Bruce Sutherland stood before the mirror and wondered what was going wrong with him. Sutherland from Sutherland Heights. Another distinguished career in a line of distinguished careers that went on, the same as England itself.
But these past weeks on Cyprus something was happening. Something tearing him to pieces. He stood there before the mirror and looked into his own watery eyes and wondered where it had all begun.
Sutherland: Good fellow to have on your team, said the yearbook at Eton. Right sort of chap, that Sutherland. Proper family, proper schooling, proper career.
The army? Good choice, Bruce old man. We Sutherlands have served in the army for centuries… .
Proper marriage. Neddie Ashton. The daughter of Colonel Ashton was a clever catch. Fine stock, Neddie Ashton. Fine hostess, that woman. She always has the ear of the right person. She’ll be a big help to your career. Splendid match! The Ashtons and the Sutherlands.
Where the failure, Sutherland wondered? Neddie had given him two lovely children. Albert was a real Sutherland. A captain in his father’s old regiment already, and Martha had made herself a splendid marriage.
Bruce Sutherland opened the closet and put on his pajamas. He touched the roll of fat about his waist. Not too bad for a man of fifty-five. He still had plenty of punch left.
Sutherland had come up fast in World War II by comparison to the slow tedious advancements in the peacetime service. There had been India, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Middle East. But it took a war to show what he was made of. He proved to be an exceptional infantry commander. V-E Day found him a brigadier.
He put on his bedroom slippers and sank slowly into a deep chair and dimmed the lamp and he was filled with remembering.
Neddie had always been a good wife. She was a good mother, a tremendous hostess, and a woman cut out for colonial service in the army. He had been very fortunate. When had the break come between them? Yes, he remembered. It was in Singapore so many years ago.
He was a major when he met Marina, the olive-skinned Eurasian woman. Marina-born and made for love. Each man has a Marina hidden deep in his inner thoughts, but he had his in the flesh and she was real. Laughter and fire and tears and passion. Being with Marina was like being in a bubbling volcano ready to erupt. He was insane for her-he desired her wildly, madly. He threw jealous tantrums before her only to half sob, begging forgiveness. Marina … Marina … Marina … the black eyes and the raven hair. She could torment him. She could delight him. She could spiral him to heights he never knew existed on this earth. Those precious, magnificent moments of their trysts …
His hands had clutched her hair and pulled her head back and he had looked at her deep red sensuous lips … “I love you, you bitch … I love you.”
“I love you, Bruce,” Marina had whispered.
… Bruce Sutherland remembered the stunned hurt look on Neddie’s face as she confronted him with evidence of his affair.
“I won’t say this hasn’t hurt me deeply,” Neddie said, too proud for tears, “but I am willing to forgive and forget. There are the children to think of. There is your career … and our families. I’ll try to make a go of it with you, Bruce, but you must swear you’ll never see that woman again and that you’ll put in an immediate request for transfer from Singapore.”
That woman-that woman, you call her, Bruce thought-is my love. She has given me something that you or a thousand Neddies never could or never will. She has given me something no man has a right to expect on this earth.
“I want your answer now, Bruce.”
Answer? What could the answer be? A man can have a woman like Marina for a night, for a touch, but she is not real. There is only one Marina to a man … one to a lifetime. Answer? Throw away his career for a Eurasian girl? Bring scandal on the name of Sutherland?
“I will never see her again, Neddie,” Bruce Sutherland promised.
Bruce Sutherland never saw her again but he never stopped thinking of her. Perhaps that is where it all started.
The sounds of the sirens were very faint now. The convoy must be quite near Caraolos, Sutherland thought. Soon the sirens would stop and he could sleep. He began thinking of the retirement that would be coming in another four or five years. The family house at Sutherland Heights would be far too big. A cottage, perhaps in the country. Soon it would be time to think about a pair of good hunting setters and gathering rose catalogues and building up his library. Time to start thinking about a decent club to join in London. Albert, Martha, and his grandchildren would indeed be a comfort in retirement. Perhaps … perhaps he would take a mistress, too.
It seemed strange that after nearly thirty years of marriage he would be going into retirement without Neddie. She had been so quiet, reserved, and distinguished all those years. She had been so sporting about his affair with Marina. Suddenly, after a lifetime of complete propriety Neddie burst out frantically to salvage her few years left as a woman. She ran off to Paris with a Bohemian chap ten years her junior. Everyone sympathized with Bruce, but it really didn’t matter to him much. There had been no contact and little feeling for Neddie for many years. She could have her fling. They were quite civilized about it. Perhaps he would take her back later …… perhaps a mistress would be better.
At last the sirens from the convoy stopped. There was complete silence in the room except for the muffled shushing of the surf breaking on the shore. Bruce Sutherland opened the window and breathed in the cool crisp November air. He went to the bathroom and washed and placed the bridge of four teeth in a glass of solution. Damned shame, he thought, losing those four teeth. He had said the same thing for thirty years. It was the result of a rugby game. He examined the other teeth to satisfy himself they were still in good shape.
He opened the medicine chest and studied the row of bottles. He took down a tin of sleeping powders and mixed a double dose. It was difficult to sleep these days.
His heart began racing as he drank down the solution. He knew it was going to be another one of those horrible nights. He tried desperately to lock out or stifle the thoughts creeping into his brain. He covered himself in bed and hoped sleep would come quickly, but it was already beginning to whirl around and around and around in his mind …
… Bergen-Belsen … Bergen-Belsen … Bergen-Belsen … NUREMBERG … NUREMBERG! NUREMBERG! NUREMBERG!
“Take the stand and give your name.”
“Bruce Sutherland, Brigadier General, Commander of …”
“Describe, in your own words …”
“My troops entered Bergen-Belsen at twenty minutes past five in the evening of April 15.”
“Describe in your own words …”
“Camp Number One was an enclosure of four hundred yards wide by a mile long. That area held eighty thousand people. Mostly Hungarian and Polish Jews.”
“Describe in your own words …”
“The ration for Camp Number One was ten thousand loaves of bread a week.” “Identify…”
“Yes, those are testicle crushers and thumbscrews used in torture …”
“Describe…”
“Our census showed thirty thousand dead in Camp Number One, including nearly fifteen thousand corpses just littered around. There were twenty-eight thousand women and twelve thousand men still alive.”
“DESCRIBE … !”
“We made desperate efforts but the survivors were so emasculated and diseased that thirteen thousand more died within a. few days after our arrival.”
“DESCRIBE… !”
“Conditions were so wretched when we entered the camp that the living were eating the flesh of the corpses.”
The moment Bruce Sutherland had completed his testimony at the Nuremberg war crimes trials he received an urgent message to return to London at once. The message came from an old and dear friend in the War Office, General Sir Clarence Tevor-Browne. Sutherland sensed it was something out of the ordinary.