Wyatt’s Hurricane / Bahama Crisis

‘You know it was impossible,’ said Julie briefly.

‘I can’t imagine what Commodore Brooks is thinking of – leaving us here at the mercy of these savages. Come on, let’s get out of here.’ She opened the door and went out, leaving Julie to bring the large bundle of blankets.

Eumenides was at the head of the stairs. He looked at the blankets and said, ‘Ver’ good t’ing,’ and took them from her.

There was a faint noise from downstairs as though someone had knocked over a chair. They all stood listening for a moment, then Mrs Warmington dug her finger into the Greek’s ribs. ‘Don’t just stand there,’ she hissed. ‘Find out who it is.’

Eumenides dropped the blankets and tiptoed down the stairs and out of sight. Mrs Warmington clutched her bag to her breast, then turned abruptly and walked back to the bedroom. Julie heard the click as the bolt was shot home.

Presently Eumenides reappeared and beckoned. ‘It’s Rawst’orne.’

Julie got Mrs Warmington out of the bedroom again and they all went downstairs to find Rawsthorne very perturbed. ‘They’ve started shelling the town,’ he said. ‘The Government troops are making a stand. It would be better if we moved out quickly before the roads become choked.’

‘I agree,’ said Mrs Warmington.

Rawsthorne looked around. ‘Where’s Causton?’

‘He’s gone to find the best way out,’ said Julie. ‘He said he wouldn’t be long. What time is it now?’

Rawsthorne consulted a pocket watch. ‘Quarter to nine – sorry I’m late. Did he say when he’d be back?’

She shook her head. ‘He didn’t think he’d be long, but he said that if he wasn’t back by eleven then he wouldn’t be coming at all.’

There was a violent explosion not far away and flakes of plaster drifted down from the ceiling. Mrs Warmington jumped. ‘Lead the way to your car, Mr Rawsthorne. We must leave now.’

Rawsthorne ignored her. ‘A little over two hours at the most,’ he said. ‘But he should be back long before that. Meanwhile …’ He looked up meaningly at the ceiling.

‘Causton said the best place for us was under the stairs,’ said Julie.

‘You mean we’re staying here?’ demanded Mrs Warmington. ‘With all this going on? You’ll get us all killed.’

‘We can’t leave Mr Causton,’ said Julie.

‘I fix,’ said Eumenides. ‘Come.’

The space under the main staircase had been used as a store-room. The door had been locked but Eumenides had broken it open with a convenient fire axe, tossed out all the buckets and brooms and had packed in all the provisions they were taking. Mrs Warmington objected most strongly to sitting on the floor but went very quietly when Julie said pointedly, ‘You’re welcome to leave at any time.’ It was cramped, but there was room for the four of them to sit, and if the door was kept ajar Rawsthorne found he had a view of the main entrance so that he could see Causton as soon as he came back.

He said worriedly, ‘Causton should never have gone out – I’ve never seen St Pierre like this, the town is starting to boil over.’

‘He’ll be all right,’ said Julie. ‘He’s experienced at this kind of thing – it’s his job.’

‘Thank God it’s not mine,’ said Rawsthorne fervently. ‘The Government army must have been beaten terribly in the Negrito. The town is full of deserters on the run, and there are many wounded men.’ He shook his head. ‘Favel’s attack must have come with shocking suddenness for that to have happened. He must be outnumbered at least three to one by the Government forces.’

‘You said Serrurier is making a stand,’ said Julie. ‘That means the fighting is going to go on.’

‘It might go on for a long time,’ said Rawsthorne soberly. ‘Serrurier has units that weren’t committed to battle yesterday – Favel didn’t give him time. But those fresh units are digging in to the north of the town, so that means another battle.’ He clicked deprecatingly with his tongue. ‘I fear Favel may have overestimated his own strength.’

He fell silent and they listened to the noise of the battle. Always there was the clamour of the guns from the out-skirts of the town, punctuated frequently by the closer and louder explosion of a falling shell. The air in the hotel quivered and gradually became full of a sifting dust so that the sunlight slanting into the foyer shone like the beams of searchlights.

Julie stirred and began to search among the boxes which Eumenides had packed at the back. ‘Have you had breakfast, Mr Rawsthorne?’

‘I didn’t have time, my dear.’

‘We might as well eat now,’ said Julie practically. ‘I think I can cut some bread if we rearrange ourselves a little. We might as well eat it before it becomes really stale.’

They breakfasted off bread and canned pressed meat, washing it down with soda-water. When they had finished Rawsthorne said, ‘What time is it? I can’t seem to get at my watch.’

‘Ten-fifteen,’ said Julie.

‘We can give Causton another three-quarters of an hour,’ said Rawsthorne. ‘But then we must go – I’m sorry, but there it is.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Julie quietly. ‘He did tell us to go at eleven.’

Occasionally they heard distant shouts and excited cries and sometimes the clatter of running boots. Eumenides said suddenly, ‘Your car … is in street?’

‘No,’ said Rawsthorne. ‘I left it at the back of the hotel.’ He paused. ‘Poor Wyatt’s car is in a mess; all the windows are broken and someone has taken the wheels; for the tyres, I suppose.’

They relapsed into cramped silence. Mrs Warmington hugged her bag and conducted an intermittent monologue which Julie ignored. She listened to the shells exploding and wondered what would happen if the hotel got a direct hit. She had no idea of the damage a shell could do apart from what she had seen at the movies and on TV and she had a shrewd idea that the movie version would be but a pale imitation of the real thing. Her mouth became dry and she knew she was very frightened.

The minutes dragged drearily by. Mrs Warmington squeaked sharply as a shell exploded near-by – the closest yet – and the windows of the foyer blew in and smashed. She started to get up, but Julie pulled her back. ‘Stay where you are,’ she cried. ‘It’s safer here.’

Mrs Warmington flopped back and somehow Julie felt better after that. She looked at Eumenides, his face pale in the dim light, and wondered what he was thinking. It was bad for him because, his English being what it was, he could not communicate easily. As she looked at him he pulled up his wrist to his eyes. ‘Quar’ to ‘leven,’ he announced. ‘I t’ink we better load car.’

Rawsthorne stirred. ‘Yes, that might be a good idea,’ he agreed. He began to push open the door. ‘Wait a minute – here’s Causton now.’

Julie sighed. ‘Thank God!’

Rawsthorne pushed the door wider and then stopped short. ‘No, it’s not,’ he whispered. ‘It’s a soldier – and there’s another behind him.’ Gently he drew the door closed again, leaving it open only a crack and watching with one eye.

The soldier was carrying a rifle slung over one shoulder but the man behind, also a soldier, had no weapon. They came into the foyer, carelessly kicking aside the cane chairs, and stood for a moment looking at the dusty opulence around them. One of them said something and pointed, and the other laughed, and they both moved out of sight.

‘They’ve gone into the bar,’ whispered Rawsthorne.

Faintly, he could hear the clinking of bottles and loud laughter, and once, a smash of glass. Then there was silence. He said softly, ‘We can’t come out while they’re there; they’d see us. We’ll have to wait.’

It was a long wait and Rawsthorne began to feel cramp in his leg. He could not hear anything at all and began to wonder if the soldiers had not departed from the rear of the hotel. At last he whispered, ‘What time is it?’

‘Twenty past eleven.’

‘This is nonsense,’ said Mrs Warmington loudly. ‘I can’t hear anything. They must have gone.’

‘Keep quiet!’ said Rawsthorne. There was a ragged edge to his voice. He paused for a long time, then said softly, ‘They might have gone. I’m going to have a look round.’

‘Be careful,’ whispered Julie.

He was about to push the door open again when he halted the movement and swore softly under his breath. One of the soldiers had come out of the bar and was strolling through the foyer, drinking from a bottle. He went to the door of the hotel and stood for a while staring into the street through the broken panes in the revolving door, then he suddenly shouted to someone outside and waved the bottle in the air.

Two more men came in from outside and there was a brief conference; the first soldier waved his arm towards the bar with largesse as though to say ‘be my guests’. One of the two shouted to someone else outside, and presently there were a dozen soldiers tramping through the foyer on their way to the bar. There was a babel of sound in hard, masculine voices.

‘Damn them!’ said Rawsthorne. ‘They’re starting a party.’

‘What can we do?’ asked Julie.

‘Nothing,’ said Rawsthorne briefly. He paused, then said, ‘I think these are deserters – I wouldn’t want them to see us, especially …’ His voice trailed away.

‘Especially the women,’ said Julie flatly, and felt Mrs Warmington begin to quiver.

They lay there in silence listening to the racket from the bar, the raucous shouts, the breaking glasses and the voices raised in song. ‘All law in the city must be breaking down,’ said Rawsthorne at last.

‘I want to get out of here,’ said Mrs Warmington suddenly and loudly.

‘Keep that woman quiet,’ Rawsthorne hissed.

‘I’m not staying here,’ she cried, and struggled to get up.

‘Hold it,’ whispered Julie furiously, pulling her down.

‘You can’t keep me here,’ screamed Mrs Warmington.

Julie did not know what Eumenides did, but suddenly Mrs Warmington collapsed on top of her, a warm, dead weight, flaccid and heavy. She heaved violently and pushed the woman off her. ‘Thanks, Eumenides,’ she whispered.

‘For God’s sake!’ breathed Rawsthorne, straining his ears to hear if there was any sudden and sinister change in the volume of noise coming from the bar. Nothing happened; the noise became even louder – the men were getting drunk. After a while Rawsthorne said softly, ‘What’s the matter with that woman? Is she mad?’

‘No,’ said Julie. ‘Just spoiled silly. She’s had her own way all her life and she can’t conceive of a situation in which getting her own way could cause her death. She can’t adapt.’ Her voice was pensive. ‘I guess I feel sorry for her more than anything else.’

‘Sorry or not, you’d better keep her quiet,’ said Rawsthorne. He peered through the crack. ‘God knows how long this lot is going to stay here – and they’re getting drunker.’

They lay there listening to the rowdy noise which was sometimes overlaid by the reverberation of the battle. Julie kept looking at her watch, wondering how long this was going to go on. Every five minutes she said to herself, they’ll leave in another five minutes – but they never did. Presently she heard a muffled sound from Rawsthorne. ‘What is it?’ she whispered.

He turned his head. ‘More of them coming in.’ He turned back to watch. There were seven of them this time, six troopers and what seemed to be an officer, and there was discipline in the way they moved into the foyer and looked about. The officer stared across into the bar and shouted something, but his voice was lost in the uproar, so he drew his revolver and fired a shot in the air. There came sudden silence in the hotel.

Mrs Warmington stirred weakly and a bubbling groan came from her lips. Julie clamped her hand across the woman’s mouth and squeezed tight. She heard an exasperated sigh from Rawsthorne and saw him move his head slightly as though he had taken one quick look back.

The officer shouted in a hectoring voice and one by one the deserters drifted out of the bar and into the foyer and stood muttering among themselves, eyeing the officer insolently and in defiance. The last to appear was the soldier with the rifle – he was very drunk.

The officer whiplashed them with his tongue, his voice cracking in rage. Then he made a curt gesture and gave a quick command, indicating that they should line up. The drunken soldier with the rifle shouted something and unslung the weapon from his shoulder, cocking it as he did so, and the officer snapped an order to the trooper standing at his back. The trooper lifted his submachine-gun and squeezed the trigger. The stuttering hammer of the gun filled the foyer with sound and a spray of bullets took the rifleman across the chest and flung him backwards across a table, which collapsed with a crash.

A stray bullet slammed into the door near Rawsthorne’s head and he flinched, but he kept his eye on the foyer and saw the officer wave his arm tiredly. Obediently the deserters lined up and marched out of the hotel, escorted by the armed troopers. The officer put his revolver back into its holster and looked down at the man who had been killed. Viciously he kicked the body, then turned on his heel and walked out.

Rawsthorne waited a full five minutes before he said cautiously, ‘I think we can go out now.’

As he pushed open the door and light flooded into the store-room Julie released her grip of Mrs Warmington, who sagged sideways on to Eumenides. Rawsthorne stumbled out and Julie followed, then they turned to drag out the older woman. ‘How is she?’ asked Julie. ‘I thought I would suffocate her, but I had to keep her quiet.’

Rawsthorne bent over her. ‘She’ll be all right.’

It was twenty minutes before they were in the car and ready to go. Mrs Warmington was conscious but in a daze, hardly aware of what was happening. Eumenides was white and shaken. As he settled himself in the car seat he discovered a long tear in his jacket just under the left sleeve, and realized with belated terror that he had nearly been shot through the heart by the stray bullet that had frightened Rawsthorne.

Rawsthorne checked the instruments. ‘She’s full up with petrol,’ he said. ‘And there are a couple of spare cans in the back. We should be all right.’

He started off and the car rolled down the narrow alley at the back of the hotel heading towards the main street. The Union Jack mounted on the wing of the car fluttered a little in the breeze of their passage.

It was a quarter to two.

III

When Causton stepped out into the street he had felt very conspicuous as though accusing eyes were upon him from every direction, but after a while he began to feel easier as he realized that the people round him were intent only on their own troubles. Looking up the crowded street towards the Place de la Libération Noire he saw a coil of black smoke indicating a fire, and even as he watched he saw a shell burst in what must have been the very centre of the square.

He turned and began to hurry the other way, going with the general drift. The noise was pandemonium – the thunder of the guns, the wail of shells screaming through the air and the ear-splitting blasts as they exploded were bad enough, but the noise of the crowd was worse. Everyone seemed to find it necessary to shout, and the fact that they were shouting in what, to him, was an unknown language did not help.

Once a man grasped him by the arm and bawled a string of gibberish into his face and Causton said, ‘Sorry, old boy, but I can’t tell a word you’re saying,’ and threw the arm off. It was only when he turned away that he realized that he himself had shouted at the top of his voice.

The crowd was mainly civilian although there were a lot of soldiers, some armed but mostly not. The majority of the soldiers seemed to be unwounded and quite fit apart from their weariness and the glazed terror in their eyes, and Causton judged that these were men who had faced an artillery barrage for the first time in their lives and had broken under it. But there were wounded men, trudging along holding broken arms, limping with leg wounds, and one most horrible sight, a young soldier staggering along with his hands to his stomach, the red wetness of his viscera escaping through his slippery fingers.

The civilians seemed even more demoralized than the soldiery. They ran about hither and thither, apparently at random. One man whom Causton observed changed the direction of his running six times in as many minutes, passing and repassing Causton until he was lost in the crowd. He came upon a young girl in a red dress standing in the middle of the street, her hands clapped to her ears and her prettiness distorted as she screamed endlessly. He heard her screams for quite a long time as he fought his way through that agony of terror.

He finally decided he had better get into a side street away from the press, so he made his way to the pavement and turned the first corner he came to. It was not so crowded and he could make better time, a point he noted for when the time came to drive out the car. Presently he came upon a young soldier sitting on an orange box, his rifle beside him and one sleeve of his tunic flapping loose. Causton stopped and said, ‘Have you got a broken arm?’

The young man looked up uncomprehendingly, his face grey with fatigue. Causton tapped his own arm. ‘Le bras,’ he said, then made a swift motion as though breaking a stick across his knee. ‘Broken?’

The soldier nodded dully.

‘I’ll fix it,’ said Causton and squatted down to help the soldier take off his tunic. He kicked the orange box to pieces to make splints and then bound up the arm. ‘You’ll be okay now,’ he said, and departed. But he left bearing the man’s tunic and rifle – he now had his props.

The tunic was a tight fit so he wore it unbuttoned; the trousers did not match and he had no cap, but he did not think that mattered – all that mattered was that he looked approximately like a soldier and so had a proprietary interest in the war. He lifted the rifle and worked the action to find the magazine empty and smiled thoughtfully. That did not matter, either; he had never shot anyone in his life and did not intend starting now.

Gradually, by a circuitous route which he carefully marked on the map, he made his way to the eastern edge of the city by the coast road. He was relieved to see that here the crowds were less and the people seemed to be somewhat calmer. Along the road he saw a thin trickle of people moving out, a trickle that later in the day would turn to a flood. The sooner he could get Rawsthorne started in the car, the better it would be for everyone concerned, so he turned back, looking at his watch. It was later than he thought – nearly ten o’clock.

Now he found he was moving against the stream and progress was more difficult and would become even more so as he approached the disturbed city centre. He looked ahead and saw the blazon of smoke in the sky spreading over the central area – the city was beginning to burn. But not for long, he thought grimly. Not if Wyatt is right.

He pressed on into the bedlam that was St Pierre, pushing against the bodies that pressed against him and ruthlessly using the butt of his rifle to clear his way. Once he met a soldier fighting his way clear and they came face to face; Causton reversed his rifle and manipulated the bolt with a sharp click, thinking, what do I do if he doesn’t take the hint? The soldier nervously eyed the rifle muzzle pointing at his belly, half-heartedly made an attempt to lift his own gun but thought better of it, and retreated, slipping away into the crowd. Causton grinned mirthlessly and went on his way.

He was not far from the Imperiale when the press of the crowd became so much that he could not move. Christ! he thought; we’re sitting ducks for a shell-burst. He tried to make his way back, but found that as difficult as going forward – something was evidently holding up the crowd, something immovable.

He found out what it was when he struggled far enough back, almost to the corner of the street. A military unit had debouched from the side street and formed a line across the main thoroughfare, guns pointing at the crowd. Men were being hauled out of the crowd and lined up in a clear space, and Causton took one good look and tried to duck back. But he was too late. An arm shot out and grabbed him, pulling him bodily out of the crowd and thrusting him to join the others. Serrurier was busy rounding up his dissolving army.

He looked at the group of men which he had joined. They were all soldiers and all unwounded, looking at the ground with hangdog expressions. Causton hunched his shoulders, drooped his head and mingled unobtrusively with them, getting as far away from the front as possible. After a while an officer came and made a speech to them. Causton couldn’t understand a word of it, but he got the general drift of the argument. They were deserters, quitters under fire, who deserved to be shot, if not at dawn, then a damn’ sight sooner. Their only hope of staying alive was to go and face the guns of Favel for the greater glory of San Fernandez and President Serrurier.

To make his point the officer walked along the front row of men and arbitrarily selected six. They were marched across to the front of a house – poor, bewildered, uncomprehending sheep – and suddenly a machine-gun opened up and the little group staggered and fell apart under the hail of bullets. The officer calmly walked across and put a bullet into the brain of one screaming wretch, then turned and gave a sharp order.

The deserters were galvanized into action. Under the screams of bellowing non-coms they formed into rough order and marched away down the side street, Causton among them. He looked at the firing squad in the truck as he passed, then across at the six dead bodies. Pour encourager les autres, he thought.

Causton had been conscripted into Serrurier’s army.

IV

Dawson was astonished at himself.

He had lived his entire life as a civilized member of the North American community and, as a result, he had never come to terms with himself on what he would do if he got into real trouble. Like most modern civilized men, he had never met trouble of this sort; he was cosseted and protected by the community and paid his taxes like a man, so that this protection should endure and others stand between him and primitive realities such as death by bullet or torture.

Although his image was that of a free-wheeling, all-American he-man and although he was in danger of believing his own press-clippings, he was aware in the dim recesses of his being that this image was fraudulent, and from time to time he had wondered vaguely what kind of a man he really was. He had banished these thoughts as soon as they were consciously formulated because he had an uneasy feeling that he was really a weak man after all, and the thought disturbed him deeply. The public image he had formed was the man he wanted to be and he could not bear the thought that perhaps he was nothing like that. And he had no way of proving it one way or the other – he had never been put to the test.

Wyatt’s hardly concealed contempt had stung and he felt something approaching shame at his attempt to steal the car – that was not the way a man should behave. So that when his testing-time came something deep inside him made him square his shoulders and briskly tell Sous-Inspecteur Roseau to go to hell and make it damn’ fast, buddy.

So it was that now, lying in bed with all hell breaking loose around him, he felt astonished at himself. He had stood up to such physical pain as he had never believed possible and he felt proud that his last conscious act in Roseau’s office had been to look across at the implacable face before him and mumble, ‘I still say it – go to hell, you son of a bitch!’

He had recovered consciousness in a clean bed with his hands bandaged and his wounds tended. Why that should be he did not know, nor did he know why he could not raise his body from the bed. He tried several times and then gave up the effort and turned his attention to his new and wondrous self. In one brief hour he had discovered that he would never need a public image again, that he would never shrink from self-analysis.