Jack Higgins - Toll for the Brave

The young officer called us to a halt, his voice hard and flat through the rain. We stood and waited while he had a look round. There didn’t seem much room to spare, but he obviously wasn’t going to let a little thing like that worry him. He selected a spot on the far side of the clearing, found us a couple of rusting trenching shovels that looked as if they had seen plenty of service and went and stood in the shelter of the trees with two of the guards and smoked cigarettes, leaving one to watch over us as we set to work.

The soil was pure loam, light and easy to handle because of the rain. It lifted in great spadefuls that had me knee-deep in my own grave before I knew where I was. And St Claire wasn’t exactly helping. He worked at it as if there was a bonus at the end of the job, those great arms of his swinging three spadefuls of dirt into the air for every one of mine.

The rain seemed to increase in a sudden rush that drowned all hope. I was going to die. The thought rose in my throat like bile to choke on and then it happened. The side of the trench next to me collapsed suddenly, probably because of the heavy rain, leaving a hand and part of a forearm protruding from the earth, flesh rotting from the bones.

I turned away blindly, fighting for air, and lost my balance, falling flat on my face. At the same moment the other wall of the trench collapsed across me.

As I struggled for life, I was aware that St Claire had started to laugh, that deep, rich, special sound that seemed to come right up from the roots of his being. It didn’t make any kind of sense at all but I had other things to think of now. The stink of the grave was in my nostrils, my eyes. I opened my mouth to scream and soil poured in choking the life out of me in a great wave of darkness that blotted out all light…

The dream always ended in exactly the same way – with me sitting bolt upright in bed, screaming like any child frightened in the dark, St Claire’s laughter ringing in my ears which was the most disturbing thing of all.

And as always during the silence that followed, I waited with a kind of terrible anxiety for something to happen, something I dreaded above all things and yet could not put a name to.

But as usual, there was nothing. Only the rain brushing against the windows of the old house, driven by a wind that blew stiffly across the marshes from the North Sea. I listened, head turned, waiting for a sign that never came, shaking slightly and sweating rather a lot which was exactly how Sheila found me when she arrived a moment later.

She had been painting – still clutched a palette and three brushes in her left hand and the old terry towelling robe she habitually wore was streaked with paint. She put the palette and brushes down on a chair, came and sat on the edge of the bed, taking my hands in hers.

‘What is it, love? The dream again?’

When I spoke my voice was hoarse and broken. ‘Always the same – always. Accurate in every detail, exactly as it was until St Claire starts to laugh.’

I started to shake uncontrollably, teeth grinding together in intense stress. She had the robe off in a moment, was under the sheets, her arms pulling me into the warmth of that magnificent body.

And as always, she knew exactly what she was doing for fear turns upon itself endlessly like a mad dog unless the cycle can be broken. She kissed me repeatedly, hands gentle. For a little while, comfort, then by some mysterious alchemy, she was on her back, thighs spreading to receive me. An old story between us, but one which never palled and at such moments, the finest therapy in the world – or so I told myself.

Englishmen who have served with the American forces in Vietnam aren’t exactly thick on the ground, but there are more of us around than most people realise. Having said that, to disclose what I’d been doing for the past three years, in mixed company, was usually calculated to raise most eyebrows, and in some instances could be guaranteed to provoke open hostility.

The party where I had first met Sheila Ward was a case in point. It had turned out to be a stuffy, pseudo-intellectual affair. I was thoroughly bored and didn’t seem to know a soul except my hostess. When she finally had time for me I had done what seemed the sensible thing and got good and drunk, something at which I was fairly expert in those days.

Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to notice and insisted on introducing me to a sociologist from the London School of Economics who by some minor miracle known only to academics, had managed to obtain a doctorate for a thesis on structural values in Revolutionary China without ever having actually visited the country.

The information that I had spent three of the best years of my young life serving with the American Airborne in Vietnam including a sizeable stretch in a North Vietnamese prison camp, had the same effect as if he had been hit by a rather heavy truck.

He told me that I was about as acceptable in his eyes as a lump of dung on his shoe which seemed to go down well with the group who’d been hanging on his every word, but didn’t impress me one little bit.

I told him what he could do about it in pretty fluent Cantonese which – surprisingly in an expert on Chinese affairs – he didn’t seem to understand.

But someone else did which was when I met Sheila Ward. Just about the most spectacular woman I’d ever seen in my life. Every man’s fantasy dream. Soft black leather boots that reached to her thighs, a yard or two of orange wool posing as a dress, shoulder-length auburn hair framing a strong peasant face and a mouth which was at least half a mile wide. She could have been ugly, but her mouth was her saving grace. With that mouth she was herself alone.

‘You can’t do that to him,’ she said in fair Chinese. ‘They’d give you at least five years.’

‘Not bad,’ I told her gravely, ‘but your accent is terrible.’

‘Yorkshire,’ she said. ‘Just a working class girl from Doncaster on the make. My husband was a lecturer at Hong Kong University for five years.’

The conversation was interrupted by my sociologist friend who tried to pull her out of the way and started again so I punched him none too gently under the breastbone, knuckles extended, and he went down with a shrill cry.

I don’t really remember what happened after that except that Sheila led me out and no one tried to get in the way. I do know that it was raining hard, that I was leaning up against my car in the alley at the side of the house beneath a street lamp.

She buttoned me into my trenchcoat and said soberly, ‘You were pretty nasty in there.’

‘A bad habit of mine these days.’

‘You get in fights often?’

‘Now and then.’ I struggled to light a cigarette. ‘I irritate people or they annoy me.’

‘And afterwards you feel better?’ She shook her head ‘There are other ways of relieving that kind of tension or didn’t it ever occur to you?’

She had a bright red oilskin mac slung around her shoulders against the rain so I reached inside and cupped a beautifully firm breast.

She said calmly, ‘See what I mean?’

I leaned back against the car, my face up to the rain. ‘I can do several things quite well besides belt people. Latin declensions which comes of having gone to the right kind of school and I can find true north by pointing the hour hand of my watch at the sun or by shoving a stick into the ground. And I can cook. My monkey is delicious and tree rats are my speciality.’

‘Exactly my type,’ she said. ‘I can see we’re going to get along fine.’

‘Just one snag,’ I told her. ‘Bed.’

She frowned. ‘You didn’t lose anything when you were out there did you?’