Lorimers at War (13 page)

Ten weeks had passed since the retreat began, and one after another her responsibilities had slipped away. All that was left was a determination at the beginning of each day to keep the survivors of her party alive until they reached the sea; but by each evening it seemed that it would be enough if she could drag her own exhausted body across the mountains. The Austro-German invasion, which forced the Serbian Army and the royal family to
evacuate Kragujevatz, had begun while she was still convalescent after her attack of typhus, and at the beginning of the trek she had had a horse to carry her south across the Serbian plains. But as the hospital column reached the foot of the Albanian mountain ranges and began to climb, there had been no more roads but only narrow paths marked out by goats and goatherds. There was no difficulty in finding the way, for every route which led towards the sea and safety was lined with the bodies of men and horses, but the tracks had proved too narrow for the ox wagons which had carried the wounded soldiers from the hospital. In the foothills it had been possible to transfer the patients to small forage carts for a few days, but by now they were strapped to all the available horses in litters, and anyone with two sound legs was expected to carry his own weight.

As comfort and even hope disappeared Kate felt increasingly surprised that the men of the military escort did not desert. Almost all of them had wives and children whose homes would by now be occupied by the Germans, and the temptation to protect their families must have been strong. But somewhere in these mountain passes the point of no return had been reached. The soldiers would perhaps starve if they went on, but they would certainly starve if they attempted to return. They might die of exposure in the mountains but they would be at the mercy of the Bulgars if they turned back to the plains. Probably, too, those of them who had been born in Austrian territory and who had willingly allowed themselves to be taken prisoner by men of their own race would be shot as deserters if they fell into Austrian hands again.

There was one form of desertion, of course, which was amenable neither to discipline nor to the reasonable balancing of alternative dangers, and her party's numbers shrank every day. They could protect each other against the wolves which howled in the darkness and against the
Albanian bandits who attacked stragglers for the sake of their clothes; but there was no protection against the increasing weakness of their own bodies. Even able-bodied soldiers were by now collapsing into the snow, unable to go any further, so it was not surprising that the wounded should succumb.

They were nearing the highest point of the pass. In terms of the total journey, that meant nothing. There had been high passes before and no doubt there were more still ahead. But on the southern side of the peak, the wind would perhaps bite less fiercely and there would be a better chance of finding a sheltered spot in which to sleep. Kate bent her head lower and forced her feet to keep moving. One more step, one more, one more.

Four hours later she wrapped her blanket tightly around her shoulders and leaned back against the black rock of the mountain, staring up at the sky. The blizzard had ended and the moon was full, reflecting off the snow and frost as clearly as though it were day. Ready to sleep, she felt completely at peace: the peace of someone too exhausted to care whether or not she would wake in the morning.

Sergei came to sit beside her. He pressed close against her side, not in any flirtatious way but in order that whatever body heat they retained might be shared.

‘I have brought you your Christmas feast,' he said, setting down a plate of beans and stale bread and a tin mug filled with water from snow melted over the camp fires.

‘Is it Christmas, truly?'

‘Truly.'

It seemed incredible that she should not have known, that Christmas Day should not somehow have had a character of its own, impinging itself on her consciousness. Kate dipped the bread into the water without comment. For the first weeks of the retreat there had been few problems with food, for the invasion had begun
before all the harvest could be brought in and the peasants who fled from their farms left plums on the trees and grapes on the vines and maize still standing in the fields. But since crossing the frontier it had been necessary to avoid inhabited areas, because the Albanians were unfriendly and fierce. By now their rations were almost exhausted. There were still horses which could be killed for food, but then the wounded men they carried would die, for it would be hard to find stretcher bearers still strong enough to carry any load along the steep and slippery paths.

From further down the mountain came the plaintive sound of a gusle as someone began to draw his bow across the single string. The sound was tuneless and very sad – Kate had never heard a guslar play a gay melody. Even when the instrument was used to accompany the kolo, the dancers required only a firm dignity of rhythm: light-heartedness was not demanded. But no one would have the strength to dance tonight, Christmas or no.

The men were not too tired to sing, though. The sound began as a kind of humming, which swelled as more and more of them joined in until at last it exploded into a cry of anguish. Kate did not need to understand the words to know that the soldiers were singing about their homeland, Serbia, which they had left perhaps for ever, and about the wives and children they might never see again. The emotion was infectious, almost unbearable. Kate felt her own heart breaking with sympathy for the singers.

‘At home,' said Sergei. ‘What would you be doing now at home?'

Home was Jamaica; and the Jamaicans, like the Serbs, celebrated Christmas with song. Kate remembered the hymns and carols which her father had taught to his congregation and the poignant harmonies with which the people of Hope Valley sang them on Christmas Day. When the Jamaicans sang about death they swung their shoulders and clapped their hands and shouted to the
skies in a kind of exultation. But when it was time to celebrate the birth of a baby their voices dropped to a whisper and the sadness of their singing had often moved Kate, as a little girl, to tears. At the time she had been unable to understand their attitude; but by now it was easier to sympathize with the feeling that a newly-born child was condemned to a life of hardship on earth while a dying man might hope for happiness in heaven.

But Jamaica was too far away. Kate had been cold for so long that she could hardly remember how delightful it had felt to be enveloped in the balmy warmth of a tropical island. Instead, as she gazed at the line of camp fires which flickered along the line of the track, she remembered the log fires which burned throughout the winter at Blaize. She had sat in front of one a year ago with Margaret and Alexa and Piers. At the time she had believed that she would never be so tired again as after the weeks of effort needed to equip and staff Blaize as a temporary hospital. Now, of course, she had learned what true tiredness was.

‘My uncle will be opening a bottle of champagne now,' she said. ‘If I were with him, I should be drinking a toast to Absent Friends. As it is, he'll be drinking the toast to me. And we can respond.'

She lifted the mug of water to her lips, but Sergei put a hand on her wrist to stop her. He pulled a bottle from his pocket.

‘I'd been keeping this to celebrate the new year,' he said. ‘But who knows where we shall be on New Year's Eve.'

‘Still on this mountain, I should think,' Kate said. But Sergei shook his head.

‘The reconnaissance party has returned. Journey's end is in sight. This is the last high pass. And there are ships waiting at Durazzo to take any members of the Serbian Army to Salonika. Before the old year is over, you and I will have to say goodbye.'

‘Why, Sergei?' Kate was startled and upset.

‘You will return to England, surely. It will be possible, and if I were your doctor I would order you to do so. You need rest, good food.'

In a long silence Kate allowed herself to day-dream. She imagined herself eating meals, hot, satisfying meals. But even the thought of delicious food was not as tempting as the prospect of sleep. To lie in the comfort of a bed, to be warm, to sink into sleep and to awake in the morning rested and still warm! She sighed at the thought, savouring the prospect but not really expecting to enjoy it again.

It was reasonable that she should return to England. A year away from home, in almost constant danger, must surely qualify her for a short period of leave. And then she would be justified in asking Beatrice to send her to France for her next tour of duty. That was where she had wanted to work, and by now she must have deserved the right to choose.

It should have been simple to decide, and yet it was not. Round the camp fire the men were singing again, their inadequate meal quickly eaten. There was no sense in which she could feel them less deserving of care than the British soldiers in France. And there was Sergei. The thought that she would have to sail away from Sergei stabbed at her heart with an unexpected pain.

She glanced at her companion and could not resist a smile. Like herself he was dressed in many layers of ill-fitting garments picked up from the roadside, crowned by a woollen hat which he had pulled down over his ears. He had sewn up the empty sleeve of his greatcoat and used it to carry the paper-bound books which he would not abandon even in this emergency. Shaving had been one of the first luxuries to be abandoned by all the men and Sergei's beard, like his hair, was long and untrimmed. Its raven blackness made his face appear even paler than normal, and his eyes had sunk more deeply into their dark sockets, although they still flashed with the fire
which had impressed Kate at their first meeting. If she had come face to face with such a man a year ago, in the civilized surroundings of Blaize, she would have gasped and hurried away. But now Sergei was her closest friend.

Language, which had once been the barrier between them, had in the end drawn them together. In the relaxed days of the almost-forgotten summer, Sergei had begun to teach her Russian and later, in a curious way, she had absorbed much of what he was saying to her during the course of her illness, while she was only half conscious. Since then, she had used the intellectual effort needed to understand him as a way of taking her mind off physical problems. She and Sergei conversed sometimes still in French, but more often in Russian; and it was during these conversations that she felt closest to him. For his part, there was no one else to whom he could talk in his own language, and he showed in his smile how much it meant to him. They were speaking Russian now, and Kate was not at all sure that she could bear to part from him.

‘Where will the men be going after we reach the coast?' she asked.

‘There's talk of a Serbian Division which will be assembled in Salonika and sent to fight on the Eastern Front.'

‘And you? Will you go with them?'

Sergei sighed, shaking his head sadly. ‘No. The Serbs can no longer fight as an independent army. They will come under Russian command. And I can tell you that the first Russian officer to set eyes on me would have me shot. Whether you go to England or not, we shan't see each other again.' He filled her mug from his bottle. ‘So we'll drink first to the absent friends of this Christmas. And afterwards to those who will be absent friends next Christmas but for a little while longer are present comrades.' He filled his own mug and they clinked them together.

He had found the slivovitza, no doubt, in the cellar of one of the abandoned farms they had passed, distilled by the farmer from his own plums. More cautiously than Sergei, Kate allowed it to make its fiery way down her throat. The warmth it brought to her body was comforting, but she could not prevent her eyes from filling with tears.

‘I seem to spend my life saying goodbye to everyone I love.' By now her knowledge of Russian was good enough for her to choose precisely the word for love which expressed her feeling of affection and respect and friendship. There was no romantic attachment on either side, but that did not make her any less unhappy.

‘You must tell yourself that if a parting is sad, it's because the comradeship which went before was good. And perhaps after all we shall meet again one day. I shall return to Russia when the revolution comes.'

‘Are you so sure that it will?'

‘You've seen all these people on the road, half alive or half dead, driven from their homes for some reason which they will never understand. What we've endured isn't only the retreat of an army: it's the flight of a nation. And what's happening in Serbia is happening all over Europe. There are French refugees, and Belgians, and Russians. Do you think they will endure such suffering for ever? There will come a moment – it
must
come – when they will turn on their rulers and say “We have had enough.” It may not be in Russia. If the Germans are defeated, it will come in Germany. It could happen in England if the Germans win and your people understand how their generals have sacrificed a generation of young men through their stupidity. If the Tsar's army defeats Germany and Austria, he will survive for a little while, no doubt. But his ministers are incompetent and his wife is German and gives him good advice under the influence of a drunken hypnotist. No. Russia will be defeated and then the voice of the people will be heard. We shall build a new society.'

‘There would be no place for me in it,' said Kate. ‘And Russia is so large that I would never find you even if I were there. So it will be a final parting. What will you do, Sergei?'

‘I shall go back to look for the orphans. Not just the few I brought to your hospital. A quarter of a million people have died in South Serbia, and who knows how many more must have been caught behind the enemy lines in the north. There must be children wandering all over the country with no one to help them. I shall see how many of them I can keep alive. We will drink another toast. To the children of Europe!'

Brought up in a teetotal household, Kate was unused to drinking spirits and the second mugful of slivovitza had an immediate effect on her tired and undernourished body. She could feel her head swimming and this was followed by a delightful sensation as though she were floating, warm and peaceful, high above the snowy pass. If this is being drunk, I like it, she thought, and fell asleep.