Small Wars (22 page)

He came down the steps. He got into the Land Rover. Kirby pulled away again, grumbling about the heat and his lunch being late, and Hal put his elbow out of the open window, resting his fingers on the doorframe.

To their left, a handful of men were playing football, shirts off, a layer of dust a foot thick making it look as if they were cut off at the knee, the heavy ball occasionally flying up to shoulder height. Their shouts reached Hal over the roar of the Land Rover as it slowed for the gate.

There came the rattle of the ball hitting the wire fence and bouncing back into the dust as the barrier sentry, instead of lifting it up, letting them go as he had let them enter, came out into the road, and raised his hand, signalling to them to pull over. He was talking to his companion over his shoulder as he walked.

Kirby braked. ‘What have I done now?’ he said. ‘There’s always bloody something.’

The Land Rover’s engine idled. The soldier gestured, ‘Stay!’ He began to run heavily towards them.

Hal watched the sentry running towards them. He saw his boots in the dust, his face screwed up with intent, his Sten bouncing and steadied with one hand as he approached, and Hal felt, from nowhere, cold dread, the horror of absolute change approaching him, and when he heard what had happened, it was as if he had known it all along.

Chapter Four

Kirby drove him straight to Nicosia, to the hospital where Clara was. The drive, all four hours, was made in silence, with nothing to say or do except keep from falling into imagining. He had been told she wasn’t dead when he left. When he left, she wasn’t dead.

He stared out of the car at nothing, seeing the long white road and the young boy on it, the slick pistol, wrapped lovingly in white cloth, imagining blood on his thin child’s body.

It had been the work of a quick and vengeful God, he thought, but she wasn’t dead when he left.

The hospital was in the centre of the city. They were being held up by trucks stopping to let out troops, soldiers with metal barriers, and the Land Rover had to squeeze between them. Neither he nor Kirby said anything about it. It was distant to Hal. He didn’t connect it with Clara or the other woman who was shot.

They reached the hospital, in a quiet street, and stopped as a straggle of civilians, running to their houses, skidded in front of the car. Hal had an impression of the building, rising in stone above him, high; the entrance hall was vast with a polished floor. He walked across the shining floor to the desk. He did not run. He heard his voice: ‘My wife is here. Clara Treherne.’

A soldier came over to him, introduced himself – some name, some regiment. They didn’t make him wait, they took him upstairs. There were nurses, like nuns, in white headdresses, quietly walking, the corridors were shiny too, the doors. Each one could have been hers. Passing doors, waiting to be taken to her, but then a doctor approached him.

Hal said, ‘Where’s my wife?’

‘Come with me,’ said the doctor.

‘No. Where’s my wife?’

‘Please, Mr Treherne, come with me.’

The man was Greek. Why didn’t they have a proper doctor? Why didn’t he address him properly? If he didn’t know a soldier – or how to speak to one – she was in the hands of foreigners, she couldn’t be helped, where was she?

‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Dr Antoniadis.’

‘I want to see my wife.’

‘Let me explain to you.’

‘Christ –’

‘Here, please.’ The man had a hand on his arm and Hal sat down on a chair in the long white corridor with the polished floors and cool blinds all along it.

‘Is she dead?’

‘No.’

‘I can’t, I’m sorry –’

‘That’s perfectly fine. You will see her. Let me, please, tell you the situation. Would you like some water?’

‘Just tell me.’

‘Your wife was shopping, with her friend, here in Nicosia.’

Hal fixed his eyes on the doctor’s face.

‘She was brought here at twelve o’clock. She was shot with a revolver. A hand gun. Do you understand?’

‘Yes. Go on.’

‘Twice. Here.’ He gestured. ‘In the stomach. I am sorry, sir, the baby inside is dead.’

He didn’t care. He didn’t care about the fucking baby. ‘Tell me.’

‘We have stopped the bleeding. She is unconscious. It’s best if you know the situation. Please. Have some water.’

‘I want to see her. Now.’ Hal stood up.

The doctor stood up too. ‘This way.’

The door was opened. Hal stepped into the white room. The air was suffused with bright, blurred light. He smelled disinfectant, mineral and sweet. Clara was lying on the bed. Her hair was the only dark thing in the room. It looked like a vision, to Hal.

The doctor was just behind his shoulder. Hal saw that she was breathing. A glass bottle, shining and full of liquid, hung above her. There were tubes going into her arms. Her shoulders were bare above the sheet, white bandages on her wrists, the backs of her hands. She had never been so still.

‘Where are my daughters?’ he said.

‘They are safe.’

‘But where?’

‘They are here, in the hospital.’

Hal walked over to the bed. The frame of the bed was white. The pillows, blankets, sheets, table, floor – everything was white. Clara’s hair and lashes were dark. Her mouth was red. There was a red stain on the sheet.

‘She’s still bleeding,’ he said.

They sent him out.

He waited.

He sat in a chair in another room and a nurse brought him water and left the warm glass in front of him. He didn’t know how long he sat there.

Another doctor came. An older man, in a suit. ‘I’m afraid your wife is still very ill,’ he said. ‘The foetus is still inside her. Can you say with certainty how many weeks pregnant she is?’

‘No. I don’t know.’

‘The bullet entered the placenta. The main thing has been to stop the haemorrhaging, do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ said Hal, thinking of tying off the stump of Taylor’s leg on the beach, how fast the blood pumped from it onto the sand.

‘We cannot think beyond keeping her stable for the moment. After that we’ll see what to do about the pregnancy. I am very sorry.’

Hal looked at him. He had dark brown eyes behind glasses. The glasses made them seem bigger, peering at him. ‘You can call the company lines at Episkopi,’ said Hal. ‘The battalion MO there, Major Godwin, he’ll know how many weeks she is.’

The army sent people to help him. He didn’t notice the things that were done for him. Nobody tried to make him leave.

They let him back into the room. It was empty – just the square room like a nightmare. His stomach dropped inside him, then her bed was pushed in past him – as if he were not there, just observing – rubber wheels on the polished floor. The bed was adjusted by the nurses in headdresses, who didn’t look at him and left quietly afterwards. He didn’t know what they had done to her out of the room, if she had nearly left him or if she was safe. She was in the same position. They had changed the sheets.

He sat down in the same chair. The doctor came in again and stood next to him. ‘You can stay here now,’ he said. ‘We will make arrangements. Try not to worry.’

It was night-time now. He heard the wail of sirens at sunset. There had been gunfire outside, and the bells of police cars, but now it was quieter. He began to notice the building around him a little.

He could hear the business of the hospital, hurrying feet, voices and distant doors.

He sat in a chair by her bed, but not too close. At intervals, he didn’t know how often, nurses would come in to check on Clara.

The checks were private, feminine work. When the nurses opened the door Hal would go to the window, looking out, far down into the street, where small cars passed the patrolling soldiers silently, until the door closed again. Through the night there were fewer cars in the street below, then none. Then after some time, the sky was paler above the buildings. The next time the nurse came, the pink sun was above the trees and roofs.

When she came back, it was not for Clara but for him: she had brought him tea. It was strong, Indian tea with condensed milk in a pale green cup with a saucer.

‘Thank you,’ said Hal, taking the cup politely, holding it in one hand near his thigh, like somebody at a tea party.

The nurse went away.

Strange, blank – he could hear cars again, trucks, people walking in the corridors, and there was Clara, lying there, not moving, in another day.

Frightened hot tears blinded him. He put the cup and saucer down on the floor, spilling the tea, clumsy, and pressed his palms to his eyes to get a hold of himself – except that instead his head went down onto his hands, bent over. More tears. Like a man before an altar, afraid, covering his face, he hid from the sight of her.

He prayed, but his prayers were just begging. He garbled silent fearful bargains behind his closed eyes, but it was too late for that. He already had God’s answer: his wife torn in half, his baby killed.

Later in the long morning, when Clara hadn’t woken still, but had moved her hand slightly and shifted in the bed, Hal went to see the girls.

They were on another floor, in an empty ward, sitting on the floor by a table where a sister was sewing. She handed them squares of coloured material and they pretended to sew, too. Hal looked through the glass door, down the long line of empty beds with folded blankets stacked on the ends of them, to where they were. He felt like a dead man, looking through glass into the living world.

The little girls were squatting, like people around a campfire, playing amongst the coloured felt near the legs of the sister, who bent down to them lovingly. Hal was far away, through the door, down the long line of beds. They looked the same, as far as he could see. They looked peaceful, intent. He watched them for a little, flinching when they moved in case they saw him and were frightened. Then he went back to Clara.

In the middle of the day the first doctor, Dr Antoniadis, came and spoke to him. He put a hand on his shoulder. ‘What is your Christian name?’ he said.

‘Hal.’

‘And my name is Giorgios. We have a lady downstairs, she is asking for you.’

Evelyn Burroughs was standing in the middle of the vast lobby. Hal met her on the shining floor, stopping two feet away from her. He realised he was dirty and that he hadn’t shaved. Evelyn was wearing a hat. Her nose was red. ‘Hal, I’m so sorry.’ She didn’t meet his eye. ‘I came as soon as I could. Is there any news?’

‘Not at the moment.’

She looked at the floor. ‘Good Lord. What a thing,’ she said quietly.

They stood in silence.

‘Now,’ she said, her briskness was ironic, ‘I’ve taken a room at the Ledra Palace. I shall collect the girls, if that’s all right with you, and we’ll go back there as it’s home to them already. We’ll try to make things as normal as possible, shall we? I shan’t tell them anything. They’re too little. They had an awful fright but I gather they’re quite cheerful now.’

‘Yes. Good. Thank you.’

‘I’ll keep popping by. And you’re not to worry. Everybody is doing their best. How are the doctors?’

He couldn’t speak; he was diminished. It was all he could do to stand there.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘we’re making sure she has the best care. I promise.’

She reached out a gloved hand, and put it on his, hanging at his side. She could have been his mother, closer than his mother had ever been, as close as anybody, as he had been to the soldier, Jenson, as he died, as close as he was to Clara when he was inside her. They had no secrets, no privacy.

‘You look done in,’ she said. ‘If you change your clothes, and have a shave, you might feel better. Why don’t you come with me?’

‘Not now,’ he said, trying to smile but wincing at the impossibility.

‘I’ll have some things sent over for you. I’m sure they’ll let you have a room, or somewhere to change and clean up at least. A lot of people were brought in last night, after everything that went on, but I’m sure they’ll find somewhere for you.’

He didn’t know what she meant –
after everything that went on.

In the afternoon Kirby – like a visitor from a different life – brought him a holdall, with clean clothes. They met in the lobby where Hal had spoken to Evelyn. Kirby was embarrassed and kept his eyes on the floor, shuffling and out of place. He didn’t say a word apart from ‘Sir’ as he handed it over.

Hal shaved and changed his shirt in a long, tiled bathroom with a rubber curtain around the bath. The room echoed as he tapped the razor on the basin edge. The baby was dead inside her with a bullet in it. He didn’t know how they would get it out.

Afterwards he sat by her bed again, regretting the brief time away from her. In the afternoon she opened her eyes and looked at him, then closed them again.

In the evening the siren sounded for the curfew. Hal watched the streets clear as the nurses made intimate changes to her unmoving body. He heard the drips being changed. The glass bottles knocking against each other, instruments on the metal trolley. He watched the soldiers far below in the street. They looked like toy soldiers.

When he was a child, home from school for the holidays and alone again, he had played toy soldiers. His armies were vast and loved. At the back of the house, on the first floor, was a long landing, with doors on one side and cold windows on the other. The wooden floor had a runner down the middle, with brass fixings at each end, worn patches where the stitching had faded and gone. Hal would lie on his tummy with the lined-up battalions, their cannon and cavalry, all the flags, the minute courageous figures of his dreams. Above him, painted soldiers looked down from dull gilt frames all the way along the landing. They had seemed to smile at him. He had not felt alone. He had been surrounded by legions. But now it came suddenly and coldly into his head that, really, there had been nobody else there with him at all.

They brought a camp bed into the room and he slept on it, flat on his front with his arms thrown out, like a baby learning to walk, a sleep like death. He woke up at two when she said his name, but she hadn’t moved; he was frightened he had dreamed she’d said his name because she was dying, and he was awake after that.

He lay in the dark listening to her breathing. Her breath was shallow. He journeyed with her, each breath, in and out, then they waited together – too long – until once more, in…

Her hand had been cool when she’d come in from the garden with the flowers. She had smiled and held it out to him. ‘Yes. Clara,’ she’d said. He had felt the rain from the wet flowers on his fingers.

Her small breath travelled in and out. At their wedding they had walked under shining swords. He had made promises to her and the promises had held at first, untested. But when she had come off the ship to meet him, she had been so bright, and she had followed him. He had taken her into this place, and then he had deserted her.

The hours of the night went by fearfully and in dishonour.

The next day she was awake some of the time and they said words to each other. Hal didn’t say any of the words he really had in his head. He said, ‘Hello,’ and ‘Ssh’.

She looked out of her dark blue eyes softly, but her voice was a whisper. ‘The girls?’

‘They’re fine. Don’t worry.’

‘Gracie? Gracie died.’

He held her gaze, nodded.

She seemed to wander. ‘Am I all right?’ she said. ‘Is it all right?’

Her tongue was swollen, trying to lick her dry lips. The nurse dabbed at than with wet cotton wool. Hal felt it was an intrusion to watch, and looked away.