When I open my eyes, it is over: the prisoner has been dragged back to his hut and the guards are leaning against the wooden fence posts, their faces once more lit by the glow of their cigarettes.
I hear the soft sound of Angus’s laughter.
I knew it was him. Of course it is him. That laughter raises the hairs on the back of my neck, makes me dry-mouthed, rigid with terror. The sound is engraved into me, is part of me.
I’ve heard it said that every person has their breaking point, although that seems a strange way of describing how someone may fall into violence. There can be no single point when a person breaks, surely. Rather, a person’s patience is like the cloth bandage that holds a wound together: over time, it is rubbed thinner and thinner, until the material is all but worn away. The final threads are simply a mesh over the rawness.
The body is a strange thing. It counts out its own time and rhythms with heart and breath and blinking eyes. All these motions are a struggle towards living, but they might as well be grains of sand tolling out the seconds into the grave.
And the dying is done alone.
The guards are smoking, smiling. The soft sound of their laughter could belong to any man, anywhere. There is no way to tell from a man’s face whether he is good or bad. There is nothing in his voice or his smile that will let you know if he plans to kiss you or try to kill you, or both.
I drop the rock and walk backwards. I can’t kill a man. I can’t do anything but back away and try to forget what I’ve seen. I retreat into the warren of huts – they are all quiet now. The Italians must have heard the prisoner’s cries. Perhaps their nights are full of shouts and screams in the dark. Perhaps each morning a different man wakes with bruises and limps down to the quarry, broken before the day begins.
But their suffering doesn’t make them harmless. I must remind myself of that. Even men who seem innocent, who seem gentle and affectionate – even they can hurt you. And if you let yourself feel for them, if you allow them to deceive you, they can destroy you.
I don’t choose to run – my feet make the choice for me – but it is freeing to be moving quickly away from the men, away from the guards, away from the huts. I break out into the open yard at the front of the camp and wait for a guard to call to me. We’re allowed to leave, of course, Dot and I, but if they see me running, they will ask questions.
But all the guards must be elsewhere because no one shouts at me to stop.
I slow to a walk and stand next to the edge of the fence – the part closest to the cliffs. Below, the pulse of the sea crashing against the stone. It never stops pounding, the water beating itself against the stone. Relentless as a heartbeat.
After I crawl under the fence, it will take three steps. The space. The fall. The silence.
I imagine Dot alone in a camp of a thousand men. I count the exhalation of the waves. Implacable, eternal.
I feel the thread of my life, suspended, waiting for the blade. Three steps forwards will change everything. I can do it, if I want. Just as I could have brought that rock down on the guards’ heads.
Only I didn’t.
I shiver, tears on my cheeks.
I didn’t do anything. I let everything happen around me, as always.
Somewhere, in the darkness, I think I hear Dot’s voice crying my name.
I force myself to turn, to walk back in the direction I’ve come from, to go back to the infirmary.
The lights call to me, leading me back to the warmth of the hospital hut, the medicinal smell, the beds of sleeping prisoners. And Dot.
But Dot isn’t there. I check our sectioned-off bed, the cleaning station, the small office behind the curtain, where Bess is drowsing.
I shake her arm. ‘Have you seen Dot?’
She startles awake, focuses her eyes on me. ‘You’re back. I was worried.’
‘Where’s Dot?’
‘Oh, she went . . .’ Bess’s eyes slide from mine and, for a moment, I think she’s going to say that Dot went looking for me. That she’s out in the cold now, searching. How could I have run off like that? How could I have put her in danger?
Bess stands, straightens some of the clamps and surgical knives. ‘She went to see the prisoner, I think. She took some honey to Cesare. For his cough.’ She turns, sees the fear on my face and misinterprets. ‘Con! Oh, Con, she hasn’t left you. I’m sure she was worried about you. She waited for you to come back. She even shouted for you. She must have thought you’d gone to the bothy.’
I nod, then turn away, my mind a white blank.
As I look around the infirmary, counting the beat of my blood in my ears, I don’t see the prisoners laid out sleeping, peacefully, in their pyjamas. I imagine the hair on their bodies beneath the sheets. I picture their hands, which could so easily turn into fists. I think of muscles in their thighs and backs. And I think of Dot, in the Punishment Hut, holding out a trusting hand to a man she barely knows.Dorothy
Cesare looks smaller when they bring him out of the Punishment Hut after nearly a week. He is filthy, his skin yellowish. When he coughs, I can see the tendons drawn tight in his neck, as if every part of him is struggling for air.
But the sound of his breathing – laboured though it is – fills me with light. He’s alive! He’s alive!
I’d petitioned Major Bates daily during the six days that Cesare had been
