On Chasing Brad Through Purgatory (22 page)

The boulders themselves clearly wouldn't give much cover but something about the lie of the land made me suspect that they could form the entrance to a canyon. I wasn't able to feel sure but there did seem to be a track which might be starting downwards at that point. Helicopters couldn't enter a ravine; not if it was narrow enough. And on this side of it there mightn't any longer be a place sufficiently flat for any of them to land. I felt I was being looked after.

Then I wondered if the planes were carrying passengers and whether in that case the pilots might shortly lower rope ladders.
Oh stop it! Stop it!
You might be fighting for your life but in some ways it was surely better to underestimate not overestimate your enemy's abilities; otherwise your every endeavour could appear so futile you'd at length be tempted into wholesale surrender. “Just come and get me. Here I am!” There'd be such a huge relief in that.

But if it
was
a canyon—and the indications all looked increasingly good—first I had to reach it. Briefly looking up as I ran—and weaved—I saw that the pilot of each machine appeared to be alone and to have no ray gun or revolver. In fact the demeanour of all three seemed curiously unthreatening. Their faintly smiling salutes were obviously ironic but at the same time they weren't at any pains to head me off and one might have thought that—instead of trying to intercept me—they looked rather more intent on behaving like sheepdogs. So they were either stupid or friendly. Yet both options struck me as unlikely. I hoped there was a third: could they possibly have misjudged the width of the ravine? Maybe it was arrogant to question the judgment of professionals but there was no denying the fact that once inside the gorge they'd have remarkably little room for manoeuvre. If I suddenly decided to backtrack how easy would they find it to reverse? I might not achieve a lot by doubling back yet on the other hand … Or perhaps they'd anticipated some such strategy and only one helicopter would give chase; the other two would wait outside. It was all too complicated; too many intangibles. Besides. My only real alternative was to carry on.

To carry on towards the canyon. The sweat by now was coursing down my face, stinging my eyes and blinding me for many anguished seconds at a time; it dripped off my neck and arms and made my T-shirt heavy. My lungs felt close to rupture or collapse and as though they couldn't any longer survive the tearing strain of even one more shallow refill. Oh, come and get me then! For pity's sake. Let's have it over with.

But suddenly the shale or gravel was sliding underneath my feet. Suddenly? I'd so much thought I wasn't going to get there, it was like at the last I'd been moving only automatically.

What's more, they could certainly have followed me in. The gorge was steep-sided and narrow but I was sure there'd have been room. Yet now that I'd discovered my own miscalculation it also seemed as if they themselves had blundered. I was left to get my breath back and to negotiate the pass in freedom.

Or hadn't they miscalculated? Could they be playing some little game? Perhaps they knew very precisely what they were up to—had faithfully fulfilled their instructions. I didn't dare believe they could simply be watching me walk away.

But then again … Even the powers that be were clearly not infallible: hadn't they allowed me to make a break for it in the first place? And the fact that they had brought into play
three
helicopters, not merely one or even two, three helicopters in addition to the previous day's dogs and commandeered auxiliaries—mightn't this mean that I was getting pretty close to escape and they were growing seriously alarmed?

Also, even if they caught me they must be aware that constant daily exercise following a night of decent sleep represented far less of a penance than the one they'd have wanted. Wanted for
anybody
; least of all a rebel! Worse—because of course I'd know the outcome of the chase—even its original terror would have been removed. And wasn't exercise itself now seen as being the most effective means of dealing with depression?

Praise God. I felt very nearly in high spirits. In one way or another they had definitely slipped up.

Maybe I had simply to come out at the other end of the pass and that's where I'd regain my freedom; that's where I would find the pathway back to all the better things. Maybe I'd already won. That's why the pilots had been waving—a surviving touch of sportsmanship intermingling with their mockery? A canyon or a mountain pass formed a natural kind of division: a natural sort of entrance of course but also a natural sort of exit.

Oh, zip a dee doo dah! Watch out for me Brad. I think I may now have truly turned the corner!

Except that … an unpleasant idea occurred to me. Supposing they brought those hounds to the mouth of the ravine and simply let them go? Was that their plan? The dogs mightn't be able to scrabble up the sides, I thought—but then again neither might I.

So I pressed on now; with greatly renewed urgency.

22

It took me half an hour to reach the other end. During this time the visible tract of sky turned from overcast to blue.

And I suddenly became aware of something else. I hadn't even known I'd missed it up till then. Birdsong. Robins, thrushes, blackbirds. Even nature itself appeared to be coming back to life.

No dogs! I was on my way out! Clearly. I was on my way out.

But I heard other sounds as well. I couldn't place them at first; not at all. The distant clash of metal, the distant cries of men? These came from ahead not behind. They might be something to be wary of but they didn't emanate from my pursuers.

Yet by the time I came to the end of the pass it was evident I wasn't hearing any form of celebration. I emerged from the canyon cautiously and saw before me a vast plain. Hundreds of men were engaged in hand-to-hand combat. I threw up on the spot.

The main weapons they were using were battle axes. Those and mighty leaden spiked balls swinging at the end of short chains. And there were many men who'd either been separated from their shields or whose shields had become so buckled they were useless; less a defence than an encumbrance. Not only these shields had been thoroughly mangled. I saw arms in much the same condition. Human arms I mean. Arms and shoulders. Torsos. Faces. Heads.

That was apart from those that were severed. I saw a score of raggedly bleeding stumps. And even as I watched … there, with one god-almighty swing, a stout plaid-stockinged leg all but hacked off below the knee … was I the only one being sick? The roars now were accentuated—the screams—the howling. The very plain itself appeared to vibrate; the main thrust of the action, the body of the massacre, tilted first in one direction then another, continually shifting as some retreated some advanced—fled, pursued—trampling on, stumbling over, both the dead and the dying, sliding through the pools of blood, slipping on the trailing guts. I should have moved, I should have gone back in the canyon. I felt incapable of movement, incapable of rational thought. Even while I cowered I was caught up, I'm not aware of how it happened. Suddenly I found myself right there in the thick of it, no longer a spectator, now a participant, my nose filled with the hot sweet rotten odour, my ears filled with the terrifying blast, my eyes as far as possible kept shut, my foolish feeble arms pressing protectively across my head. (
Protectively?
) But eyes had to open—automatically. Arms had to be brought down—automatically. I was knocked, spattered, fallen against; tried each time to save myself, God knows why, till at length I must have learnt, stayed down, played dead, face pushed against the sunbaked earth, hands returning to protect my scalp, to shield it from the thud of boots mere inches from my ears, the thud of boots from time to time in jarring contact with my neck and back and legs. My decision though remained good; I knew instinctively I shouldn't get far if I tried to stagger off. And my knowledge wasn't confined just to that. I now knew more or less the period from which this scene derived—this fearsomely reanimating imprint? And more or less the setting too. (Culloden? Bannockburn? Names that had hardly touched me during history class.) Half these men were wearing kilts.

No. At least as regards dates I must have absorbed more than I knew. Culloden had happened over four centuries later than Bannockburn. By then there'd have been muskets and far more sophisticated ways of slaughter. When I came round again (it should have been a mercy I'd lost consciousness but I couldn't see that it had done me any good) I at once heard musket-fire; or at any rate gunfire. I wasn't on the ground any longer; I was spread across a barbed wire fence. And when the mists began to clear I saw no further evidence of kilts. I had moved on: a hundred and fifty years or more beyond Culloden. And I had been taken down from Scotland altogether and into northern France.

A comrade must have heard me moaning or seen me breathing or something. As gently as he could he raised me off the barbed wire and laid me on the damp earth. The wire had driven through my T-shirt and into my stomach and I don't know what sort of mess had been made by the machine gun which had hurled me against it in the first place (I must have been retreating; in fact I now recalled the bowel- and bladder-emptying fear persuading me to turn about); I only knew that it was hurting. Hurting. Hurting. But teach a person to be kind: in the very act of trying to minister, my rescuer himself received a hail of bullets in his forehead, cheek and throat. His blood sprayed warmly down my chin and pieces of his teeth ricocheted against my chest. He slumped across my wounded legs but the yell I gave was as much for him as it was for me. Few of the yells I gave throughout the next four hours—or was it six or was it eight?—while I watched helplessly a thousand people die and tried to pray that all of them would find salvation; few of those yells were purely for myself … does there arrive a time when a person becomes so numbed he can almost forget about himself—when he becomes so much a part of what is happening that his own identity starts to meld with everyone's around him? I lay there on the muddy ground, cold and wet and hurting under that relentless rain of shrapnel and machine-gun fire, and during that indefinite number of hours I died about a thousand times; but never, sadly, once.

There are other times however when you can't think of anybody but yourself. Or I couldn't. Move forward another thirty years or so. Another war. But this isn't on the battlefield. Further sophistication has partially got rid of battlefields in Europe. Further sophistication means some refinement in its instruments of torture. Axes are out. Knives and pincers are in—and trays of slim and pointed gadgets you might expect to find more commonly inside some operating theatre. For these are Gestapo headquarters. I am strapped into a chair. My T-shirt's gone, my socks and jeans. I might have been wearing underpants but my underpants were shat again and even Nazi torturers can be sensitive to smell. I have been bathed and cleaned up to some extent (head repeatedly held beneath the water in the process) to prepare satisfactorily for my moment in the limelight. My couple of hours in the limelight. My wounds from almost thirty years ago—or is it only almost thirty minutes ago?—have wholly disappeared.

You remember me reporting a conversation which I'd once had with Brad? Of all the things I've ever feared the one that probably heads the list is physical torture. I can't even talk about what happened during that couple of hours. Not every second was devoted simply to inflicting pain. There were long minutes sacrificed as well to pure anticipation. And to the discussion of what it was one might expect. And to the forehead-sponging between instalments and to the bringing round after a faint. And to the wiping away of sweat and blood and mucus. There were even some frequent forays into light-hearted banter: a little joke to raise your spirits in betweenwhiles. My vomit was tenderly removed off chest and stomach—where had the food come from that I was capable of vomit? You can imagine the ribbing and the jollity when it was tenderly removed from groin.

It might have helped to know there was some point. If I'd been privy to top-secret information and the futures of millions had depended on my staying silent … that at least would have been something. I could have thought with every fresh wave of pain from which I had resurfaced, Maybe another million lives just saved? It might have helped; I somewhat doubt it—does pain become less painful in a worthwhile cause? Though it might have meant my railing at God a little less. But he deserved it anyway: how could he just stand by, how could he ever have just stood by? So easy merely to shrug and murmur something about free will and then sit back and take another sip of your hot toddy. And turn your eyes away. Regretfully acknowledge the existence of pure evil in the world. That somehow let God off the hook did it, somehow left him free of blame? Made his life more comfortable? Whilst for certain others: Violette Szabo—Odette Churchill—Ken Bigley—myself, right at this moment …

Also it might have meant my railing at Brad a little less; and he did
not
deserve it. But I was completely out of my mind—hysterical—demented. Damn you! Damn you! Damn you! Why did you just go off and leave me like that? You must have known how anxious I was to catch up with you? And don't you realize that none of this would be happening now if only you
had
waited for me? And don't you realize that I would certainly have waited for you? Waited for you forever. But me, I simply wasn't worth the hanging around for was I? Though you always said you loved me—asshole. And I really thought you meant it—asshole.

Asshole!

Yet perhaps that did help a bit—my being angry. Having someone to shout at and to blame. No matter how unjustly.

You probably didn't even know I was dead.

How should you?

But at least in fairness to myself all this was whilst they were working on my toenails. I couldn't call
them
assholes; that just got me another blow, another series of blows to my already broken nose and swollen lips; which might almost have been an antidote you'd suppose—but wasn't, really wasn't, not at all. (And to think that I'd once used to worry about my looks!) On the other hand they did enjoy hearing me swear lustily at God. And at you. Even encouraged it, with each new flourish of the pincers.