The string signalled at his ankle and he went down, found them listening to the young man who had walked in from nowhere. Shelley pressed his teeth together to stop the noise that shook his whole face to tears. He held a loaded revolver high in his left hand for practice, but the, bad had already infected the good with its pain and weakness and he dropped it in despair. Mokhtar was talking to the young man and the guide, moving his thick finger on the French military map. The leaflet crinkled in Frank’s pocket, and he held it up to read. Shelley put down his gun and went to the water store. ‘You should see this!’ Frank called, laughing without wondering first whether it would be safe to do so. The leaflet told of some café-brothel of Laghouat and was meant for the eyes of French soldiers, complete with prices for the various levels of delight — clean, well-reglemented and safe. The young man handed them to passing convoys and incoming drafts, patrols returning from a hard slog to this staging post of rest and culture.
Shelley read it. ‘Yeh, it’s bad news. A sweet chick of Nubia heard it from the lips of an orgiastic poilu. Two brigades left this morning to clean up the area. One is spreading from the Laghouat-Aflou road, and the other’s fanning out from the Géryville area. A nice little trap, complete with planes, guns and bunsen-burners. There are a few of us in the bag. We were supposed to be massing for a raid on Laghouat — though I don’t think they knew it. So we break out to the south and gather somewhere else, east of Laghouat maybe, to go in as soon as that brigade leaves, which means we might filter through the thick of them at night, and hit them in the rear if they scoot back to relieve Laghouat. The permutations are endless, but not so that you can’t sort them out if you have half a brain.’
‘How’s your hand?’
‘Improving. I don’t feel the ants any more. I want to find a doctor. I’ll leave you for a sweet while. When it’s fixed, I’ll hit the trail again.’
‘It might be safer to stick with us. Have it fixed and drag along. We don’t want the French to nick you. Got to pull you out in one piece.’
Shelley smiled, his eyes feverish, and teeth set. ‘Don’t worry. I’m an American journalist come over the Tunisian frontier to report on the situation. Working for the magazine New People. All my papers are in order. Take no chances. They won’t like it, a left-wing mag, but at least they won’t stand me up against a wall, or roast me over a slow fire.’
‘I’m glad you’re organised.’
‘You’re no good dead. Not that I’m wailing over a smack on the hand by a bullet, or cringing for the Purple Heart. Just a brief statement of principles.’
‘They won’t leave you behind,’ Frank said, wryly. ‘And we’ll mend your hand. How do we get out, though?’
Shelley picked up the revolver again and levelled it shakily at the rockface. ‘We climb to six thousand feet, then go north-east, up and down peaks till we cross the Laghouat-Aflou road. We start in half an hour. We’ll meet no tanks so high up, but we’ll have to crawl on our bellies because of planes and helicopters. The French must think there are thousands of us in this area, but I’d be surprised if there are more than a hundred.’
Chapter Seventeen
From a distance the grey and orange flank of the mountain looked unassailable except with the gear of an alpine expedition. They took the hard route out, the long march, the half-possible. To look down made him dizzy, to look up promised a premature death by exhaustion — which was better, he thought, scrambling up a few more feet, than a bullet up your arse or the red cock on your shoulders. Tilt your head back and the wall moves towards your eyes. The wall went into the sky and would swing down unless you threw yourself off to avoid it. So you kept them fixed in front, and since you couldn’t hold back the machine of your legs, you kept your senses locked where they could not distract or destroy you.
Below the eastern drop of the land lay a cloud of dust and smoke. It looked flat and low from where they were, with a noise as if a forest were hidden beneath, and all trees in it were falling down to the crack of their rending trunks and the dull brush of enormous treetops. ‘Bazookas,’ Shelley said. ‘Grenade rifles. It’s a privilege to fight such a well-equipped army.’
‘I’m not proud,’ said Frank. ‘I’d rather be hounded by thugs with sticks and us have the rifles. When do we get to that six-thousand-foot mark? I’ve forgotten my barometer. On a useless stunt like this, I begin to forget who my friends are.’
‘Delirium,’ Shelley said.
‘I let it have free rein. Then it goes away. I’d like to roam the world in a freebooting tank, guns firing in all directions — at friends who try to help me and enemies who try to destroy me — because there doesn’t seem much difference at a time like this.’
They lay on the rocks for a short rest out of the hour. ‘The trouble with you is that you’re irrevocably unavoidably rotten. Maybe it’s because you’re English, I don’t know. I love you like a brother, but I can’t honestly see you getting a job in the cabinet when they form the Free Government of Reconstruction!’
‘I know,’ Frank said. ‘It makes me sad. I cry myself to sleep about it every night. Maybe I’m rotten, but I’m burning it out of me. A few charred corners are left, that’s all.’
The file moved, seven now that the young man joined them rather than risk walking alone through the French brigades. Shelley talked to him. He’d polished shoes, run errands, carried kit and luggage, lost a bus-conductor’s job because he hadn’t kept his hands out of the fare-bag. The café work was all right. He lived, was wiry and surprisingly strong, useful in a hundred ways. The Frenchwoman who owned it couldn’t know what accurate information he dispensed to those in the street who saw that it reached the relevant people. Often he passed it on himself, trekking the hills with pockets of nuts and figs. He could read French, write his name, recognise the different tanks and aeroplanes, the various guns and weapons, explained to him boastfully by French soldiers who thought they had stumbled on a queer idiot who played up to their cause. In a world of enemies, you can make friends easily, and do much damage before being caught. His smile was too frank and continuous to be quite sane. The brothelised obscenities mouthed out of loyalty to his job and the mistress of the house, the leaflets thrown at great risk onto the backs of speeding trucks, made him known all over this part of the country. When he appeared in the midst of a battalion about to embark on a fisherman’s hunt, a bundle of newspapers under his arm recording successful encounters with the FLN, and predicting a final sure end to the rebellion, they drove him away or, goodnaturedly, advised him to go home. Some would even buy his papers, and then he would walk off with a sulphurous, appealing grin, running a little, jumping, then a quick stroll until he came across a friendly shepherd who would fork up the nearest outflanking ranges to spread verbal messages over the cordoned area, to warn any who did not already know what was coming. He couldn’t think back to how such work began. Nothing definite had pulled him in. Even his loathing, being intermittent, formed no basis for his consistent and intelligent action. Yet he was an easygoing rebel rather than a zealous revolutionary, and perhaps for this reason was able to make a surer contribution to the common war, since his personality fitted him perfectly for this part.
Shelley retailed it to Frank. ‘He’ll vanish in the night, or some time when we’re through the thick of it.’