Leon Uris (52 page)

“Come on, Rory, we’re clear,” Johnny cried.

“Shut up!” Rory answered, near frothing. “Do you know what that fucking Aussie did to me?” Rory seized Rawash’s lapels. “This is what he did to me,” and promptly smashed his forehead between the Inspector’s eyes. The bespattered man fell, crushed. Rory, nearly knocking himself out with his blow, wiped Rawash’s blood from his own forehead, then focused on Farouk el Farouk. “So you know what I did to that son of a bitch?” Rory wrapped his arms about the Egyptian, lifted him off the ground, and squeezed him till the air was nearly gone from him, then bit his ear lobe so that it dangled by a thread. “That’s what I did.”

The two were quickly gagged and tied.

AHUGAH! AHUGAH!
the horn cried desperately.

“Come on, Rory!”

Rory dragged Christopher Hubble from under the bed,
tossed him over a shoulder, tucked a pair of pistols into his belt, and led them out.

An angry and threatening crowd had gathered at the bottom of the stairs.

AHUGAH! AHUGAH!

Rory took one of the pistols out, cocked it, and fired at the chandelier. The protesters scattered. He came down the stairs firing at the mirrors, the windows, the check-in desks. Emptying one pistol, he began firing the other.

“Move, you assholes! I’m coming through!”

Jeremy shaved very carefully around assorted nicks, cuts, scrapes, and bruises on his face, recipient of stray blows in the Hotel Aida encounter. A knock.

“Come in, please.”

Christopher, still in ragged condition, slumped in the easy chair and draped a leg over its arm.

“How’s it?”

“I got a laboratory report. There were traces of, what the devil was it, chloral hydrate. I had ordered a number of drinks trying to find the wherewithal to write a glorious note of farewell and take that other stuff, the cyanide. You might say they saved my life by drugging me. I was either chloroformed first and they forced the drink down or vice versa. I was too drunk to know. Bad show,” he whispered.

Jeremy dunked his face, patted on some bay rum carefully, grimaced at the sting and sat on the edge of his bed close to his brother.

“How’s your mind holding up?”

“Not very well,” Christopher said. “I know I own an apology and expression of gratitude to the gaffers, but I’m not really certain if I ever learned how to apologize, at least with any sincerity. Not a notable Hubble trait. I’ve humiliated myself like a common beggar and I’m having difficulty managing that as well. Jeremy, I don’t know if I can change. I don’t know how to change or even if I want to change.”

“No one really expects you to change.”

“I do feel duty-bound to say I’m grateful.”

“You don’t have to tell them anything. You were in deep trouble and they didn’t hesitate for a minute.”

“They came because of you, Jeremy.”

“We’re all just a bunch of chaps from all over the place who have been thrown together to get through a war. We have to take care of each other.”

“They hate me.”

“They think you’re a horse’s ass. But these are good men. They understand wars can’t be won without officers like you. They are also deeply pained and compassionate over what happened to you back home.”

“I find that so difficult to comprehend.”

“You should. You’ve never been there for anyone.”

“That’s not true, Jeremy. I’ve been there for Father, for General Brodhead.”

“To cover yourself with glory. Or, you were there to protect your privilege. You were never there for love of anyone.”

Christopher was stunned and tried to think back. It was cloudy in the past. When? Even once? Was his every profound act and gesture to someone encased in a hidden agenda to promote his own image and cause? Did he ever act selflessly without hope of recognition and reward? What maid in the manor house would speak up for him now? What butler? Did he not take the mule battalion in order to become a full colonel with his own brigade? Was he ever more than superficially considerate of anyone beneath his station?

Christopher had passed over the threshold. He’d bury his lie no longer. He was face-to-face with Christopher. He nearly gagged sorting out his words; they had to be untwisted carefully.

“I feel something now very deeply,” he muttered. He now knew internal pain and the man had become bewildered by it. The discovery of buried passion suddenly tore him off the pedestal he had placed himself on and brought him down to common earth with common pain.
Twenty-five years of building an armor of reserve attitude, of detaching himself from human misery was blown away, snatched from him and reduced him to dust in a sudden moment. Welcome to the human race, Major Hubble.

Christopher found his old steel. He looked directly at his brother. “When we took Molly from you, I was as evil as a brother could be. You writhed in agony and I kicked you and enjoyed it. I was above you, you see. When you became a drunk and I rose over you in rank, I delighted in humiliating you. When you were terrified to sign the resignations at Camp Bushy I adored tormenting you as a coward.”

He stood and clasped his hands behind him. He was pleased that his words were direct and did not falter, for he had never ventured into such territory of the heart. “I never really understood the meaning of pain until I opened Hester’s letter. Physical pain, yes. But one keeps a stiff upper lip when he is thrown from a horse and merely suffers a broken arm. This was pain of a horrible dimension. Oh, I admit I did not love Hester with any sort of bottomless fervor. Hester had to be collected by me along the way to fit into a niche. When I was unable to make her pregnant, I was concerned only that my manliness might be in question. I had no understanding why she seemed to be so distressed.”

Christopher felt his brother’s hand on his shoulder for the first time since they were kids. No touch of another person in his life had been so meaningful. He felt it all over, for the first time.

“I was foolish to block inside pain from my life, but I didn’t consciously know I was doing it. Detachment from others seemed the normal way of being. To have learned it all in this single moment was too much for me to bear. I had betrayed Hester with my indifference. I never felt jealous of her, not once. She was not much to be jealous of, one would think. She existed only to serve my requirements, nothing more. I never understood that she was a tight rosebud who craved to bloom. She is happy now…truly in love…a baby in her belly and risking all. Only now
do I realize what I did to you. God, you must despise me.”

“I’ve never felt any sense of revenge. I wish I could take some of your pain from you now. I can’t. But I am your brother and I love you.”

It was all too much for Christopher, to keep together, not to break down. Blast, he had his pride! “What can I do to make it right for those lads?” he asked softly.

“You have to put your head in a noose for them,” Jeremy responded without hesitation.

“I’m listening.”

“Camp Anzac is starting to fold its tents. The first battalions to move out are infantry, sappers, artillery. Apparently we are the tail end of the line.”

“I’ve already spoken to General Brodhead about it. He said it is a typical army bureaucratic fuckup. We are officially a service unit. Service units have always brought up the rear. They made no provision for the fact that the Seventh Light Horse has extraordinary urgencies. The War Office and Darlington are on automatic. Brodhead has protested to London.”

“We must leave Egypt first, Chris. If we don’t have mules on Lemnos in a week or two and cram our training, we are going to fail in our mission, miserably,” Jeremy said. “From what we can sniff out, there is going to be hell to pay, if the mules aren’t working.”

Chris became a bit sick to the stomach from a delayed wave of the effects of the past forty-eight hours.

“Chris,” Jeremy continued, “we have been raised under the axiom that other people only existed for our use. We were taught they were faceless, without feelings, needed no compassion. The army is a brotherhood. What makes it go is your dedication to their lives, as human beings. They aren’t mules to be worked until we have no more use for them and discarded. They are men to be brought through this and they trust you. You know what must be done.”

*  *  *

Pig Island had been in a state of awful melancholy. Lieutenant Jeremy had been gone most of the day. The Major had been taken to the hospital over forty hours earlier. The blow fell on them in the first orders to break camp. Troop trains to Alexandria and ships to Lemnos would be in motion in two more days. The schedule of battalion departures was set well into April. The Seventh Light Horse was not on the list.

No mules, no final training. Gallipoli seemed to be a well kept military secret that everyone knew, including the London newspapers. The squad had studied the maps. The landscape was treacherous. The job would be botched if they didn’t get their animals at once.

Yurlob Singh entered and everyone cast their eyes down. They were in a state of communal guilt over having blackballed Yurlob from the Villa Valhalla.

“Listen, Yurlob,” Rory said at last, “we feel shitty about the way you’ve been treated by us.”

“Real shitty,” Johnny added.

“Bad,” Chester said.

Modi shook his head in shame.

“If you speak of the Villa Valhalla,” the Sikh answered, “you made the proper decision. I would not have felt comfortable in that atmosphere and would have made you likewise not comfortable.”

“I know,” Rory said, “but at least we should have invited you and if it wasn’t working, fine. But we should have asked you in.”

“That would have been worse,” Yurlob answered. “It would have imposed upon me to carry your secret. Your behavior was clearly in conflict with military code. I am glad I was not burdened with the secret.”

“Are you sure you’re not pissed off at us?” Rory asked.

“I was, but I am not. I feared you would not respond to the Major’s dilemma. But you did, indeed, most gallantly.”

“Actually it passed through my mind to let him fry,” Modi said. “There are some people, like Major Hubble,
who can let you know you’re a dirty Jew without uttering a word.”

“Or a Sikh houseboy,” Yurlob answered. This sobered everyone. “The point is, we volunteered into this army and he is our commanding officer, so we must be loyal, if we are men.”

“How is our beloved leader, anyhow,” Rory asked. “Did they get him pumped out?”

“He was released from the hospital yesterday. Today, he met with Major General Brodhead and General Darlington.”

“Darlington, the big man.”

“Darlington!”

“Major Hubble and Major General Brodhead tried to get General Darlington to change the order of battalion departures and have the Seventh Light Horse arrive at Lemnos first.”

“How the hell do you know this?” Johnny asked.

“Lieutenant Colonel Swaran Singh has been on General Darlington’s staff since Darlington was CC of Punjab. He is my uncle, the brother of my father.”

“What happened?” Chester asked shakily.

“I do not know. My uncle told me that in his twenty-two years of service in His Majesty’s army, he had never heard a junior officer speak so forcefully to a general.”

“Jaysus, what did he say?”

“I believe Major Hubble’s most profound words were when he told the general, ‘You’re a fucking fool.’ At that point Darlington removed his staff from the room. Only Major Hubble and Major General Brodhead remained.”

“Yow.”

“Mother of God.”

“How long ago did this happen?”

“Over an hour ago.”

“Oh Jaysus, they’ve jailed him.”

They sat in fear-filled silence until Lieutenant Jeremy arrived. Jeremy knew nothing except that Christopher had a meeting at Corps.

“I wonder if those cops ever got out of the closet,” Chester said.

“I wonder if Sonya made it out of Cairo.”

“I hope she took Shaara with her. Shaara said Sonya promised to take her to Spain.”

“I hear Cairo is ready to explode. They say that Corps has given leave to thirty thousand troops and let everyone know that no arrests for misconduct will be made.”

“Yeah, I heard the same.”

“So Cairo will burn.”

“I wish we were going in.”

“We made our own personal farewell.”

“I hope Sonya made it out of town.”

Silence.

“Although I am relieved I was not involved with Villa Valhalla, I should like to also have a tattoo. I have seen you in the showers with envy.”

“Sure.”

“Absolutely.”

“You’re going to have to wait awhile.”

“I am honored.”

Silence.

Mordechai left and returned with his accordion. He tried a happy song. It got baleful looks. He played a sad song. That was better.

“TEN-SHUN!”

Everyone scrambled to their feet as Major Hubble entered, appearing pale and weak.

“As you were,” he said with a hoarse voice. As they went gingerly into their chairs, Christopher clasped his hands behind him and paced, groping for the language to express the emotions that overwhelmed him.

“What the devil,” he finally managed. “Thank you.” He went from man to man and offered his hand, and when that was done, he postured once more. “This does not mean I offer any apologies for the manner in which I have commanded this battalion. While some measures may
have seemed excessive, we have a battalion second to none in this entire expeditionary force…. I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

Everyone winced and turned their heads on cue as though to duck an oncoming punch.

“The bad news is that I offered my resignation to General Brodhead over my behavior and he refused it so I am to continue as your commanding officer.” He snickered at his humor and was delighted to see broad smiles greet him. “I don’t imagine I’m going to change all that much, although I have gained some new insight into my obligation to take care of you no less than you have taken care of me.”

Jeremy’s eyes brimmed near tears. Chris had made his first gesture to escape from a life-long prison imposed by privilege. It was about as much humility as his brother could muster.

“I say, I have other news. Shall we gather ’round the big table here? Do you suppose we might have some tea?”

“Yes, sir,” Chester snapped, and went to the always ready pot.

“Nothing but tea for me for a while.” Chris loosened his Sam Browne belt and put his jacket over the back of the chair. He could not help but feel a great deal of warmth coming to him from the men, a kind of sensation he had felt from his mother, long ago. Many times he had passed a room in a museum or missed an opera he should have attended or passed by some very special flowers at a show and he’d wished he had gone in. He was in that room now and it was a wonderful place to be.

“May I say, Major,” Rory said, “that we are deeply sorry for your troubles.”

“Thank you. It was quite a blow. I do censor a great deal of outgoing mail. It seems that this is a rather common occurrence for us chaps…. Shall we get to our business?”

After tea was served and properly balanced with condiments, Christopher wore a sly grin. “I was fortunate to be able to have a chat with Central Command today. I
was able to convince General Darlington to reverse our order of departure. As of this moment, the Seventh Light Horse is breaking down to ship out immediately.”

It was somewhat short of a formal hip-hip-hooray, but everyone shouted in delight and backs were pounded.