Watson’s Humber was beginning to look the worse for wear. We had lost a front wing somewhere along the line, and the rear window was lying on the back seat in a million tiny pieces. The boot smelt strongly of petrol – maybe the tank had been nicked – and on both flanks the paintwork was gouged down to the undercoat. It didn’t take more than a couple of minutes to run it into a bank of juniper scrub on the side of the track. Then I accepted the Sterling she handed me, shouldered the ammo pack, and followed her down the road to the farm. We stayed ducked under crumbling stone walls, and more straggly junipers and vines. Common sense told me we were well concealed. Funk told me that every EOKA man on the island had his sights on me.
From behind a stone drinking trough near the yard gate Thirdlow started to lay bullets on what looked to me like an empty hillside. The empty hillside shot back at us. Its bullets ricocheted off the trough the way they do in Richard Widmark Westerns. Like Warlock: did you ever catch that? I managed half a mag before the damned gun jammed. She changed hers, and gave them another scattered burst before I’d cleared it. I think the rest of my bullets went everywhere. I think I shot the sky. I hoped the sky wasn’t offended; it was where I made my living, after all, and I wouldn’t feel happy up there if it was holding a grudge.
As I started to change the magazine she hoiked me to my feet by my elbow, and got us sprinting for the farmhouse door. Now I knew why she always wore low lace-ups on her feet: she had hoisted her skirt, and ran like Emil Zátopek, beating me to the door by six clear feet. The mad cow was actually laughing as we bundled through it. A tough-looking sod from the Lancashires booted it half-shut behind us. We careered clear to the other side of the room. I saw a scared family hunkered down behind a heavy overturned table, and Tony Warboys trying to tie a narrow bandage around one of his biceps, pulling the knot tight with his teeth.
Thirdlow said, ‘I’ll do that,’ and crawled on hands and knees to help him.
He grinned at me, and waved the other hand. A bullet came in through an already glass-free window, and smashed a piece of plaster from the wall. A small child behind the table cried out in fear. Then half a dozen ill-aimed rounds of automatic fire; they seemed to hit the roof tiles. A lot of noise. That smell of burned propellant in the air. Gun smoke visible in the blocks of light coming through the window. Fights are like that: your brain absorbs thousands of impressions in split seconds, and when you try to remember them afterwards, you can’t believe you’ve seen so much in so short a time.
There was a child’s rag doll lying in some spilt wine on the floor, its arms and legs akimbo. Pat Tobin had looked like that when I’d last seen him. I put that thought out of my mind and sat on the floor with my back against the stone wall one side of the door. The Lancs squaddy was on the other side. He raised an eyebrow in enquiry.
‘Charlie Bassett,’ I told him. ‘Thanks for asking me to your party.’ At least that raised a few grins. ‘Who’s in charge?’
‘Sar’nt Chatto. Don’t give him any lip.’
I nodded, and asked, ‘Where is he?’
‘Upstairs wiv the radio. Our radio op copped it after he sent out our situation.’
‘Can I get up there?’ The staircase was at the back of the room, but it had a ruddy great square of sunlight shining on the bottom steps which meant they could be seen from the outside.
‘I’ll cover you if you like, son, but what makes you think he’ll welcome you?’
‘I’m another bloody radio op,’ I snarled. ‘God’s just sent you his second choice.’ I wasn’t being brave or manly. I was being unpleasant. Most of the men I know tend to get very unpleasant when they are as scared as I was. I got up to a squatting position, my back still against the wall, and when he bounced half a dozen rounds along the hillside overlooking the yard – the best he could do, because no one could see who they were shooting at – I dived for the stairs.
And, like a clot, tripped over the bottom one.
I sprawled flat out across them in the sunlight, which just about saved my bloody life. The bullet from the sniper, sighted on that square of visible stair, went a foot above my head, and I was up, and around the curve of the stairs before he could get another in. He tried though. The top of the staircase emerged directly through the floor into a bedroom. I didn’t see much of it initially because I was mesmerized by the muzzle of a big ugly service automatic grasped in the big ugly hand of a big ugly man. It was about a foot from my forehead.
‘Name?’ he shouted.
‘Bassett, sarge. Radio operator.’ In one word he’d taken me straight back to my basic training in 1943. Name? . . . Name, rank and number. He moved the pistol out of my line of sight, and I heard a click. The bastard thing had been cocked and ready to go. I collapsed, still on the stairs, and let my chin rest against the floor.
‘Get up ’ere then, son. See what you can do wi’ that. It took a whack – so did
