Page 85 of Last Letter Home
Several nights after Sarah’s letter arrived, Paul was woken by a commotion. Someone, Sparky Webster, by the voice, was bidding them get up. ‘There’s a problem down in Tuana,’ he heard the man say. Paul wriggled out of his sleeping bag, pulled on his jacket and felt for his boots. From the other rooms he heard curses as the men scrambled to readiness.
Outside, staring across the valley, Paul saw that the little town was full of dancing lights. A distant crack of gunfire echoed all around, making them hurry. He fired up one of the trucks, Harry the other. The men piled in and they were off, slowly bumping and lurching down the winding track that clung to the hillside, the shaded beams picking out the ruts and potholes. It had been their first job here to clear the route of mines.
When they drove through town a few minutes later, the streets were empty, though lines of light glowed at the edges of many a window shutter. They found two of Sergeant Fulmer’s platoon prowling the square, puzzled chaps wondering where their pals were.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ Ivor Richards barked at them.
‘We don’t know, sir. A lot of noise like running footsteps woke us up,’ said one. ‘Sergeant Fulmer’s having a look-see. Told us to stay here. Something strange is going on, that’s for sure.’
‘What were the shots about?’
The two men peered at one another in the greyness. ‘That was the Sergeant. It was to get everyone off the streets. Don’t think anyone got hurt. Anyway, it seemed to work.’
‘And which way did Sergeant Fulmer go?’ One of the squaddies pointed past the damaged church towards a gloomy maze of streets beyond.
‘You stay here,’ Ivor said to Harry, ‘with you, you, you and you. Keep order and look after the vehicles. The others come with me. No lights or we’ll be walking targets for snipers.’
Paul followed Ivor, rifle at the ready, out of the square down the stony streets where the reflection of moonlight on limewashed walls lit their way. From time to time he was sure he saw a shadow, or heard a scrape of falling masonry, but when he paused to take stock there was nothing. At one point a whisper reached his ear, the sound of frightened breathing, but when he flicked his torch on and off, there was no one caught in the glare, so he wondered if he’d imagined it. He stumbled over rubble, the remains of a portico, followed Ivor round first one corner and then another, then heard his muttered curse. Several figures loomed out of the darkness and he felt the pit of his stomach drop. When he heard Sergeant Fulmer’s deep voice call out the password, relief spread through him.
‘It’s the storage barn, sir,’ Fulmer was telling Ivor. ‘The doors are locked, but we think they’ve been in there. Someone swiped our key.’
There was no need to ask who ‘they’ were. Paul was used to the townspeople being lumped into one suspect mass, ‘their’ strange customs, ‘their’ impenetrable language, ‘their’ passionate emotions, ‘their’ cunning or cowardice or superstition, this was how Fulmer and Richards spoke to one another about the local people, and most of the soldiers went along with it. Paul did, too, on occasion, when faced with frustration and failure on both sides to understand each other.
They set off once more until the street petered out into countryside. Here stood the black shape of a stone barn with metal doors on which had been set a large padlock. It was inside that supplies of food and seed corn had been locked.
In the absence of a key, Ivor Richards stepped across and ordered Paul to stab down at the padlock with the butt of his rifle and, when this didn’t work, he brought out his pistol and shot it apart. He prised open the double doors and a slice of a moon shone in on – nothing. It was empty.
For a moment they stood there amazed. ‘How did they get the key?’ they asked one another.
‘Let’s go,’ Richards shouted in a voice full of rage. ‘The damned idiots. How do they suppose we’re going to last till the next convoy?’
Nobody answered. Nobody liked to suggest that perhaps they’d been too hard on the locals, too mean with the rationing, but the difficult winter had made it necessary. Yes, it was hard to see children go hungry, but better to go carefully with what they’d been given, to eke it out with what they’d gleaned from the ruined harvest, the few animals that hadn’t been slaughtered or requisitioned. So they’d thought. This was the people’s revenge, though perhaps by their theft they were only hurting themselves.
‘Right,’ Richards said. ‘We’ll spread out, knock on the doors. Search everywhere. We can’t let them get away with this. Round up anyone who gets in our way.’
A low hum of alarm started in Paul’s head. They were supposed to be protecting these people who had suffered so much, not treating them as the enemy.
‘Get on with it.’ Richards’ cry was almost a screech. Everybody snapped to attention and set off in groups, muttering to each other as they went. A hammering on doors could soon be heard, the growl of British voices, Italian ones raised in response, the odd squeal of outrage, a baby crying.
‘What are you waiting for, Hartmann?’
Paul stared at Richards, then turned on his heel and followed the others. He could hear Richards’ angry breathing close behind him. Up and down the streets the soldiers were bringing out boxes of the missing rations. A truck was fetched from the square to load with them. Paul witnessed a woman who would not let go of her stash until a soldier wrenched the packets from her, begging her pardon. At another house the family would not open the door and Harry stood outside arguing with them. Richards snatched Harry’s rifle and smashed his way in. The mother and her three terrified young daughters were made to stand in the street as two soldiers fetched the boxes out. Only then were they allowed to return.
‘We’ll have to drive everything up to the villa,’ Richards shouted to one of the Stooges, who was edging the truck up the street. ‘Can’t trust them with it all down here.’
Hostile eyes followed them everywhere. Paul hadn’t felt such enmity from them before, a mute accusation that they were taking food from children’s mouths.
‘There’s someone skulking down there.’ Richards led the way along a tight alley with overhanging buildings where the darkness thickened. When they paused, the sound of fleeing footsteps could be heard. ‘Who’s there? Show yourself!’ Richards shouted. The footsteps faded.
‘They’ve gone,’ Paul said, hoping Richards would give up, but he was ignored. They rounded a corner and ahead the cobbles glistened with moonlight. A row of pots burgeoning with shrubs lined the wall of a shuttered villa. Paul’s eye slid past scattered outbuildings to see the edge of the hillside itself, glimpses of a ruined olive grove, the valley, a pit of darkness, beyond.
A clink, like a loose tile sliding on stone. Richards sank behind the shelter of the shrubs and Paul followed his example. Light gleamed from the pistol in Richards’ hand. ‘Sir,’ Paul whispered. ‘Whoever it is . . . they might not be armed.’
‘Shh,’ Richards interrupted. At the same moment he glimpsed a shadow fly along the ground beyond the end of the alley, heard a pebble bounce. Richards scampered to the corner of the villa, where he pressed himself against the wall and ducked his head round. ‘Nothing,’ he hissed to Paul. ‘Stay back.’ Paul saw the man’s hand tighten round his pistol. They waited for some time, absolutely still. There was only the sough of the breeze and the faraway bleat of a goat. The light was dimming as cloud wreathed the moon, and then they saw him.
A bulky figure separated itself from the silhouette of an outhouse and set off running along the hill’s edge, its strange shape appearing to be caused by the heavy box it was carrying. ‘Hey! Stop, you, presto!’ Richards tore after him, Paul loping in his wake.
The runner, he saw, was only a lad, his head encased in a bandana. He cast a look over his shoulder at his pursuers and it was close enough for Paul to see terror in his great dark eyes. The youth abandoned the box, zigzagged away through the rubble and veered back towards the town and now Paul caught his profile in the brightening moonlight. Recognition struck him like a sickening blow. It was at this exact moment that a gunshot split the night and the boy was lifted briefly into the air before slumping to the ground.
