Always I have been a little in love with Claudia, he thinks. Always Claudia has seemed brighter cleverer more entertaining than other people, always I could talk to Claudia about anything, always when you leave Claudia you go flat a little. Henry does not like Claudia, he is jealous, also he is afraid of her – lots of people are afraid of Claudia. But not me. I am not clever like Claudia but never has she squashed me like sometimes she squashes people, always she has listened to me, even if she laughed at me too. We have quarrelled, but always we have become friends again at once.
Lisa is speaking now of Jasper, coolly; she has taken the sons to visit him, he gave them money for bicycles. Rich, benevolent Jasper. At the thought of Jasper Laszlo curdles with dislike; never should Claudia have been involved with a man like Jasper, a hollow man, an entrepreneur, not worth her time. For an affair, perhaps, a little love affair, but not for so long, off and on, years and years, why do people make such mistakes? But Claudia has not good taste in men for a woman so brilliant, so handsome it is extraordinary. Laszlo reviews, silently, various men, and his disapproval must be reflected in his face, for Claudia asks him what he is looking so ferocious about. ‘Not ferocious,’ he says. ‘Not ferocious at all. Just I was thinking about some people.’
Except the brother, with whom she was so close. Laszlo thinks about Gordon, and his expression changes yet again. There was something strange there – Claudia and Gordon, something not quite like sister and brother, they seemed set apart when they were together, they made you feel you were not there. And I was a little afraid of Gordon, Laszlo tells himself, if I am honest I was always a little afraid, I had to try to please, to be careful.
‘And now you’ve got your hangdog expression on,’ says Claudia. ‘I thought we were celebrating my seventy misspent years. Entertain me, please!’
16
‘Someone brought this,’ says the nurse. ‘You were asleep so he just said to tell you Laszlo left it.’
And when she has gone Claudia unties the string, opens the envelope and takes out an old exercise book, stained, dog-eared. Her movements are slow, her hands fumble. She stares at it for a moment, then reaches out to the bedside table for her glasses, which takes more time, and effort. She puts them on and opens the exercise book.
The first time I saw it – recognised the handwriting – I felt as though I had been struck. I went numb. Then hot. Then cold. I put it down and read the letter, his sister’s letter, brief and to the point: ‘Dear Miss Hampton, Having seen your article on being a war correspondent in the Western Desert I realise that you must be the C. referred to by my brother Tom Southern in his diary. He spoke of you in letters to us, but never gave your name. I think you should have the diary, so here it is. Yours sincerely, Jennifer Southern.’
After that I read the diary, as I do again now.
It is a light green exercise book with CAHIER on the front in black letters. Ruled paper, rough and grainy. He has written in pencil. The entries are undated, and separated from one another by a wavy line.
This written God knows where, on a day in 1942. At an hour’s notice to move off. So time to draw breath, have a brew-up. Fitters cursing over new tanks, two delivered last night, Grants, which we haven’t had, half the equipment missing, guns still swimming in oil. Not my headache though – our troop came through yesterday unscathed. Can’t put down yesterday as it happened, what we did, who we met, who did what to whom – so let me try to record what it was like. For C., perhaps – what I tried to tell her that first time we met, and failed I think.
The blackness of moving out of leaguer before dawn. Sandstorm too, so howling blackness full of sound and smell – rest of the squadron roaring away out there, interminable whistle and crackle of one’s headphones, fuel stink. Then grey light turning to pink, orange. Moment of uplift when you see everyone else, long shapes of the Crusaders riding ridges – going fifteen-twenty miles an hour – sense of the whole place being on the move, more of us than there really are. Last call-up from the CO, then hours of wireless silence during advance. Hours? Or minutes? Time is not time any more, in any proper sense. Becomes simply the hands on one’s watch, the CO’s voice – ‘Report to me in figures five minutes – we move off at figures 0500 hours – fire in figures three minutes.’ You don’t remember further back than half an hour. You don’t anticipate except in your stomach.
Fear. Worst always before battle, not during. The fear of fear. Of being paralysed with it when the time comes, not being able to function, doing something bloody silly. In action it becomes something else. Keys you up. Saw my own hands shaking yesterday, once, looked down and saw them as someone else’s, juddering on the edge of the turret, but my head quite clear, voice coming out normal or thereabouts, telling driver this, operator that, reporting our position, reporting tanks spotted at seven thousand yards, recording assessing predicting all as though some other self takes over. Only the hands a giveaway. Banged them down on the cover to get them under control and burned them on the hot metal. Which maddened me the rest of the day.
Sunset now. So we leaguer here, get some sleep pray God, we had damn all last night, everyone doing repairs till all hours, racket like an assembly line, and explosions every few minutes from enemy ammunition dump going up in the next wadi. Lay looking at stars and thinking. No, not thinking. You don’t think, just fetch out some images and have a look at them. Other times, other places. Other people. C. Always C.
A week on. I think. During which not a moment for this – either going flat out, in the thick of it, or too exhausted to do anything but collapse till the next move. Even if it were expedient I couldn’t say now what came before what, where we were when, how this happened or that, in the mind it’s not a sequence just a single event without beginning or end in any proper sense simply a continuity spiked by moments of intensity that ring in the head still. Looking down to see that my loader is hit, blood pouring from his neck but he doesn’t seem to realise is still loading still shouting something and I have to reach out and touch him to get his attention. Dust in the turret so thick that we can’t see each other’s faces, I can’t see the map unless I hold it inches from my nose. Sick flop in the belly when one of my own troop brews up, that awful belch of orange then thick black smoke, and watching to see if anyone bales out and no one does, not one. Different sick feeling when what I thought was an enemy derelict comes to life and starts firing. Flare of exhilaration when enemy reported retreating, we are to pursue – sitting up on the turret squinting through field-glasses searching for tell-tale dust on the horizon I feel nothing but primitive lust for chase, no fear, that bone-cracking exhaustion gone, just this instinct like a pack of hounds. And, later, am ashamed and amazed.
Burying the crew of a Crusader from C squadron. They dropped behind with engine trouble during an attack and later we found the tank shot up and burnt out, all dead, the driver and commander still inside, a bloody mess fuming with flies that we took out as best we could, in pieces, the gunner and operator lying near in the sand, shot when they’d tried to bale out, hardly a scratch on them, just stiff on the sand in that absolute unreachable silence of the dead.
Battle noise that reverberates in the head long after it has ceased – noise to which one responds like an automaton, not identifying but blowing with it, one jump ahead, seeing in the mind’s eye the field-guns and rifles, accounting for a burst of high-velocity fire, assessing range and distance. And the voices always in one’s ears, the disembodied to and fro of the squadron as though we roamed the sand like tormented spirits, calling to one another in a mad private language – ‘Hello, Fish One, Rover calling… O.K. off to you… All stations Fish… Advance on a bearing of figures ten degrees… Move now… Can you confirm…’ – and sometimes the pitch changes, the tempo becomes frenetic, the voices shriek and wail against each other in the tight box of one’s head – ‘Fish Three where the hell are you… bloody well get off the air when I’m talking… Fish Three, blast you, where are you?… Hello, Rover, I am hit,
repeat, I am hit and withdrawing.’ It is as though one existed on different planes: that of sight – the confusing treacherous spread of the desert, smoking and flaming, flinging up tracer and Very lights, vehicles crawling hither and thither like ants, and that of sound – which comes from everywhere, above, around, beyond, within – the whine of aircraft, the bangs, clatter, screech and the voices which seem to come not from what one sees but to be detached, a commentary, a ghost chorus.
I’ve just seen a gazelle. Usually we shoot them when we get the chance – they make a fine change from bully beef and tinned bacon – but I couldn’t bring myself to this time. It hadn’t seen me, just stood there flicking its tail, ears pricked, sand-coloured but somehow brilliant in the rock and scrub, in the deadness of the place, rusty petrol tins and barbed wire and a burnt-out lorry near and in the middle of it this scrap of life. And then it scented me and went bounding off.
Sleeping after being in action. Either a black pit of extinction or one skates around just below the level of consciousness, having wild manic dreams, surrealistic dreams in which crazy things go on that you never question. Apt reflection of what we’re in the middle of, come to think of it – preposterous world of sand and explosions that becomes the only one you’ve ever known and therefore banal, mundane, normal.
The moments that rear up, when one stops, the pictures that stay in the head… My gunner squatting in the sand over a fry-up in a respite between actions, intent, absorbed, the sky-line exploding all around, smoke streaming, ‘Here we are, sir, try a bit of this,’ small wiry chap with a Midlands accent, in the building trade pre-war. Staring into heat-shimmer unable to make out line of vehicles on a ridge, what are they? Tanks or lorries? Enemy or not? They hang quivering just out of reach and I am hunched in the turret gripping field-glasses so intently they mark my hands. Italians scrambling out of a gun-emplacement, being herded together by an Aussie infantryman with cigarette glued to his lip, bawling at them occasionally, the blue-green Italian uniforms looking suddenly alien, foreign, intrusive against the khaki – and now I see them again and think of the expedient simplistic way in which war conditions thought of us and them, ours and theirs, good and bad, black and white, no confusing uncomfortable indeterminate areas.
Except the desert, of course, which is neutral. Not on our side or on theirs, but simply on its own. Going about its business of hot and cold, sun and wind, cycles of days and months and years for ever and bloody ever. Unlike us.
More moments. Padre setting up altar for Sunday service in the back of a ten-ton lorry, tail-board let down, men standing round in half-circle, apologetic unsynchronised murmur of prayers and hymns, column of armoured cars moving past behind. God being said of course to be on our side.
Looking down into a weapon-pit with what seems to be a heap of torn clothing in the bottom and it is not clothes but a corpse, resolving itself suddenly into twisted limbs and flung-back head with open eyes crusted in dust, and again that remote silence of the dead, almost a superiority, as though they knew something you don’t. Walking off to some rocks for a shit and finding oneself eye to eye with a little snake, coiled up as still as a stone, just its tongue flicking, beady black eyes, bright zig-zag markings down its back. These two sights separated perhaps by days but they come together now and seem to complement one another, to say something about the potency of life, its charge, the way in which death is total absence.
Air attack on enemy anti-tank guns dug in at the neck of a shallow valley, blocking us for hours, CO’s voice on the headphones saying ‘Friends up above, thank God, at last,’ and then the bombs showering down like white skittles. And before that – after – I don’t know – a hideous time when what I thought were rocks turn into a line of Mark IIIs, hull-down a couple of hundred yards off and I have seconds in which to decide whether to get into reverse bloody quick and withdraw or find the range and take them on, have they seen me yet? Can I hold them off long enough to call up support? And then they solve the problem for me by opening fire, the first shells whistling past thank God and I report my position to command, bawl at my gunner to fire, all at the same moment it seems and stuttering with the effort to keep panic out of my voice.
The desert lifting around me as someone walks into an ‘S’ mine a dozen yards ahead. He is killed. I am deafened for half an hour and have a small flesh wound in one leg. Everyone has their tale of a miraculous escape – that I suppose is mine, except that miracles don’t come into it, just blind chance. But no one likes the idea of chance, so they play games with language and talk about miracles instead.
Nights. The noisy illuminated darkness full of aircraft, ack-ack guns, thuds and bangs off-stage, orange flashes, the silver rise of shells, great glowing furnaces – a Gotterdammerung above which the stars preside, the same icy glitter night after night, Orion, Sirius, the Plough, the Bear. Periods of truce in which we leaguer (odd, that term, reaching back to other wars, other landscapes) – soft vehicles within defensive ring of armour, draw breath, take stock, get orders for tomorrow and, occasionally, sleep.
Two weeks later. Nothing doing for days now – pitched from frenzy into boredom, apathy – the capricious way of this campaign. Rumours that we will advance, withdraw, be sent on leave, sit here for months. So we sit – dispersed untidy city of vehicles and tents and dug-outs. Shanty-towns of petrol tins spring up. People lay out a cricket pitch. Supplies are brought up. We repair kit, equipment, ourselves. Pass round tattered magazines. Write letters. I write this.
To whom it may concern. C., I hope. Myself, maybe, in some future that at the moment seems frankly incredible. We all talk about ‘after the war’ but it is almost an incantation – a protective device: touch wood. One thinks about it, one daydreams, makes plans – something like the day-dreaming of childhood: When I’m Grown-up. So I say to myself: when I’m grown-up in this mythical world in which there are no more tanks, guns, mines, bombs, in which sand is stuff on beaches and the sun is something one appreciates – when I’m let loose in this playground I’m going to… What am I going to do? And then the mythologies take over because what one conjures up is a place stripped of imperfections, a nirvana of green grass, happy children, tolerance and justice which never existed and never will. So one shoves that out of the way and summons up more wholesome stuff like hot meals, clean sheets, drink and sex. All those things one took for granted a bare three years ago which now take on almost holy significance. Which seem at times to be what we are fighting for.
‘Tell me a story,’ C. said in Luxor. I never told her the other story, in which she stars, in which she is always the heroine – a romanticised story full of cliché images in which I am telling her all the things there has not been enough time for, in which we are doing all the things there has not been enough time for, in which this damn thing is suspended and we are living happily ever after, world without end, amen. To such indulgences have I sunk. Well, perhaps I am telling her this now, and if I am, may she be tolerant and understanding, may she perceive the extravagance into which one is pitched by war, the suspension of ordinary common sense except that aspect of common sense needed for doing what has to be done, for telling other people what to do, for moving a lot of heavy metal around and trying to kill people with it while avoiding being killed oneself.
May we, eventually, contemplate all this together.
And now I want to get yesterday down while I still have the awful taste of it.
Orders to move off before dawn again – objective enemy tanks in large numbers reported twenty miles east. Felt keyed up during midnight briefing in CO’s HQ, even glad at prospect of something positive after days of sitting around. Walked back to my tank – brilliant starry night, quite still, men moving about against the pale sand, black hunched shapes of vehicles. Settled down for a few hours sleep and was seized by something I’ve not known before – sudden paralysing awareness of where I am, of what is happening, that I may die, so savage that I lay there rigid, as though in shock, but the mind screaming, h
owling. Fear, yes, but something more than that – something atavistic, primitive, the instinct to run. I told myself to snap out of it, take a grip on things. I tried breathing deeply, counting to a hundred, going over the codes for the day yet again. No bloody good. All that I can think of is that the morning is riding at me full tilt and I am pinned down with no escape and shit-scared as I’ve never been before and I don’t know why. So I try something else. Tell myself I am not really here. That I am moving through this place, this time, must do so, cannot avoid it, but soon I shall come through and out beyond into another part of the story. Thought of the gazelle I saw, flicking its tail carefree amid heaps of rusty metal, that I envied for a moment; but the gazelle has no story, that is the difference. Pinned down and shit-scared, I have a story, which makes me a man, and therefore set apart.
So I make myself move backwards and forwards, lying there huddled in the sleeping-bag on the cold sand – backwards to other places, to childhood, to a time I climbed a Welsh mountain, walked the streets of New York, was happy, not happy, was by the sea in Cornwall long ago or on a bed in Luxor with C. last month. Forwards into obscurity but an obscurity lit by dreams which is another word for hope. I make myself dream, push away the night and the desert and the black shapes all round me, push past the morning and tomorrow and next week and make pictures, dreams. I dream of green fields. I dream of cities. I dream of C. And at last the primitive paralysing thing loosens its grip and I even sleep, to be shaken awake by my driver. 0500 hours; I am tense but sane.