Authors: F.G. Cottam

The Magdalena Curse (6 page)

BOOK: The Magdalena Curse

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The stream mysterious glides beneath,
Green as a dream and deep as death.

It was odd. Brooke was not a poet Hunter had ever enjoyed. He could not remember last having read him. But the lines were his and there was something sinister about their rhythmic insistence as they reverberated in his head.

Rodriguez tore open a foil pack with his teeth, tipped the contents dubiously into a mug of hot water and began slowly to stir. Hunter recognised the familiar, largely chemical smell of what was optimistically termed lamb casserole. Rodriguez watched it bubble and churn in his mug. Then he looked up at Hunter. ‘How did you fare with Gaul?’

‘Okay. He was informative enough. Don’t think he’d want me as his point man.’

‘Oh?’

‘He made a comment about my vocabulary. I think he’s got me down as a bullshit artist. It could be counter-productive when we go in if your men all think that way.’

‘I speak nine languages,’ Rodriguez said.

‘I was told seven.’

‘Then your intelligence is out of date, Captain. My point is simply that this accomplishment doesn’t undermine me in the minds of the men.’

‘I’m skilled at crochet,’ Peterson said. He belched. ‘Very skilled. Doesn’t necessarily mean I interfere with little girls.’

‘I don’t know how you eat this shit, Hunter,’ Rodriguez said, slopping out his libellously labelled lamb casserole. He reached for the satchel of charts and maps on the ground beside him. ‘Let’s get down to business, gentlemen. We attack
at 2100 hours. Full darkness will have been on us for an hour. We will brief the men at 1700 hours. We need to know what we are about.’

The three men stood and walked the short distance to the small camouflage-covered tent erected as a command centre. In there, over an improvised table, they would iron out every exact permutation.

Hunter did not know why he had allowed himself to become preoccupied by such extraneous details as cult tattoos, the odour of decay and the silent attack dog. All of them had been trained to subdue dogs. And the nature and calibre of the weapons they carried and their physical numbers were far more important considerations than the physical characteristics of the men guarding their objective. Still, he felt a growing sense of strangeness. Still, the Brooke couplet echoed and sang maddeningly in his head. He snatched at a sinew of orchid vine trailing down the side of the ravine, crushed it between his hands and sniffed his sticky palms as though the sharp, savage odour of the plant sap could clear his mind and exorcise his thoughts.

After the briefing, on full bellies, Rodriguez and Peterson did what all the men not on sentry patrol were doing and went off to enjoy a couple of hours’ sleep. Hunter unpacked his sleeping bag, unrolled his foam undersheet and found a fairly flat spot intent on doing the same. But he could not sleep. The Brooke couplet had receded, finally, in his mind. But his mind could discover no rest. Instead, it was filled with thoughts of Lillian, his new wife. He did not think about or speculate upon their future together. On the eve of combat, he was too superstitious a soldier for that. He did not believe in throwing down the gauntlet to fate. Instead, as the men from Louisiana and Arkansas snored cradling their rifles around him, as exotic birds shrieked in the forest canopy on remote tree limbs above, Mark Hunter thought
about what he regarded as the miracle of his marriage to the beautiful woman he loved.

He had met her one evening fourteen months earlier at an event staged at Hatchard’s bookshop on Piccadilly. The Irish poet Seamus Heaney had been there to give a reading. He had queued patiently to exchange a word with the great man and have his hardback first edition signed. He was leaning against a wall, grinning at the signature with the book opened in front of him, when she turned among the press of people and spoke to him clear of the surrounding chatter.

‘You’re a lover of poetry?’

‘Yes. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.’

She had green, feline eyes and straight, light-brown hair that buckled and splashed heavily around her shoulders. She was very composed, with her wine glass held high in front of her. He thought it the composure that gave her such strong physical impact, though she was very slender and not particularly tall.

‘You don’t look like a poetry fan.’

‘Oh? What do they look like? Generally.’

‘Not like a soldier of fortune. Not like someone involved in espionage. Not carrying an intriguing facial scar. In short, not at all like you.’ She raised an eyebrow and sipped from her drink. ‘Look around.’

They were lit by hot lights above them, surrounded by the spangle of book spines on heaving shelves. The shop was very crowded and most of the men there were red-faced, tweedy, bucolic. The scar under his cheekbone was a shrapnel graze. He thought that perhaps she was here from the publishing company, or the company that owned the bookshop, to look after their star guest. If so, she seemed a very svelte and polished sort of security presence. Lucky old Seamus Heaney.

‘Look, I’m not a crank or anything,’ Hunter said. ‘I like poetry. I can even quote it, should the need for proof arise.’

She appraised him some more. He could not read her expression at all. She wore a red wool coat, unbuttoned. It was early spring outside on the street but very hot in the crowded space they shared. The heat seemed of no concern to her. She cocked her head and looked at the book in his hands and then plucked it from his grip. ‘
Beowulf
,’ she said. ‘This isn’t Heaney’s poetry.’

‘It’s his translation.’

‘It’s the story of a monster. My name is Lillian.’

‘It’s the story of the quest to kill a monster. Three monsters. I’m Mark.’ An incredulous thought occurred to him. ‘Are you chatting me up?’

She handed him back his copy of
Beowulf
and sipped more wine. ‘You are the most attractive man in the room. You might be the most attractive man I’ve ever met. That will depend. Tell me about yourself, Mark. Don’t lie. I will know straight away if you do.’

Afterwards they went for a drink in Covent Garden, where she had a flat. She worked in publishing. But she had been at the Heaney reading purely as a fan. Her book had been signed also. It was the
Collected Poems
. It had been safely tucked back in her shoulder bag by the time of their Hatchard’s confrontation.

‘What kind of poetry do you like?’

‘Modern,’ he said. ‘Anything I really like is from Manley Hopkins on.’

She laughed. ‘You seem entirely too good to be true.’

‘I can assure you I’m not.’

‘You must think me very brazen. I’m not usually like that. I’ve wasted the past two years on a relationship that wasn’t worth my time. This was a discovery made only a few days ago. It’s left me feeling somewhat angry and aggressive.
I’m not usually quite so forthright. And I’m not so pathetic as to think relationships with men define a woman. But I saw you and I saw that you were alone and I didn’t want you just to slip away.’

‘I’m glad.’

‘What do you do?’

Their table in the pub seated only two and they occupied an isolated corner. Mindful of her earlier warning, he told her. She listened. Once again, he found that he could not read her expression. He thought that she was very beautiful. She was the more so the more he studied her. It was not an effect of make-up or of style. It was uncontrived and she seemed hardly conscious of it, though he knew she must be. When he had finished telling her about his life, she smiled and finished her drink and asked him to walk her home. On her doorstep, he kissed her. She dropped a hand on to his shoulder and the touch of her thrilled through him with a force that was almost convulsive.

‘What would you like to do now?’

‘Take you to bed?’

‘I mean, would you like us to see one another again?’

‘Oh, God. That was so crass. I’m so sorry, Lillian.’

She fished for her keys in her bag. ‘Don’t be,’ she said. ‘There’s no harm in optimism. The glass half full and all that.’

He laughed with relief. ‘What would you like me to do?’

She had found her keys. She lifted her eyes from them to him. She flicked the veils of heavy hair away from her face, revealing her expression fully. ‘I’d like you to court me, Mark. I would like that very much.’

He walked down Catherine Street to the north side of Waterloo Bridge and took the turn of descending steps to the Embankment. He looked along the gentle sweep to the right of the Thames towards the Houses of Parliament.
He would walk the route back to the barracks and his hard mattress and coarse woollen blanket and sleep. There was a light spring fog over the river and the lamps strung along the Embankment were pearly in the rising mist. He was billeted at Chelsea Barracks for a two-day session of seminars. He had seen the details of the Heaney reading in a London free-sheet left by someone on the table he chose at random for lunch in the officers’ canteen. He had set down his tray and seen the listing. He had gone to Hatchard’s really on a whim. Already he regarded his having met his future wife as a sort of miracle. Nothing up to the point of his deployment in Bolivia would shake Mark Hunter’s faith in that grateful conviction.

Now, sleepless in the ravine, he went to get his pack and took from it some paper and a pen. There was an unfamiliar duty he had forgotten to perform and he needed to carry out. He had to write a letter to Lillian that might be his last. It was a new responsibility and it was onerous but he had no choice. She had the right to final words from him should he not survive the coming encounter. He would keep the tone light. He had misgivings about this operation, an uneasiness he could not have articulated to himself, let alone to her. He would not be dishonest in what he wrote. One discovered lie and he believed he would lose her. That was her promise. That was the standard she set. He would not truly have dared to lie to her. She was too precious a prize for him to think of risking the loss. But there was enough honest comedy in the circumstances to allow him some cheer in the writing. And he did not believe he was going to be killed or injured in the contact to come. No soldier really ever does. It’s always what happens in a fight to someone else. Hunter wrote with brevity and good cheer, signed his note with a kiss and folded the paper into
an envelope he licked shut and put back into his pack. Much had recently changed in his life and the change was greatly for the better. But he was experienced at what he was about to do and he entertained no false modesty concerning his formidable ability to do it.

There was only so much information the men could absorb about their mission. The boys of the South were soldiers steeled for action. They were not repositories of words. They were not lovers of rhetoric. There were only so many times a weapon could be stripped and cleaned and loaded. There were only so many equipment checks a man could make on the tools on which he depended in action for survival. Fifteen minutes before their moment of departure, Hunter, Rodriguez and Peterson gathered in their little canvas command post with nothing else physically to do before setting off on the mile-long route to combat. Rodriguez took out a metal flask, unscrewed the stopper and poured them each an inch of something potent. Hunter sniffed the liquor. It was tequila. They raised their glasses and drained them.

‘I’m wondering about you, Hunter,’ Rodriguez said. ‘I like to know the men I fight alongside. When you’re not doing what you’re ordered to, what do you choose to do? What’s the passion in your other life?’

Hunter wiped his lips with the back of his hand. He was silent for a moment. ‘Back at home, my wife and I light a log fire in the evening.’

‘It’s summer,’ Peterson said. ‘Even in England, it’s summer now.’

‘You don’t live in the West Country, Captain. We light a fire. And the logs take. And the room fills with the warm scent of pine resin. And I brush my wife’s hair as she sits between my knees on the rug in front of me. And I greatly cherish that ritual.’

Rodriguez smiled and nodded.

‘That’s fucking tragic,’ Peterson said. ‘It’s my understanding you’ve only been married a few weeks.’

‘Not tragic,’ Rodriguez said. He shrugged. ‘Though somewhat English, perhaps.’

Hunter looked at Peterson. ‘And you don’t know what it is that makes my wife’s hair require the brushing.’ He turned to Rodriguez. ‘You, Major?’

‘I’m teaching my daughter piano,’ Rodriguez said. ‘I treasure that time we spend together, side by side on our stools at the keyboard. She has a real and precious gift.’

‘Jesus,’ Peterson said to Rodriguez. ‘Is there no end to what you can do?’

Rodriguez smiled. He looked apprehensive, even sad, though such feelings were relative, Hunter told himself. ‘What about you, Peterson?’

‘I like to read,’ Peterson said. ‘When I’m not behind the butt of an assault rifle, drawing a bead on anything with a pulse, believe it or not, I like to read. I like to walk in open country. And I like to paint. No country on God’s earth like mine for a watercolour painter.’

‘What kind of stuff do you read?’ the major asked. He sounded genuinely interested.

‘Melville. Conrad. I like stories about the sea.’

BOOK: The Magdalena Curse

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