Look down in mercy, p.16
Look Down in Mercy, page 16
As soon as he arrived back he sent for the platoon sergeants and passed on the gist of what he had been told. Then he settled down and tried to sleep away the time of waiting. But sleep refused to come, an ant would crawl over his bare legs, a fly settle on his face, he would open his eyes and peer up through the thick leaves, trying to catch the sparkle of the sun as they rustled in the wind. As the minutes dragged by he became more and more restless. He decided to go back to the battalion headquarters on some pretext or another. He could find out then if the Gurkhas had already passed. That at least would be a positive piece of information; once that particular uncertainty was out of his mind he thought he would be able to come back and sleep.
He got to his feet and as he did so he heard the faint hum of planes in the far distance, and he went to the edge of the plantation. The noise slowly grew louder but they were flying very high, it took him a long time to pick them out of the dazzling sky but at last he found them and counted five groups of six. Now they were heading away from him toward the north. It gave him a strange feeling to know that in a comparatively few minutes those men above him would be over some town and that people would die, a town that perhaps it would take him days to reach on foot. And of the tiny specks of silver now disappearing one by one, not all would necessarily come back, some might fall out of the blazing sun, smashed, full of fire and tearing icy wind, their goggled and parachuted crew already paralyzed with death.
He stepped back under the trees. But the Japanese would not mind at all, he thought. Even if they jumped out of the plane they probably wouldn’t bother to open their parachutes. A large hunting wasp flew past him and he watched it out of sight, then he went back again and leaned against his tree. Anson was on the ground unpacking his haversack and he looked up at Kent.
“I’m just checking over exactly what you’ve got, I’m afraid it’s not very much. About forty cigarettes, two tins of bully, all your small washing tackle, and a spare pair of socks. We lost everything else in the lorry, except I have got a vest of yours in my pack.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kent said indifferently, “at least I can’t, lose anything else, and it’s better than having to lug a mass of stuff around. You ought to be very pleased.”
“Well, I’m not, you had a lot of good stuff that you’ll need sooner or later. Underclothing and shirts, and that sleeping bag. It’s still cold at night.”
“As soon as you can you had better get some more stuff off the Q.M.,” Kent said. The domestic details bored him, and he was moving away when he saw Tarrant and the C.O. coming toward him.
“I’m having a quick look round, Tony, also to tell you to let the men eat now and be ready to move off at one o’clock. I’ve just heard from Brigade that we are not to wait for the Gurkhas after all. You will be the last to leave the plantation, Maguire will be in front of you, and he leaves at twelve forty-five. Tarrant tells me that you’re all right at the moment for bully beef, but I’ll send a truck over here when I get back and you can issue some more out. There will also be a tank of water for the men to fill up their bottles, and make quite certain that they do. We shall march at least until it’s dark, and then possibly form a battalion perimeter for the night. I shall be in the front of the battalion if you want me for anything.”
When he finished looking round the position and had moved on to the next company Kent turned to Tarrant, “That’s fine,” he said. “I had a nasty feeling when I saw him that we were going to have to help those Gurkhas out of a road block or something, or else hang about here for most of the afternoon and then have to march all night. This is just what I wanted to have happen.”
But at two o’clock that afternoon Kent was still in the plantation. He had moved down to his starting point at the proper time only to find that the battalion was halted along the track in front of him. No one knew what was the cause of the delay, there were the usual crop of rumors, the most likely one being that brigade headquarters had started to withdraw and then halted some miles down the road while a company of Indian troops were sent on ahead to investigate a report that a party of Japanese had been seen crossing the road. By half-past two he began to despair of their leaving the plantation that day, and he looked back at the dark avenues of trees with resentment, but suddenly there was a stir in the company in front of them and Maguire shouted back that they were moving. As he left the plantation he had an unreasoning sense of great relief.
Once on the track again the heat and glare of the sun seemed to strike to the back of his eyes. Although he marched at the head of the company in order to keep a proper interval between himself and Maguire he was soon powdered with dust. In front of him the long line of men disappeared in the haze of dust kicked up by their feet, and sometimes a lorry piled high with bedding and stores would go lurching past sending a thick cloud of choking dust rolling over them like a destroyer laying a smoke screen.
It took almost an hour for the column to spread itself out to its proper intervals, and until it did there were continuous halts ranging in time from a few seconds to several minutes. Although they had only covered a short distance in the hour and a half Kent felt as if he had been marching for a long time and already he would have liked a long drink of water. But once they started moving at a proper pace he settled down and forgot his thirst. At the end of the second hour he walked back down the line and once more warned the platoon sergeants to stop any men drinking water before he gave permission. The breeze was beginning to slacken, and although the day showed signs of wearing itself out it was still extremely hot. The scrub and trees seemed to absorb the fading-wind like blotting paper, and the sweat that had dried on their faces while it trickled toward their necks now dripped from their chins and glistened on their throats. Some of the men sat on the ground with their knees drawn up, smoking cigarettes, but the majority had slipped off their packs and lay on their backs with their eyes closed.
They started marching again, and had covered nearly a mile when Kent heard machine gun firing and then the sound of planes. Before he could shout instructions the column of men, in front and behind, ran jumping into the scrub and threw themselves down. He looked back quickly and saw a single plane appear above the track and he, too, ran into the cover and lay on the ground. As the plane passed over him the guns started firing and then that sound was drowned by the crack and burst of bombs. Three more planes followed the first, firing indiscriminately into the cover on either side of the track. The noise of the planes died away and Kent lay on the ground for a few moments wondering if they would return. Then he got up and shouted to the men to re-form. In front of him he could see groups of men making their way awkwardly to the edge of the scrub, carrying casualties. He went quickly back asking if anyone had been wounded, but apart from one man who had cut his knee deeply on a stone they were untouched.
It took a long time for the column to move again, and when it did it was with the same exasperating halts every few minutes while messages were shouted down the line warning everyone to keep their proper intervals and avoid bunching. By the time Kent reached the first group of wounded men they were already being lifted onto stretchers; as two medical orderlies bent down to lift a man Kent looked quickly away, as though he could avoid hearing the gasp of protest. An ambulance came down the track, its well-sprung body swaying from side to side, and he heard someone say that if they weren’t dead after a mile of that they must be shamming now.
Farther on there was another little cluster of wounded, and just beyond them and out of their sight were two bodies with their hats laid over their faces. One was unmarked, but the other was soaked in a mess of darkening scarlet from his waist to his knees. As the column went by, the same question was asked of the silent stretcher-bearers time and time again, “Who are they, who are they?” Once they were out of hearing some of the men laughed and said that they were lucky not to have to go on marching and wondered what their first request would be when they reached St. Peter.
The sun was now low enough in the sky to shine under the brims of their hats, but still strong enough to sting the sweat and dust-sore skin. Kent’s thirst had slowly grown until now he could think of nothing else but how he would relieve it if he could. First he would skin a large cool peach—he could feel the wet soft flesh as he broke off one half and crammed it into his mouth, crushing it with his tongue, and feeling the juice pouring down his throat. Then he picked up a cut-glass tumbler and turned on the cold-water tap in the scullery at home. He turned it on to its fullest and stood there watching the water splashing furiously into the sink. It wetted his hands with spray and when he could bear it no longer he thrust the tumbler under the tap and drank, and again and again and again.
He put his hand behind him and felt his water bottle; he wondered how much longer he could go on before he would have to drink. A long time yet, he told himself; I won’t touch it until I know for sure that I can get some more. The jingle of the last words stuck in his mind, and he went on repeating them over and over, fitting them to the rhythm of his marching.
Just before the sun set the column halted, and he thought that they had stopped for the night, but no message reached him and they went on again, marching in rose-colored dust on a pale-coral track. He decided to speak to Maguire while it was still light enough to find him, and telling Anson to stay where he was he hurried on and found Maguire marching silently by the side of his company sergeant-major. As he came level with him he noticed that Maguire’s face was drawn and tired, he would have looked haggard if the pink glow from the sunset had not lent a spurious air of health and color to his face; when he saw Kent he smiled questioningly. Kent had had to walk quickly for some distance in order to catch up with him, and he was too tired to waste words, and the skin of his face felt too hot and tight for him to smile, he thought that the skin would split if he did.
“Have you had any message yet about tonight?”
“No, but Rogers just sent word back that the C.O. was sent for and has gone to Brigade in the jeep. Apart from that I know nothing, but if he has gone you can take it for sure that we shan’t halt and settle in while it’s still light.”
“Then I hope we go on a bit, the sooner we get to the river the better. Thanks, Tom.”
Kent stepped to one side and waited for the head of his company to reach him. It took him a little time to get back into the rhythm of marching, but once he did his mind wandered about as erratically as a child in a summer wood. He tried to concentrate on immediate problems, but it was impossible; in the middle of evolving a plan if the company was ambushed after dark he suddenly remembered a dinner in a Jermyn Street restaurant shortly before he was sent abroad, then he recalled the theater they had gone to afterward and the taxi that had broken down in Coventry Street. He tripped over a lump of earth and jerked his mind back; in another quarter of an hour it would be completely dark, if they were ambushed would it be better to form a circle of his own company or join up with Maguire? Or do neither, but bring the last platoon up and put it on the other side of the track with Tarrant in command? What tip had he given the driver? Something ridiculously extravagant considering they had had to walk the rest of the way and were late for the first act. Afterward they had gone on to the Florida and sat there for hours, occasionally dancing to relieve his boredom, having little spurts of gaiety at longer and longer intervals, stupid with brandy and cigarette smoke. He was sure that, secretly, everyone had longed to go to bed, and when at five o’clock he and Celia had gone back to their hotel he had made himself sick in the bathroom.
He suddenly found himself blundering into the back of Maguire’s company, which had halted. He passed word back for his own men to close up, and saw by his watch that they were not due to halt for another quarter of an hour. He went back and spoke to Tarrant, and as he made his way to the front again he asked one or two men about their feet and once more warned the platoon sergeants not to let the men drink or smoke without permission. He thought he heard the sound of a cork being furtively pulled, but he was not sure, and although he felt a quick stab of anger he said nothing.
The men sat or stood silently in the darkness; occasionally if they realized that he was near them they would ask each other in an audible aside when did they think they would sodding well get something to eat, or stop this bollocking march. It annoyed him that they should vent their exhausted irritability on him, they knew that it was not his fault, and that in fact he had more reason to be tired than they.
As he reached the head of the column Anson bumped into him. “They’re moving off, sir,” he said quickly and Kent shouted to Sergeant Peters to lead on while he and Anson hurried past them until they were marching head to tail with the company in front. It was much more tiring marching in the dark; during the daytime one subconsciously watched the ground in front, it was as though there were eyes in the toes of one’s boots that ceaselessly signaled to step an inch short to avoid that stone, a fraction higher to avoid that slight unevenness, and now those eyes could no longer see, and the pace too seemed quicker than before. It was the reverse tendency of the morning, when the platoon and sections were stretching themselves out at long intervals; now everyone was closing up to keep contact. Kent tried to set a steady pace but he dared not risk falling too far behind, he was afraid that the track might suddenly fork or that the men in front might file off into a plantation or clearing in which to spend the night. In the darkness he might miss it and go blindly on. Behind him he could hear the men grumbling and swearing as they stumbled over the uneven ground, and at last he turned round and angrily told them to close up and keep quiet. There was silence for some time, and then a man tripped over a stone and almost fell, the man in front of him cursed and the muttering started once more.
Now that it was dark the temperature fell rapidly, but the pace of the march more than offset any relief they might have gained from this. Kent and everyone else was streaming with sweat and his nostrils were so clogged with dust and dried mucus that he was forced to breathe through his mouth, which seemed to have lost all the qualities of a mouth, it was completely dry and he could hardly move his tongue. Wherever the straps of his equipment rested the skin was chafed and sore, and his drawers seemed to have worked themselves into a large wad of wet hard cloth in his crotch and the insides of his thighs were burning. He realized now that the previous halt must have been meant as a ten minutes’ rest and that although he was feeling exhausted and wanted to lie down almost more than he wanted to drink, there was at least another forty minutes’ marching to be endured.
He started repeating to himself, “Everything must come to an end,” over and over again, saying the words in his mind with tremendous emphasis; it helped to push his physical discomfort a little way into the background, it was a thread that guided him away from reality. Everything must come to an end, to an end; he wished that he had realized that his first term at his public school, when the years until he should be eighteen stretched away more solid and enduring than eternity itself. Next week’s half holiday was unimaginably remote, the end of the first term would happen in a hundred years’ time, he would stop being a fag when the world was cold.
But on the other hand if he had known that everything must come to an end it would have spoiled the university for him, and once he had settled down time had stood still, and he could never imagine any other existence except to be at Cambridge. He used to lie in a punt with two or three other friends, someone who enjoyed it doing the work and someone to play the phonograph. “Time on My Hands.” Lying flat on the cushions trailing his fingers in the cool waters, watching the May sky above the willow trees through the blue spirals of cigarette smoke, listening to the sentimental music, filled with the contentment of being nineteen and squandering one’s days on nothing, with the thought of neglected work as an added pleasure. Going to afternoon movies, sitting in one’s rooms in college arguing pointlessly with friends, tipsy on cheap claret. He remembered an inn outside Cambridge on the road to London, there was a garden set with tables and chairs where they used to sit in the late spring. The tulips would be full blown, bent over by the weight of their curled-back petals, and the apple blossom loose on the boughs above them. He remembered one evening sitting with his friends, the empty bottles of beer stacked in front of them as a public testimonial to their drinking prowess, and a light rain began to fall. Out of bravado they had stayed at the table while the rain dripped through the leaves and the apple blossom fell, and they forced the gassy beer down and racked their fuddled brains for another dirty story.
In the hot sweaty darkness he smiled to himself; it didn’t sound very romantic, rather worse than tiresome in fact, yet it was preferable to being a little older and staying up until five in the morning in a night club drinking brandy with one’s wife, at least the garden had been fresh and being drunk in public still a novelty. But however it appeared to other people there was a magic in that garden, although what its essence was eluded him; a strange compound of innocence and timelessness.
And it had come to an end, with a worse than mediocre degree, debts that had seemed crushing, one or two highly undesirable sports jackets, and an assortment of beer tankards and ash trays given him on his twenty-first birthday. But he would always remember the rain in the garden; if only it would rain now, he thought, and lifted his face to the sky as though he expected the cool drops to splash into his parched mouth. The stars shone and there was a soft glow in the east spreading from the rising moon. Already darkness held a promise of light, and one could pick out the verge on which they marched from the whiter track. The pace too had slackened, and the men no longer cursed and muttered, if only because they were too exhausted.
The column halted again for its ten minutes’ rest, and Kent passed back an order that everyone was to take off his equipment and lie down. He and Anson went a little apart from the rest of the company, and when Anson had lain down Kent lay on his back at right angles to him and rested his head on his chest. He could feel Anson’s shirt wet against the back of his neck, but he was past caring, he lay with his eyes shut luxuriating in every moment of the exquisite relief of not marching, feeling the sweat trickling down his face. He picked his nose clear of the clogged dirt and kept his mouth closed, the saliva spread again from beneath his tongue and he let it collect until he had enough to swallow. His forearms and hands rested in the dust by his side, the sweat was rolling off them, and when he moved his fingers he knew that they were coated in dust. Something small crawled onto his knee and then stopped as if wondering which way to go. He told himself with indifference that if it went up his shorts he would have to do something to stop it, otherwise it could please itself. He heard the men in front begin to move, and thought angrily that they had not been allowed their full ten minutes —when he looked at his watch he saw that they had been resting for a quarter of an hour.
