The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [189]
John Verney limped back to Good Hope Fort in a state of consternation. Security had been compromised; the operation must be cancelled; initiative had been lost . . . all the phrases of the tactical school came to his mind, but he was still numb after this unexpected reverse. A vast and naked horror peeped at him and was thrust aside.
When he got back Elizabeth was laying the supper table. He stood on the balcony and stared at the gaping rails with eyes smarting with disappointment. It was dead calm that evening. The rising tide lapped and fell and mounted again silently among the rocks below. He stood gazing down, then he turned back into the room.
There was one large drink left in the whisky bottle. He poured it out and swallowed it. Elizabeth brought in the supper and they sat down. Gradually his mind grew a little calmer. They usually ate in silence. At last he said: “Elizabeth, why did you tell the doctor I had been walking in my sleep?”
She quietly put down the plate she had been holding and looked at him curiously. “Why?” she said gently. “Because I was worried, of course. I didn’t think you knew about it.”
“But have I been?”
“Oh yes, several times—in London and here. I didn’t think it mattered at first, but the night before last I found you on the balcony, quite near that dreadful hole in the rails. I was really frightened. But it’s going to be all right now. Dr. Mackenzie has given me the name . . .”
It was possible, thought John Verney; nothing was more likely. He had lived night and day for ten days thinking of that opening, of the sea and rock below, the ragged ironwork and the sharp edge of stone. He suddenly felt defeated, sick and stupid, as he had as he lay on the Italian hillside with his smashed knee. Then as now he had felt weariness even more than pain.
“Coffee, darling.”
Suddenly he roused himself. “No,” he almost shouted. “No, no, no.”
“Darling, what is the matter? Don’t get excited. Are you feeling ill? Lie down on the sofa near the window.”
He did as he was told. He felt so weary that he could barely move from his chair.
“Do you think coffee would keep you awake, love? You look quite fit to drop already. There, lie down.”
He lay down and, like the tide slowly mounting among the rocks below, sleep rose and spread in his mind. He nodded and woke with a start.
“Shall I open the window, darling, and give you some air?”
“Elizabeth,” he said, “I feel as if I have been drugged.” Like the rocks below the window—now awash, now emerging clear from falling water; now awash again, deeper; now barely visible, mere patches on the face of gently eddying foam—his brain was softly drowning. He roused himself, as children do in nightmare, still scared, still half asleep. “I can’t be drugged,” he said loudly, “I never touched the coffee.”
“Drugs in the coffee?” said Elizabeth gently, like a nurse soothing a fractious child. “Drugs in the coffee? What an absurd idea. That’s the kind of thing that only happens on the films, darling.”
He did not hear her. He was fast asleep, snoring stertorously by the open window.
COMPASSION
I
The military organization into which Major Gordon drifted during the last stages of the war enjoyed several changes of name as its function became less secret. At first it was called “Force X”; then “Special Liaison Balkan Irregular Operations”; finally, “Joint Allied Mission to the Yugoslav Army of Liberation.” Its work was to send observing officers and wireless operators to Tito’s partisans.
Most of these appointments were dangerous and uncomfortable. The liaison parties parachuted into the forests and the mountains and lived like brigands. They were often hungry, always dirty, always on the alert, prepared to decamp at any move of the enemy’s. The post to which Major Gordon was sent was one of the safest and softest. Begoy was the headquarters of a partisan corps in Northern Croatia. It lay in a large area, ten miles by twenty, of what was called