‘You seem determined.’
‘But this one will soon be finished. France can’t go on. I can’t understand why you came out to look for me, John.’
‘I wanted to see what kind of a man you were. The glimpse I had of you when you came into my room by mistake wasn’t enough. I frightened you off with a gun then. I don’t think I could do the same now.’
‘So you won’t tell me?’
Both were silent. Explosions vibrated through the cold black night. ‘You know,’ John said at last, ‘we don’t want you to perish out here.’
‘Perish! What language. It’s good to be talking English again. But how can one perish? You mean die. What does dying mean? I once knew a man who had cancer six times but didn’t die. Each time he went right to the point of death, and then became completely cured — by the guiding hand of his own spirit, as far as anybody knew. He went down from fifteen stones to five. Worked in our shop at the factory, and we got fed up visiting him and having collections for a wreath. He developed anti-bodies when close to pegging out, then his weight shot up to normal for another few years. Nothing could get him, but everything had a try. He even had TB as a young man. Then syphilis between two bouts of cancer. Lost the use of his kidneys once. In the end, when he was nearly sixty, he got run over by a loaded furniture-van. I don’t suppose he could stand old age. So don’t talk to me about perishing or death. Why should I worry about that when I’m not yet thirty?’
Chapter Thirty-one
Half-a-dozen grey-haired donkeys as small as dogs were strung along the footpath laden heavily with baskets of mortar-shells, cartridge-belts, food and oil. A roll of cloud that hid the great drop below looked firm and solid, as if any legs that lost foothold or balance would not be let down by it. They ascended towards more wet cloud, then crossed a plateau so deep in snow that the donkeys, led by an old man, were barely visible.
‘It seems we forgot our skis,’ John said, hurrying after them. ‘But never mind. Perhaps we’ll come back one day for winter sports.’ Frank had made an overcoat from his only blanket, cut arm-gaps and head-hole and drawn it around him with a length of rope. John had at first insisted he take his sheepskin coat.
‘You need it more than me,’ Frank said.
‘I’d be honoured if you take it, though.’ There was a glint of compassion and self-sacrifice in John’s eyes that irritated him, a blackmailing mothering solicitousness that smouldered like a lamp about to tip over and ignite. It was an English attempt at dominance that he had not met from anyone in Algeria, a final feeble wish to make contact with another human being by the only means left to him, which in this case would mean John sickening from exposure. He felt sorry for him, but would not give in. ‘I’m warm enough, thanks. I’ve toughened up a bit this last year.’
‘Really,’ said John, hurriedly taking it off. ‘I shan’t need it.’ His sharp face was thinned by the fires that burned in him, giving the temporary impression that he could cross Siberia naked and survive.
‘If I faint from hunger,’ Frank said, ‘I might ask you for a loan of it, but not now.’ He swung his own blanket-overcoat around himself and drew in the rope. John had thrown away his suitcase and fitted the remains of his belongings into a copious but lightweight pack in which he still carried his loaded service revolver. He levelled this at Frank: ‘Take my coat,’ he cried. ‘Take my coat. You need it more than I do.’ His hand shook, and he rubbed sweat from his face.
Frank snatched the gun. ‘You should give this to somebody who has better use for it.’ But he laughed at the argument and gave it him back, and John put it into the pocket. ‘You wear it the first week,’ Frank said, ‘and I’ll wear it the second — if you still want us to share it.’
‘We’ll be on the ship in three days.’
‘That’s what they say. It’ll be more like three or four weeks.’
Saturated by snow up to the waist they followed the track of the donkeys. John had learned enough to know that Frank was looked on with special favour by the FLN. He was not one of the thousands of Germans who deserted in such numbers from the Foreign Legion merely to be repatriated back to the cushier life of the economic miracle in the hope that their war crimes had been forgotten. Dawley had actually driven a huge cargo of arms from Morocco south of the Monice Line, and stayed on to fight with them.
‘You can stuff personal comfort,’ Frank said at that night’s resting-place, ‘as far as I’m concerned. Black bread or white bread, it makes no difference to me, as long as I can think on it and move on it.’
The northern slopes of the Grande Kabylie, well-covered with cork and olive-trees, ran sharply down towards the sea. Frank and John Handley shared a cave with other soldiers. They entered through a maze of thorn-bushes — though the area was completely free of the enemy — into a space large enough to stand up in, a hideout running twenty feet back into the hillside. A further compartment which burrowed out at an angle was used as a storeroom for food, arms and ammunition. They walked down towards the sea, but were turned back by Sten-armed FLN pickets.
Winter mist that spread along the coast gave Frank sore guts and rheumatism. White chops foamed on the sea, and passing ships were invisible though their hooters sounded — lost, melancholy, but determined at any cost to make tracks away from this inhospitable and stricken coast. He didn’t blame them, wishing he could also leave it, in his present mood. ‘I’d like to live on a ship, John, be the only passenger on a large cargo-boat that goes around the world, on every route and eventually to all parts of it. I’d have a cabin and part of the deck to myself, and would see all regions of the earth from the ship: Spitzbergen, Macassar, Valparaiso, Odessa, Yokohama, New York, Socotra, Buenos Aires, Singapore, Sydney, Archangel, Java. I’d never go ashore again, but I would see people. That ship would be a bit of everything, monastery, brothel, zoo, office, hotel, floating beer-hall, workshop. Lots of people would pass through it. Yet no, as soon as people start coming into it the idea loses its attraction. I’d like to be a hermit-figure on that ship. In the end I’d want to die at sea, dropped into the warm tropical tin-opened ocean. How’s that for the end of the world, John? You never expected me to say such things, and I suppose it all comes from the miserable moth-eaten all-consuming past, and meeting someone like yourself who has just come out of it, and is trying to show me my place in it again. Such pipe-dreams have to be put in their place, pulled and stamped on if you can’t burn them while they’re still inside. And if you want to fight against the extinction of your better self you’ve got to scorch out the sort of past that can only give you such paltry and hollow pipe-dreams when you’re at the end of your tether for a day or two. Plough the past under the rubble, and sow the best sea-salt in it — that’s the only thing to do.’
They waited for the ship to come. Myra’s letter had dropped to pieces, soaked and creased to extinction, and he left the remains of it in the hollow bole of an olive-tree. It was a simple letter, giving news of Mark, wanting him to come back, and hoping he was alive and well. But it was warmly written, and he longed to see her and his son. He also wanted to visit Nottingham to find Nancy and his two other children. The only thing out of your past that was ineradicable was children. After three years he had a blind and painful yearning to see them again and help them, somehow wanted to live where they could all be close to him, an insane proposition that haunted him on this wild, saturating and hungry coast while he waited for some boat to take him off it.