Page 72 of Last Letter Home
‘There are more of them out there,’ Paul remembered suddenly. ‘I mean there’s another patrol. When their officer told them to fall back, he said they should find the others, I heard him.’
‘Damn.’ Andrews killed the torch and was silent for a moment. Then, in the far distance, it was as though a firework display started up, cracks and explosions, sparks, then a plume of flame.
‘Do you think that’s the rest of our lot?’
‘Who can tell? They’re certainly having a party.’
Without a word, Andrews led the way down the escarpment, pistol in hand, Paul following with the torch. The wounded man tensed, tried to inch away. ‘Shh, we have come to help you,’ Andrews said, checking him quickly for weapons.
Paul started to speak to him softly in German. He was about Paul’s own age, a compact, muscular young man, his face distorted with pain. Ahead, another explosion lit up the sky. The blood over the clutching hands gleamed like metal.
‘Tell him we have to move him.’
Paul translated and asked him his name.
‘Hans.’
‘All right, Hans.’ He and Andrews each slid an arm under a shoulder and with much groaning and cursing they managed to drag him up to the others. There Andrews sent half a dozen of the men on various duties, while the remainder of the platoon crowded round their captive, and Paul, kneeling beside him, sensed their hostility. He ignored them and gently continued to reassure the young man as he applied pressure to the wound in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Someone pushed a phial into his hand. Morphine. He felt for a fleshy part of the boy’s arm and jabbed the needle in.
‘What do we do with him now?’ Duffy asked, but nobody knew. They were marooned, and somewhere out in the darkness this man’s pals were undoubtedly searching for them.
Paul bound up Hans’ wound, but still the blood seeped through. He gave him sips of water from his own bottle and tried to keep him conscious by speaking to him in whispers. Hans mumbled that he had a brother, who was also in the army, but he didn’t know where.
First one, then the other of the patrols returned. They’d found no one. Water and biscuits were passed around, then the patrols dispatched again. Hans was quieter now, he found speaking more difficult. Paul soaked a handkerchief and mopped the sweat from the man’s brow. He could see Hans’ face more clearly, the gleam of his teeth as he shifted in discomfort. Gazing around, it seemed that the stars were fading and the sky was lightening. Dawn was on its way. The light grew stronger. Paul could see insects moving in the clumps of coarse desert grass. Ahead, all was quiet, but a great cloud of smoke hung over the horizon where the front line must be. He glanced down. The boy was more peaceful now. He seemed to be sleeping, though from time to time his mouth twisted and he whimpered.
It had been the longest night Paul could remember, worse even than after they’d taken his father. He had killed a man, but this rite of passage had not made him feel braver or more grown-up. It had simply happened, been the next thing he’d had to do, without thinking. And here he was trying to save the life of another who, for all he knew, he’d been responsible for wounding in the first place. He didn’t feel good about this either. It was so random, pointless, he thought. Why should one die and another live?
His thoughts were broken as he became aware of a low, continuous rumble. He was wondering where it came from when one of the others, Pounder, that was his name, leaped up, in his reckless, terrier-like eagerness, shading his eyes to look east, behind them, into the glare of the rising sun. ‘Lorries,’ he said in excitement. ‘They’re ours, lads. We’re saved.’
‘Get down, you fool,’ Andrews snarled and Pounder obeyed, but heads were snapping round to make out what was moving in the dusty distance. Soon it was clear. A convoy of trucks was advancing along the marked-out track. Oblivious to possible danger, the men rose and waved their hats at them until they slewed to a stop in the sand hundreds of yards away. An officer jumped out and began to jog towards them.
‘We’ll get you to a doctor soon,’ Paul told Hans, but the young man slept on, twitching and gasping in his dreams. When Paul inspected the bandage on the wound, he was shocked to see that the bloody mess was crawling with tiny glistening flies.
Thirty-three
Briony woke to daylight filtering through the curtains, confused by the fleeing coat-tails of a dream full of shouting and gunfire. The alarm hadn’t gone off. Had she actually set it? She threw off the duvet, causing a sigh and crackle of paper, and sat up, breathing a curse at the sound of something solid hitting the floor, the cigar box. It lay open on its end, its contents spilling across the boards. She seized her travel clock and blinked at it until the hands on its face came into focus. Half-past seven. Relief. Was today Wednesday? Yes. No teaching until eleven. She lay back on the pillows, trying to recall whether there was anything she’d be late for. Nothing, she decided. She sighed as she slid out of bed, gathered Paul’s letters together and shoved them back into the box. She must have fallen asleep reading them. The result was they’d taken over her dreams.
As she showered, she mulled over what she’d read. Paul had had his first brush with the enemy. He’d killed one of his own countrymen, then saved the life of another. He’d mentioned in a later letter that the man had been sent to a field hospital and survived, presumably to be sent to a POW camp when he’d recovered. Paul’s commanding officer, Major Goodall, had summoned Paul and asked him for a full account of events, had commended him for his ‘smart work’, which Paul had mentioned to Sarah with amusement rather than pride. He said he was ’glad to have a chap who could speak German in the ranks’, but that our Captain Richards looked none too pleased at this. Briony was surprised that all this detail had passed the censor.
Subsequent letters had been written over the following year. She must remind herself of the significant dates in the Egyptian campaign, she mused as she turned off the shower and reached blindly for her towel. The high commands of both German and British forces had changed over that long dangerous summer of 1942. After she’d dressed, she pulled down a book from the shelves that lined her small living room and turned to a chronology. Tobruk had fallen on 21 June. That was when Paul Hartmann’s ship had docked at Suez. A few days later his company had joined the bedraggled remnants of the Eighth Army, defending the Egyptian frontier. By 30 June, the Germans under Field-Marshal Rommel had beaten them back to the little border town of El Alamein, and many of the foreign populace of Cairo and Alexandria fled in panic. How close defeat had been for the Allies. It was therefore an extraordinary turnaround that as October segued into November, the Eighth, finding new heart under the command of Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery, routed the Germans at the third battle of El Alamein and over the following months, beat Rommel back across Libya and into Tunisia. The Egyptian campaign was finally won.
‘Ah, Briony. I’d begun to think you weren’t honouring us with your presence today. A word, when you’re ready, if you wouldn’t mind.’
‘Of course. Give me a moment.’
Briony had been unlocking her office at ten o’clock when Professor Gordon Platt, the Head of Department, appeared in the doorway of his, across the corridor. She shoved her bag into her desk drawer, took off her coat and tried to ignore her coffee craving as she hurried over to hear what He-who-must-be-obeyed wanted.
Platt’s office was at least twice the size of hers, with a giant antique desk before which was arranged a selection of uncomfortable high-backed chairs. The long Victorian sash windows looked out over the courtyard, where there was usually something of interest going on. During the last protests against fees, students had erected billboards on the grass that featured a cartoon of the then Minister for Higher Education in rather a vulgar pose. Gordon Platt had kept his blinds down all day. In retaliation someone had thrown raw eggs at his window, to which his response, very stupidly, was to call the police. Consequently, his rating with the student body of the college stood at an all-time low.
He was a tall, rangy man in his late fifties, with thinning hair that might once have been an enchanting curly blond, but which was now greying, scanty on top and too long over the ears. He had a penchant for wearing bright-coloured corduroy trousers. Sometimes they were brick-red, on other occasions mustard. On days of important college meetings they would be a more sober maroon or navy. Today was a mustard day and his olive socks didn’t quite go, Briony noticed as he came round the desk and shut the door behind her.
‘Now,’ he said, sitting down again in his comfortable chair. He looked over his bifocals at her with that ruthless, searching manner that had got him where he was today. ‘I need to talk to you about our engagement programme. The Vice-Chancellor thinks the department needs to be doing more to reach out to the public, but frankly I don’t have the time, so I’d like you to step up to the plate.’
Briony stared at him in bemusement, the thought of the work this might entail rushing through her mind like a giant wave. Talks to schools, conferences, lectures, exhibitions for the public. Essential these days to justify universities’ existence. Although other members of staff and graduate students would be actually delivering them, being the organizer on top of all the other things for which she was responsible would take up a great deal of time. Time she didn’t have. She gave a sharp intake of breath to steady herself.
‘I see that you’ve put in a bid for promotion,’ Platt went on, rocking back in his chair, his hands linked behind his head, giving himself the appearance of a large, malevolent insect. ‘I’m not sure that you’ll get it, mind, it’s quite a step up for someone like you, but taking this task on will improve your chances.’
Great. He’d delivered a double blow. Not only did he belittle her ambitions, but he’d made it plain that refusal of his request now would do her no good at all.
