came fast… He kicked back the blanket. He felt the damp in his hip joints and his shoulders and the ache from the rough ground, and was hell's thankful for the hotel's blanket. The smell caught at him. Penn remembered…
The sun threw a long shaft into the recess of the cave. He wondered if she had been there all night, if she had slept, if she had stayed in the crouched posture against the inner wall of the cave. The cave, big in the small light of the Headmaster's torch, seemed shrunken, little more than a cleft. He yawned, stretched. He smiled at her and won back no acceptance of his presence. He tried to smile warmth.
He looked hard at her.
There was little to see of her because there was a shawl of torn cloth across the crown of her head that covered also her ears and her throat. What he could see of the face was a mosaic of age lines, weathered and grimed. Small hands, without spare flesh, were clasped rigidly on her lap, and he saw the deep-set dirt as if they were painted with it. She wore a long dress of black cloth that shrouded her and the cloth had the stale dankness of the cave. Over her dress, open to the waist, was a big overcoat, too large for her sparrow size, and Penn thought it might have been her husband's, and there was a knotted string holding it to her waist. Her short legs were extended in front of her and her stockings, heavy grey wool, were shredded at the knee and her feet were in small- sized rubber boots that came half of the way up her shins. It seemed to Penn as if the shawl and the dress and the coat and the stockings and the rubber boots were moulded to her body… Did she have other clothes? Did she change the clothes? Did she go to a stream and strip and wash?… He was wondering how long it had been since she had changed her clothes, washed herself. In his mind he made small markers. Had she changed or washed since his little Tom had been born? Washed or changed since the acid session with Gary bloody Bren-nard (Personnel)? Changed or washed since he had last laid up rough, through a night, in the undergrowth beside the Network South-East rail track when they were watching the lock-up garage for the Irishman? Washed or changed since the battle for Rosenovici and the death by a sniper's aim of her husband, and her flight to the woods, the cave? His Jane showered in the morning and in the evening. His mother stood in the kitchen of the tied cottage and stripped to the waist, and didn't care if her kiddie had seen her, and soaped herself. He made the markers and wondered if she had ever washed or changed since she had come to the cave.
He tried to smile across the cave floor. Would she come back with him?
Katica Dubelj was the eyewitness. Would she come back to Zagreb and make the statement?
Had she the strength to go back with him, across country?
Penn smiled and he gazed into the dead animal eyes of the old woman. He did not think she had the strength… They had no language that was common to them. He pulled his backpack round from its pillow position and when he made the movement she cringed back against the cave wall as if seeking a cranny where she could hide from him. When the Headmaster returned then they would make a statement and the Headmaster would write the story of the eyewitness, and she would make her mark as authenticity. She did not have the strength to go back with him, across country. He had given ham for the cat and sandwiches for the dogs, he was down on his food stock. There were bread rolls in the backpack and there was cheese, and the opened packet of ham, and there was an orange… Penn split a roll open and he laid a piece of cheese in the roll and then peeled off a slice of the ham and laid it with the cheese. He crawled towards her across the cave floor and he held the roll of dried-out bread in front of him. She could go no further back, and he came close to her, until her hand, the bony, filthy claw, darted forward to snatch the food from him. Christ, and she had no teeth… She tore at the roll, broke it into pieces and wolfed the pieces. She could not chew them down, they were swallowed indigestible. When she had finished the pieces then she picked for each crumb and each fragment of the flaked bread. It was as if he fed an untamed animal. He passed the orange to her. He wondered when she had last seen an orange. Jane had orange juice on the table each morning, and it was maybe a year, maybe a year and a half, since Katica Dubelj had last seen an orange. She grabbed at the orange and her fingernails, black-coated, nicked the full flesh of his hands, and a little blood ran. She pulled the orange into pieces and stuffed them down, pith and fruit and peel, into the mouth without teeth. He saw the juice dribble from the side of her mouth and when the orange was gone she lifted the fold of her dress to her lips and licked the juice off. She had gratitude and she wanted to share. It was picked from the cave floor from amongst her bedding sacks. It was passed to him in her closed claw fist. He held out the palm of his hand and the claw fist opened… Christ, a bloody root. She scurried back to her far edge of the cave. A sucked bloody root… She watched him. It was truth, the reality of the war. He wondered how many of them there were, old people holed up in caves in the woods behind the lines, sucking roots for survival. He thought that if he sucked the bloody root then he would be sick onto the floor of the cave… They would have sucked bloody roots in caves in the glorious and pleasant land that was England a thousand years and more before, but this was civilized fucking Europe, and now… He would have the statement when the Headmaster returned, and her signature, her mark, as an eyewitness. He reached again into his backpack. Penn took out the brown paper envelope. He had the photograph of Dorrie Mowat. Penn showed the face of Dorrie Mowat, the cheeky smiling mischief challenging face, held it up. There was joy cracking the mouth of Katica Dubelj, as if the mouth had been touched by love, as he had been touched, and there was the cackle laugh of the old woman, a memory coming back to her that had been private and suppressed too long. She reached for the photograph and she took it and she kissed it. She babbled at him and he shook his head because he understood nothing of what she said. She took his hand in her tight claw fist and she led him as a child out into the sunlight falling through the high tops of the trees. She pointed down through the trunks of the trees towards the village and then gestured towards the sun and made with her small arm the arc of the sun falling. Penn thought it was the promise of Katica Dubelj that she would take him to the village when the darkness came, where the truth was, and he would have her statement. He had heard his wife's voice beyond the steel door, frightened, sent away and not arguing… The Headmaster sat on the mattress on the concrete shelf. He had heard Milan Stankovic's voice, harsh, in the guardroom beyond the steel door, state that the matter would be dealt with on his return, later
… The Headmaster sat cramped in the cell built of concrete blocks and the light came through the meshed grille at eye level in the steel door. He had heard the postman talking about his hands and his fingernails, and he did not know why the state of his hands or fingernails was important… The Headmaster sat in his damp trousers, sat huddled in his jacket, and they had taken away his tie and his belt and the laces from his shoes. He did not know what he would say when Milan Stankovic returned from his meeting, wherever he went, and his mind was too terrorized to concoct a reason for his having been alone, in darkness, soaked wet from crossing the stream's ford, in the village of Rosenovici. His mind was too confused to manufacture a story of innocence. If he had not met the Englishman… They had not brought him food, and they had not talked to him. They left him solitary to wait for the questioning of Milan Stankovic. It was an aspect of the madness that so many men, hundreds, thousands, had sat in cells throughout the beauty of their land and waited for questioning and torture. If he had not stayed so long at the cave… He did not know, could not know, how he would respond to the beating or to the knife or the burning by cigarettes. Did not know whether he could hold his silence against the pain. Could not know whether the pain of torture would prise from him the secret. If he had not hurried noisily back through the village towards the stream's ford… Benny flicked the 'speak' switch. He said gravely, 'We can't all be heroes, somebody has to sit on the kerb and clap as they go by.' He heard the laughter, distorted, coming back over the loudspeaker in the Seddy's cab. 'That original, Benny?… Who'd you lift that off, Benny? 'Nothing original about me. Will Rogers and I collaborate.' 'Cut it, Benny, do me the favour.' He obeyed. The convoy manager had cause to be stressed up, pissed off, because the rock that had come through the side window of the Land-Rover had caught his face above the collar of the flak jacket and below the rim of his helmet. The move out of Knin had been sweet enough, 0700 departure, but the shit had started in a village just up the road from Titova Korenica with ugly women and dwarf kids lobbing rocks. The convoy manager had a bandage over his face, looked a really fine hero. Rocks in that village, and four windscreens broken. They were blocked now by mines. They were up from Slunj, almost with the whiff of the river at the Turanj crossing point in their noses, and there were mines, and four little arse holes to negotiate with. Good stuff for the hero, the convoy manager, to negotiate with. They were blocked in between a cliff face and a river, a good place to get the old head blown off. It didn't happen on every run, but happened too often, that they were messed around on the convoy route. Benny reckoned that up the road, between Slunj and Veljun, they were moving tanks, maybe artillery, and a track had gone broken or a wheel had got holed, and they weren't having a United Nations relief convoy going by and seeing what they were moving. It was difficult for him to get the bloody great pisspot on his head out of the window, but he took the trouble. Past all the lorries, past the Land-Rover, the convoy manager was in his second hour of failing, too right, to negotiate the removal of the mines from the road. Their schedule was all shot to hell. The kids with the mines, from what he could see, were drunk, and they'd a good game going. He saw the convoy manager stride back to his Land-Rover.
