Militia

I’ve always thought the best part of an adventure comes with the telling. That’s when myths and legends are born – out of the ordinary actions of ordinary people. In a way, it’s the story that really is the adventure, not the events at all. It’s the story-teller who collects the incidents, shapes them, colours them, decides which to keep and which to discard. He can make a hero out of a bystander, a villain out of a man acting under orders. He can make the trivial significant, the accidental planned, cowardice an act of bravery. The wonderful thing is, it’s all true – just because he tells us so, and the story is his invention.

Anyway, we were all heroes that afternoon. With our cuts from the brambles, our bruises from the rocks, our three remaining boats, and our stories, we sailed valiantly to the meeting-place, where wives, girlfriends, parents, child were waiting to applaud us. Four hours and twenty minutes after we set out. Lawrence was furious.

– Damn the goddam dam. We could’ve made it on time.

While John lit his camping stove and started preparing the ceremonial tea, the rest of us began.

– Richard, look at your face! What did you do?

– He tried to make out with a rock.

– No, there was this incredible waterfall and I was thrown out of the boat and got trapped underneath, underwater. I’d probably still be there now, but for Lawrence.

– My boy, it was nothing. Your Richard, Mrs Devine, has earned his place in the legends and lore of the Dog River. Twice, nay thrice, he stared death in the face, and what did he do? What did he do? He laughed. He laughed at Death. And that’s why I’ll be recommending him for the Silver Star.

– Richard, I told you to be careful.

In spite of Claire’s protest, I could tell she was proud of me. I don’t think I’d ever had the chance to be brave before. Not in front of Claire. And certainly not in front of Monique, who sat opposite, her head nestled on Lawrence’s shoulder, her eyes glinting in the sun.

– You should have seen Dany when he fell in the first time. I didn’t think people could actually turn blue.

– Well, you guys all had sweaters. I had only a T-shirt.

– God, it was cold up there in the water though, wasn’t it? With the snow running off.

– Weren’t you scared?

– No, not really. There wasn’t time to be.

– Lawrence was. Tell them about the dam, Lawrence.

With his veiled accusation of cowardice, Dave had broken the spell.

Nobody spoke. We waited for Lawrence to defend his honour, but he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. He was a journalist, a professional myth-maker and he knew the rules better than any of us. Somebody else had to tell his story. Me.

– Wouldn’t you have been scared? It was all right for you lot, watching safely from the bank. You don’t know what it felt like, the force of that water trying to drag us down and drown us. Lawrence got sucked into a dam, Claire – he could have drowned.

Lawrence stood up and began to walk across to John. He spoke without turning back to challenge Dave.

– I could have dived right over the top of the crummy dam if I’d wanted.

– Why didn’t you then?

– Seemed like the easy way.

Without Lawrence, the group began to break up, and I was left sitting alone with Claire and Jason.

– I wish you could have come with us. You’d have loved it.

– I miss doing things with you. But there’s Jason …

– I know. I wish I could explain how exciting it was. You don’t have any control at all. You’re just swept along with the current and everything just rushes past, and somehow your whole body becomes part of it until you can’t help yourself – you’re just laughing and yelling and screaming …

– Doesn’t sound very lady-like.

– S’pose not. But you’d have loved it, really, Claire. It’s hard to explain, but it’s when you get to the dangerous places, that’s when you get such a buzz. Like at the dam. One minute you’re just floating along in the sunshine and the next thing you know, you’re fighting for your life. Except you know you’re not, you say this can’t be happening to me and everything will be all right and …

Jason had discovered a new game, a new sound. By sucking hard on the teat of his juice-bottle, pulling it away with those tiny strong hands, then opening his mouth, he produced a satisfying rubbery smack. So satisfying that he had to repeat it over and over.

– Look, Richard. Aren’t you clever, Jason? Aren’t you clever?

Jason chuckled and dribbled with the joy of his adventure. He wasn’t going to let me finish my story.

Claire had noticed the parents paddling in the stream.

– Can you take care of Jason for a while, Rick? I just want to get my feet wet.

I was lying back on the grass, so she lifted him over and sat him down on me. I closed my eyes against the sun.

– Claire, your tea.

Monique. Close.

Claire turned and took half a step back to us.

– Thanks Monique. Leave it there. I’ll be back in a minute.

Monique knelt and set down two dainty white cups on two dainty white saucers. She was kneeling at my side, smiling at Jason.

– Then maybe I will drink for Claire.

She picked up a cup and nestled it between her two hands. She did not drink.

She was wearing this:

1 bikini top – gold.

1 ankle-length embroidered skirt – black.

1 waist-scarf knotted just below navel – turquoise.

1 pair large earrings – gypsy.

Nothing else.

It was a luxuriant body, tanned everywhere as richly as her face. I knew her skin would feel like a smooth, polished wood. Mahogany. Free from blemish. Warm. I wanted to touch it.

There was a word for her. Voluptuous.

She put down the cup.

She threw back her head in homage to the sun, and closed her eyes, pulling her hair into a loose mane behind her.

– May I sit with you?

She knew she didn’t need to ask. But I couldn’t reply. I was literally speechless. I silently cursed my tongue, my brain, my lips, all mind and mechanisms that had anything to do with the simple act of speech, for leaving me so miserably inept. I felt the three flushes of frustration, shyness and desire rising irresistibly within me.

I gestured vaguely at the ground beside me.

She sat. I kept my eyes straight ahead. 

Why? Why could I not enjoy normal social intercourse … relations … why could I not talk to women? Or to men, for that matter. I never had anything to say when I found myself alone with someone, unless it was Claire … and recently, Lawrence. Funny, I was fine with a class of students. But not with real people. I flashed to Eliot’s Prufrock, how much I identified with him. I should have been a pair of ragged claws … No, better still, a hedgehog. In decent hedgehog society, I felt quite sure, there would be no disgrace in curling up into a prickly uncommunicative ball at the slightest approach of small-talk.

– You’re so pretty.

She meant Jason, not me. She was playing with him, wiggling a finger in front of his staring eyes.

– I want one just like you.

My brain suggested a lascivious response. Thank God my mouth was still wired up and the words didn’t come out.

What would Monique’s child be like? Not like Jason, I was certain. Hers would be a girl for a start. A little suntanned girl with almond eyes. Where Jason was irritable and screamed for attention, Monique’s girl would only have to smile to get it.

Jason now was reaching out towards Monique and gurgling. He wanted her to hold him. It was one of the few occasions when my son and I had ever shared an interest or an opinion.

She lowered her face down to him so he could play with her hair. There was that trademark scent again. I gripped the grass with my free hand so it wouldn’t stroke her beautiful curved brown back.

– Jason. Aren’t you beautiful?

– Coo.

She leaned further down and my eyes fingered her smooth skin – the wide hips, the tapering waistline, the burnished shoulders, the secret shadows. Was anyone watching us? Lawrence and John were busy burrowing in the hamper. Claire, Elaine and the parents were splashing about in the water. Dany and his friend were deep in conversation. Only Dave, shaded under a tree, was facing us, and it looked like he was dozing.

– May I hold him?

– Yes.

She put one arm around Jason’s waist and the other underneath him. On my thigh. And let it rest there. Shifted it a little higher. Pressed down a fraction. Or was I imagining it? And as she began to rise from her knees, pressed down hard, letting her weight fall on me.

Spontaneously, my body pressed back.

As she was rising, so was I. I sat up quickly and pulled my knees up to my chin, wrapping my arms around my legs to hide the embarrassment that was thundering up inside my old cut-offs.

But now she was further away I began to relax and feel safe again. She was standing with Jason, rubbing his cheek against hers.

– He likes you.

– I think he does. Will you be my boyfriend when you are a man, Jason?

A gunshot sliced through Jason’s answer, and whined away into the mountain.

The leader strode out of the trees with a squad of four behind him. His pistol was pointed deliberately at the sky, but three murderous black steel rifles and a machine gun were just as deliberately aimed at us.

– Haut les mains! Vite!

His voice was as coarse as his French. They wore their green fighting fatigues casually, fashionably. Ammunition belts tight at the waist; trousers gathered at the knee into high, polished black boots, green caps on big hair, drawn down long and dark over the eyes. Two of them wore extra bullets, belted across their shoulders, like bandits in a Western.

The leader’s tunic was unbuttoned almost to the waist. A large wooden crucifix dangled from his neck and beat against his breast as he swaggered toward us. There were no other marks of regiment or rank.

They might have been dressed for the stage, but there was no mistaking the real aggression in their questions to the first of our Lebanese friends.

– Inta! Ma ismak?

– Dany Maksoud.

– Wayn haweetak?

– Tfaddal, habeebi.

Dany fished his identity card out of the shoulder-bag beside him and handed it to the officer. Now it was an interrogation.

– Inta Dany Maksoud?

– Nam.

– Min Bayroot?

– Nam.

– Sahafi?

I knew that meant journalist, but from there I couldn’t follow the Arabic. Dany’s voice stayed calm, but he shrugged his shoulders and turned his palms and his eyes to the heavens in loud gestures of innocence.

There were fingers pointed at us, then at John’s hamper. We were ordered to empty everything out for inspection: sandwiches neatly wrapped in foil, bottles of water and wine, cheeses, bags of fruit, cakes in tins, cups, cutlery, napkins. Packages were shaken and rattled, sandwiches opened and examined, knives thrust into cakes and then – fatally – through the top of a can of olives. The brine from the can squirted out all over a tunic, and turned their ugly mood vicious.

Now, instead of tossing the food away after their inspection, they trod it into the grass. Two of them opened bottles of water. They ripped off the plastic tops, threw back their heads and held the bottles a few inches above their mouths. We watched the Adam’s apples bulge and jerk down, up, down, as they poured the water straight down their gullets, expertly. Satisfied, they emptied the rest on the ground.

The leader was coming over to Monique, Jason and me. His heavy black moustache made him cruel, the week’s stubble and the hooded eyes beneath the cap made him dangerous. The gun was still in his hand, but it was the crucifix that terrified me more. Carved and curved and polished, it chilled me as if it were a cockroach crawling on his chest. There was nothing delicate or decorous about it. It wasn’t an ornament. It was a threat. It was the witch hunter’s cross, the inquisitor’s cross, the crucifier’s cross. It was the cross that would tear you from limb to limb for something as simple as your faith, for as little as thirty pieces of silver.

He stood with feet set apart, facing Monique. His hand rested on his belt buckle, with the thumb tucked inside. His heavy face twisted and his eyes sharpened lecherously as he spoke.

– Shu ismik?

– Je ne comprends pas. Je suis française.

She told him she was French. Why? Slowly the gun came down, pointing itself directly at Jason, who was still in Monique’s arms. Strangely, the fear I felt for my son was Claire’s, not my own. In the thick silence I steadied myself to jump at him. It would be a rugby tackle – the only form of attack I’d ever learnt.

– Inti mish fransiiyya. Maratain thaania, shu ismik?

Monique was cool as ice. She shook her head at him, then spoke to me in English, with a heavy French accent.

– I do not understand zis man. Does ‘e not know zat I am French?

– Quel est ton nom?

– Merci, monsieur. Et maintenant, je comprends.

He bellowed at her, the slyness in his voice driven out by rage.

– QUEL EST TON NOM?

– Monique.

– Monique qui?

– Monique Giresse.

– Et tu habites où?

– Monsieur, je vous interdis de me tutoyer.

My French wasn’t good enough to work out what Monique was saying, but I could see the effect. There was not a trace of coquetry in Monique now, only a new cold authority. She was perfectly in control of the situation. The soldier had lost his advantage, but there was still no mistaking his menace.

– Vous avez un air plutôt arabe que française. Où est votre carte d’identité?

– Je n’ai aucune carte d’identité, monsieur. J’ai un passeport, bien sûr, mais ça, c’est chez moi.

So something about a passport and an identity card. He gestured with the gun at Jason, but less threateningly now.

– Ça c’est votre bébé?

– Oui.

– Et votre mari?

– Oui.

He raised the gun, cleared his throat from the back. and spat viciously – but away from Monique.

– OK. Allez! Allez vite, tout le monde. Allez! Venez jamais ici! No come again!