‘That’s all right,’ said Doctor Simmonds, ‘take it easy. You’d better carry him along to his room.’
‘But you can’t move them,’ repeated Goyles. ‘It’s not true. You can’t move them at all.’
‘Get him under the legs,’ said Duncan. ‘You take his head, Tony.’
‘I’ll be along in a minute,’ said Doctor Simmonds. ‘I’ll mix him a sedative. He’d better stay in bed for twenty-four hours.’
After they had gone the doctor stood for a moment, a puzzled look on his face. He had just realised what Goyles was talking about.
Hands. Dozens of hands. Singly and in pairs. A hand, larger than life, dragging itself, like a maimed octopus across the sand.
Curious, thought Goyles, that he had never before realised how significant was the human hand. It was in its shape that its true secret lay. The broad river of the palm, flowing out to the delta of the fingers. Four fingers, each one with a life and character of its own, four tapering, aristocratic, fingers and a gross plebeian thumb, a bastard connection, sprung from its own root back in the wrist. A distant and disowned collateral to the four beautiful sister fingers. Each one with its sensitive and its sheath of horn.
A man could live with his hands, by his hands and through his hands, thought Goyles. And, conversely, he could be more truly hurt in them, than in any other part of his body. The stout Elizabethan, John Stubbs, punning at the scaffold when his hand was to be struck off: ‘Pray for me, now my calamity is at hand.’ Gestapo torturers, with delicate precision, plucking off nail after nail from the living flesh, like shells off a ripe filbert.
It was in the hands of Cyriakos Coutoules that the answer to all the mystery was contained. With the clarity that sometimes comes in a nightmare and disappears within a few seconds of awakening, so that it must be caught instantly or lost for ever, Goyles glimpsed the naked logic behind the mysteries that had puzzled him and it shocked him, so that he cried out, and woke up to find an anxious Tony Long shaking him by the arm.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘just a nightmare.’
‘You’ve been talking to yourself for hours,’ said Long. ‘I could put up with that, but when you started screaming—’
‘I shall be all right now,’ said Goyles.
When he next opened his eyes, it was late morning, and his head was clear. There was no one in the room.
He groped for his spare pair of glasses and put them on. They rested awkwardly on the thick strip of sticking plaster down the side of his nose. They were a pair which had been issued to him, many years before, in England, for use inside a respirator, and this was the first time he had ever worn them. He took them off, bent them into a more comfortable shape, and put them on again, as the door opened and Corporal Pearce came in with a cup of coffee.
‘Thanks very much,’ said Goyles. ‘I’m afraid I’m a fraud, really.’
‘Doctor’s orders,’ said Corporal Pearce. ‘I hear you were in a bit of a turn-up yesterday evening.’
‘Roughly speaking, yes. Very good coffee, this. By the way, who told you about it?’
‘These things get round,’ said Corporal Pearce. He started to brush diligently under the beds.
Goyles watched him for a bit. Then he said, ‘Stop that for a moment, would you, and come and talk. There’s something I wanted to ask you.’
Corporal Pearce obediently propped the broom against the bedpost and sat down on the end of the bed. He was a good-looking boy, of about twenty, with the dark black hair and deep blue eyes that sometimes come together in the Celt or the Spaniard.
‘How many orderlies are there in this camp?’
‘There’s about forty of us now, sir. Used to be more.’
‘They sent a lot of you off about a fortnight ago, didn’t they – to do farm work?’
‘That’s right, sir.’
‘How did they choose the party?’
‘There wasn’t any choosing, sir. They just took the first twenty in the queue.’
‘Everybody wanted to go, did they?’
‘Almost everybody. It was more food, you see, and more freedom, and the chance of seeing a few
signorinas
—’
‘Did you volunteer?’
‘No, sir, I didn’t.’
‘Why not? Aren’t you fond of food and freedom and
signorinas
?
’
Corporal Pearce grinned and said, ‘Well – you had to give your
parole
– I didn’t fancy that – particularly not just now.’
‘Are you hoping to escape, then?’
‘You never know, sir. There’s sure to be a chance – when things pack up—’
‘I’m not arguing with you,’ said Goyles. ‘I just wanted to know. Would that be the general view among the orderlies – or is it just your own idea?’
‘One or two of the lads think like I do. It’s difficult to say, really.’
Goyles pondered for a moment.
‘Look here,’ he said. ‘This is something that perhaps I oughtn’t to ask – and you mustn’t pass it on. You say that some of you – you and a few of your friends – are keen to escape. The others, I take it, don’t mind one way or the other. They’re glad the fighting’s over – and as long as they get enough to eat and don’t get pushed around, then they’re happy enough.’
‘That’s about it, sir.’
‘All right. But does it go any further than that? Would any of them actually help the Italians – if a suitable reward was pushed in their direction?’
Corporal Pearce looked unhappy.
‘They’re a mixed crowd,’ he said. ‘Some of those South Africans are very rough characters – don’t even speak English, some of them – jabber, jabber, jabber, in a lingo of their own, sounds just like German to me—’
‘But you don’t know of anyone in particular?’
‘Oh, no, sir. It’s just that you can’t answer for them, not knowing them.’
‘If any of you wanted to get a word to the Italians, it wouldn’t be difficult for you?’
‘Easy as falling down. We’re in and out all day – fatigues, Red Cross carrying parties – odd jobs – like that time I was bringing you your meals in the Punishment Block, remember?’
‘Yes,’ said Goyles, ‘that’s rather what I thought. Well, forget all this, will you—’
An hour later he had another visitor. Colonel Baird came to see him.
‘I thought you’d like to know,’ he said, ‘that the tunnel is all right. We had an inspection party down this morning. What fell on you was practically all the sand under the foundations of the outer wall.’
‘It felt like quite a lot of sand,’ agreed Goyles.
‘We’re not even going to roof it over. There’s no need. In fact we’ll probably develop it into a sort of second “half-way house”. I reckon it pays to have a few sitting-out places in a tunnel of that length. You can get some traffic-control installed when the time comes—’
Goyles agreed, but absent-mindedly. His interest in the tunnel, at that moment, came second to more urgent problems.
‘Any news of Roger, sir?’
‘Nothing reliable.’
‘Do you think they mean business – or are they only bluffing. It would be just like Benucci.’
‘Very like,’ agreed Baird. ‘I don’t know. One can’t rely on it being one thing or the other. We’re going ahead with this evening’s show, anyway. That was one of the things I wanted to talk about. I don’t think, in your present state, you could quite pull your weight in a show of that sort—’
‘But I’m as fit as a fiddle, sir – really—’
‘Well, there are plenty of others who can do it. Besides, we needed one more lock expert, so that both cell doors could be opened at once—’
‘But really, sir – I’m not—’
‘Look,’ said Baird, kindly but firmly, ‘this is just one of those rare cases in this God-damned camp where an order is an order. You’re not going. Now relax.’
Which was all very well, thought Goyles, as he lay on his bed at six o’clock that evening and looked out of the window.
He knew that, as originally organised, the riot was due to take place somewhere on the playing field and at about that time. It might, of course, have been changed. No one would have told him anything.
He could see the usual evening sports programme getting under way. There were games on both of the basketball pitches and a small group of experts were pitching a baseball in one corner, but the chief attraction that evening was the rugger game. The Old Hirburnians appeared to be playing a Scottish team. Goyles could see nothing out of the ordinary, except that Tony Long (neither a Scotsman nor, incidentally, a rugby enthusiast) had apparently been co-opted into the Scottish scrum in which Anderson and Duncan were also performing. He noticed both Burchnall and Parsons in the Hirburnian scrum.
The Italians, as usual, were suspicious of the whole performance. Ever since an enterprising escaper, under cover of a reconstruction of the rugger pitch, had caused himself to be buried in a shallow trench from which he hoped to emerge after dark, the orders had been that sentries were to exercise an active vigilance during all such games. When it did happen, everything happened very quickly.
At one moment a small sentry, his rifle slung over his shoulder, was pacing importantly across the half-way line. The next moment the ball had appeared from nowhere and struck him on the chest. He had barely time to utter a single, indignant bleat before the scrum had caught him, and he disappeared under a cataract of arms and legs.
The sentries on the walls were plainly in two minds. Outrages were being committed in front of their eyes, but they were unable to shoot. They relieved their feelings by screaming. The gates opened and a file of carabinieri doubled on, headed by Paoli. The scrimmage subsided and the sentry reappeared. He had lost his rifle and bayonet and, as became horribly apparent when he tried to stand up, his braces as well.
Goyles held his breath.
It was always touch and go at moments like this whether the Italian sense of humour or sense of dignity was going to come to the top. It was with mixed feelings that he saw that Captain Benucci had arrived and appeared to be taking command of the situation.
The groups separated and the dust settled.
To his surprise it became apparent that most of Captain Benucci’s wrath was concentrated against the sentry. His admonitory remarks practically reached the hut. The sentry, holding his rifle in reverse in one hand, and the top of his trousers with the other, scuttled off.
The game restarted.
Half an hour later a dishevelled and despondent Tony Long arrived and perched on Goyles’ bed.
‘You saw it?’ he said. ‘Seemed to go pretty well, didn’t it? Well, it was an absolute flop.’ He sat for a moment swinging his legs, and then said, ‘Wouldn’t you have thought it a safe bet that they’d have arrested the lot of us? We were all there, all six of us, as arranged, holding little bits of that sentry’s clothes and gear, all utterly arrestable. I had his hat and bayonet scabbard. If ever you could have betted you were on to a safe thing, I should have thought that was it. I was only scared they were going to machine gun the lot of us. Then Benucci arrived—’
‘I saw him,’ said Goyles. ‘What happened?’
‘What happened?’ said Long. ‘He laughed.’
‘I see.’
‘I’ll do him this much justice,’ said Long. ‘He behaved exactly as an English officer would have behaved in the same circumstances. He tore the sentry off an awful strip – so far as I could follow what he was saying – for getting in the way of the game. He then told him to get back to barracks and get dressed. Then he gave everybody a sort of paternal tick-off. “Boys will be boys – don’t get carried away” – that sort of thing, and sauntered off.’
‘With the honours of war—’
‘Oh, Lord, yes,’ said Long. ‘With every honour that was going. I’ve never seen a bluff called more competently.’
‘You don’t have to be a good poker player,’ said Goyles, ‘to call a bluff when you know exactly what cards all your opponents are holding.’
‘Say that again.’
‘Look here,’ said Goyles, ‘either I’m mad or everyone else in this camp is blind. But isn’t it perfectly obvious that everything we do and say
goes straight back to Benucci.’
Long suspended his undressing and stood for a moment, with his head on one side, looking anxiously at Goyles.
‘You’re not still delirious, are you?’ he said.
‘I’ve never been clearer headed in my life. You remember that first morning – when the Italians found Coutoules’ body in the Hut A tunnel. All that finger-printing and photographing and measuring marks in the roof of the tunnel. It stuck out a mile that they knew perfectly well that they were being offered a put-up job. I don’t go so far as to say that they knew where or how Coutoules was killed, but they knew that he had been put in that tunnel for them to find. That stuck out so far that even the Escape Committee noticed it.’
‘All right,’ said Long. ‘When else?’
‘Well, you remember my fiasco in the cooler. I thought at the time that poor little Biancelli might have blown his mouth off and got nabbed for indiscretion. Now I’m not so sure. And this business tonight makes me even less sure. You said yourself that it was unnatural. It was more than unnatural. It was plain bloody incredible.’
‘You realise what you’re saying, I suppose,’ said Long slowly. ‘Take those three cases alone. If Benucci got hold of them as quickly as you say he did, he’s got to have an informer who’s well in the swim. Not just anybody. I don’t suppose that more than a dozen people knew about any of them.’
‘I agree,’ said Goyles. ‘And it means a good deal more than that, too. Benucci’s not a fool. He must know that we’re capable of working this out. Why should he practically go out of his way to give us the information? Why should he come and rub my nose in it, as he did over that Biancelli job?’
‘You tell me,’ said Long.
‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ said Goyles. ‘I don’t think he cares a brass farthing for the safety and well-being of his informer in this camp. Any more than he did for his other stooge, Coutoules. And I’m beginning to think – and hope – that the reason for this is simply that he realises, better than we do, that time is running out. We can’t see the line running off the end of the reel, but he can.’
‘Hang on to that,’ said Long soberly. ‘It’s almost the only hope left for Roger that I can see.’