The Water Diviner (6 page)

Tall, broad-shouldered and suntanned, Lieutenant Colonel Cecil Hilton is just thirty years of age. He directs the local workers in broken Turkish, switching quickly to English to fire off an order to one of his men. It’s unusual to find such a young man in command of such an important commission, but his aptitude and intelligence marked him for early promotion.

Hilton oversees the hive of activity on the hillside and asserts his authority gently but firmly to ensure the organised chaos does not descend into utter bedlam. He strides purposefully towards an open area where two paint-spattered soldiers are hard at work, painting hundreds of wooden crosses white and, by default, half the hillside. Neither Private Dawson nor Private Thomas notices the approach of their commanding officer.

‘God Almighty, Dawson!’ marvels Thomas. ‘Could you be more cack-handed? How you managed to survive four years on the front I’ll never know.’

Dawson puts down his brush and strikes a pose. ‘I put a lot of it down to good looks.’

Lieutenant Colonel Hilton coughs, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners and his mouth hiding a smile beneath his militarily precise moustache. ‘I take it neither of you were house painters back home?’

Dawson laughs. ‘It’s hard to believe, I know. But no, sir. Never lifted a paintbrush in my life till now. Thinking about taking it up when I get back home though.’

‘When they’re dry, send them up to Baby 700 in the cart.’

‘How many are you wanting, sir?’

‘Whatever you’ve got.’

A puffing Sergeant Tucker approaches Hilton and salutes. ‘We’ve got company, sir. It’s him.’

Hilton watches as the horse-drawn carriage draws to a halt. An uneasy quiet settles over the Anzac soldiers who have gathered around to inspect the new arrivals. Hasan stands, arranges his sword and belt and alights from the cart, brushing cigarettes from his lap.

Tucker glowers and murmurs under his breath to Dawson. ‘Four years ago they would’ve given me a bloody VC for shooting that bastard.’

In contrast to the Anzacs’ angry reception, the Turkish villagers throng around Hasan, doffing their hats and bowing, awestruck to find themselves in the presence of a celebrated war hero. Hasan nods his head, acknowledging their greeting.

Hilton approaches Hasan. Even if the Turkish major was not wearing polished black boots, a dress sword, and a breast full of impressive medals, his dignity and noble carriage would mark him as a man of high rank.

Lieutenant Greeves stands at the major’s side and salutes. ‘Lieutenant Colonel Hilton. May I present Major Hasan Bey? Major Bey was commander of –’

Hilton corrects Greeves. ‘No, Lieutenant. It’s just “Major Hasan”. “Bey” just means “Mr”.’

Greeves’ round cheeks flush. Embarrassed, but seeming not to comprehend Hilton’s explanation, he continues. ‘Right. Yes. Thank you, sir. So, Mr Bey here was in charge of the 47th Turkish Regiment. Apparently he gave our boys what for at Lonesome Pine, sir.’

‘We all know who
Major
Hasan is. Thank you, Lieutenant.’ Hilton turns to Hasan.

‘
Merhaba. Hoş geldiniz.
’

Hasan smiles, his eyebrows raised, clearly taken aback by the greeting in his own tongue. ‘
Hoş bulduk. Türkce biliyor musunuz
?’

An uncomfortable silence descends as it becomes apparent that Hilton has exhausted his conversational Turkish. Hasan holds his gaze. Hilton is forced to break the deadlock.

‘English?’

‘No, I’m Turkish. But I speak French, German, Greek and a little English. What would you prefer?’ Hasan replies.

Hilton swallows. ‘Let’s stick with English for now. How was your ride out here?’

Hasan ignores the question. He looks across the desolate ridges and deserted beaches. ‘I see you have finally taken the peninsula.’

Hilton smiles. ‘Yes. Lost the battle, won the war. Chai?’

The two men perch on folding canvas chairs inside Hilton’s tent. They have little to say to each other as they drink tea and swat flies. Looming above them, pinned to a board, is a large map of the Gallipoli Peninsula.

Hilton coughs, businesslike. ‘We’ve started working this area . . .’ He gestures at the map with his teaspoon. ‘From the Nek to Hill 971. I assume they briefed you fully at the War Office in Constantinople? We would appreciate your help locating our dead.’

Hasan raises an eyebrow. ‘
Your
dead?’

‘We lost ten thousand Anzacs here at Gallipoli. We still don’t know where half of them are.’ Hilton’s voice betrays his anger. ‘Some were buried properly but a lot of the graves have been lost or washed away since we evacuated . . .’

‘You didn’t evacuate. You retreated,’ Hasan corrects the Anzac officer. ‘So now you build your cemetery on our soil?’

‘I have a duty to honour them, and that’s what I’ll be doing – with or without your help.’

Hasan studies Hilton. ‘You were here?’

Hilton answers with a brusque nod. ‘First Light Horse.’

Hasan seems to hesitate, to relent. ‘What do you need of me?’

Hilton draws a deep breath and returns to the map, taking advantage of the detente born of shared experience. ‘The land has changed, but you know this area better than any of us. I’m hoping you could help us locate the units we lost track of.’

‘I’ll need a horse.’ Hasan finishes his tea and stands, moving towards the tent’s door. He pauses. ‘You know, we lost seventy thousand men here . . . at Çanakkale. For me, this place is one big grave.’

Before Hilton can reply, Hasan turns and walks out into the daylight.

Hilton rides on horseback along the ridge, at the head of a trail of mounted soldiers. The view across the Dardanelle Straits, the gateway to Constantinople and the Black Sea, is idyllic. Gentle waves glitter as a cluster of small, brightly painted fishing boats bob in the wake of a white steamship bound for the city.

Behind Hilton, Greeves urges his horse into a trot and draws alongside Sergeant Tucker and Privates Dawson and Thomas. He throws his left arm out in an expansive gesture, indicating the perfect panorama below.

‘Dunno what you fellas were belly-aching about. It’s the Garden of bloody Eden here!’ As one, Thomas, Dawson and Tucker give him a dead stare and keep riding in a grim procession.

Hilton reins in his horse briefly, allowing Hasan to catch up with him. Hasan indicates the summit.

‘If your troops had taken this hill we would have been finished. You nearly did it on the first day. It would all have been over so quickly.’

‘How close did we get?’

Hasan points to a spot some fifty yards away. ‘Here.’

Hilton shakes his head incredulously.

Hasan continues, ‘When you landed there were only two hundred of us here. There were two thousand of you.’ He stops for a moment. ‘But we had more to lose.’

As they speak they nudge their horses on towards the crest of the hill. They halt suddenly. To a man, no one utters a sound.

In stark contrast to the lush approach, spread out below them is a nightmarish landscape. Barren and pockmarked with shell craters, the scorched terrain is knee-deep in the detritus of war: used shells, fraying and faded packs, shattered ammunition boxes, rusting cannon and skeins of barbed wire. But the most unsettling aspect of this surreal and apocalyptic tableau is the endless and tangled harvest of sun-bleached bones protruding from a field of rotting, shredded khaki uniforms.

The unmistakable pall of death drifts towards them on the warm Aegean breeze as a murder of crows takes wing.

Sergeant Tucker turns to Greeves.

‘There you go, sir. Your Garden of Eden.’

T
he boy teeters on the edge of a vertiginously steep dirt mound. A rough and rutted path leads down the hill, dropping away beneath the front wheel of his rusty bicycle.

Long brown hair falls across his brow. He sweeps it aside. Glacier-blue eyes squint. He looks down to where his brothers wait on either side of the path below: Henry on the left, Ed on the right.

Braced and ready. In neat piles at their feet, sticky clods of horse shit.

‘C’mon, Art. No more muckin’ around. It’s time,’ Henry shouts.

‘Ready
. . .
Steady
. . .
GO!’

The boy smiles and launches himself over the edge of the mound, careening down the hill at breakneck speed.

Ed and Henry whoop and laugh, chucking their ammo with deadly accuracy.

He picks up momentum as he flies down the hill. Darts, weaves, tries to duck, but his brothers chalk up more hits than misses.

‘Woohoo!’ A war cry. Victorious. ‘Six! I got him! Art – you’re a goner!’

Freckled from head to toe with shit, the boy laughs, throws his hands sky high. The bike hits a small, rickety ramp.

The boy and the bike part company, airborne.

He spreads his arms and legs, cruciform against the cornflower-blue sky. His brothers cheer, a new volley of dung flying his way. A sting and slap to the guts as he belly whacks into the murky waters of the dam.

His brothers’ peals of laughter ring even underwater.

The cloudy water reveals nothing
. . .
He feels around
. . .
mud
. . .
Is that
. . .
? Yes, feels like a bottle
. . .
more mud
. . .

That’s it. The handlebar.

The boy emerges from the water, fist raised in victory. He drags the bike with him, laughing so hard he nearly chokes.

Ed and Henry roll on the muddy bank, laughing fit to split.

The water laps at the shore.

A
n insistent clanging, clear in the morning air, summons the passengers on deck. The engine chugs, sending vibrations shuddering through Connor’s corner of the four-berth cabin. The ship dips and rises, waves slapping against its sides as it drives through the choppy swell.

He sits on a small bed, flicking through Art’s diary. Gently, he takes the photo of his three sons from between its well-worn pages and slips it into his jacket pocket. He presses the book between his palms; the leather is now warm and yielding. Connor has come to know every crease and fold better than he knows his own hand.

Beside him sits his small, neatly packed brown suitcase. He is travelling light. Besides the clothes he is wearing he has a pair of trousers, two spare shirts, underwear and socks and a handkerchief. His personal effects are equally scant: a leather toiletries bag containing a comb, a razor and a shaving brush. He has also packed Lizzie’s gold locket, inside which is a lock of her hair. At the beginning of the journey it still carried her scent and Connor opened the clasp in the mornings and took a deep breath so he could rise with her. Now, after six weeks, all he can smell below deck is bilge water and coal. He places Art’s journal carefully on top of his clothes, next to a small blue book, its boards tooled and inscribed with the familiar elaborate gilt lettering,
The Arabian Nights
. He closes the case and snaps the latch.

From a distance, Connor hears the mournful low call of a foghorn, and wheeling above, the now familiar cawing of sea birds.

But today, cutting across the sounds of life at sea to which he has become so accustomed, there’s something else. A melodic yet discordant trill. Not quite music, yet still musical. A voice . . . perhaps hundreds of voices.

He moves to the porthole. On this side of the ship there’s little to see. Faint lights glitter along the distant shore, and the inky shadow of hills are outlined against the early dawn sky. The source of the sound is unclear.

Connor grasps a brass door handle damp with sea mist, turns it, and steps out onto the deck. He looks towards the ship’s prow. His fellow passengers stand in a cluster at the rail.

The sky behind them glows peach as sunrise approaches, illuminating the city that lies ahead. On the horizon, Connor sees an endless procession of domes and thin, pointed towers reaching heavenward. Teetering ruined walls encircle the steep hills and stretch out of sight along a low, sweeping plain.