None, Alistair had said, since the obvious one—how will I possibly bear it?—seemed unwelcome. The operation would have seemed less daunting if the surgeon had been able to acknowledge, even tangentially, that it was an awful thing to happen to a person. Perhaps there were simply certain procedures, such as wielding a scalpel or firing a 3.7-inch anti-aircraft piece, that were always going to affect the subject more than the operator.
The truck lurched and swayed on the ruined roads. Briggs whistled. In the intervals between the deepest potholes the motion was soothing.
“Isn’t it something, sir?”
Alistair opened his eyes. Briggs was indicating a sweep of countryside beyond the walls of Valletta.
“Oh, you like it?” said Alistair. “Me, too.”
“The people can’t do enough for you. It’s like Liverpool, only with beaches.”
“Think you’ll come back on holiday?”
“After the war I’ll bring my wife here and we’ll open a pub.”
“Good show. Germanic or traditional, do you think?”
“I think the English style might be more of a hit with the locals, sir, at least for the next thousand years or so.”
“You have it all worked out.”
“Don’t you, sir?”
‘Oh, I don’t know what I’ll do after the war. But that’s officers for you, isn’t it? Each pip on these epaulettes represents a point we are missing.”
“I’m glad you said it, sir. I couldn’t possibly.”
They drove a little way further and then a twenty-millimeter shell from an enemy 109 shattered the windshield, punched through Briggs’ chest at the level of the sternum and continued through the driver’s seat. Four more shells followed, two piercing the cab and two coming through the canvas canopy. On impact with the truck bed the shells disgorged hot phosphorous into the wood. Fragments pierced the fuel tanks and lit them up. Alistair was out of the cab immediately, the battle instinct delivering him to the roadside ditch. He watched the truck roll slowly off the road and take fire. Briggs made no sound as he burned. The truck went up with an orange roar and clouds of back diesel soot.
Alistair scanned the sky but saw no sign of the fighter. He scrambled from the ditch and went as close as he could, holding his left hand before his face to shield against the heat. The truck’s canvas back was burned away, the metal hoops arching over a bed of embers. He went up to the cab, looked at Briggs, and wished he hadn’t. Up and down the road for thirty yards he searched both ditches, hoping that by luck the painting might have been thrown clear.
The road snaked away in both directions over low hills, its yellow gravel losing its distinctness in the yellow grass of the verges and the yellow stones of the walls. He couldn’t get his pipe lit.
After an hour a local man came by in a donkey cart. They said prayers for Briggs, and Alistair rode back on the tailgate of the cart. At the fort he reported the incident and stayed on his feet as far as the stone staircase, where he sank to his knees before he found the resources to climb up to his room. He only wanted to close his eyes for a few minutes—to collect himself—but the fort’s bells began almost immediately.
The fresh attack came in, the bombers dragging their shadows across the cerulean sea. Alistair took the jar of Tom’s jam from the arrow loop and put it safely on the floor. He sat on his cot and got out the phenacetin. He almost called for Briggs to make coffee.
After the raid, Simonson came up with an aerogramme. He flipped it onto Alistair’s desk, took off his cap and threw that at Alistair.
“Damned if I know why anyone would write to you. I got two letters, by the way, in case you were wondering which of us was the more popular.”
Alistair stretched for the letter. Simonson slouched in Alistair’s chair.
“You know what worries me about the enemy? It’s the violence. It is almost as if he thinks he can solve every problem this way. I sometimes feel we shall have trouble rubbing along.”
“Please don’t joke,” said Alistair. “Briggs was killed this morning.”
Simonson said nothing.
“It was my fault,” said Alistair. “I had him drive me, and we got lit up. I was taking my painting to the church to give it back.”
“No other cargo?”
“None.”
“No other purpose for the journey?”
“I’m afraid not. I falsified the requisition—said we were taking invasion maps to the outer forts.”
Simonson closed his eyes.
“Lost a Bedford, too. Burned. They’ll bring you my report.”
“What about you?” said Simonson. “Are you all right?”
Alistair stood, balancing with an effort. “Briggs had a wife.’
“Children?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“I shall have to write to her,” said Alistair.
“Do so, and then move on and don’t brood. You must be kind, of course. Write that he was killed by enemy action during a liaison operation.”
“Yes. But I’m telling you the truth, Douglas. As my senior officer.”
“And what would you have me do? Court-martial you?”
“You’ll probably have to, won’t you? When the lieutenant colonel sees my report, I shouldn’t think you’ll have much leeway.”
Simonson stood and paced. “You are a first-class officer and in any other circumstance you would have been back in London long ago, invalided out. You are exhausted and you showed poor judgment, that’s all.”
“It isn’t as if I’ve stolen a tin of margarine. I’ve killed Briggs.”
“The enemy killed him, and you must live with it as you can. If I were you I might weigh it against all the ones I had saved.”
“Oh, but who keeps count?”
“God almighty keeps count, you fool, and when He loses count He checks with me, as your commanding officer.’
Alistair had been flipping the aerogramme over and over in his good hand, absentmindedly, and now he noticed that it was from Hilda. The ghost of his hand moved by instinct to the flap of the envelope and pushed a thumb under it before it realized—with a feeling of absolute surprise that Alistair shared—that it did not exist. He overbalanced, his left arm having compensated for the movement of the phantom right. He fell sideways onto his cot. The letter fluttered to the floor. While Alistair struggled to a sitting position, Simonson retrieved it. “Here,” he said, “let me.”
“Please don’t,” said Alistair. “I’m not in the mood to read it.”
Simonson ignored him and opened it.
“Do you mind?” said Alistair.
“Don’t be so precious! We could use some diversion, don’t you think?”
Dear Alistair, I am sorry to write to you under difficult circumstances.
Oh,
thought Alistair:
Mary has been killed.
His blood began to stop.
I find it my duty to tell you that Mary has been acting outrageously.
Alistair went light with relief.
“Mary is your girl, yes?”
“I’m not sure.”
“No one is ever sure. And who is this Hilda?”
“Her friend. Here—give that back, won’t you?”
Simonson held the letter beyond his reach. “Your Mary seems to have got this Hilda’s back up.”
I will come to the point because it is something you have a right to understand, since I know that Mary has been writing to you.
“But she hasn’t, has she?”
“Not for months.”
“Or so you claim,” said Simonson.
“Just read, will you? Or give me the letter.”
Simonson snatched it away.
I am sorry to say that she has given up her duty on the ambulances and become a slave to morphine. Out of loyalty I would have said this was her business, but now our friendship is finished and I feel a duty to you that I no longer owe to Mary. Please know that I admired you from the moment we held hands.
“You dog!”
“But it isn’t like that,” said Alistair.
“Says you. I think we must let Hilda tell us what it is like.”
The worst of it is that Mary is consorting with Negroes. She spends days at the Lyceum and carries on as if it is the most natural thing. I suppose the morphine is her only counsel in the matter. Of course it is too awful for her parents. Their name suffers—I need not tell you how people talk.
Simonson whistled. “That really is the limit.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“Of course it’s not nothing. Damn it, man—you look as if the devil has you by the scrote.”
I wish you to know that I do not hope to reopen anything between us. My circumstances have changed and I would not be an attractive proposition to you in any case. Rather, please know that I choose to close things between us by discharging the duty of honesty that I owe you for the kindness you once showed me.
“How does she sign it?” said Alistair.
“ ‘
Sincerely
.’ ”
“I see.”
“And of course you are thinking ‘bitterly’, but you will see that she is right, I’m afraid. If half of what she says is true then you are best off without Mary, and this Hilda has done well to warn you.”
“I should like to know Mary’s side of the story.’
‘I shouldn’t be curious. Niggers are niggers, there’s no consortable kind. And morphine—my god. It’s filthy stuff. It’s for doctors and whores.”
Alistair flushed. “Mary taught children who were killed. And there was a friend of mine she was practically engaged to, and he was killed too. One makes allowances.”
“One makes allowances, Alistair, for fatigue and pain and misjudgment. But morphine and blacks? The woman is utterly fallen.”
“Women fall differently, that’s all. We die by the stopping of our hearts, they by the insistence of theirs.”
“Oh do give it up, Alistair. She’s lost.”
“I don’t believe that. Everything can be restored. If one won’t believe that, how does one endure all this?”
“One doesn’t have a choice, which makes the decision easier.”
Alistair sighed. “Anyway, I like her. A medic once told me to find a nice girl and forget the war—and so long as I think of Mary, I can.”
“So you won’t give her up?’
“Not even if I wanted to. Doctor’s orders, you see.”
“ ‘Well, poor Hilda’s letter seems to have backfired, wouldn’t you say?”
“Hilda’s not a bad egg, you know. She is funny, and rather pretty and . . . in another life, a girl like that . . .”
“Yes, but it is rather a desperate letter.”
“It is rather a desperate war.”
Simonson put his arm around Alistair’s shoulders and they looked out at the sea.
“What shall we do about you?” said Simonson.
“There is nothing to do. I’ll accept what punishment the lieutenant colonel thinks fitting. In the meantime I’ll arrange a burial detail for Briggs.”
“Briggs won’t mind if you don’t, you know. That’s what’s so admirable in the dead—they never ask one to do anything they wouldn’t do themselves.”
“Still, I should feel bad if I didn’t organize the service.”
“How would you like to fly to Gibraltar instead, and then take a boat on to England?”
“My number won’t come up for weeks.”
“But there is an evacuation order and then there is a social order. I was at school with half of Med Command. I could have them bump you onto the next flight out.”
“I’m not wild about taking another man’s place.”
“Then you’ll be here forever, because other men are cheerfully taking yours. Come on, we can have you away before the lieutenant colonel gets to your report. You’d be doing us both a favor—he wouldn’t enjoy disciplining you any more than I would.”
“It would only catch up with me in London.”
“It might not, you know. If this war has taught me anything, it’s that no crack is too small for our procedures to fall through.”
“Listen to us. Can you imagine us thinking such aw thing, a year ago?”
“Survival hadn’t been invented, then. One can hardly blame us for not using something that didn’t exist.”
Alistair smiled. “How long this war has been.”
“I’ll say. One hardly remembers how we lived before. Lightly—not worrying much.”
“Do you suppose we shall ever live that way again?”
“Oh, who knows? Given sufficient champagne and ether.”
“Maybe if we stay drunk to the end of our days, we shan’t remember.”
“That will take systematic drinking. We’ll need to stay drunk in cities, towns and villages. And in the hills and in the fields—How does it go?”
“And on the beaches and on the landing grounds.”
“Yes, exactly. We’ll have to stay drunk in some inaccessible spots.”
“And with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, don’t forget that.”
They leaned shoulders companionably and looked out to sea. Perhaps it was true, thought Alistair, that Septembers would come again. People would love the crisp cool of the mornings, and it would not remind them of the week war was declared. Perhaps there would be such a generation. Blackberries would ripen, carefree hands would pick them, and jam would be poured into pots to cool. And the jam would only taste of jam. People would not save jars of it like holy relics. They would eat it on toast, thinking nothing of it, hardly bothering to look at the label.
Alistair let the idea grow: that when the war’s heat was spent, the last remaining pilots would ditch their last bombs into the sea and land their planes on cratered airfields that would slowly give way to brambles. That pilots would take off their jackets and ties, and pick fruit.
He understood that he was finished with the war. He could not stop seeing the enemy airman, choking on yellow dust. He could not stop smelling Briggs, burning. It was too much. He had given everything that had been asked of him: fighting when fighting could be done, retreating when retreat was wise, and holding fast when it was all that remained. He had not favored himself, or measured his effort, or taken more than his share. He had done his best to help the men, and now all he wanted was to go home and see if he could help Mary. When set against the great corruption of the war, one’s own small rot seemed, if not excusable, then at least unexceptional.
“You know that I joined up voluntarily?” said Alistair.