Judith

  “David!” she called out, rising and running to the window, but he was already striding away through the trees in the direction of the fort. Suddenly, a sense of doom possessed her; all the fond fancies of the darkness, of their lovemaking, had vanished at the frail sound of the bugle-calls. She sat down on the bed heavily and said aloud: “I know he is going to be killed; I know it.” And throughout the day the weight of this conscious thought pressed on her mind, heavy with a premonition like a child in the womb.

  But David shared none of her fears; at this moment he was gazing through powerful glasses at the mill which covered the head springs of the Jordan. He grunted as he saw a wisp of smoke rising. Doubtless that old rogue Karam was making a morning brew of coffee in the Yemeni fashion. There was no movement, no fires or sounds from the great mass of rock on the eastern side. The world looked so peaceful and so empty in the dawn light that one might be forgiven for thinking that the Arab army which crouched behind the towering cliffs, ready to pounce, was a mere figment of the imagination.

  How sound carried in the quiet valley! He heard the distant roar of transport from the British camp, and knew that the convoys were being formed and would soon be on the road. His pulse beat faster with the thought that soon they would be alone, face to face with whatever destiny held in store for them. He waited until he saw the first dust plumes rise from the mountain roads before turning to the business of the day.

  Peterson arrived, pale and serious, to convey the committee’s compliance with David’s first military act as its local representative. He proposed to issue an order of the day; crisply he dictated the first of such documents:

  “Distribution of arms is now complete and all section leaders know their places. If we need an emergency muster I will sound the siren. Meanwhile I want the camp to retain an air of complete normality. Remember that, though there is fighting in the south, we may not be attacked at all.”

  Anna snapped her pad shut and lumbered off down to the cellars where the duplicating machines were; in one of the cellars she caught sight of Grete with a group of children. They had temporarily moved the school below ground, in case of air attack.

  Peterson yawned and puffed a cigarette. “I didn’t get much sleep,” she said. “Nor you, I suppose.”

  David looked at her and then away. “What is the news?” he asked quietly and she replied:

  “A few of the kibbutzim have been over-run or by-passed, but the main points are holding up. Jerusalem seems the toughest place. How long before the great powers step in and order a truce?”

  David bit his lip. “I don’t know; but we mustn’t cede a lot of ground, for the arbiters are likely to work on the ‘finders-keepers’ principle when the truce does come.”

  “David,” said Peterson, “I’m worried about the men from the mountains.”

  He shrugged. Peterson wrinkled her nose aggrievedly and said:

  “You yourself say that it would take over an hour to concentrate them in the field to help us... Are you confident we could hold out an hour under sudden attack?”

  David threw her a keen look and grinned. “Good Lord, yes,” he said. “And we can count on Aaron...

  Peterson shook her head doubtfully. “If they brought tanks and rushed our wretched perimeter...

  David walked up and down. “They couldn’t; first we’d get a warning from Karam up at the mill. Then, if they did, we have a number of gentlemen among us who have dealt very efficiently with Tigers and Centurions and would certainly not be above doing in half a dozen tanks of an older pattern, which I believe is all they have...

  “Well, it’s your war,” said Peterson. “Let me know if I can do any thinking for you.”

  “I will,” he said with a grin. “Meanwhile, business as usual please.”

  So it was that the community life of Ras Shamir appeared to continue with perfect normality; from the viewpoint of a watcher on those rosy cliffs above the valley, there would have been nothing untoward to report. The tractors went out as usual with their armed drivers of both sexes; from the sawmill came the whine and whir of the saws cutting up timber; a team of brawny Swedes, scythes in hand, cut a circular swathe in the green of a square field, moving steadily forward and round in a slow arc. The British had rumbled away from the mountain ravines. The valley, with its small communities of Jews, lay at the mercy of any invader strong enough to wrest it from them. Yet there was only silence, heat and the drowsy hum of bees among the clover.

  David did not quit his observation post; he had food sent up to the roof from which he watched, his face turned now towards the northeast range. Once a solitary plane passed over them — a bi-plane; but they could not tell if it was a spotter sent by the Arab forces or the British. The sun was hot; the concrete floor of the look-out post was baking. From somewhere down among the green trees came the oddly reassuring sound of someone snoring, which made the sentries laugh.

  The hours wore on, and still there was no sign from the guard post at the head springs, and no visible movement along the escarpment. Only once or twice they heard a new sound, an echoing, snarling sound of motors revving up. David’s face grew grave as he listened with his head on one side. The sentries stiffened at their posts, listening.

  “What do you make of that?” said David, but he knew only too well. Tank engines!

  For about half an hour they listened to that ominous roaring and rasping of invisible tanks moving about somewhere behind the rosy bluffs of the eastern chain. Finally the sound died away, as if swallowed by a ravine, and silence returned to the valley. But there was still no movement, nothing to be seen. Clouds began to form under the sun and its attenuated light began to change the green valley from emerald to rose-violet.

  So much for the heliograph — it was out of action without sun. David thanked God for the kindly Macdonald’s gift of Verey lights and signal pistols. Up to now they signalled to the mountain kibbutzim only by torchlight — a clumsy method at best, and always with the danger of the Morse signals being miscoded or misread. Now at least they had naval flares, red, white and green, at their disposal.

  Thinking these thoughts, he had turned his eyes to where the string of little white settlements dotted the mountains westward — kibbutzim with the half-joking nicknames that their inhabitants had earned for them — Brisbane, Brooklyn, Odessa, Calcutta, Warsaw, Glasgow...

  Beside him he heard a gasp of horror. One of the sentries was peering through his heavy Zeiss night-glasses — peering in the direction of the head springs where the mill stood, their outpost.

  “My God,” he said, “I can’t believe it.”

  His hands were shaking so that he nearly dropped the glasses.

  “What is it!” cried David sharply, snatching the instrument from him. He too turned the lenses on the northern corner where the Jordan, spinning out from the rock wall, fanned smoothly out into a wide green stream, pouring down the rich, lily-dappled meadows. Something was moving there on the river, something heavy which moved with a slow, halting rhythm — as if uncertain of its direction; something which turned slowly as it moved down towards them. He too caught his breath now as he focussed sharply on it...

  The clumsy cross-beam of the water-mill must have been crudely sawn off to make a shape which was that of a Christian cross; there was a human figure crucified to it with bayonets. Naked, its side had been pierced so that blood dappled the white flesh and flowed down in a wave to its toes. It took some moments to realize that it was the body of Karam, and that the apparently beatific smile on the old man’s face was really a rictus of intense pain. It was impossible to tell if he were dead or not. Slowly, hoveringly, the heavy cross moved down towards Ras Shamir, grazing the banks of the Jordan, turning and spinning swiftly in its own eddies.

  “Run,” said David in a voice choking with anger. “It must not reach the camp. Run I say!”

  Hardly comprehending what or why, the two sentries followed the one who had himself seen the thing first. They dropped their guns and ra
ced like hares across the fields towards the river, to head off this grim trophy of hate.

  David gave a harsh sob. “They must have surprised them,” he said. “How could Towers allow... (Of course Towers knew nothing of it — it was Daud who lightened the boredom and loneliness of his illness with that original notion.)

  David’s glasses swept the nearer reaches of the river where the three men, up to their waists in water, grappled with the cross and its body, steering it to land; then there was no time for any thought other than the kibbutz and its danger.

  It was only when the first ripple of machine-gun fire fell like hail on the corrugated roofs that he gave a sigh of exultation, almost of relief. At long last the final decisive engagement was to take place. Though the kibbutz was now a hive of unfamiliar activity, nevertheless there was no suggestion of haste or panic as the kibbutzniks moved each to his appointed place in the shallow emplacements which the tractors had ploughed for them, and which they had surrounded with a shallow defensive field of barbed wire.

  On the calm evening air, David could hear the voices of the section leaders as they ordered their files into position along the perimeter: women and men took their places in the front line, training their weapons. Down by the sawmill there came the clatter of machinery, and it was with a splendid roar that the farm tractors now crawled out to take their place in the defensive scheme. Upon each was mounted one of the cherished light machine guns bequeathed to them by the kindly Macdonald.

  In all this activity, Grete played no part. She had been forced to accept, much against her will, the role of children’s warden. Indeed, she had come near to an acrimonious exchange with Anna over the business, so anxious had she been to share the front-line dangers of David and the men. But there were not enough guns to go around as it was, and Peterson herself had settled the argument abruptly by saying:

  “There are so many more important things to do. Stop being childish and do as you’re told. Your place is with the children.”

  So she now found herself locked into the great barn-like cellars with the smallest of the children — those who were ten years old and upwards had been given tasks to do which had a direct military bearing, acting as powder-monkeys, carrying ammunition, messages from those in the outer perimeter to the central command, and medical supplies.

  27

  The Ultimatum

  Trouble began to spread now like burning oil on water, and every day brought its quota of ugly news and rumour, tidings of riot and burnings within, of menaces and provocations without. Yet still the valley lay in the winter sunlight, deceptively at peace, while the whole country was going through a convulsion around it — death-struggle or birth-pangs — who could say? By now the ugliness of Arab threats, and the fact that their armies were poised on the borders, waiting to pounce, left the kibbutzniks in little doubt that they would not escape the onslaught in this one small and remote sector.

  But when Towers did get the order to move down into the plain and invest Ras Shamir, Daud was lying ill with fever and a new haemorrhage; it was plain that he would not be able to play an active part. He lay among the coloured cushions, exhausted, with flushed cheeks, and told Towers: “You will advance anyway, Towers.” Towers grunted and nodded. “I am bitterly sorry not to ride with you,” said Daud, but the old man said: “You will miss nothing. I am sure they will surrender. No shot will be fired. You will see. If I move we shall have the place in our hands in a couple of hours.” He really believed this himself; indeed, to such a degree that he repeated it almost word for word to his staff as they sat by swinging lantern-light, making their final preparations for the morning start. It was to be a thoroughly orthodox operation — a “bus-ride” in Towers’ expressive phrase. They would move down onto the plain and advance with the armoured cars in dart formation, infantry in open order.

  So it fell out, exactly as planned, but of course no such operation could be conducted invisibly, and with the very first move of the scouts in the pass, with the first trails of dust rising from the lorry convoys with their infantry, the look-out at Ras Shamir picked them up and reported the fact. Pete watched them keenly for a second and then blew her whistle for general assembly. “I think we have a little time before they get here,” she said soberly. “Send out the markers to mark the minefield.” A dozen children raced out to mark the low pickets and tracery of wire with death-head signs and the forbidding words “DANGER — MINES”. The men and women went slowly, purposefully, down to the magazine to draw their weapons, and then each went to his or her allotted place. Judith was in the second section with a group of yellow-haired Poles and four other girls, among them Anna who was the section leader. A deathly hush had fallen upon the settlement now, broken only by the low talk and murmurs of the defenders as they took up sighting positions.

  Slowly, like a brown stain on the greensward of the plain, Towers’ infantry debussed and formed up in battle line. Then the whole mass began its cumbersome movement forward, walking behind the armoured cars. Towers, who scorned armour, walked at the head of his section, grim of face; the existence of a hitherto unnoticed minefield infuriated him as an example of faulty intelligence. Nevertheless, it might be a fake minefield for all one knew. The intention was to advance up to the wire and call for a surrender, but they were already within a few hundred yards when a long rippling glissando of machine-gun fire broke from the perimeter of the settlement and swished among them like a scythe gone mad. There was a moment’s hesitation and Towers called to his section-leaders to reform and continue the advance. “Bless my soul,” he said to himself, almost with an academic pleasure, “at least four heavy machine guns. Who would have thought it?” Another long slither of fire, and he saw some of his middle section fall. He gave the order to halt and lie down, while he himself walked forward to the wire with the bullets flickering about him, cutting the heads off flowers and sending up puffs of soil. He walked slowly and thoughtfully, like a professor approaching a blackboard to make a demonstration of an academic fact. At the sight of this solitary figure advancing, the fire tailed away and ceased. Towers advanced to the wire, producing a white handkerchief from his sleeve, and made a vague and somewhat indefinite gesture towards the Jewish lines. It was the sort of half-modest movement that a public entertainer makes when imploring an audience to desist from further applause in order that he may complete an encore. “He wants to parley,” said Anna grimly. A moment of indecision, and then they saw the minatory figure of Miss Peterson, Sten gun across her shoulder, advancing to meet the officer; it was a well-calculated choice of sector, too, for she was able to advance along the broad path between the fake minefields, thus offering an apparent indication of a safe road through them. But she was in fact walking over the grass and bramble-covered pits they had so laboriously cleared and covered. Towers, waiting for her, grunted and made the deduction he was supposed to make — the wrong one. He was extremely put out to be faced by a woman. He saluted and put on a quacking Camberley accent in order to disguise his confusion. “My orders are to call on you to surrender,” he said. “Nobody will be harmed — you have my word for it.”

  “We are not surrendering,” said Pete.

  “I shall be compelled to use force,” said Towers in his new blustering tone. “Much against my will.”

  “Is that all you have to say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then our answer is NO.”

  Pete turned on her heel and started her slow histrionic walk back to the perimeter. Towers called after her: “I will give you — ” he glanced at his watch and named the time — “until then — to discuss the matter. Unless you surrender, I will attack.”

  She did not turn. Towers watched her broodingly. An idea had begun to stir in his mind, to germinate. He looked at his watch. “Donner,” he called, “I have an idea. They seem better armed than I thought. If they are going to resist we may have a bit of a dust-up — but it certainly means they expect to be reinforced. Detach three cars and command the easter
n cross-roads.” He watched the order conveyed and the great cars start to rumble off through the silence. Where the devil could hypothetical reinforcements come from? A faint biblical tag, something about “lift up thine eyes to the hills”, crossed his mind. The camp lay quiet, ominously quiet — the hands of his watch circled to the appointed hour. No messenger appeared with the hoped-for white flag. “All right,” said Towers, and addressed himself systematically to the task of reducing the settlement.

  •

  Meanwhile, Aaron drove at full speed along the dusty roads towards the east, his mind buzzing with anticipation and anxieties. He had chosen a point some two miles away as a hypothetical point of concentration for his army of reinforcements. He knew they would need to form and concentrate if they were to be brought to bear on the enemy in any force. By now they must already be pouring down the dusty tracks among the hills, a motley crowd of farmers, blacksmiths, women... Some would be lorry-borne, some on tractors; some armed with nothing better than pitchforks or blacksmiths’ hammers. But the call had gone out and been answered.

  Civilians all, whose most distinctive feature of dress was the gentian blue pants of the field workers, and whose habits and culture spanned half the globe. The hills disgorged them slowly but certainly. Some swung in to marching tunes culled from many armies and many lands — Russian and Hebrew and Polish tunes hammered out in the distant past by armies of the line which had learned that to sing while you marched enlivened monotony. “John Brown’s Body” and “Waltzing Matilda” carried their haunting overtones of Tobruk, Rimini and Caen; even “Lili Marlene” brought her sagging melancholy to swell the chorus.

  Behind him in the distance, faint plumes of smoke rose from Ras Shamir — vague inchoate movements altered the lines and contours of the plain. Within an hour or so he should have his force concentrated and on the white road. He sat among the olives, savagely chewing grass and watching them roll in. He tried to keep his mind off Judith playing her part in the defence of the settlement. In his imagination he could hear the long dry chuckle of the automatic weapons, chattering like magpies.