Horizon (2 page)

Miller was still talking about Johann. “I told him nothing about you. He thinks the buttons are for me. So if he’s been planted here to trap us he will give the wrong information.” He allowed himself to glance at Lennox for a moment. This will be his third attempt, he remembered: the first from this camp, but the third altogether. The other two had failed because of sheer bad luck. Miller himself had only tried once, but it hadn’t been planned in the careful way Lennox worked out his escapes. When a man planned like Lennox it was unfair that he shouldn’t succeed. He remembered now that in each case Lennox had been caught (once in sight of Jugoslavia, once in Southern Italy) by trusting to the good faith of smiling civilians. No wonder that the mention of Johann, the seventeen-year-old Tyrolese in the prison’s post office, had stiffened Lennox like that. He scarcely trusted his own shadow now. And you couldn’t blame him: not after two disappointments.

“I passed the buttons to Jock Stewart when he was scrubbing the post-office floor today,” Miller went on quietly. “He is hiding them in your mattress now.”

Lennox stirred. That at least was a good plan. Stewart, the intransigent Scotsman, had been detailed to a week’s fatigue-duty for some minor infraction of the rules. This meant a good deal of scrubbing and cleaning and slop-carrying. It also meant no exercise in the yard, for the Adjutant had so arranged the fatigue-party’s routine that they were emptying the slop-pails
from the rooms of the other prisoners at this moment. So Stewart, although he lived in a different part of the prison, would now be in Lennox’s room. That was a good plan. In the event of an escape the men who were examined most carefully were always those occupying the same quarters as the man who had escaped. Suspicion fell naturally on them.

“Thanks,” Lennox said. “Thank you, Dusty.” He stared at a small white cloud, already tinged red round its soft edges. The sun would soon go down. The bell would ring any minute now. “What did it cost you to get them?”

“Nothing,” Miller answered. “Johann doesn’t take bribes.”

Lennox’s eyebrows went up. “A gaoler who doesn’t take bribes?” he asked mockingly.

Miller’s good-natured face was frowning. “He’s all right, I tell you,” he said shortly. After all, he thought, I’ve been working in the post office for months now. I’ve seen Johann every day. I ought to know what he’s like. “If it hadn’t been for him and his information we’d never have known about the capture of Sicily or any of the recent news,” he said. Then his frown cleared as he saw Lennox’s eyes. Men got that way just before an attempt to escape: after they had perfected the main plan they would worry about the details unnecessarily. Miller pulled his sweater more closely round his neck. The first evening breeze from the mountains was shrewd. “Going to be damned cold here this winter,” he said, looking down at his thin shorts. Like most of the men, he was still wearing the lightweight clothes in which he had fought in Africa. Warmer clothing had been promised, but then the Commandant always promised. And now it was the beginning of September, and the cold autumn rains would soon lash the unheated prison. “If we are still here,” he added,
and half-smiled as he glanced at Lennox’s face for a moment. “Something’s blowing up, judging from the calm all round us today. Reminds me of the Sunday when Musso resigned. Something’s blowing up.”

Lennox didn’t seem to think the idea so very funny. “Yes,” he said grimly. “Maybe peace will be signed and you’ll all ride out of here while I’m still squirming through ditches.”

“Oh, we’ll stop and give you a lift in our borrowed Bugatti,” Miller said generously. He was grinning openly now as he watched the game of football. He laughed more than necessary when the sergeant-major missed another shot at goal. Then, suddenly, he was serious again.

“Don’t worry, Pete. You’ll make it. Good luck to you,” he said as he rose. “This will be the last time I’ll get a word with you, I suppose.”

Peter Lennox said “Yes.” It was the habit of those who were about to make an escape to avoid in the last few days the friends who had helped them. It averted suspicions and shortened the punishments for the men left behind. “Thanks, Dusty.”

For a moment the two friends looked at each other. Then the New Zealander moved away as slowly, as desultorily as he had come. He was talking to Ferry, the South African, now: they were still chatting when the bell began its mournful peal. The sentries, usually nagging the men to march quickly inside, were less urgent today. Lennox picked himself up slowly and joined the tail-end of the straggling crowd. He had his last look at the Dolomite ranges. Well, he thought, it wouldn’t be long before he might look at them as a free man. With luck and care, it wouldn’t be long.

Then he noticed that the two sentries outside the wire were
no longer bored. They were staring at the road, some hundred yards across the grass from the outer wire. Lennox and the men beside him stared too. Three large army trucks were coming swiftly towards the camp from the direction of the town. And they were not Italian. They were German.

“Perhaps some boxes,” a man beside Lennox suggested hopefully. “About time some more packages were arriving.”

“The Germans don’t act as the Italians’ postmen,” another said acidly. He muttered something under his breath about bloody optimists.

But speculation was silenced as Falcone, the least likeable of all the prison guards, appeared at the wide arch of doorway. He was a small, thin-faced man with a thick skin, which the Abyssinian campaign had stained into a permanent walnut colour. Camp gossip said he suffered from flat feet, an unfaithful wife, stomach ulcers, and strong Fascist convictions. Today he seemed to be feeling the effect of all four ailments simultaneously. There was more than the usual violence in his voice. His mounting rage contrasted strangely with the lassitude of the five other guards.

The prisoners had to content themselves with an exchange of side-glances, as they marched in obedience to Falcone’s shouts through the stone cavern of a hall into the room where thin meals were doled out. Yet this was not the time for food. Usually at this hour of the afternoon those whose names had appeared on the day’s Letter list would be taken to the post office in the Administrative side of the building; those who were less fortunate would be marched to their rooms and locked into bare boredom to await their shift for the mess-hall. And now they had been gathered together, jammed up against the long
tables and fixed benches in a room which had never been built to contain so many at once. This break with routine stirred the men for a moment, but the sudden undercurrent of excitement ebbed away as the solid door, which separated this room from the hall, was closed decisively. There was coughing, shuffling of feet as men tried to keep their balance in the crowd. There was Falcone’s vigilant eyes and sharp tongue calling “Attention!”

From the courtyard at the back of the castle came the sound of grinding brakes. The trucks had arrived. But speculation was already dying. The boarded windows blotted out sight of a sky stretching to freedom. Under the naked bulbs, with their wavering electric light, the prisoners’ faces were still more haggard. The animation of the exercise yard had gone, and with it the moment’s forgetfulness. Here they remembered again.

The men waited, outwardly patient (so much they had learned during their captivity) even if their thoughts were unprintable, and chalked up another petty annoyance on the Italian score. There weren’t any cases of open brutality at this camp. Not since the Swiss Representative had two of the worst bullies removed from the guard room. The rest of the gaolers weren’t so bad, considering how bad the deposed two had been; for the most part they were inoffensive creatures, with weak hearts and stout stomachs, determined to keep their jobs so pleasantly far from the battlefield, and not averse to stretching their own rations with a pilfered package or two. The prisoners had been quick to learn: a package, with a tin of meat or a slab of chocolate neatly filched out while it was being examined for contraband, meant a bribable gaoler. Not that judicious bribing meant real kindness. But it did mean a cigarette from the town, or some little item which the Camp Commissary didn’t have
on sale, even if the price charged by the obliging gaoler secured him a 600 per cent profit.

* * *

The minutes passed. The men were still held to attention. Then the uneasy silence was broken suddenly, and the men’s thoughts switched from their own grievances over to the dulled sound of heavy boots shuffling through the hall outside. Peter Lennox’s eyes left Falcone’s savage little face and turned towards the door. Its solid thickness depressed him still more. What’s going on? he wondered again. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it. Any new developments in this camp meant complications in his escape. It was too near, he thought, it was too near... The nagging worry of today and yesterday suddenly sharpened into anger.

“Hell!” Ferry said suddenly, and relaxed ostentatiously. That would mean another two weeks of “solitary” in a basement cell. Ferry had only recently completed such a turn. But his name had been on the Letter list this morning, and he hadn’t received any mail for over four months. “Hell!” he said again, and stared into Falcone’s bulging eyes.

“And hell!” another voice said. Someone laughed, and the laughter increased. The Italian guards glanced uneasily at each other: here was another of these mad outbursts by the Inglesi. It began with nothing; just a laugh like this one now. And then it would spread into a chant—no violence, just chanting. You hadn’t any justification for shooting at them. The most you could do, if you didn’t want the Swiss to complain about the way this camp was run, was to choose the ringleaders (the basement cells being unfortunately inadequate in number for all the prisoners) and shut them up in darkness for a week or two.
You could also cancel all privileges for the rest of the camp, and keep them confined to quarters. That was the most you could do: but the prisoners either couldn’t or wouldn’t learn.

Of all the guards Falcone enjoyed these outbursts least. He always seemed to think that they were an insult specially directed against his dignity. Now his dark face turned into a ripe pomegranate. The veins in his neck swelled. His hand was on his revolver. As the chorus of “Where are our letters? Where are our letters?” increased in volume his voice rose and was all the more ludicrous lost in the uproar. His eyes turned towards the doorway. He was worried as well as angry, almost nervous. Those who noticed that look paused for a moment, and then resumed their song with still greater enthusiasm. I’m a fool, Lennox was thinking: we’ll be jugged for this, and the chances to escape will be more difficult. I’m a fool... But the intoxication of this moment of small triumph, of seeing Falcone no longer assured and somehow shaken, couldn’t be resisted. His voice joined the chorus even as he told himself just what size of a fool he was.

As the door half-opened the men realised at last what had been worrying Falcone. The Commandant himself had come, fat of face, sad-eyed, with his pouting lips ready to say so very gently “Such bad boys!” That was his usual phrase when he was about to order the meanest form of punishment he could give. But somehow, today the words weren’t spoken. Lennox thought, he’s worried too. What is wrong, anyway? The Italians hadn’t lost so much composure since the day that Mussolini’s fall was announced over the Rome radio, and the prisoners had all started a song with scurrilous additions about Humpty Dumpty. (It was after this unfortunately frank radio
announcement that the wireless set in the prisoners’ dining-room suddenly went out of order and was never repaired.) Since then the only news had come through Johann’s asides to Miller, working beside him in the post office. What was wrong, anyway? The other men near Lennox had sensed something too. They might still be the prisoners, and these Italians were their keepers, but in this minute it was the prisoners who were victorious. Their answer was given once more by the door. It opened fully, and the prisoners could see a line of uniformed men, slowly filing through the hall towards the staircase. There were some heavily armed guards. There was an officer, now standing in the doorway. He was German. So were the strange guards. But the men in the dining-room staring into the hall at the slowly moving file there stopped their chanting.

“British,” Miller was yelling. “Canadian.”

“American,” Ferry added to that. “Hi there, Yanks!”

“And officers,” Lennox heard his own voice shouting. The men stared, each at his neighbour. “Officers? What’s the bright idea?” “Officers? What are they doing here?”

The German captain looked savagely at the Italian Commandant. “What discipline!” he said. “Keep those men quiet.” He turned to Falcone. “Keep these men quiet. What’s wrong?”

“They want their letters—”

“Give them their letters.” And then the captain turned to the prisoners, now silenced by their curiosity. “Any more of this and we will consider it mutiny. We will shoot.” To the Italian guards he said, “Keep your guns ready.”

“But—” the Commandant began.

“No time for ‘buts.’ Give them their letters. Send that man
for them.” He pointed to Falcone. “At once!”

Falcone, taking the short-cut to the post office, moved quickly through the back door of the mess-hall into the kitchen.

The German captain looked round the room, his eyes narrowed. He spoke once more to the Commandant. “Keep them quiet.” His tone was so savage that Lennox, Miller, Ferry, and a score of others exchanged glances. The rest of the prisoners were either content that they were to be given the letters, or were still speculating why any officers should be brought to this camp. But Ferry and Miller had a different look in their eyes, and there was a grin on their lips. They were guessing, and the guesses were very comforting.

“Shut up,” Lennox said quietly to the clown next him, who could only think of raising a smile at this moment by his “Officers? What next? I’m going to complain to the management.”

“Shut up!” And then as the man looked at him with a blank expression, he said quickly, “They can’t have enough guards. They’ve got to bribe us to keep quiet. They can’t even detail guards to take us to the post office. So shut up. And get ready. Pass the word along.”