One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [37]
‘What were they doing?’ I whispered as they finally waved us on.
‘Taking food parcels. And they’re pissed off because we usually carry a lot more, but not today.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because we knew they’d take it. We usually travel at night when there’s only a couple of them on the checkpoint and only a few boxes get dragged off. But during the day they swarm like locusts. They say it’s going to Serb civilians, but that’s bollocks. They keep it for themselves, for the military. It’s their rations for the next few weeks.’
‘But that’s outrageous. You’re neutral, aren’t you? Protected by the UN?’
Kit shrugged. ‘What can you do? Nothing. Not unless you want to be accused of smuggling arms into the city.’
‘So how much do you usually carry?’
‘About twenty tons is our limit, and we’ve got five trucks. Other agencies have more, but we’re quite small.’
‘And you deliver? The food? I mean, you personally? I thought you just packed it.’
‘I do now,’ he said, shortly. ‘Only recently. And usually only to villages, which is reasonably safe.’
‘So where’s not safe?’
‘Sarajevo.’
‘Have you ever been there?’
‘Yes.’
‘How often?’
‘Once or twice.’
‘Do Mum and Dad know?’
‘No. Well, Dad might.’
Taking aid into Sarajevo. I didn’t even ask how dangerous that was. Knew that, even with the humanitarian message on the side, rules were broken here and he was risking his life.
‘But where we’re going now,’ he swept on, reading my thoughts, ‘which is essentially the Dalmatian coast, is safe. You’ll see.’
Except for the father of three, I thought. Kit’s doctor friend, the one shot by snipers. Only relatively safe. Rather like the road we were on now, I decided, although ‘road’ was pitching it high. A thin, elevated snake of potholed shingle wound through the mountains, either side of which crumbling rock fell away at an alarming angle. It seemed to me to have all the qualities necessary to facilitate a fatal accident, and I wondered how this unwieldy Bedford managed at night when they usually travelled. I voiced as much tentatively to Kit, who shrugged and said you got used to it, although of course it didn’t help not having headlights.
‘No headlights?’
‘These hills are full of snipers. You don’t want to announce yourself.’
Of course you don’t, I thought, gazing down the steep embankment to the gully and certain death below.
‘And although we’re only going a bit further up the coast from Split, this route through the mountains is much safer than the coastal one.’
‘Right,’ I said weakly, shutting my eyes as two tons of articulated lorry shuddered and wheezed around a hairpin bend.
At Heronisque, where we were based, however, I relaxed slightly. A pretty coastal village with a Mediterranean feel to it, albeit shabby and clearly shelled in places, here life was going on in a relatively normal fashion. As the evening drew in, old men sat in a dusty square running beads through their fingers, a few women bustled into red-tiled houses with baskets: one or two children played in the street, and businesslike dogs trotted by. Every so often you could hear the odd pop of gunfire from the hills, which sounded like an old motorbike backfiring in the distance. Other than that, one could almost be in Italy, or Greece, I decided.
An old boathouse on the quay had been requisitioned as the packing station, and Kit took me there first. Outside were the other Bedfords, and inside, checking and loading scores of boxes of food and other essentials, medicines too, were a dozen or so people. All nationalities were here: Swedish, German, French, Spanish. They broke off at the sight of us, looking tired and drawn, but were all very welcoming as Kit introduced me. That night, over a hastily prepared supper of tinned food heated over a Primus stove in the entrance to the warehouse, we sat around cross-legged. As I looked