John Masters (43 page)

He said, "It took me ages before he'd tell me—Crapp." She laughed, obviously relieved. "I thought for a moment he might have been a Jew. I can't stand Jews."

"Nor can my mother," he said. "That's what makes me wonder."

They walked on, round and round. Joan was fit and brave and clean and honest. She would face up to the Nazis come hell or high water. She was indomitable, admirable. "Wonder what?"

He said, "Whether my father had changed his name twice. Who he
really
is, in other words. So, who
I
am. One reason I think my father did something bad in South Africa is that he's always been a maniac for respectability, for doing the right thing. Of course my mother may have caused that.... He made his pile in gold and diamonds, but my God, he's turned himself into a country squire. He reads books but pretends not to so the fox-hunting crowd will take to him. I was to inherit everything ... Darley Court, the squiredom, Joint Master of the Tedworth, the lot. I went through Don and Cambridge, then I wanted to do something real..." He was talking to himself now. "Real, with my hands. With my brain. I went to mining school. I became a mining engineer. Father nearly died of chagrin. And, do you know, until I got my degree I didn't even know he had made his loot in mining! Am I me or my father over again? Or someone else?"

They walked round and round. After two hours they returned to the quarters. When he kissed her goodbye, she said, "I think you'd better take a good dose of Epsom salts, Sam, and ask for a couple of days off. I'll take two days at the same time, and we'll play tennis all day...."

Sam went to his quarters. Constipation as the root of all disquiet. It was an old female shibboleth, and Joan was female to the tips of her toes, in spite of the outward severities.

He sat down at his table and found his writing pad. He had to know. The doubt had been drilling into his mind all day—through the talk with Farley, through the scene with Hughes, all the time with Joan; especially with Joan. After what she had said, if he cared for her, he must get down behind the face, tunnel through the dark, reach the open.

"Dear Father,"
he wrote, "
What was your name before it was Crapp?"

1943

" 'Swift is the flash that lights up the obscurity Sudden in answer the echoing roar Where ye light hearted ones now your security Mind ye tonight the world is at war?

Thunder the monsters aloft on the Ridge Echo the pop guns below on the Moles, Jews, Buffadero, Levant...' "

"What's that about Jews?" Chaddock snapped, thumping his tankard down on the counter and half-standing.

Mr. Wardrop eyed him owlishly. "Name of a battery, my boy. Jews' Battery. Joe, another gin for me, and a pint for Captain Whatsisname here. You're looking a mite distray tonight, captain."

"I've got things on my mind," Chaddock said shortly. "Wouldn't you find it more congenial, shall we say, in the Piccadilly? That's the officers' pub."

"I came here first with some Canadians, officers and O.R.'s together," Chaddock said. "They didn't give a damn for this separate officers' pub business, and nor do I." He turned his back.

"I hear you're importing apes from Morocco," a petty officer said to the Ape Corporal.

The Ape Corporal nodded. "Yes, we are. On Winston's orders, express. Though mind, getting the ones already here to accept the new ones so they can settle in, that's another kettle of fish. We put them together in threes, the ones from Morocco, 'cause their coats aren't so thick as ours, and they can huddle together for warmth...."

"It wasn't warmth I saw two of 'em huddling together for," the petty officer said. "It was you know what. So Gibraltar's safe again."

Old Sergeant Tamlyn said, "Those monkeys are nobbut a damn nuisance. It's the Barbary partridge we ought to be saving. There are too many people on the Rock, so the hens can't sit."

A sergeant-major of signals turned to the petty officer. "Had a little trouble with the Italians, haven't you?" he said.

The sailor said, "No."

"I see a ship's mast and funnels sticking out of the water outside the Detached Mole. What happened?"

The sailor ostentatiously turned his back. Flight said, "Eyetie frogmen. It took our noble bluejackets rather a long time to find out."

The petty officer said "Fuck you," and stalked out, slamming the door behind him.

Mr. Wardrop said, "Seeing that you Brylcreem boys can't fly a Polish general a hundred yards without killing him, I don't think you've got much to boast about."

"Thank God for our allies. Look at the Russians! Look at Stalingrad!"

"What about Alamein?"

"What about Arakan?"

"Eighteen months and I haven't seen a bit of skirt."

"Three and a half years for us," Joe said. "But things looking better, maybe. Today the army asked me if okay to strengthen my roof, to put anti-aircraft Bren gun up there. Last year, they do it, don't ask. Someone smell the end of war, maybe."

"This is not the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning."

Mr. Wardrop said, "This is better than any female in the world." He raised his gin glass. "What woman could have written

'Down in the city, lights are a-twinkle,

Hums the close hive with the evening's affairs ...' "

"And they're
tough!
We had to put Monty down. Three bananas loaded with nembutal. Another shot full of cyanide. He just acted a little sozzled. A couple of days later ..

Chaddock slammed down his tankard so hard that it shattered. Beer splashed his tunic and Joe's face and Flight's feet.

"Shut up, shut up!" he yelled.

"Here, here! What the..."

"Hey!"

The lights swung in front of Chaddock's eyes. "Apes. Skirts. Stand here filling your bellies with beer. We are in the presence of EVIL," he shouted. "This ... Hitler ... this is not a war for glory ... not a cup final. We are fighting the most evil thing in the history of the world. Until it's burned out, it affects us all, we're all unclean because we're all human, too, like him."

He stopped, his hands clenched at his side. Joe was mopping up the counter. Flight said awkwardly, "We're all with you, sir.... I mean, none of us want to invite Hitler to tea, you know. Here, take a seat."

Chaddock stared at them, their faces wavering. The lights grew bright, dim. He ran for the door and out.

Chaddock felt a little more solid on his feet as soon as he entered the tunnel, and the gradually growing stutter of the drills acted to settle his jangling nerves. By the time he came near the face he felt sure of his balance and did not wonder at every step why he was not falling.

The round of charges were set, and the explosives were being tamped in. Three men were dismantling the last hundred feet of the ventilation ducting. He glowered at the work, for it was still the sheet-metal type.

"Who are you?"

The voice was in his ear. He wheeled round. "Conquy," he said.

Major Hughes frowned. "This is Captain Chaddock, sir. My second-in-command."

"Is your name Conquy or Chaddock? Or do you mean conky, C.O.N.K.Y? ... I'm Greenway, the new C.E." Chaddock saluted.

The whistle blew for the safety check. Everyone started to move back behind the safety line. The new chief engineer was round and youngish and popeyed. "What delays are you using?" he asked.

"Zero in the cut, one-second easers, two top outers, three side outers, four bottom outers."

"It works well? Leaves a clean advance?"

"Clean enough. There's no need to have the walls smooth as a house corridor, is there?"

The C.E. poked out a thick forefinger. "What you civilian mining engineers have got to understand is that the basic principle of military mining is exactly the opposite of what you have been brought up in."

"It's the time that matters, not the cost," Major Hughes said, quoting the previous chief engineer's favorite dictum. Chaddock said, "Hole not string."

"Eh? By God yes, that's it. In normal mining, your object is to extract a valuable substance—coal, ore, whatever. The shape of the hole doesn't matter,
per se.
In military mining your object is to make a valuable hole. The shape or value of quantity of the extract doesn't matter,
per se
.... Hole, not string, like a net. Very good."

A whistle blew again, and Sergeant Farley intoned, "Blasting. All clear?"

"All dear."

Farley pressed the firing plunger. A series of cracks echoed sharply down the tunnel, followed by a short, heavy rumble. A cloud of gray dust and fumes hid the face. "Nineteen fired," a voice cried.

"Fuck!" Sergeant Farley said.

" 'Twas one of the easers missed, gaffer."

Chaddock lit a cigarette. Now they had to find the misfired detonator in the mass of fallen rubble and extract it and after it the actual charge.

"The detonator's in the top of the charge?" Hughes asked anxiously.

Chaddock said, "That's where we always put it."

"This is the sort of thing that makes six hundred cubic yards a week hard to keep up," the C.E. said.

"There'd be fewer delays if we had electric detonators," Chaddock said.

"We've asked for them."

A miner standing close by, dragging at a tiny stub of cigarette, said, "It's nothin' to do with the bloody charges, man. It's the ghost."

"Ghost?" the C.E. said cheerily. "What ghost?"

"There's a naked woman runs about with her mouth open," the miner said. "She's the one who fucks up the drillpoints and derails the tubs and snuffs out the fuses."

"Does she have a name?" the brigadier asked.

"Aye. The ghost of Thompson's Raise, we call her, 'cos that's where she was first saw. The officer had a dog with him, and suddenly the dog started whining and whimpering as though he'd seen ... a ghost. Since then that bloody woman's been seen in every raise and winze and drive in the Rock."

Chaddock said, "It's not a ghost holding us up. It's unnecessary delays. Spit and polish. Old-fashioned methods. Nondelivery of what we need. Look at these ventilator ducts. I put in a special urgent report in January, 1941. The air flow at three hundred feet from source was six hundred thirty cubic feet a minute with this stuff, and
two thousand six hundred cubic feet
a minute with rubberized canvas. How the hell can the men be expected to work without enough air?"

"Chaddock!" Major Hughes said warningly.

"No, no, I like an officer to speak his mind," the C.E. said. "I've got to go now. Walk back a little way with me, Chaddock."

They started down the tunnel. Chaddock kept talking, because he could not stop. He was aware that the brigadier was looking at him under the passing lights, rather than listening, though every now and then he murmured Yes, or No, or Quite. "One size rip bit only, one and a half inch diameter," Chaddock babbled. "No steel transport, use the drill sharpening shop only for reshanking the rip rods.... Hand drills, Holman SL 9 or something like, instead of the sledges ... compressors in banks, three point five gallons diesel oil per hour for the Ingersoll Rand ... drifters ... two fans in parallel, short Y junction..."

"Are you a regular?" the C.E. said. "I thought I only had three in Gib. Where were you at school?"

"Don!" Chaddock shouted. His hands were shaking violently, and he could not hold them still. "What the hell does it matter where I went to school? We're in the presence of Evil! ... That's the ghost of Thompson's Raise—Evil, Evil! And all you can do is ask where I went to school. And in the pub, about monkeys ... the ... the...."

The brigadier took his arm. Chaddock felt hot tears running down his cheek. "Been overdoing it a bit, eh?" the brigadier said. "Come along, old chap. Here, Fanshaw, give me a hand. There. Sit back."

He sat in the back of the staff car, his hands held tight between his knees. A green room. Two years, three months, twenty-one days. Tunneling all the time? Yes, sir. Tunneling Company? Of course. Airplanes roaring overhead continuously. Must be imaginary. One hundred and seventy-five feet, 7/8-inch riprod, climax stopers and 1-inch steel, 4.9 tons, cubic yards, rock, rock...

The window was open, and there were red flowers in a box outside. He sat in an armchair. They ought not to keep books away from him, surely? A man's mind couldn't be stopped turning by depriving him of books. That would only make it go round and round, instead of along the lines of the author's thought. The Spanish hills were brown across the bay. A coastal steamer had just cleared Algeciras Harbor, heading outside Europa Point, the Spanish colors of red and yellow painted huge on its side. The sky was still full of aircraft, and their droning went on day and night.