THE HEART OF DANGER (37 page)

the Irishman? Washed or changed since the battle for Rosenovici and

the death by a sniper's aim of her husband, and her flight to the

woods, the cave? His Jane showered in the morning and in the evening.

His mother stood in the kitchen of the tied cottage and stripped to

the

waist, and didn't care if her kiddie had seen her, and soaped herself.

He made the markers and wondered if she had ever washed or changed

since she had come to the cave.

He tried to smile across the cave floor. Would she come back with

him?

Katica Dubelj was the eyewitness. Would she come back to Zagreb and

make the statement?

Had she the strength to go back with him, across country?

Penn smiled and he gazed into the dead animal eyes of the old woman.

He

did not think she had the strength .. . They had no language that

was

common to them. He pulled his backpack round from its pillow

position

and when he made the movement she cringed back against the cave wall

as

if seeking a cranny where she could hide from him. When the

Headmaster

returned then they would make a statement and the Headmaster would

write the story of the eyewitness, and she would make her mark as

authenticity. She did not have the strength to go back with him,

across country. He had given ham for the cat and sandwiches for the

dogs, he was down on his food stock. There were bread rolls in the

backpack and there was cheese, and the opened packet of ham, and there

was an orange .. . Penn split a roll open and he laid a piece of cheese

in the roll and then peeled off a slice of the ham and laid it with

the

cheese. He crawled towards her across the cave floor and he held

the

roll of dried-out bread in front of him. She could go no further

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back,

and he came close to her, until her hand, the bony, filthy claw, darted

forward to snatch the food from him. Christ, and she had no teeth

.. .

She tore at the roll, broke it into pieces and wolfed the pieces.

She

could not chew them down, they were swallowed indigestible. When

she

had finished the pieces then she picked for each crumb and each

fragment of the flaked bread. It was as if he fed an untamed animal.

He passed the orange to her. He wondered when she had last seen an

orange. Jane had orange juice on the table each morning, and it was

maybe a year, maybe a year and a half, since Katica Dubelj had last

seen an orange. She grabbed at the orange and her fingernails,

black-coated, nicked the full flesh of his hands, and a little blood

ran. She pulled the orange into pieces and stuffed them down, pith

and

fruit and peel, into the mouth without teeth. He saw the juice

dribble

from the side of her mouth and when the orange was gone she lifted

the

fold of her dress to her lips and licked the juice off. She had

gratitude and she wanted to share. It was picked from the cave floor

from amongst her bedding sacks. It was passed to him in her closed

claw fist. He held out the palm of his hand and the claw fist opened

.. . Christ, a bloody root. She scurried back to her far edge of

the

cave. A sucked bloody root .. . She watched him. It was truth, the reality of the war. He wondered how many of them there were, old

people holed up in caves in the woods behind the lines, sucking roots

for survival. He thought that if he sucked the bloody root then he

would be sick onto the floor of the cave .. . They would have sucked

bloody roots in caves in the glorious and pleasant land that was

England a thousand years and more before, but this was civilized

fucking Europe, and now ... He would have the statement when the

Headmaster returned, and her signature, her mark, as an eyewitness.

He

reached again into his backpack. Penn took out the brown paper

envelope. He had the photograph of Dorrie Mowat. Penn showed the

face

of Dorrie Mowat, the cheeky smiling mischief challenging face, held

it

up. There was joy cracking the mouth of Katica Dubelj, as if the

mouth

had been touched by love, as he had been touched, and there was the

cackle laugh of the old woman, a memory coming back to her that had

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been private and suppressed too long. She reached for the photograph

and she took it and she kissed it. She babbled at him and he shook

his

head because he understood nothing of what she said. She took his

hand

in her tight claw fist and she led him as a child out into the sunlight

falling through the high tops of the trees. She pointed down through

the trunks of the trees towards the village and then gestured towards

the sun and made with her small arm the arc of the sun falling. Penn

thought it was the promise of Katica Dubelj that she would take him

to

the village when the darkness came, where the truth was, and he would

have her statement. He had heard his wife's voice beyond the steel

door, frightened, sent away and not arguing .. . The Headmaster sat

on

the mattress on the concrete shelf. He had heard Milan Stankovic's

voice, harsh, in the guardroom beyond the steel door, state that the

matter would be dealt with on his return, later .. . The Headmaster

sat

cramped in the cell built of concrete blocks and the light came

through

the meshed grille at eye level in the steel door. He had heard the

postman talking about his hands and his fingernails, and he did not

know why the state of his hands or fingernails was important ... The

Headmaster sat in his damp trousers, sat huddled in his jacket, and

they had taken away his tie and his belt and the laces from his shoes.

He did not know what he would say when Milan Stankovic returned from

his meeting, wherever he went, and his mind was too terrorized to

concoct a reason for his having been alone, in darkness, soaked wet

from crossing the stream's ford, in the village of Rosenovici. His

mind was too confused to manufacture a story of innocence. If he

had

not met the Englishman .. . They had not brought him food, and they

had

not talked to him. They left him solitary to wait for the questioning

of Milan Stankovic. It was an aspect of the madness that so many

men,

hundreds, thousands, had sat in cells throughout the beauty of their

land and waited for questioning and torture. If he had not stayed

so

long at the cave .. . He did not know, could not know, how he would

respond to the beating or to the knife or the burning by cigarettes.

Did not know whether he could hold his silence against the pain.

Could

not know whether the pain of torture would prise from him the secret.

If he had not hurried noisily back through the village towards the

216

stream's ford .. . Benny flicked the 'speak' switch. He said

gravely,

"We can't all be heroes, somebody has to sit on the kerb and clap

as

they go by." He heard the laughter, distorted, coming back over the loudspeaker in the Seddy's cab. "That original, Benny? .. . Who'd you

lift that off, Benny? "Nothing original about me. Will Rogers and I

collaborate." "Cut it, Benny, do me the favour." He obeyed. The convoy manager had cause to be stressed up, pissed off, because the

rock that had come through the side window of the Land-Rover had

caught

his face above the collar of the flak jacket and below the rim of

his

helmet. The move out of Knin had been sweet enough, 0700 departure,

but

the shit had started in a village just up the road from Titova Korenica

with ugly women and dwarf kids lobbing rocks. The convoy manager

had a

bandage over his face, looked a really fine hero. Rocks in that

village, and four windscreens broken. They were blocked now by

mines.

They were up from Slunj, almost with the whiff of the river at the

Turanj crossing point in their noses, and there were mines, and four

little arse holes to negotiate with. Good stuff for the hero, the

convoy manager, to negotiate with. They were blocked in between a

cliff face and a river, a good place to get the old head blown off.

It

didn't happen on every run, but happened too often, that they were

messed around on the convoy route. Benny reckoned that up the road,

between Slunj and Veljun, they were moving tanks, maybe artillery,

and

a track had gone broken or a wheel had got holed, and they weren't

having a United Nations relief convoy going by and seeing what they

were moving. It was difficult for him to get the bloody great pisspot

on his head out of the window, but he took the trouble. Past all

the

lorries, past the Land-Rover, the convoy manager was in his second

hour

of failing, too right, to negotiate the removal of the mines from

the

road. Their schedule was all shot to hell. The kids with the mines, from what he could see, were drunk, and they'd a good game going.

He

saw the convoy manager stride back to his Land-Rover.

217

The voice, tight with controlled anger, was in Benny's cab.

They were going to take a minor road over towards the Bosnia border.

They were going for the scenic route ... for the tourist run .. .

going

up towards Glina, then would work back through Vrginmost for the

Turanj

crossing way behind schedule.

He sat in the Seddy's cab, snuggled in the flak jacket and with the

weight of the helmet squat on his head, and hit the gears. The convoy

took the fork road east, drove off the main drag, and away from the

kids with their 'frag' mines, and he smiled down at them like it was

a

pleasure for him to be going the scenic route. And the kids loosed

off

their AKs into the air, as if they'd won a war and not just diverted

an

unarmed aid convoy.

They were laid out neatly on the bed, her new files. She had drawn

the

new curtains back, because she came into the room each evening and

closed them. Mary Braddock sat beside the new files on the new duvet

and she had kicked off her shoes onto the new carpet. The new soft

toys, bears and rabbits, were on the new pillow of the bed, and the

shop assistant, when Mary had bought them, had prattled to her as

if

she were a grandmother, and she had not contradicted the shop

assistant, nor told her of obsession, or the weight of guilt.

Because

of the new paint and the new wallpaper it was a pretty room, and a

room

that was correct for a child who would grow to be a climbing star,

not

a horrid young woman. It was after a spring shower that had beaten

on

the mullioned window, and the sun shone into the pretty room.

The size of the new file was a measure to Mary of the scale of the

obsession. She had read about herself in the newspapers, different

name and different address, but read about parents who shared with

her

the obsession to know. The newspapers printed sad photographs of

fathers and mothers sitting close on settees, with the picture of

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the

dead child, the lost loved one, in the frame behind them, those who

demanded to know and who had failed. She could recall the sad

photographs of the stunned parents of the 'friendly fire' boys in

the

Gulf, of the girl in the Kenya game park, of the young man murdered

in

Chile's capital, of the young woman who had died in Saudi, and the

sad

parents all had the same refrain of confused criticism for the help

they had been given. All her friends said it was obsession. She

shared the file with none of them, and she did not allow her secretary,

two days a week, to type the letters of which the copies went into

the

file. There were the copies of fourteen letters written to the

Foreign

and Commonwealth Office; her friends said she should close her mind

to

an episode better forgotten. There were four letters personally

addressed to the ambassador in Zagreb; there were two letters written

by hand to the President of Croatia. None of the replies were curt

or

brusque or rude the replies, aide-drafted, signed by the dignitaries,

were bland and oozed sympathy, and were bloody useless. Her friends

said that she should start again .. . The telephone stampeded her

out

of the newly decorated, newly furnished bedroom for a child. She

ran

for the stairs. God, please, make it the call .. . Penn's call ..

.

The dogs slithered with her down the stair carpet, cannoning against

her legs. God, please, make it Penn's call. She snatched up the

telephone in the hall. The dogs barked raucously, as if her run for

the telephone was a fun game. "Charles here. Where were you?

Outside? A nice morning up here in this filthy city. Sorry,