wear this?’
Craddock nodded, and sank down on to his heels, putting his hands about her waist. ‘For you?’
‘For her.’ Nella hung the chain round his neck. ‘She says, you are not with God, but God will be with you.’
Craddock sighed, and kissed her on the cheek. She began to tremble under his hands. He straightened up and said, ‘Go back to her now.’
She hurried away, crying. As she went, Tiger stepped forward and laid his hand on her arm, but she scampered on as if she had not felt his touch. The door closed behind her.
§§§§
Nine a.m.… The ranks had been cleared. The soldiers stood stolidly over their rifles, wiping the sweat from their faces and looking with silent indifference at the crowd which fidgeted in a subdued panic on the opposite pavement. The roadway was wide and empty between them.
Into the dull timelessness of waiting there intruded a new sound; the disorderly surge of distant marching. The noise grew, and the men grinned uneasily at each other. The battalion was on the move. This was ‘A’ Company, coming along the waterfront on its way to the station. Their own turn would follow. ‘A’ Company came tramping past the head of the street, and the noise of its passing, caught up in a roaring echo between the walls of the street, stirred them.
The sound died away. ‘A’ Company must be filing into the station now. Time dragged once more. The men’s eagerness began to subside; they were oppressed by their own impatience and by the scorching heat. A hush lay on the street, broken only by snatches of whimpering and an occasional flight of hysterical laughter from among the women.
‘Company…!’
The torpor lifted from the soldiers as the words of command came to them. They slung their rifles and turned to the right. There was no time to think. Craddock felt a last, quick wrench of pain, then the ranks ahead began to move, and he moved with them, uplifted by a great flood of relief. As the men moved off, there was a moment’s hesitation on the pavement, before the people started off alongside the column, in full cry. Craddock was suddenly glad that his last memory of Graziella would not be as one of this crowd of frantic women running clumsily along the street.
There was a comfort in marching. The thunderous tramp, the rhythm of his own legs, the weight of his equipment, the sight of the pack bobbing in front of him, were all part of an old, instinctive routine which carried him along without the necessity of thought. Some of the men around him were gloomy, some were grinning and calling to their followers on the pavement, some had already relapsed into the slack-mouthed apathy of the marching soldier.
The buildings and the dusty trees moved past as in a dream. The babbling crowd on the pavement was in another world. Familiar sights had become strange again; and the soldiers, inhabitants yesterday, had become passing strangers.
Orders were shouted. The men in front could be seen coming to a stop and unslinging their rifles, and the rest of the column piled up in a disorderly halt. The khaki ranks dissolved into a mass of men squatting in the station yard. The officers hurried away; time passed – ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. The men showed no signs of restlessness, but made themselves comfortable, enduring this new delay with the patience of animals. Some of the women drew near once more, but few of the men responded. They were losing the ability to recognize anything outside themselves.
They climbed to their feet again and began to file, by platoons, into the station. The dilapidated waiting rooms mocked them with echoes as they hurried through. Here and there a man hesitated, cluttering up the narrow entrance with his equipment as he looked back for a moment, panic stricken. Then he would hasten on, leaning forward beneath the weight of his gear, to emerge again into the pitiless sunlight of the platform. A tall, white wall cut them off for ever from the world which they could still hear beyond. The platform was military, with the colonel and a group of Movement Control Officers standing against the wall swishing their sticks. The shouts that echoed from one end of the platform to the other were military, as inhuman as rifle shots.
‘What platoon, sergeant?’
‘Eight Platoon, sir!’
More shouting, ‘Up the front, Eight Platoon, come on, come on,’ Craddock ran, and heard the platoon clattering behind him. There was relief in running and in feeling his pack jerking up and down against his shoulders. He opened a carriage door and bundled the men in. ‘Come on, come on, get in and don’t talk so much. Move up, there. Move up on that right-hand seat, there’s room for more. Two more. Come on!’ He slammed the door. There was relief in hearing the door slam. He opened the next door. ‘Come on, look sharp!’ He slammed the door. A third carriage. ‘Come on, come on, wake your ideas up, Ling!’ He climbed into the compartment, slammed the door from the inside and said heavily to Honeycombe, ‘Well that’s that!’ He could still feel the slam of the door inside him. The crucifix burned like an icicle in the groove of his chest. He shouted out of the window, ‘Eight Platoon all in, sir!’ Mr Perkington scurried away, with a terrified schoolboy eagerness, to report.
He sat down, and did not look out of the window any more. He wanted to unburden himself by shouting Graziella’s name. There was a dusty, cindery smell in the carriage but his nostrils were cloyed with a strange, remembered scent. Honeycombe was sitting opposite, looking at him. Honeycombe asked, ‘All right?’
He answered, ‘All right.’
The fragrance was tormenting his imagination, stirring unwelcome emotions that did not explain themselves to him but which inflicted pain.
Men were crowding at the windows, looking out as if they had just arrived. The station buildings were a barrier that they could never cross. In a moment the mysterious gap of the years would begin to open out.
The train jerked. Men were flung together, and steadied themselves. A flash of remembrance came to Craddock. He knew now what the scent was. He saw again, more clearly than the carriage in which he sat, more sharply indeed than the scene had appeared in reality, his first glimpse of Sicily. It was two months – two lifetimes – ago. Their landing-craft was idling through the shoreward swell. The sun rose, and the heat and the motion of the craft made the men seasick. The sergeant stood up in impatience. He saw the sea heaving silently about them, a shimmering silk of indigo and silver. He saw ahead, swinging slowly towards them, the continent to which their army was returning: a strip of shore, clusters of white houses, low wooded slopes, and behind, line after line of hills dark against the dawn pallor. Out of the stillness there came a single breath of breeze, and on the breeze was borne this haunting fragrance, the pungency of oranges, the bitterness of almonds, and the minty odour of wild herbs. The breeze died and the smells of oil, vomit and hot metal arose again.
The train began to move. He asked Honeycombe for a cigarette. The clatter of wheels quickened and the platform buildings slid past. A swarm of children had climbed up on to the embankment to shrill a last farewell, and the men shouted back from the windows. Some were already settled in their seats, unwrapping their haversack rations. The sergeant leaned across to Honeycombe for a light to his cigarette. His face was between Honeycombe’s cupped hands, and he did not raise his head to look out of the window.
There was a last shower of chocolates and caramels from the windows and a last clamorous response from the children. The train gathered speed and passed round the bend. Now there was only the blank end of the rear truck. Now it was gone.
The last tremor died from the rails. The sun’s glare, pitiless, blanched the blue sky, glittered on the deep blue sea, reflected, dazzling, from the walls of the tumbled white houses and drew an oven heat from the bleached pavements. The last tremor died from the rails. Now there was no sound in the blinding white sunlight; no sound but the weeping of women.