…”’
‘Wrong… Schwartzkopf – no question.’
‘I’d love to think it’s true – two brandies, one straight Scotch, doubles. Go on, hurry up, you try and get some action here. A woman, leading an army, now that would be some story…’
In the quiet of the night, she came to the place by the wire where Gus sat.
‘The best tale in Major Herbert Hesketh-Prichard’s book is about the cat. There was a German trench that was thought to be disused, but this lieutenant from the Royal Warwickshire Regiment – with his telescope – saw the cat sunning itself.’
‘He’s asleep, Gus.’ There was the tinkle of her quiet laughter. ‘I think the cat will have to keep until tomorrow.’
He had known the boy was asleep. He was telling the story for himself, for comfort.
She sat close to him. He put his arm lightly around her shoulder and remembered how he had felt when the boy had told him she was down.
Chapter Seven
‘Without your grandfather, his friendship for my grandfather, I would be a peasant.’
‘Has your wound been treated?’
‘Without his books I would not be able to read. I would be in a village with children, animals, a small field and a man – and I would have nothing.’
‘Stop talking for a moment and answer me. Has anyone looked at your wound?’
The night was around them, and the quiet. The scant moon’s light shimmered on the wire of the fence in front of them. Gus held her shoulder loosely, as if she were a sister or a loved cousin. At home he had neither. He smelt the stale sweat of her body and the dankness of her clothes. No radios played behind them, and he heard no voices. Gus thought the village was stilled by mourning and exhaustion.
‘I know from the books, Gus, of the workings of the engine of a Hastings aircraft of Transport Command and the armaments carried by a Vampire jet bomber. I do not think that many peasant women have such knowledge. I know the history of the Peninsula war, and the campaign of the British in North Africa. I know of the lives of Montgomery and Haig, Kitchener and Wellington, and why William won at Hastings, Henry at Agincourt.
I read the books well that your grandfather gave to my grandfather. How could I be a peasant?’
‘If you’re wounded, it must be looked at and treated.’
‘How could I work in the fields, clean children, cook, watch goats and sheep, when I have read the many books given to Hoyshar? I think it was destiny, Gus.’
‘It has to be looked at.’
‘I felt the weakness when I fell. It was God’s mercy that very few of the men saw I was hit. If they know I am hurt, believe I cannot go forward, they will be gone by the morning. It would be the end of the destiny. Do you not understand, Gus? I cannot go for treatment where the wound is seen.’
He asked quietly, a murmur in her ear, ‘Will you allow me to look at the wound?’
‘But you would not tell? You must not…’
There had been a fierceness in her voice when she had spoken of destiny. When she spoke of the wound there was, Gus recognized it, a timid slightness about her. The wound made her young, frightened. He understood. Destiny would carry forward the cold, hard, cruel men of the peshmerga – the pain of the wound and her fear would cause them to go.
If she could not go forward then he, himself, would turn. He would go back to his grandfather, back to Meg, back to Stickledown Range, back to the offices of Davies and Sons; he sensed the burden she carried.
Gus said, ‘I’m sorry, I know very little about medical treatment. I’ll do what I can.’
‘But you won’t tell?’
‘I promise.’
He slipped his arm from her shoulder and walked across the dead, darkened ground between the wire and the homes of concrete blocks. He stumbled against the carcass of a dead sheep, sloshed in the mud of a sewer, moved past the low houses where muted lights burned. He went into the command post, where Haquim was crouched over the captured maps. He told Haquim what he wanted, and saw anguish crease the face of the fighter, ageing him.
Haquim stood awkwardly, as if the pain had settled again on his old wound, and was gone. If her injury was serious, if she was living on borrowed time, it was all finished.
Gus sat amongst the dark debris of the command post. All finished, for nothing… The minutes slipped by. He would return home and the one thing in his life that had seemed to him to be important would have been dogged by failure. He would carry that failure to his grave. Haquim returned.
Gus carried the saucepan of boiled water, the sealed field dressing, the small wad of cotton wool, the narrow roll of bandage gauze and the torch out into the night.
He set down the torch, knelt beside her, and did what no man had done. His fingers trembled as he reached under her tunic, unbuttoned the waist of her trousers and drew down the zip. She was looking into his face and he saw trust there. He put his arm around her waist, lifted her to drag down her trousers and felt the spasm of pain grip her. He saw the clean skin of her thigh, the caked blood and the livid colour of the bruising. He tore off small pieces of cotton wool, dipped them in the water and began to separate the blood from the bruising.
Three years before, Gus had been the first driver to reach a motor accident – chest injuries from the impact on the steering wheel. He had run a hundred yards to the nearest house and demanded that an ambulance be called. He had gone back to the car, held the woman’s hand until the paramedics arrived and had vowed to replace his ignorance with the basic skills. He had driven away with good intentions on his mind, and had never enrolled in an evening first-aid course.
He cleaned away the blood, edged his hand high on her thigh to hold her still when she squirmed in pain, and found the wound. An inch to the left and the bullet would have missed her; an inch to the right and it would have nicked an artery or shattered her femur.
He worked faster as the water cooled. The wound was a deep furrow in the flesh of her thigh. It was worst for her when the cotton wool touched the rawness, and then he held her tightest, but she never cried out.
He smeared the last strands of trouser cotton out of the wound. The field dressing was old British Army surplus, would have been sold to the Iraqi military at a knock-down price. When he held her, and hurt her, the warmth of her chest was arched against his face and she bled from her bitten lip. He read the faded instructions on the dressing, then stripped it out and fastened it. He lifted the slight weight of her thigh higher and wrapped the bandage round the dressing.
There was a guttural cough behind him.
Gus pulled her trousers up over her thighs and hips, and buttoned them. She sagged away from him and lay on her back.
He lifted the torch and the beam speared into the darkness. The men sat silently in a wide crescent, their backs to him and to her. No man looked at her, had seen her nakedness.
The softness passed from her eyes. The trust was a memory. She dragged herself up and picked up the torch.
Meda walked freely among them and kept the torch on her face so that they could see that she felt no pain.
He was bound to her. Where she walked, he would follow.
AUGUSTUS HENDERSON PEAKE.
3. (Conclusions after interview with Henry Peake (father of AHP) conducted by self and Ms Carol Manning – transcript attached.) MINDSET: In a solitary childhood, AHP received a grounding in countryside lore and hunting. He would have learned to kill and, more important, would have become familiar with the basic techniques of stalking and tracking. In my opinion it is impossible for a sniper to operate successfully unless he has the hunter’s MINDSET. However, my assessment of AHP’s chances of medium-term survival (slim to nonexistent) in the northern Iraq theatre are unchanged. The MINDSET is good, as far as it goes, but a teenager’s ability to shoot rabbits and pigeons does not compensate for lack of MILITARY TRAINING. Also, I have no evidence of AHP possessing the necessary TEMPERAMENT that differentiates a sniper from a target marksman.