Transit

TWENTY-TWO

Somehow, between them, they got him up the ladder and into a tent. Avery laid him face down, gently, on one of the camp beds.

Mary was white-faced and trembling. But when she spoke, she made a tremendous effort to keep her voice normal. ‘Can—can you take it out, Richard?’

‘Yes,’ he said, with more confidence than he felt. ‘I’ll get it out— You’d better go for some water And, Mary—don’t hurry. You understand?’

She nodded dumbly, and went out of the tent.

Avery knelt down. ‘Tom, old son, can you hear me?’ Pushing urgently through all his pity and friendship for Tom was something more selfish, more agonizingly personal. Barbara, Barbara, he thought. Please be all right. Oh, my love, please be all right…

‘Tom, can you hear me?’ Avery was shocked at the sudden harshness in his voice. He wanted to know. He had to know. He fought back a terrible impulse to lift Tom up and shake the truth out of him.

‘Tom! For Christ’s sake, wake up!’

But there was no response. Tom had managed to stay conscious until he got back, and that was all.

Oh, God, don’t let him die, pleaded Avery. I must know. I must]

Then suddenly the panic stopped, and an icy calmness came over him. Sweat ran down his face and into his mouth. It was cold and bitter. He looked at Tom—eighteen inches of javelin sticking out of his back, and the blood pulsing darkly through the dark patches on his shirt where it had already dried and cracked—he looked at Tom and was filled with shame.

‘Sorry, old son,’ he murmured gendy. ‘I can’t go to pieces on you, can I?’

He bent down to examine the javelin, mumbling to himself as he did so. ‘Number one, it’s got to come out. Number two, there’s only one bloody way to get it out.

…Don’t hold it against me, Tom. Whatever happens, don’t hold it against me. I’jn only a poor ignorant clod trying to do my best.’

He gave the javelin a cautious and tentative pull. Nothing happened. It must be embedded in bone or muscle—possibly both.

Then he tried a quick hard wrench. All that happened this time was that Tom’s body lifted an inch or two from the bed. It plopped back heavily, forcing out of him a vague sound that was half groan and half grunt.

Sweet Christ, thought Avery, what the hell am I going to do? Whatever it was, it was going to have to be done in a hurry. Mary wasn’t going to sit on her anguish for ever.

The answer was obvious and logical; and he didn’t like it at all, for it seemed somehow to reduce Tom to the status of a lump of meat. But Avery could think of nothing else, so it had to be done.

He placed one foot in the small of Tom’s back, took a grip on the javelin with both hands, and heaved.

It came out. And with it, it tore out of Tom a thin, high-pitched animal scream that was mercifully cut off by returning unconsciousness. Avery was afraid there was going to be a fountain of blood—a result of his clumsiness in tearing an artery or vein—but there wasn’t. It just bubbled out in a sad, thin rivulet. The javelin fell to the ground out of Avery’s shaking fingers.

Mary came back with water and bandages from a first-aid kit. The sight of her galvanized Avery into action. He ripped Tom’s shirt back and exposed the area all round the wound. The hole was smaller than he would have thought. He began to bathe the blood away. It was coming out slower.

‘Richard, how is he?’ Her voice was flat, carefully drained of emotion. It sounded like a child making the supreme effort of not crying.

Avery took a gamble. ‘Lucky, I think.’ He smiled at her. ‘Nothing vital seems to be hit. He’s a tough customer, is your Tom. But I don’t imagine he’ll be doing handsprings for a few days.’

She seemed relieved, but not much. ‘I wish I could A have helped. I feel so….’ Her voice tailed away.

‘We’ve got to stop this damn bleeding,’ said Avery. ‘I’m going to squeeze a wad of cotton wool through in the Dettol, then pack it over the wound and bind it as tight as I can Unless you can think of anything better?’

She shook her head.

They cleaned the wound thoroughly and pressed a small mountain of cotton wool over it. Then, while Mary held the cotton wool in position, Avery turned Tom over and got him up into a half-sitting position.

By the time Mary had cut the rest of his shirt away, the cotton wool was soaked through. They got a bigger wad—in fact the rest of the supply—and pressed that on. Then Avery began to put on the bandage, winding tightly under the armpits and then across the chest and back, as high as possible. The first bandage lasted about six full turns. They put four on altogether.

While Avery was struggling to pin the last one, Tom —surprisingly, even miraculously—returned to consciousness.

‘My back’s burning,’ he mumbled. ‘What’s happening to my back? Who the hell ’ He opened his eyes wide, and gripped Avery’s arm weakly. ‘Richard, did you ?’

‘Yes, it’s out. Take it easy The operation was hardly a text-book example, but the patient is still alive.’

‘Darling,’ said Mary. ‘How do you feel?’

More miracles. Tom managed a sound that might charitably be interpreted as a laugh. ‘How do I feel? That’s a good one! I need some whisky…. Oh, my God! They got Barbara! ’ The remembering of it seemed to hit him physically.

‘You said that before.’ Avery tried to keep his voice normal. ‘Don’t play it for suspense a second time.’

Mary found a bottle of whisky and held it to Tom’s lips. She tilted it too much. He coughed and spluttered, and the whisky ran down his chest. The cough made him contort with pain.

He controlled both the pain and the cough with an effort. ‘We must have gone too near their bloody camp, I suppose…. No, I’ll be honest, I wanted to see their territory…. Don’t even know whether we got anywhere near it. We were following a stream. Barbara thought it might be the one they used…. Next thing you know, we practically walked into one of the big boys. He had javelins, we had tomahawks…. We stood staring at each other for a couple of seconds—mutual shock. Then he began to play with a javelin, and I yelled to Barbara to run for it…. The first one missed us both. I stopped to throw a tomahawk then started after her Next thing, I collected it in the back. I must have made a hell of a noise. Barbara turned round and came towards me. Then I passed out.’

He glanced longingly at the whisky bottle, and Mary gave him another drink. He took care not to cough this time. ‘When I came round, there was nothing. Except that Barbara’s tomahawks were lying in the grass.’ He hesitated, and avoided Avery’s gaze. ‘It—it looked as if there had been a bit of a struggle.’ Again he hesitated. ‘The only blood there was seemed to be mine…. God, it was hurting me. It was hurting bad I thought… I

thought the next best thing to dying was to ’ He stopped, and suddenly began to cry ‘Don’t know how the hell I got back,’ he blubbered. ‘I just had to…. Say something, Richard, for Christ’s sake, say something…. You ought to ram that goddamned javelin down my throat! ’

The telling of it, the shame, the unhappiness were all too much for Tom. He was still conscious, but his head slumped forwards on to his chest. The tears ran down his face, dripped off the end of his chin and mingled with blood and whisky. The sobbing hurt him, but he couldn’t stop. Avery laid him carefully back on the bed.

‘Not your fault, Tom,’ he said with difficulty. ‘Something was bound to happen sooner or later…. It seems that people like them don’t think or feel like people like us…. Whatever happens now, I suppose in the end it’s going to have to be a fight to a finish.’

But Tom wasn’t listening any more. Too much pain, too much sheer endurance and too much exhaustion had pushed him mercifully down into a pit of darkness.

Mary took Avery’s hand and held it. It was cold and clammy. ‘What can we do?’ she asked helplessly. ‘Oh, Richard, what can we do?’

Suddenly, he seemed to come out of a trance. ‘I’ve got to find out about Barbara, if she’s…’ He left it unsaid.