A Good Clean Fight (37 page)

It blew itself out after a day and a half. Bailey stumbled down from the cockpit. He took all his clothes off and beat them against the Tomahawk, but he could not clear the fine grit from his ears and eyes and nose. He celebrated his release with a double sip of water and a malted milk tablet. His body needed more, much more. Hunger and thirst nagged him throughout the weary night.

Dawn produced the usual silent extravaganza of colors on the usual empty stage.

He stood on top of the engine cowling and looked at mile upon mile of slightly undulating nothing, and despair seized him so that for a moment his breath got trapped in his throat. He couldn't walk his way out of this problem, not on the tiny amount of water he had left, not in this
murderous heat. And even supposing he could, how far would he have to walk? Fifty miles? A hundred? Don't be stupid. “Is that all there is to life?” he said aloud. “All over, already?” To his surprise there were tears in his eyes. “It doesn't seem much,” he said, and climbed down. At least the tears washed some of the grit away.

*   *   *

Three days after his forced landing, Butcher Bailey was lying underneath the Tomahawk, brooding on fate and the memory of Groppi's ice cream, when he heard the faint buzz of an engine. The buzz deepened to a growl, and out of the quivering heat-haze emerged a motorcycle with sidecar. It took many minutes to arrive, and when it did Bailey saw on it the sign of the Afrika Korps: a palm tree and some forked lightning in the shape of a swastika. The man in the sidecar got out and said, “You are our prisoner. Give me your weapons.”

“Haven't got any,” Bailey said. He was surprised how thin and husky he sounded. “Except for the machine guns, and they're a bit hard to get at.”

They searched him and gave him a full water-bottle. He drank half of it slowly and felt enormously better. “This is a surprise,” he said.

The sidecar passenger introduced himself as Hauptmann Winkler. The other man was a corporal; he spoke no English. “We saw your machine from a big distance,” Winkler said. “We were part of a training exercise. Then the storm came. Now we are lost.”

“That's jolly bad luck.” Bailey poured a little water into his palm and washed his eyes. They were immensely grateful.

“You have a compass?” Winkler asked. “Good. You will . . . What is the word?”

“Navigate.”

“Thank you. Yes. You will navigate us to the nearest German camp.”

“It's the very least I can do,” Bailey said.

*   *   *

Now that he was feeling slightly better, George the Greek noticed the flies. At some stage he had fouled his trousers and the flies thought he was the greatest invention since camel-dung. George couldn't remember doing it, but he wasn't surprised that it had happened. The crash was a long time ago. Nobody's bowels waited forever.

The flies were a torment. When they got bored with his stinking trousers they went on walking tours of his arms and neck and face. They buzzed with gratification.

When the dust-storm died and daylight reached into the cave, he managed to show the old Arab man that he wanted to be rid of his trousers. The man tugged them off. He did it very cautiously, as if afraid of worsening some injury. George stood up to show everyone he was well again. His heart panicked and his legs wandered in various directions. The Arabs caught him as he fell.

Nevertheless he was able to clean off the filth, using handfuls of grit from the cave floor. One of the children brought him some fresh sand and he completed the job with that. The flies didn't like it. All but a few hundred left in disgust.

From time to time he heard the roar of engines. Some were low-flying aircraft; others he guessed to be armored cars. None of the Arabs spoke English, but one drew a swastika in the dust and signaled the need for silence.

At the end of the afternoon, the serious little girl brought him more sour milk and a little bread. Then everyone helped to lift him onto a stretcher, a real army stretcher except that one corner of it was missing and his leg flopped down. The serious little girl held his foot. Dusk rapidly
turned into night. They carried him out of the cave and along the wadi. There were no flies. Libyan flies were not qualified for night-flying. That was a blessing.

*   *   *

The German corporal drove the motorcycle-combination. That was his job. Everything else was not his concern. Hauptmann Winkler sat in the sidecar and watched Bailey, who was on the pillion with the Tomahawk's compass. Winkler had his pistol out, in case Bailey tried to attack the corporal with his compass.

They drove for two hours, due east. The going was good. If the corporal wandered off course Bailey had only to point and they swung back at once. There was no shadow. The sun roasted all color from the world, but their speed created an agreeable breeze.

They stopped to refuel the engine.

“One travels and one goes nowhere,” Winkler said, rubbing his backside. It was true. The desert here was no different from the place they had left. He gave Bailey a water-bottle. “How much further?”

“An hour.”

“Any camp is good. German army or Italian. Luftwaffe, even.”

“I know.”

The corporal locked the cap on the jerrican. “
Drei liter, Herr Hauptmann
,” he said, tapping the can.

“Ample,” Bailey said.

An hour later, Winkler suddenly shouted and the corporal stopped. The sun had moved on; there was a shadow. Winkler got out, looked at the tracks they had made, turned and looked at the shadow he cast, and said in a child's voice: “This is all wrong!” The safety-catch on his pistol clicked. “This way is east. We must go
north
.”

Bailey rested his arms on the corporal's shoulders and rested his head on his arms. “Too late,” he said.

“You
lied
to me,” Winkler said. “You are an officer and you
lied
.”

“Awfully sorry, sir,” Bailey mumbled. “And that's another lie.”

*   *   *

Benghazi did rather well out of the desert war.

It was originally an Arab port, but by 1942 the Italians had been there for twenty years and it was like a little Naples in Africa. In the ping-pong war, Benghazi changed hands at least once a year, sometimes twice. This meant that there was always a fresh influx of thirsty men who had slogged east or west across the desert and who were delighted to find the comforts of civilization. For its part, Benghazi was happy to serve them. Good pasta was good pasta, whether it was eaten by a German or an Australian. Inevitably the town got knocked about by bombs, but the target was usually the docks. If a bomb-aimer had a fit of twitch when searchlights coned his machine and he pressed the tit too soon, it might be the end of a decent little restaurant or a hardworking brothel; but that was an acceptable business risk. Like Londoners during the Blitz, the Italian colonists of Benghazi took pride in maintaining service as usual. War was hell, of course, but it was no excuse for badly-cooked spaghetti.

Maria Grandinetti told Schramm that he was taking her out for dinner. “It's time you started paying for your treatment,” she said.

“All right.” He thought hard for a few seconds and said, “There's a restaurant called the Sorrento which I sometimes pass . . .”

“Very wise.”

“Oh.” That flattened him. “I'll take you to the Officers' Club, then.”

“No you won't.” She picked up the phone and dialed. “It's full of boring uniforms and I see more than enough . . .
Ah, Pietro, come sta? . . . Benissimo, grazie. Per questa sera
. . .” Her rippling Italian was far too fast for Schramm. He moved away and took a seat, and watched her lively, intelligent face in a mirror, because he did not wish to be seen to stare but he enjoyed looking.

She hung up.
“Tutto va bene.
Dinner is arranged. Very expensive, but you have conquered Europe, you can afford it. Now it's time for me to go round the wards. Come.”

“I hate your damned wards.”

“Which just shows how dishonest you are.” She took his arm and steered him out of her room.

As she made her way down the wards, moving from bed to bed, talking quietly with nurses and doctors, examining wounds, asking questions, Schramm stayed well in the background. He kept to the center of the ward and looked to his front. Pain was a fact, but he didn't have to see its suffering face. Bad enough having to breathe the tainted air and hear the occasional groan. This is not your job, he told himself. Leave it to the professionals.

“Paul,” she said. He strolled across and looked at her. There was something lying on a bed, but it was none of his business. “This I think is one of your men,” she said.

Schramm took the clipboard holding the patient's record. Debratz, Kurt. Aged twenty.
Gefreiter
, which meant airman, lowest form of life in the Luftwaffe. The date he got his wounds was the day the SAS raided Barce. Kurt Debratz. Must be the lad who was working a fire hose when a 109 exploded and blew him over the fire truck. Burns, fractures, internal damage: the works. Recommended for a decoration, God knows why. All he did was point a hose.

Schramm returned the clipboard. “One of ours,” he agreed.

“Perhaps not one,” she said. “More like seventy percent.”

Now Schramm had to look. The head and chest were all bandages. One leg had gone and one hand. “That won't do his love life any good,” he said flatly.

“It's not a problem any more. His love life was blown off with his leg.” She was totally matter-of-fact.

“What do you expect me to do?” he asked. He tried to match her tone, but his voice sounded harsh.

“Enjoy yourself,” she said. One of the nurses looked startled and immediately busied herself with tidying a loose dressing. Schramm frowned and hunched his shoulders, and felt the fire of guilt seep into his face. Dr. Grandinetti moved on.

The afternoon was slowly ending: running out of heat and light and energy. He took her to her flat, only a couple of blocks away. She said she wanted to wash her hair. He knew that, if he asked, he could stay while she did it. That was what he wanted; but he was still stiff with anger and he produced a clumsy lie: he had to go to the Officers' Club in case there were any messages waiting that required immediate action . . . She cocked her head and smiled. “Don't let the war get cold,” she said. He turned and left her, trying hard not to march.

Since he had gone to the trouble of lying, he lived up to it and went to the Officers' Club, took a shower, shaved, had his uniform pressed, his shoes polished (a waste of time in the Benghazi dust) and his hair trimmed, and drove back to the flat feeling at least two ranks senior to himself.

She was ready. Green silk dress, scarlet scarf knotted at the neck, no hat, gold bangle on the right wrist. Maybe a hint of perfume, or perhaps that was the scent of some flower in the night.

“You look,” he said, and cleared his throat, “all right.”

Her mouth curled up at the corners. “I bet you've been
practicing that all afternoon.” She got into his car. “Hotel Garibaldi. Take the Benina road, it's on the left.”

He drove ten yards and stopped. “We can't go there. That's General Schaefer's headquarters.”

“Trust me.”

The Garibaldi was hidden behind a mass of cypresses. Schramm's papers took them past the sentries at a checkpoint, and he drove up a white gravel drive that crunched like icing on a wedding cake. He stopped by an entrance of fake Moorish arches. The blackout was total. A soldier came from nowhere, opened the car doors, helped the lady out.

“What am I going to say?” Schramm muttered.

“Schaefer doesn't scare me,” she said, quite loudly. “I've seen his X-rays. I wouldn't take those kidneys as a gift.”

Inside, the lighting was soft and sympathetic, very old light that knew its manners and didn't stare at the guests. A tall, thin man dressed like an ambassador to the Court of St. James came forward and received them. Maria said something that made him smile, and for a few moments they swapped silver trills of Italian like two songbirds after a fine breakfast. Then he escorted them into a dining room that was far too good for General Schaefer and his unhappy kidneys.

Wine appeared. Antipasto appeared. Olives, smoked ham carved so thin it dissolved in the mouth, cherry tomatoes, breadsticks, little pats of butter stamped to resemble Deutschmarks as a gesture from the hotel to its guests, of whom there were many. Schramm and Dr. Grandinetti had been given the last table.

“Explain,” he demanded.

“Not in that tone of voice.” She took a spoon and cracked him on the knuckles.

“You sadistic bitch.” He saw that she approved of this response. Now he was thoroughly confused. “Do that again and I'll strangle you with that horrible red scarf,” he told her gloomily. He sucked his knuckles.

“Signs of improvement,” she said, and lifted the spoon. He grabbed her throat with the undamaged hand, but at the first touch his fingers lost their strength. She made no move, simply sat and looked him full in the face, while his fingers slid down her smooth, strong neck and came to rest above her collarbone. His fingertips discovered a steady throb. “Pulse normal,” he said. “What's wrong with you?” She tilted her head back to stretch the skin beneath his touch. “You're enjoying it, damn your eyes,” he said.

“I enjoy everything. I enjoy life. That's what it's for.”

“Pain? Blood? Death? Those too?”

“Yes, those too. They are all part of life.”

“Gibberish.” He took his hand away. “Death is shit. Nobody can enjoy death.” But he had to look away from her.

A waiter came, topped up their glasses, and went.

“Absent friends,” he said, and drank. “Where is the host?”

“General Schaefer is in Rome with his staff for a conference. After Rome, Tripoli. He will not need the Garibaldi for a week.”