“Dinner,” he affirmed.
Ludovic examined it, smoothed it and tucked it away. He collected the bank-notes. He held out a hand and drew Fido firmly to his feet. Then he turned and led.
The gorge soon widened and became a little cultivated plain bounded by receding cliffs and opening on the sea. Ludovic’s way led off the path and the stream, following the rocky margin. It was hard going and Fido lagged and staggered until after half an hour he whispered, “Corporal-major. Wait for me. I can’t go on,” so faintly that the words were lost in the sound of his stumbling boots. Ludovic strode on. Fido stood with hanging head and closed eyes, out on his feet. And in that moment of prayerless abandonment, succor was vouchsafed. Tiny, delicious, doggy perceptions began to flutter in the void. He raised his bowed nose and sniffed. Clear as the horn of Roland a new note was recalling him to life. Unmistakable and compelling, above the delicate harmony of bee-haunted flower and crushed leaf a great new smell was borne to him; the thunderous organ-tones of Kitchen. Fido was suffused, inebriated, transported. He pressed forward, he overtook Ludovic, he passed him, wordlessly, following his nose in and out of boulders, up treacherous scree, the scent stronger with every frantic step; until at length he came to a wide cave high in the cliff face and he stumbled into the cool gloom where amid stream and woodsmoke a group of shadowy men sat round an iron cauldron; in it there seethed chickens and hares and kids, pigs and peppers and cucumbers and garlic and rice and crusts of bread and dumplings and grated cheese and pungent roots and great soggy nameless white tubers and wisps of succulent green and sea-salt and a good deal of red wine and olive oil.
Fido was bereft of knife, fork, spoon and tin. He squinnied round the congregation and discerned the semblance of his batman about to tuck in. He snatched. The man held fast.
“Here, what’s the idea?”
Fido pulled, the man pulled back, their thumbs deep in the hot grease. Then from behind them Ludovic, in the voice of comradeship, said persuasively: “Give over, Syd. Anyone with eyes in his head can see the major’s all in. We can’t have him going sick on us now we’ve found him, can we, Syd?”
So Fido took possession of the tin and silently feasted.
The cave was commodious; from its modest mouth it opened into a spacious chamber and branched into dim, divergent passages; from somewhere in its depths came the sound of running water. It held without overcrowding three women, some assorted livestock and more than fifty men, mostly Spaniards.
These wanderers had got away to a good start. They were familiar with defeat in all its aspects, versed in its stratagems, sharp to recognize its portents. Before their lighter touched shore they had sniffed the air of disaster and twelve hours before the rout began had resumed their migration, passing through villages still unravaged by war, looting with practiced hands. Theirs was the cauldron and its rich contents, theirs the women, theirs the brass bedstead and other pieces of domestic furniture which gave an impression of cozy settled occupation to their place of refuge. But they were heirs of a tradition of hospitality. Fiercely resistant of other intruders, they had greeted their old comrades of Hookforce, when out foraging they fortuitously met, with happy smiles, raised fists and sentiments of proletarian solidarity.
They retained their arms but had shed all but the rudiments of their British uniforms in favor of a variety of Cretan hats, scarves and jackets. When Fido paused in his eating and looked about him, he took them for local brigands, but he was known to them. He had not been a favorite of theirs at Sidi Bishr. Had he come possessed of any pretense of authority or equipped with any desirable property they would have made short work of him. But destitute, he was their kin and their guest. They watched him benevolently.
Presently Ludovic said: “I shouldn’t eat any more just at present, sir.” He rolled a cigarette and handed it to Fido. “I’ve always considered it a mystery, sir, that one immediately revives after eating. According to science, several hours of digestion must pass before any real physical nourishment is obtained.”
The speculation did not interest Fido. Replete and fortified, he began to resume the habits of his calling.
“I’m not quite clear, corporal-major, how you come to be here?”
“Much the same way as yourself, I think, sir.”
“I expected you to report back to headquarters.”
“There, sir, we both made a miscalculation. I thought I should be safely back in Egypt by this time, but I encountered difficulties, sir. I found check points at all the approaches to the beach. Only formed bodies of men under their officers were allowed through. There was what you might call a shambles last night in the dark. Men looking for officers, officers looking for men. That was why I was so particularly pleased to meet you today. I was looking for an unattached officer. I hardly hoped it would be you, sir. With your help we shall get off very nicely, I believe. I’ve got the men all lined up for parade tonight—rather a motley crowd, I fear, sir, representing all arms of the service. Not quite what we’re used to at Knightsbridge or Windsor. But they’ll pass in the dark. The Spaniards have decided to stay on.”
“What you’re suggesting is entirely irregular, corporal-major.”
Ludovic regarded him softly.
“Come, come, Major Hound, sir. Don’t you think we might drop all that? Just between ourselves, sir. Tonight when we embark our party, later when we get back to Alex—it will be quite appropriate then; but just at the moment, as we are here, after what’s happened, sir, don’t you think it will be more suitable,” and his voice changed suddenly from its plummy to its plebeian mode—“to shut your bloody trap.”
Suddenly, for no human reason, a great colony of bats came to life in the vault of the cave, wheeled about, squeaking in the smoke of the fire, fluttered and blundered and then settled again, huddled head-down, invisible.
*
Guy was weary, hungry and thirsty, but he had fared better than Fido in the last four days and, compared with him, was in good heart, almost buoyant, as he tramped alone, eased at last of the dead weight of human company. He had paddled in this lustral freedom on the preceding morning when he caught X Commando among the slit trenches and olive trees. Now he wallowed.
Soon the road ran out and round the face of a rocky spur—the place where Fido had found no cover—and here he met a straggling platoon of infantry coming fast towards him, a wan young officer well ahead.
“Have you seen anything of Hookforce?”
“Never heard of them.”
The breathless officer paused as his men caught up with him and formed column. They still had their weapons and equipment.
“Or the Halberdiers?”
“Cut off. Surrounded. Surrendered.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure? For Christ’s sake, there are parachutists everywhere. We’ve just been fired on coming round that corner. You can’t get up the road. A machine-gun, the other side of the valley.”
“Where exactly?”
“Believe you me, I didn’t wait to see.”
“Any casualties?”
“I didn’t wait to see. Can’t wait now. I wouldn’t try that road if you know what’s healthy.”
The platoon scuffled on. Guy looked down the empty exposed road and then studied his map. There was a track over the hill which rejoined the road at a village two miles on. Guy did not greatly believe in the machine-gun but he chose the short cut and painfully climbed until he found himself on the top of the spur. He could see the whole empty, silent valley. Nothing moved anywhere except the bees. He might have been standing in the hills behind Santa Dulcina any holiday morning of his lonely boyhood.
Then he descended to the village. Some of the cottage doors and windows were barred and shuttered, some rudely broken down. At first he met no one. A well stood before the church, built about with marble steps and a rutted plinth. He approached thirstily but found the rope hanging loose and short from its bronze staple. The bucket was gone and leaning over he saw far below a
little shaving-glass of light and his own mocking head, dark and diminished.
He entered an open house and found an earthenware jar. As he removed the straw stopper he heard and felt a hum and, tilting it to the light, found it full of bees and a residue of honey. Then looking about in the gloom he saw an old woman gazing at him. He smiled, showed his empty water-bottle, made signs of drinking. Still she gazed, quite blind. He searched his mind for vestiges of Greek and tried: “Hudor. Hydro. Dipsa.” Still she gazed, quite deaf, quite alone. Guy turned back into the sunlight. There a young girl, ruddy, bare-footed and in tears, approached him frankly and took him by the sleeve. He showed her his empty bottle, but she shook her head, made little inarticulate noises and drew him resolutely towards a small yard on the edge of the village, which had once held livestock but was now deserted except by a second, similar girl, a sister perhaps, and a young English soldier who lay on a stretcher motionless. The girls pointed helplessly towards this figure. Guy could not help. The young man was dead, undamaged it seemed. He lay as though at rest. The few corpses which Guy had seen in Crete had sprawled awkwardly. This soldier lay like an effigy on a tomb—like Sir Roger in his shadowy shrine at Santa Dulcina. Only the bluebottles that clustered round his lips and eyes proclaimed that he was flesh. Why was he lying here? Who were these girls? Had a weary stretcher-party left him in their care and had they watched him die? Had they closed his eyes and composed his limbs? Guy would never know. It remained one of the countless unexplained incidents of war. Meanwhile, lacking words the three of them stood by the body, stiff and mute as figures in a sculptured Deposition.
To bury the dead is one of the corporal works of charity. There were no tools here to break the stony ground. Later, perhaps, the enemy would scavenge the island and tip this body with others into a common pit and the boy’s family would get no news of him and wait and hope month after month, year after year. A precept came to Guy’s mind from his military education: “The officer in command of a burial party is responsible for collecting the red identity discs and forwarding them to Records. The green disc remains on the body. If in doubt, gentlemen, remember that green is the color of putrefaction.”
Guy knelt and took the disc from the cold breast. He read a number, a name, a designation, R.C. “May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, in the mercy of God, rest in peace.”
Guy stood. The bluebottles returned to the peaceful young face. Guy saluted and passed on.
The country opened and soon Guy came to another village.
Toiling beside Fido in the darkness, he had barely noticed it. Now he found a place of some size, other roads and tracks converged on a market square; the houses had large barns behind them; a domed church stood open. Of the original inhabitants there was no sign; instead, English soldiers were posted in doorways—Halberdiers—and at the cross-roads sat Sarum-Smith, smoking a pipe.
“Hullo, uncle. The C.O. said you were about.”
“I’m glad to find you. I met a windy officer on the road who said you were all in the bag.”
“It doesn’t look like it, does it? There was something of a shemozzle last night but we weren’t in that.”
Since Guy last saw him in West Africa, Sarum-Smith had matured. He was not a particularly attractive man, but man he was. “The C.O.’s out with the adj. going round the companies. You’ll find the second-in-command at battalion headquarters, over there.”
Guy went where he was directed, to a farmhouse beside the church. Everything was in order. One notice pointed to the regimental aid post, another to the battalion-office. Guy passed the R.S.M. and the clerks and in the further room of the house found Major Erskine. An army blanket had been spread on the kitchen table. It was, in replica, the orderly room at Penkirk.
Guy saluted.
“Hullo, uncle, you could do with a shave.”
“I could do with some breakfast, sir.”
“Lunch will be coming up as soon as the C.O. gets back. Brought us some more orders?”
“No, sir.”
“Information?”
“None, sir.”
“What’s headquarters up to then?”
“Not functioning much at the moment. I came to get information from you.”
“We know nothing.”
He put Guy in the picture. The Commandos had lost two troops somehow during the night. An enemy patrol had wandered in from the flank during the morning and hurriedly retired. The Commandos were due to come through them soon and take up positions at Imbros. They had motor transport and should not have much difficulty in disengaging. The Second Halberdiers were to hold their present line till midnight and then fall back behind Hookforce to the beach perimeter. “After that we’re in the hands of the navy. Those are the orders as I understand them. I don’t know how they’ll work out.”
A Halberdier brought Guy a cup of tea.
“Crock,” said Guy, “I hope you remember me?”
“Sir.”
“Rather different from our last meeting.”
“Sir,” said Crock.
“The enemy aren’t attacking in any strength yet,” Major Erskine continued. “They’re just pushing out patrols. As soon as they bump into anything, they stop and try working round. All quite elementary. We could hold them forever if those blasted Q fellows would do their job. What are we running away for? It’s not soldiering as I was taught it.”
A vehicle stopped outside and Guy recognized Colonel Tickeridge’s large commanding voice. He went out and found the colonel and the adjutant. They were directing the unloading from a lorry of three wounded men, two of them groggily walking, the third lying on a stretcher. As this man was carried past him he turned his white face and Guy recognized one of his former company. The man lay under a blanket. His wound was fresh and he was not yet in much pain. He smiled up quite cheerfully.
“Shanks,” said Guy. “What have you been doing to yourself?”
“Must have been a mortar bomb, sir. Took us all by surprise, bursting right in the trench. I am lucky, considering. Chap next to me caught a packet.”
This was Halberdier Shanks who, Guy remembered, used to win prizes for the Slow Valse. In the days of Dunkirk he had asked for compassionate leave in order to compete at Blackpool.
“I’ll come and talk when the M.O.’s had a look at you.”
“Thank you, sir. Nice to have you back with us.”
The other two men had limped off to the R.A.P. They must be from D Company too, Guy supposed. He did not remember them; only Halberdier Shanks, because of his Slow Valse.
“Well, uncle, come along in and tell me what I can do for you.”
“I was wondering if there was anything I could do for you, colonel.”
“Yes, certainly. You will lay on hot dinners for the battalion, a bath for me, artillery support and a few squadrons of fighter aircraft. That’s about all we want this morning, I think.” Colonel Tickeridge was in high good humor. As he entered his headquarters he called: “Hi, there. Bring on the dancing-girls. Where’s Halberdier Gold?”
“Just coming up, sir.”
Halberdier Gold was an old friend, since the evening at Matchet when he had carried Guy’s bag from the station, before the question even arose of Guy’s joining the corps. He smiled broadly.
“Good morning, Gold; remember me?”
“Good morning, sir. Welcome back to the battalion.”
“Vino,” called Colonel Tickeridge. “Wine for our guest from the higher formation.”
It was said with the utmost geniality but it struck a slight chill after the men’s warmer greeting.
Gold laid a jug of wine on the table with the biscuits and bully beef. While they ate and drank, Colonel Tickeridge told Major Erskine:
“Quite a bit of excitement on the left flank. De Souza’s platoon caught it pretty hot. Lucky we had the truck there to bring back the pieces. We just stopped to watch Brent winkle the mortar out. Then we came straight home. I’ve made some nice friends out ther
e—a company of New Zealanders who rolled up and said please might they join in our battle—first-class fellows.”
This seemed the moment for Guy to say what had been in his mind since meeting Shanks.
“That’s exactly what I want to do, colonel,” he said. “Isn’t there a platoon you could let me take over?”
Colonel Tickeridge regarded him benevolently. “No, uncle, of course there isn’t.”
“But later in the day, when you get casualties?”
“My good uncle, you aren’t under my command. You can’t start putting in for a cross-posting in the middle of a battle. That’s not how the army works, you know that. You’re a Hookforce body.”
“But colonel, those New Zealanders—”
“Sorry, uncle. No can do.”
And that, Guy knew from of old, was final.
Colonel Tickeridge began to explain the details of the rear-guard to Major Erskine. Sarum-Smith came to announce that the Commandos were coming through and Guy followed him out into the village and saw a line of dust and the back of the last Hookforce lorry disappearing to the south. There was a little firing, rifles and light machine-guns, and an occasional mortar bomb three-quarters of a mile to the north where the Halberdiers held their line. Guy stood between his friends, isolated.
A few hours earlier he had exulted in his loneliness. Now the case was altered. He was “a guest from the higher formation,” a “Hookforce body,” without place or function, a spectator. And all the deep sense of desolation which he had sought to cure, which from time to time momentarily seemed to be cured, overwhelmed him as of old. His heart sank. It seemed to him as though literally an organ of his body were displaced, subsiding, falling heavily like a feather in a vacuum jar; Philoctetes set apart from his fellows by an old festering wound; Philoctetes without his bow. Sir Roger without his sword.
Presently Colonel Tickeridge cheerfully intruded on his despondency.