Tremor (27 page)

With the risk of every sort of pestilence breaking out in this heat, it was further announced that by tomorrow evening, Wednesday, all rescue operations would have to come to an end and the city be flattened and abandoned.

‘What time is it?' Letty asked.

He switched on the torch. ‘Twelve, I reckon it must be midday.'

‘That's twelve hours we've been here. I think we should start shouting again.'

‘Let me. I suppose your head …'

‘It is still throbbing. But I believe not quite so bad.'

Lee began to shout. The air was foul, but there must be a current somewhere.

After about ten minutes he stopped. There was a piece of the bed he could bang with Letty's scissors and this made a thin piercing noise within the confined space.

‘It's only a matter of time,' he said.

He did not ask if she was thirsty; useless to emphasize what they were both feeling.

‘It's only a matter of time,' he said again.

She said: ‘Well, I have been in more uncomfortable places.'

‘Have you?'

‘Even this is better than being in the hands of the Gestapo.'

‘
Were
you?'

‘Yes, twice. In 1941. They thought I knew where my brother was.'

‘Was this in Oslo?'

‘Yes. The infamous Victoria Terrace. Where my father went before me.'

He put his hand back over hers. ‘How long were you kept there?'

‘The first time a week. The second time two. Lying here with you, with company, buried but waiting, it is rather to be preferred.'

‘You were, I suppose – interrogated?'

‘Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I told them nothing. Or sometimes lies.'

‘Did they …' He hesitated and stopped.

‘Torture me? No. They were bullies: they shouted at me, became hysterical. Many of the Gestapo were hystericals, did you know? But the only time they touched me was to grasp my wrists. After two, three hours of questioning they would take me back to my cell, where I was alone, a single light, no window, not allowed to read, to write. I could just pace about – perhaps three metres each way – or sit or lie on the bed, which was not so soft as this one.'

‘Though not sloping.'

‘Not sloping.'

‘Listen, was that something?'

A distant droning which might have been an aeroplane. They both began to shout, but when they stopped the aeroplane had gone.

To take her mind off their situation and to help the time to pass, he began to question her about her life in Norway under the Occupation. She talked more then than she had ever done before, and he suspected that she was playing the same game. She told of confiscated food, men arrested without warning, children picking flowers to put on the grave of an unknown British pilot, the tank parades through the main streets, a mutiny among the German soldiers and the firing squads that suppressed it, the banning of newspapers and radios, the sinking of the cruiser
Blücher
, the Lofoten raid and the reprisals and the burning of houses and the arrests of prominent men.

When she and her mother had finally reached Sweden they had worked their way south to Göteborg. This had taken a month. There they had boarded a Swedish vessel carrying a cargo of cotton and leather goods for Baltimore. Being neutral, they had not been searched.

‘And your brother?' Lee asked.

‘He was captured and shot near Bergen, attempting to blow up an oil refinery. They were all shot, all six of them … There is only one thing I am thankful for, he was not interrogated. I am told the German officer who ordered the shooting was later sent to the Russian front – not for killing these brave men but for not handing them over to the Gestapo first …'

‘You cared much for your brother.'

‘Oh, yes. Perhaps him most of all.'

Towards two he put on the torch and looked at her head. The stitches were holding, and the bleeding had almost stopped.

They had pulled out nine more corpses and one man alive but with two broken legs. He was English and was a big man with a pugilist's face and manner. He said he was not a guest at the Saada but came from the Mahraba. His chum was dead, squashed obscenely flat like some frog caught under a tractor wheel. He and his chum had come to visit a chum of theirs, he said, and had been caught sitting in the lobby when the earthquake struck. He was taken by jeep to the quay, there to be lifted by helicopter to the airport.

Special attention was being given to Europeans caught in the collapse of the hotels. This was not merely because they were wealthy visitors, though that counted for a great deal, but because Prince Moulay Hassan, circling the scene in a helicopter, could see that whereas building built of the Moorish
pise
had collapsed completely, burying the inhabitants without hope of survival, the more modern and up-to-date buildings, even if they had collapsed, had fallen into heaps of masonry and steel girders which might have fallen and trapped people without killing them. Therefore different techniques had to be applied for different parts of the city. By tomorrow morning the bulldozers and the dynamiters must go in, followed by the disinfectant squads; the coastal strip would have to be left as long as possible.

But how long would it be possible? The buzzards were already circling, the rats multiplying, the jackals were out, and the flies and bluebottles, in this heat, and with this smell, everywhere. There had been pressure on the Prince to delay the total destruction of the town by another day. But would it pay to save one or two more buried people at the expense of many others who might go down in a wave of typhoid, cholera and dysentery?

Tomorrow at dawn four hundred men had been commanded to advance on the town wearing damp antiseptic masks and would smother it in quicklime. That would be the end of a fine city. In a month or so another would begin to rise, not quite on the same site but within half a mile, perhaps built on more stable rock. At this stage one had to weigh the consequences of ruthlessness against the consequences of hesitation and a form of humanitarianism which might earn praise in the foreign press but might well lead to terrible outbreaks of disease.

About four they dug out Mme Thibault, uninjured except for a gashed ankle. The curious sight was to be seen of Vicky Reynard comforting the other woman with her arm round her shoulders while Estrella wept into a small sodden handkerchief. M. Thibault was not to be found. Mme Thibault, having had her ankle perfunctorily dressed, refused to leave the spot while her husband was unaccounted for. Laura Legrand, also uninjured in spite of her long entombment, came across with a cup of strong coffee and a piece of fruit cake, and Estrella did not refuse to take them from her.

At six Matthew's legs gave way. He was helped into the next jeep, but refused to leave the town. In spite of all his efforts and the efforts of soldiers under his direction, Nadine's body had not yet been recovered. There had been a further fall of masonry, and everyone was reluctant to do anything to start another collapse while a hope of life still lingered among the rubble.

They took him instead to the ruined hospital, where makeshift tents had been put up in the grounds, and Dr Berrada, trying to ignore his personal losses, and others were dealing with the less seriously injured.

A young medical attendant dressed his arm properly, he was given some wine and biscuits, and then they jabbed his other arm and he fell into a heavy sleep.

He only realized how long he had slept when, on opening his eyes, he saw there were streaks of daylight in the sky. He had been out for about sixteen hours.

He felt sick and ill and tired and sick at heart, but alert. He sat up, and a man lying beside him stirred and groaned. In the glimmering light a few people were moving about the tents. He tried to get up but his legs were still weak and he sat back, taking in long deep breaths. He rested his head against the tent pole.

The catastrophe was still too much for him to take in. A happy holiday – made suddenly vividly exciting by his meeting with Nadine – had collapsed into a nightmare of unguessable proportions. That girl, that beautiful girl, in the full flight of her youth and elegance, crushed, smothered, bludgeoned to death by a convulsion such as had never happened before in the history of western Africa. And hundreds of other people.
Thousands
of others. If Nadine had accepted his suggestion that they should drive to Marrakech they would have escaped it all and she would still be alive. Or if they had accepted the Baron de Blaye's invitation to spend another few nights there … If … if … It was unthinkable. It was insensate, an evil force striking out blindly and caring nothing what it hit. There was some poem by Hardy he vaguely remembered: ‘Or come we of an Automaton unconscious of our pains?' This Automaton cared as little as any other robot; killing and crushing as it went.

Among those it had arbitrarily missed was Matthew Morris. Among those it had arbitrarily killed was Nadine Deschamps. He wondered what had happened to the other guests. Fat old Thibault and the pretty Italian woman, and the limping German and that American couple. Had they been brought out to safety, or brought out and lined up among the other dead, or not brought out at all? He would never know now. He would never go back.

Recovering his strength gradually, he gripped the tent pole and pulled himself to his feet. In the next tent they were bringing in a boy of about twelve who, a nurse said, had been buried standing up to his neck in rubble for thirty-one hours. He had no serious injury but his nerves had gone now he was rescued, and they were trying to get a teapot between his chattering teeth so that they could pour water into him after the dehydration. At a table not far away under the light of an acetylene lamp a surgeon was performing some sort of an operation on an unidentifiable figure. After a few minutes the male nurse beside the table dropped an amputated arm into a bucket.

Matthew's new strength went and he sat down. As daylight grew he could see people everywhere, many lying on the ground, some kneeling, others standing like lost souls not knowing which way to turn.

‘Are you better, monsieur?' a voice said. It was the young doctor who had dressed his arm.

‘Thank you. I – have been asleep a long time. Have you water – or any liquid?'

‘I can get you some lemonade.'

‘That would be wonderful.'

‘Let me look at your arm.'

Matthew allowed him to examine the bandage and to sniff it. He seemed satisfied.

Matthew said: ‘You have far too much to do. Perhaps I can look after myself.'

‘Presently you shall. But you are – a visitor, and therefore we do our best for you.'

‘How many people are there in this – this encampment?'

‘Perhaps three thousand.'

‘And doctors?'

‘Eight. There were only three to begin, but many more are coming. I think you should not have come here, M. Delaware. You should have been lifted out to the airport.'

‘I did not want to go. I have lost someone – very dear to me.'

‘As have so many others, alas.'

As the doctor turned away to fetch the lemonade Matthew said: ‘But why do you call me M. Delaware?'

The young doctor smiled. ‘ It was in your passport, monsieur. We are trying – the authorities are trying very hard to keep a tally of those who have survived and those who – who have been lost.'

‘But it is – that is a mistake,' Matthew said. ‘I am not …'

But the young doctor had turned away and did not hear him.

Lee had been tunnelling. After a long time he looked at his watch and reckoned he had been working for four hours. He had made little progress, for the rubble was pressed hard down, and he had to go cautiously. The other great problem, which was insoluble, was how far they had fallen. Did safety lie upwards, or downwards, or tunnelling level away from where they lay?

Letty was asleep. She had fallen asleep just after he began digging, and his only break in his activities was every now and then to edge nearer to her and listen to her breathing. Often it was short and troubled as if she were dreaming. Once he shone a shaded light and saw that her face was flushed. Probably running a fever from the wound in her head. He wondered if he would have been wiser not to have touched it, but he did not dare to lift the scarf for fear of waking her. Let her sleep.

He was feeling lightheaded and feeble himself, and though he had progressed about two feet into the rubble there was nothing to gauge whether this sort of effort was bringing them any nearer the surface.

Actually there wasn't very much either of them could do but sleep. Perhaps this way they would sleep their lives away.

There was no sound of activity outside. Occasionally an aircraft could be heard, but these sounded distant and remote, as if hearing them through an immensely thick wall. There was some current of air, otherwise they could not have lived. He thought it came from below, from the area from which he had dragged Letty, and that was the way he had been tunnelling.

It would be going dark outside, and soon they would have been buried two days. For half a day the air had been unpleasant because of their own faecal motions, which they had been unable to contain; but with no food or water taken in they had passed nothing, and the air was clearing again.

He was feeling sleepy himself, and after rubbing the blood off his fingers and fingernails, he tucked them inside his shirt and slid beside her, trying to find comfort in her presence.

Almost at once he dreamed. He was marrying Ann again, and was being constantly offered glasses of champagne which, as soon as he grasped them, turned into dry straw. Then they were driving away, just as they had done so many years ago, but were somewhere in Arizona on a road overlooking a lake. It was a mountain road with hairpin bends, and although it was climbing he felt certain that it would soon lead him down to the cool waters of the lake. Instead the road narrowed and the Tarmac was barely a car wide; then it tapered to a narrowness that made it impossible to go on. But now it was impossible to reverse, so they abandoned the car and decided to climb down to another road fifty feet below. They had rope, which Ann was carrying in her handbag, but it was in small lengths which had to be tied together. The descent was impeded by fallen columns of stones, great rocks and broken bedsteads.