Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Small Wars: A Novel
Small Wars: A Novel
Small Wars: A Novel
Ebook378 pages6 hours

Small Wars: A Novel

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

Read preview

About this ebook

“Sadie Jones has a long literary future ahead of her.” —Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl with the Pearl Earring

Fresh off her triumphantly assured debut novel The Outcast, award-winning author Sadie Jones has again delivered a quiet masterpiece in Small Wars. Set on the colonial, war-torn island of Cyprus in 1956, Jones tells the story of a young solider, Hal Treherne, and the effects of this “small war” on him, his wife Clara, and their family. Reminiscent of classic tales of love and war such as The English Patient and Atonement, Jones’s gripping novel also calls to mind the master works of Virginia Woolf and their portrayal of the quiet desperation of a marriage in crisis. Small Wars is at once a deeply emotional, meticulously researched work of historical fiction and a profound meditation on war-time atrocities committed both on and off the battlefield.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateFeb 9, 2010
ISBN9780061966323
Author

Sadie Jones

Sadie Jones is the author of five novels, including The Outcast, winner of the Costa First Novel Award in Great Britain and a finalist for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Los Angeles TimesBook Prize/Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction; the enchanting, hard-hitting novel set on the island of Cyprus during the British occupation, Small Wars; her most successful, bestselling novel The Uninvited Guests, beloved of Ann Patchett and Jackie Winspear, among other; the romantic novel set in London's glamorous theatre world, Fallout; and most recently, the highly acclaimed, bestselling novel, The Snakes. Sadie Jones lives in London.  

Related to Small Wars

Related ebooks

Literary Fiction For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Small Wars

Rating: 3.653333237333333 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

150 ratings25 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Very disappointed by this book it didn't seem to get anywhere very slow and very dull
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    "Small Wars" is set in Cyprus in the late 1950s. Hal is a rising star in the British Army. His wife Clara has just come to live with him on base with their twin toddlers. Slowly the tension in Cyprus starts to grate on both Clara and Hal, as well as their once rock solid relationship. A series of events leads them to question both their marriage and Hal's career, exposing the unanticipated costs of small wars. This novel was excellent. From the very first page I was drawn into the world of the British military in the post-war era that Clara and Hal inhabit. Jones does an excellent job of depicting Cyprus and the simmering tension in the streets that slowly works its way into Clara and Hal's life and relationship. Some of the military scenes are brutal, but Jones does a fantastic job of balancing them with strong emotional content between her two main characters. As I was reading this novel I couldn't help but think about the insurgent wars that are being fought in our world today, and the parallels between the emotional costs in the novel and of our soldiers today. If you are looking for some excellent literary fiction, I can't recommend Small Wars enough.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a great read. I didn't know much about the British occupation of Cyprus in the 1950s leading up to the Suez crisis, so I found the historical aspect fascinating. Hal Treherne is a young British officer anxious to distinguish himself. He and his wife Clara with their twin baby girls live in a small army base about 3 hours from Nicosia. But life in Cyprus in the heat of the emergency is an ugly place and the skirmishes with the locals are bloody and brutal as Britain desperately tries to hold on to this strategic island. Hal is troubled by the atrocities he has witnessed and Clara is frightened and lonely as Hal withdraws from the relationship. Whe tragedy strikes, Hal and Clara face a shocking personal crisis. This is a great story.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I loved this novel from beginning to end, and sped through the near 500 pages in 24 hours. Everything about it was terrific - the unusual setting of the Greek Cypriot unrest against British occupation in Cyprus, the subtle tension built up around the military action and the ensuing psychological fallout, and the pinpoint observations of the slow rot setting into what had been a perfect marriage.Jones is an amazing writer: her prose is so descriptive and her plots so cleverly executed I almost forget I'm reading at all.A perfect holiday read spoilt only by the terrible cover which makes me think of mass market romance books.5 stars - practically perfect.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Small Wars tells the story of Hal Treherne and his wife, Clara, in 1956. Hal is a young, enthusiastic soldier in the British Army, poised to quickly rise in the ranks due to his commitment, responsibility, and intelligence. Clara and Hal also have two baby daughters, Lottie and Meg. Hal is stationed in Cyprus, a British colony in a state of confusion and simmering rebellion, and after taking time to get settled Clara and the girls join him. Although Clara knows what is expected of an army wife, she finds that Hal is growing increasingly distant towards her as he experiences atrocities and begins to see the shades of grey that he never imagined when he was being trained. I found Small Wars to be an extremely engaging, interesting read. The time period and setting were fascinating, as was Hal's transition as time passed and he moved further from enthusiastic but inexperienced to battle hardened and questioning. Another strength in Small Wars is the cast of smaller players, from the Cypriots who Clara and Hal encounter to the other soldiers and their families. Small Wars is at its best when it reveals the struggles of a family and the effects of war on one small family.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Small Wars is the story of Hal and Clara Treherne. Hal, a career soldier, is transferred from Germany to Cyprus in 1956, and Clara moves with him. Together with their twin toddlers, the Trehernes adjust to life in Cyprus, where Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots are at odds, and the colonial British are trying to keep the peace. Small acts of terrorism are the only battle Hal and his men see, and while he seems to initially enjoy his part in this "small war", Clara is constantly afraid - of terrorists, of the Cypriots, and of her increasingly distant husband.As Clara and Hal's marriage fractures, so too does the safe world of the army base. Davis, a translator with a wavering moral code, sees atrocities about which he cannot keep silent. The corruption of the British Army is exposed to Hal, and he struggles to remain faithful. Tensions in Cyprus escalate, causing even more tension at home, and Clara and Hal's love is tested in horrible ways.Like her first novel, The Outcast, Jones' Small Wars is less than cheerful. Clara and Hal are characters living in a war zone - both physically and emotionally. Their thoughts are a jumbled mess of dark feelings and heavy moral issues, and the light moments in their lives are few and far between. However, they are very real in how they come to terms with their daily battles, and I was swept up in their fight to keep their love alive.Underneath the relationship of Clara and Hal is a very strong anti-war message. Jones draws parallels between the Cypriot "terrorists" and the British soldiers, and these comparisons are anything but flattering. Much of what she says through her exploration of this small war can be applied to conflicts raging today, and I felt as though the purpose of her writing is just as much about shedding light on the present as it is on the past. This message was a bit heavy-handed for my taste, at times.Through all this rather intense material, Jones' prose shines. She is especially skilled at making characters' emotions jump off the page, and her descriptions of Hal's reactions to battle are heart-wrenching. Small Wars was a moving piece of fiction, one I highly recommend.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Sadie Jones uses a forgotten guerilla uprising, the Cypriot revolt against British rule, as a means to make a rather heavy-handed statement about war, the military machine, and colonialism that resounds in the "small wars" being fought today in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other hot spots. Jones focuses on the isolation of and between a young couple, Clara and Hal Traherne, to make her points about the dehumanization wrought by the struggle for world power. Clara, a bit pampered yet willing to play the military wife and follow her husband first to Germany, then to Cyprus, seems completely unprepared for life in a war zone. Hal, on the other hand, acts around Clara as if everything is perfectly fine, unable or unwilling to share his experiences and discounting her fears. By the time a personal tragedy hits, their lives have already been changed and their marriage may be beyond repair (although Jones does hint at a reconciliation in the end).While I enjoyed Small Wars, the characters here lacked the depth of those in her first novel, The Outcast. Several secondary characters, like the literature-loving translator with an inconvenient moral streak but not much backbone, and the shopaholic officer's wife who befriends Clara in Nicosia, are never fully realized, and even Hal and Clara are a bit flat. Perhaps Jones's obvious desire to send us an antiwar message overwhelmed some of the finer elements of plot and character here. Still, I'd recommend the book to anyone wanting to know more about life in the 1950s, particularly for a young military family in a "small war" zone.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A story about wars indeed, but in no way small.Hal is a British soldier promoted to Major posted in Cyprus to fight EOKA, a paramilitary association against the British rule of Cyprus. It's 1956 and Hal has never seen action, so he takes this post eagerly wanting to put in practise everything he's learnt in the base. His wife Clara and their two baby daughters join him in Cyprus after two months and while she struggles to "fit in" and make a home out of this foreign place, Hal and his men start their duty searching for suspects and interrogating them trying to prevent more terrorist attacks.As weeks go by, Hal starts to realise that what seemed to be an under control situation is in fact a constant strain between what's morally right and wrong and when he finally dares to speak about it to his superiors he is disappointed in the unfairness of the system and the detached coldness he finds in some of his men.An escalating tension is starting to build up in him, a tension which will affect his relationship with Clara and his daughters, a small war within himself and another one with his family, and a foreboding feeling engulfs the reader as the story advances. This is not a novel to take lightly and Sadie Jones makes an excellent job out of it. Like in her previous novel, The Outcast (which is one of my favourites ever), she manages to create real characters with human conflicts and faults and to portray convincing relationships between them without the need of excessive dialogue. In this book, the images described and the silences tell you all you need to know. No flourishing, no superfluous conversations, just raw feelings and impotence and guilt. And an important message, there are no winners in wars, and no good or bad men, only humans trying to cope with life the best they can and dealing with the consequences of their own actions. Sad, but true.You'll find yourself swallowing compulsively while reading on and wondering how a story like this can have a happy ending.But like life, this book is full of surprises, and not all of them sour.If you're undecided, just pick it up and start reading, you will forget about the rest.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Images of torture and terror from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo have slid across our tv screens, jumped out of newspapers and magazines, and peppered conversations over the past number of years. How, we wonder, did we come to this, this unacceptable and horrifying state of affair? Has civilization broken down so badly that we can turn a blind eye to this sort of thing unless, and only unless, it is thrust into our common consciousness? Surely tacit approval was not granted. We can not have so lost our moral compass, especially compared to the civilized and relatively humane generations who have waged war before us, can we? Unfortunately, this isn't the case. Not that we have gone so misguided, but that the generations before us weren't just as ruthless and willing to step over the line. War is hell in more ways than one and its damages can be counted in far more than casualty numbers. Loss of innocence, moral breakdown, and silent complicity are all terrible, soul destroying by-products that have been a part of war as long as war has been a part of mankind.Major Hal Treherne is posted to Cyprus during the 1950's and is joined by his wife Clara and their twin toddler daughters. His war is not to be the enormous consuming war of their fathers, World War II, instead, his war is to be the small war of waning colonialism on this tiny island so vital to the Middle East. He is mostly happy with his command although he longs for more important action than sweeping the local villages for EOKA terrorists. Eventually this vague dissatisfaction starts to seep into his heretofore charmed marriage. Meanwhile, his wife Clara must master herself and her fears about this posting and perhaps her very unsuitability to be an army wife, only relaxing once the family is safely housed on base.But isolated, violent events occur to shatter the false sense of security for the Treherne family and Hal and Clara react diametrically opposite to each other in the face of these disturbing happenings. At first Hal is exhilerated and blind to Clara's fear and feelings. As he learns more though, Hal's conception of duty and his sense of right and wrong are tested beyond endurance. He is torn between his duty to his country and the men with whom he serves and his own conscience and as he struggles, his life with Clara erodes and becomes unrecognizable until both halves of him, public and private are at the breaking point.This is a fascinating look at the psychological strain of war and how essentially good people react to it. It counts the damage to intimacy and goodness. Jones allows her characters to judge the scenes they see and hear about without much authorial intrusion at all. Her characters are strong, even when they are crumbling, and they illustrate the timelessness of those news pieces that reach us and so horrify us today. The writing is tight and well-done. The tension slowly grows as the story continues but it grows unevenly, as it would in war: longer stretches of less watchfulness interspersed with brief bursts of pulse-pounding events. The characters are easy to sympathize with as they wrestle with their duties and desires. All in all, a sensitive and powerful story and one I'd highly recommend.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I got this out of the library after demolishing her first book, The Outcast, in almost one sitting. This is a very different book, but equally good. The claustrophobic atmosphere of army life is well captured, and the writing is superb. The scene on the beach with the horses will stay with me for a long time. I'm also really impressed with how well Sadie Jones gets into the minds of her characters, which makes the ending, when the husband does something so out of character feel like a real shock. All in all excellent reading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Set in the 1950s during the military conflict in Cyprus, this is an example of how war - no matter how small - can bring tragedy for those involved. The author has a beautiful writing style and even though the characters have difficulty expressing their emotions, Jones is skilled at allowing the reader to understand them. An excellent work that I can recommend highly.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The setting is 1950's England and Cyprus. Hal Treherne meets and falls in love with Clara just before entering the service. Initially they are sent to Germany where Hal distinguishes himself and quickly rises up in the ranks becomming a major by the time he's thirty. There is a disturbance on the British held island of Cyprus and Hal is sent there. This "small war" introduces Hal to the "small horrors" of war. Hal, while trying to do his job and keep a stiff upper lip finds sleep hard to come by, and more and more he pushes away the one person who vowed to stay with him in good times and bad.I was so looking forward to this novel after having loved The Outcast. Sadie Jones is a good novelist unfortunatly this book didn't have the emotional pull and inpact of her first. "Small Wars" was at it's best when depicting the brutality and horror, but the characters felt flat. I'll hope for better next time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I loved 'The Outcast' and once I started reading 'Small Wars' I knew she'd not let me down with the follow-up. I adore the way she writes, my only criticism of this was that it did fizzle a bit at the end in terms of plot. Without wishing to give anything away, often you know what you wish would happen as an ending and usually it never does and the tension there makes it interesting even if its frustrating. This kind of ended exactly how one would wish but instead of being satisfying, it was a little bit of a let-down. Still loved it though, but perhaps only 4/5.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Small wars is the story of Hal and Clara Treherne and their two daughters. Hal is an ambitious soldier, on the brink of a great career who at this point has seen little action. He is posted to Cyprus, a man with high ideals and standards, and after a time his wife and daughters join him. This is the story of their time in Cyprus and the effects on their family. As time goes on Clara become more unhappy and more unsettled in Cyprus and is more afraid for their safety. As time goes on and Hal witnesses atrocities, and sees that actions don't always have the consequences he expects, he too becomes more unsettled and grows more distant from Clara as he does not feel able to share anything of what is happening to him with her, The inevitable crisis point comes. I loved the title of this book - the small wars - to me it illustrated the small conflicts in relationships set against the greater troubles in Cyprus. I found it very interesting and absorbing and it gave insight to another period in history that I knew little about. It painted a detailed picture of what life in the military could be like for both the husband and the wife and the effects it could have on their relationshop. A book well worth a read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I enjoyed The Outcast and liked this too, but I think I enjoyed The Outcast more. The pacing seemed a bit off, going very slowly for a long time, then wildly speeding up. I expect that it was necessary to getting the plot to work, but felt that there were long stretches of unexplored relationships and nothing really happening. Not bad, I just feel the author has more in her.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This novel is a portrait of a young family in crisis set against the backdrop of a Mediterranean island locked in a brutal guerrilla conflict. Hal and Clara are overjoyed to be together in Cyprus. Hal is rising quickly through the ranks and with the opportunity of this latest conflict, he is likely to win himself even more accolades. Clara is happy to be stationed with her husband so their daughters can be around their father.Unfortunately, the stress of battle and the horrors he is witnessing are changing Hal. Clara is frightened by his violent outburst and Hal is confused and irate at the military cruelties he has been a party to. Both are under a lot of pressure to suck up their doubts and behave as it befits true British patriots. Under this much tension, something has to give.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Set in 1956 Cyprus, just prior to the start of the Suez Crisis, this story really packs quite the punch. What I found amazing is how well Jones balances the emotional roller coaster ride of the plot with the more subdued, rather understated prose. The raw emotional energy of Hal and Clara is there, lashing like an electric current, but constrained in a stoic English facade of repression and lack of honest communication. The story is multifaceted as Jones bares to the reader the inner thoughts, emotions and turmoil of her main characters. The story vividly captures the growing unrest of Cypriates under colonial British rule of the time period and the rising terrorist activities of EOKA (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston) which the British were struggling to contain. The narrator, Stephen Hoye, does an amazing job, making it easy for me to understand the emotions of Hal and Clara. Sadly, the ending fell flat for me, rather anticlimactic compared to the prior bits and left me at a loss as to how I felt about the story. I found Hal to be a rather frustrating character and even felt compelled to reach out and slap him across the face at one point, which I won't go into because that would mean revealing spoilers. Suffice to say, it is a well crafted story that really gets under the skin of its main characters, giving the reader much to contemplate.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    In Small Wars, the second novel by Sadie Jones, Jones explores the impact of “small wars” on countries, citizens, servicemen and their loved ones. When you read a novel by Jones, you expect an intensive read. Small Wars is exactly that – a novel that keeps you thinking about its characters long after finishing the book.Hal Treherne is a young major in the British Army. He comes from a family whose men held distinguished careers in the army, fighting in great English wars throughout history. Hal has no war to fight, until he is stationed in Cyprus, a nation whose interest to England becomes exceedingly higher as the conflict in the Suez Canal erupts in nearby Egypt. Cyprus had a small war of its own, trying to break free of British rule. The country’s desire for independence resulted in terrorist activity, and Hal finally gets the war he’s been trained for. However, it’s not the war of his father or grandfather. There are no trenches, fronts or battlefields. Instead, it’s house-to-house searches, land mines and torture. Hal learns that he’s not emotionally equipped for this type of warfare and begins to question his service in the army.Meanwhile, Hal’s wife Clara arrives in Cyprus with their twin daughters, and tries to create a life in this tumultuous country. At the beginning of the book, you sense a deep love between the couple. However, as conditions sour in Cyprus and Hal becomes traumatized by its events, you watch as this marriage crumbles. They fail to talk to each other, and Hal takes out the atrocities of the war on his wife. He eventually arranges for Clara’s departure to a “safer” part of Cyprus, but in a country involved in a small war, there are no safe havens. Eventually, Clara and Hal face an enormous tragedy that will make or break their marriage.I was unaware of this portion of British history, and I found that Jones’ research about Cyprus during the 1950’s to be enlightening. I couldn’t help but draw parallels from the small war in Cyprus to those being fought in countries throughout the world today. The places have changed, but the lessons have not. I applaud Jones for tackling this sensitive subject and for doing so in such a provocative way. I would recommend Small Wars to those readers who enjoy reading intense fiction or books focused on military history. It’s a book that will leave its fingerprint on me for a long time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Set in 1956 in Cyprus during one of the “small wars” that the British fought after World War II, this novel focuses on the story of Hal Treherne, a major in the British army who is posted to Cyprus. His wife and their two small daughters join him there. Amid the violence and fighting against EOKA (Ethniki Organosis Kypriou Agonistou), Hal and Clara find that their relationship suffers.It’s very difficult to review a novel such as this one. Small Wars is a character-driven novel. It’s an intriguing look at the war a war, even a small one, can have such a strong psychological impact on someone who is conditioned to withstand it. The novel is often bleak; danger and even death are imminent in this novel. And yet the military action is such a strong contrast to the activities of the British colonists (their club in Nicosia and life on the military base, for example). This novel is a beautiful evocation of a time and place. It’s an emotionally draining read; and while I would have liked for the ending of the book to be less drawn-out, I really enjoyed this novel. I’m looking forward to reading more from Sadie Jones, especially her first novel, The Outcast.At the end of the book, Sadie Jones lists a website on the “small wars” that the British fought in the last half of the 20th century: britainssmallwars.com. It’s an excellent introduction to the time period for someone who doesn’t know much about it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Hal Trehene is an officer in the British military. Bright, motivated, and moving up in the ranks, he is eager for battle but finds himself instead on Cyprus where the bright blue skies and inviting waters seem very far from war. When Hal’s wife, Clara, joins him there with their twin daughters, the mood on Cyprus is becoming tense and the rumblings of violence are growing louder. The EOKA – an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist nationalist organization – has begun to commit terrorist acts against the British military and their families in an effort to liberate Cyprus from British rule. Hal finds himself on the cusp of war where loyalty to one’s country may conflict with one’s inner moral compass.Small Wars, Sadie Jone’s elegant second novel, is set during a difficult time in British history. The EOKA, led by George Grivas, focused their efforts against the British military, but the conflict was decidedly political and attracted front page headlines. The EOKA campaign lasted until March 1959 and was defined by terrorism, brutality, and the deaths of not only military personnel, but civilians as well. The guerilla methods of EOKA have been widely studied as an example of anti-colonial, national-liberation struggles in a period of decolonization. Into this volatile mix, Jones places her characters: the reserved and proper Hal who thinks he is prepared for war, but finds himself struggling with a type of post-traumatic stress; and the lovely Clara, who wants to support her husband but begins to feel as though she does not really know him.This introspective novel is really about the impact of war on relationships and our sense of identity. Hal struggles with the moral decisions he is forced to make. He finds himself torn between doing the “right thing” and doing what he must do to support the military’s agenda and ultimately his country. Unable to communicate his vulnerability and fears to Clara, he instead erects an emotional wall against her which further isolates him. Clara struggles with being the good, military wife and mother while finding herself more and more alone in a dangerous situation. Neither character communicates effectively, leaving room for misunderstanding, anger, and an escalation of their own fears.Sadie Jones is adept at getting beneath the skin of her characters. The tension in the novel is subtle, but as events begin to escalate, the reader’s unease and anxiety begins to parallel that of the characters. As in Jones’ previous novel, The Outcast (read my review), the characters are flawed, their relationship with each other seeming almost too damaged to be mended – and yet, in the end, Jones allows for the idea of redemption and leaves the reader a glimmer of hope for a happy future.Small Wars is a gem of a novel – carefully constructed with an understated, yet elegant, plot. The historical background and geographical setting lend themselves well to the overarching theme of the small internal wars we fight to remain whole in the face of disaster. Readers of historical fiction will find this novel a compelling look at the struggle against colonial rule, and the men and women who found themselves in the middle of it.Highly recommended.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In the day and a half since I finished “Small Wars”, I’ve spent more time going over the events and characters than when I was actually reading the book. As this novel was unfolding, I had such a sense of dread as to what the final results might be, that I had to set it aside a few times just to take a break.Hal and Clara Treherne are the main characters of “Small Wars” – a book set in the mid-1950s, but who live out a story that could be, and probably is, taking place today. It’s a story about war, about winning a war – even when “winning” has been poorly defined, and even when the costs may be even greater to the victor than to the vanquished.This story is so sad, and so real…it’s been haunting me. Soldiers and their families are going through these very experiences as I write this. The brutality of war, the isolation of a foreign language and culture, the crippling doubt of what is right and what is wrong in a time of war…and trying to reconcile the person one must become to withstand war with the person one is to one’s family.It’s a story about how much a person can accept under extreme circumstances – both in actions taken and things experienced – while still holding on to one’s soul.“He was left on his own then to sleep, but confined by physical pain and the shame of his weakness, he didn’t sleep. In the dark part of the night, after the moon had gone and before the sun came up, he died. He died of a heart-attack, which couldn’t have been prevented, and perhaps was nobody’s fault, but it was a very lonely death, and fearful.”Hal, the textbook 1950’s British soldier, is stationed in Cypress and brings his wife Clara and their twin daughters with him. The transformation he undergoes there, and the effect it has on his wife and their relationship, is devastating.He witnesses death and incredible brutality – some of which takes hold of him – and every part of the world he thought he knew, changes. There is another character whose storyline is parallel to his, a British soldier named Davis, and the similarity between what they experience and the difference in the choices they make provide some surprises in the book.“Davis was surprised that his capacity for dread and disgust had not diminished. The boy was kept awake, standing, for hours at a time, and with each interrogation, seeing his deterioration, Davis jumped through the same hoops in the circus of his mental process. Steeped in shame, he condemned himself, but always, in the back of his mind, the thought: This is still within the realms of acceptable. If something really bad were to happen, I’d do something.” “..He clung to the notion that he had a limit, that his threshold lay somewhere, uncrossed and ready to save him, if only he were given the opportunity.”Words like “acceptable”, “something really bad”, and “limits” are ones that are relatively easy to define in the everyday world. In the world of war, those words are so questionable as to be useless. The same is true for people and their actions. Ones we meet on a daily basis can be more clearly described. People encountered during wartime…do their words and actions matter more as we try to determine if they are friend or foe? Or simply the uniform they wear or the side for which they fight? “This place was nothing like the churches he knew and yet it was familiar to him – uncomfortably so: the familiarity seemed to find him out, unpeel the layers of him, a feeling that was too sharp for comfort.”“Small Wars” will remain on my mind for a long time to come. Not only did it make me think even more about the men and women whose life it describes…but about myself. What would I do? How would I react under the extreme fear, or hatred or shame? How might I change and what boundaries might I cross?What layers of myself might I find?
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    “This sick fear was new to him; like shame, it had been unknown. Now he was well acquainted with both.” (348) Major Hal Treherne is a young, dedicated soldier who has risen impressively through the ranks. Thirsting for action, he does not hesitate to accept a transfer from Europe to the Mediterranean in 1956. He, his wife Clara, and their two young children relocate from Germany to Cyprus. Their timing is certainly amendable to action: the island is in the midst of the Emergency. The British are defending their colony from the Cypriots who are battling for union with Greece. Of course, there is nothing small about war, even a “small war.” Hal, like most soldiers, is changed by atrocity. And Clara grows fearful of the world she is living in. Doubt, fear, betrayal, and shame threaten to derail their marriage. “She was hot and panicking and felt imaginary Cypriot eyes upon her. She had started to feel like that all the time now. When she was in her bedroom she imagined them watching her house, when she was opening her front door she imagined tripwires across it and had begun to check, without letting anyone see she was doing it. Whenever she got into the car, part of her was expecting it to blow up. Every sound she heard had both a benign and a sinister interpretation, and she would have to remind herself to keep to the real world and not be drawn into her fear completely, not let it overtake her.” (154)Small Wars is eminently readable, so much so that I didn’t want to put it down. In addition to being a haunting depiction of the Cyprus Emergency and a marriage in crisis, it raises bold questions which resonate acutely about our contemporary world view and, even less flattering, about the moral superiority with which we righteously defend our ruthless assault on “terrorists.” Jones is quickly becoming a favourite author. Small Wars, like The Outcast before it, is highly recommended.“History doesn’t end. Places that are fought over are always fought over, and will always be fought over, and there will never be an end to it, and each conflict is just adding to the heap of conflicts that no one can remember starting and no one will ever, ever finish.” (82)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Small Wars by Sadie Jones is set on the island of Cyprus during 1956. This was a time of military conflict and Major Hal Treherne has been posted there, soon his wife Clara and their two young daughters join him. Theirs is a military family and Hal is soon relishing leading his men into combat and serving his country in the way he has been trained to. Clara feels it is her role to back Hal, accept their living conditions and not complain or let her husband see her fear.But this isn’t an open battle, this war for independence is being fought by guerrillas and schoolchildren alike. The lines of battle are unclear and civilians are often targeted., atrocities are being done by both sides. As Hal works at being a good solider, he finds himself on the same side as rapists and torturers. He withdraws into himself and Clara feels more and more abandoned. It takes a personal tragedy to change their lives and eventually open the path of communication between them. The author has turned her microscopic view on this marriage and we can see that love, duty, stress, fear and mostly non-communication all play a role in the distance that separates these two. I felt this was a statement not only about life in the military but also about life in the 1950’s when talking about one’s feelings was not considered acceptable conversation. I applaud the author for telling this story, I loved the setting but unfortunately I never felt emotionally involved with the characters. They seemed to hold themselves as much at a distance from the reader as they did from each other. Perhaps this was the authors’ design, but it kept me from totally falling in love with this book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Sadie Jones has a way of producing page-turners, and if this book is less compelling than The Outcast I would still have found it hard to put down, but all the same it was in many ways less than satisfying. The writing was very uneven with some lovely phrases rubbing shoulders with paragraphs that read like a first draft in need of editorial revision. The tale of the young couple who become estranged by war is essentially a good one, but I found it hard to relate to either of the main characters whose complete inability to communicate became increasingly infuriating as the plot progressed. Perhaps they were too similar in their acceptance of circumstances to create the necessary dynamic. The ending, although suggesting reconciliation, did nothing to dispel the impasse in which the husband Hal (if anything better realised than his wife) found himself. Minor characters verged on the stereotypical and the translator who might have become the wife’s lover was unsympathetic and underwritten. That said, the period feel is nicely evoked and the theme of an army in a policing role had a topical feel.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I was a little disappointed by this book. I liked the idea of exploring what happens when Clara accompanies her British soldier husband Hal to Cyprus during the emergency, with their twin daughters, and focusing on the way in which this puts their relationship under pressure. I particularly liked the idea that the story would focus on the ‘small wars’ ‘fought’ on the domestic front. I can’t put my finger on the reason why I didn’t like this as much as I expected I would – the story was solid and the dilemmas faced by Hal and Clara realistic and poignant, with disconcerting contemporary parallels. However, I just felt detached from the characters. I wasn’t drawn me into the story and I couldn’t share their concerns to the extent that I had hoped, and so the book had less impact on me than it otherwise could have.

Book preview

Small Wars - Sadie Jones

Prologue

Sandhurst, July 1946

An English rain was falling onto the instruments of the band, onto their olive green uniforms and the uniforms of the cadets as they marched. The quiet rain lay in drops on the umbrellas of the families watching, on the men’s felt hats and the women’s gloved hands; it dampened the grey and green countryside around them and put beads of water onto everything.

The band played ‘Auld Lang Syne’. The sound of the commands of the cadets and of the marching feet seemed to promise a bright future that was grounded in England and in discipline; the love of one made strong by the application of the other.

The families stood in a crowd ten deep, bordering the parade square. The small band and the marching cadets were between them and the long, white, columned building. The cadets held rifles and wore dark green battledress. The wool of their uniforms was dense and damp in the weather. The marching feet and rifles and tilted heads made patterns, so that their mothers could hardly tell one from another and felt embarrassed about it, but proud too, because their sons had become part of a greater body and did not stand out.

Some mothers and fathers had seen the passing-out parades of other sons, and many of the fathers remembered their own. This parade, in 1946, like England herself, lacked opulence but had its own austere ceremony. It was not the sunny, decorative ceremony of established peacetime, but resolute and businesslike, as if these men, like those of only a few months before, would be dispatched immediately into battle.

There was almost no self-consciousness at the emotion of the occasion: it was designed to be emotional and there was nobody there who did not feel it. The only time Hal Treherne could remember his father choked with feeling was in describing the day of his own Sovereign’s Parade.

Hal was not choked with feeling: he had only the desire to do well that he always had, immense pride, like a physical thing, and a powerful eagerness to meet his future and to conquer it. He wasn’t thinking about these things though; he was thinking about the precise execution of this small part of his training, drilled, redrilled, and accomplished. It was afterwards, as they stood in silence for inspection by the Princess Elizabeth – rifles up to the shoulder, eyes front – then, suddenly, he felt it, a sort of overflowing, and he had to blink and focus carefully on the far trees.

There was almost total quiet as everybody watched the young princess walk down the line of cadets. Hal could hear the sound of the footsteps approaching. He knew that she was the embodiment of his country, that he was doing his best to please and that he always would. He thought of God – his hazy, humble idea of God – and dared to hope he could please Him, too.

Hal, flanked by his peers and not alone, thought briefly of his father, watching him from the crowd, with all his battles behind him, and of his mother, next to him, quietly satisfied. Then his mind focused again on the exact present. The group of officers, aides and the princess came into the side of his vision, and across it, and his eyes didn’t waver. He could see the top of her cream-coloured hat out of focus at the bottom of his field of vision. She paused briefly, she passed him and she moved on, and the small group with her moved on too, down the line.

Hal’s girl was called Clara Ward. She was watching from the crowd with her parents and younger brother and later, at the Sovereign’s Ball, she would dance with him. Clara was the sister of Hal’s friend James. Hal had gone back with James to stay with his family a few times in Buckinghamshire, and that was how they had met.

Clara and James’s family house was a village house, a wide red-brick villa, with white painted door and gate, white sills and sashes and a big garden. It had a lilac tree, apple trees, roses and a well-kept lawn that had a stream with a small bridge over it. Clara and her two brothers had grown up there and gone to and from their various schools and the house showed the small scars of their childhood in its crooked swing and worn carpets.

It was a house for Christmases and summers, for school holidays, rocking horses and chickenpox. It had seen wooden toys, rattles, satchels and raincoats and then, later, it had seen evening clothes and beaded bags on thin chains left on the hall chairs as Clara and James, tired from their parties, went upstairs to bed.

Hal had seen Clara for the first time one weekend, in the first weeks of his training.

They had arrived after tea on a Saturday. James had been talking to his father about money, and Hal had thought he’d better go out into the garden for a smoke and to be out of the way.

There was a blueish dusk just settling and Clara was coming into the drawing room; she had her arms full of wet flowers, and Hal – avoiding a small table – had almost bumped into her. He had apologised and they had shaken hands awkwardly. Her hand was wet from the flowers. Hal said, ‘You must be James’s sister,’ and Clara answered, ‘Yes, I’m Clara.’

She said ‘Clara’ as her brother did – to rhyme with ‘dare’ or ‘fair’ – and then, ‘Are you Hal?’

‘Yes. Hal,’ and he had been silenced by her voice and the look of her, and had not known what to say.

They stepped around each other. He had gone out into the garden and had his cigarette; she had gone into the kitchen to put the flowers in water, but the picture of her stayed in his mind. She was pale and had dark brown hair, the colour of conkers or a bay horse, and her eyes were marine blue. She was seventeen then; he was nineteen.

Hal had set about seeing more of Clara with determination, and over the few months of his training he would come back with James whenever they were allowed a weekend.

His own parents’ house was near Warminster, in Somerset, not far from Stonehenge. It was faced with dark grey and had a well-proportioned front and other older and more complicated sections attached and interlocking behind. It bore the wind that came off Salisbury Plain stoically, with barely a rattle of its Victorian windows. Hal was always happy to be back in the big chilly rooms, with their familiar echoes; the gilt-framed paintings, the grim colours of the house, and its coldness, were nourishing to him. Although before visiting the Wards, he had never noticed the look of his own house before, he still felt more comfortable with its discomfort than he ever did in that light village house. He was happy with the silent mealtimes and bare boards of home, but he needed to be near Clara, and tolerated her jolly, messy family well enough to see her.

Hal and Clara had written to one another, letters more intimate than they ever were face to face. He called her his ‘red, white and blue girl’ – for her colouring – and when he asked her to come with him to the Sovereign’s Parade and ball it wasn’t surprising, but it was significant.

Clara stood with her parents and younger brother, trying to pick out Hal and James from the lines of cadets, straining up onto her toes to see over the people in front, while twenty feet away, Arthur and Jean Treherne, in the front row, watched too.

Arthur Treherne and George Ward could not have been more different. George was a kind, fastidious man, and smallish. His trousers had one soft crease at the ankle and his overcoats spoke of dim offices and hatstands in domestic hallways. James was the first of their family to go into the army as a professional soldier, and they had watched his absorption into that world with something like dread.

George was a civil servant; he had gone to work every day from the red-brick villa in Buckinghamshire, returning each night to Moira, Clara and their two sons. He had fought briefly in the First War. It had been – still was – the unequalled crisis of his life. He didn’t feel soldiering was anything one would choose to do, and was sharply aware that the greater part of his wish for continued peace in the world was so that his sons would not have to do the things he had done, and that his daughter would not have to be a soldier’s wife. And yet here he was, his powerful distate – and fear – mixing with a pride that was almost beyond his control.

Hal’s father, Arthur, was a soldier, had been a soldier, and would always, whatever he wore or wherever he went, be a soldier in every aspect. He had Hal’s height and colouring – although his dark blond hair was faded now with grey, and his bones, like a steel frame revealed, were closer to the surface. Arthur watched the parade with none of the Wards’ ambivalence, his leather-gloved hand clamped over his wife’s as it rested on his arm. He had neither anxiety nor regret, but simple, deeply felt pride in his son, whose progression was expected, a long anticipated stepping-stone to a distinguished future.

The slow rain became no more than mist when the parade was over, carrying the smell of wet grass and rifle shot as the birds started to sing again. The new officers and their families stood in groups on the parade square. Around them was parkland, big vague trees undisturbed now by sharp volleys of fire. Women shivered in the chill summer air and held their husbands’ arms. Clara Ward stood shyly by her brother James, and teased him, and hoped that Hal would come over.

Hal was with his father and mother, with very little to say after the congratulations were over. He twisted his head to look over his shoulder at Clara with her family and felt nervous suddenly of what they might talk about all evening. He wanted to be alone with her. He wanted not to have to get to know her – which seemed a frightening process – but to know her already.

The Wards went back to Buckinghamshire, after the Sovereign’s Parade, to change into evening dress for the ball. The Trehernes went to a hotel they had found in the high street in Godalming because they lived too far away to be going back and forth. His parents drank warm gin and tonic in the downstairs bar, while Hal went up to his room, which overlooked the road.

He put his belt and jacket on the bed, paced up and down and thought about Clara. She was a foreign country to him, but one he felt he’d always known, like the countries coloured pink on the atlas, that he had been familiar with through his childhood. Like a far-off place of treasures and spices that still was English, in his mind she waited for his visit; she was India.

Clara’s dress was midnight blue. The idea was that it would match her eyes. It was strapless, and had clear beads on the skirt, which was net and there was a lot of it. Her bosom felt very bare and white; she had tried several different ways of wrapping her stole around herself to cover up. Her mother’s dress – a casualty of Clara’s yards of net – was stiff, brownish taffeta, seven years old and making what she hoped was its last appearance.

James was wrestling with Bill on the landing, they were shaking the floor with their thumping. Bill was fourteen and already too old for wrestling on landings, and James really should have known better, twenty years old and still in his battledress from the parade.

Clara sat on the bed in her evening gown, listening to the noises of their fighting and laughing. She felt an intense nostalgia. They would all leave home. Everything would change. Clara felt she could reach out and touch her childhood: it was all around her in the house, still living. She rested her hands lightly on the edge of the bed, as her mother’s footsteps came up the stairs and reached the boys on the landing. ‘Do be quiet! Stop that!’

She came into Clara’s room and sat next to her, lifting the material of her skirt away from her legs so as not to crush it.

‘Silly boys,’ said Clara.

Her mother took her hand. ‘Shall we set your hair?’

Clara nodded but neither of them stood up; they sat together, quietly, with the sound of the boys fighting and a wood-pigeon in the garden outside.

At the ball, all the women were in long gowns, but only half of the men in black tie because the young officers were in the mess kit of their new regiments, standing out brightly against the sombre black dinner jackets of their fathers and guests.

Hal had waited by the door to the ballroom at the beginning of the evening and when he saw Clara walking towards him he felt again the odd stillness with which she affected him. It wasn’t just being tongue-tied, or nervous – although that was part of it – it was more that he was overwhelmed by her.

She was with her family. His own parents had already gone away into the crowd. His father was with a large group of officers and retired officers at the other end of the ballroom and paying no attention to Hal, or who he might or might not be with, but the Wards hovered for a moment while Hal and Clara gazed at each other.

‘Do you know where they’re sending you?’ said George, abruptly, to Hal.

‘Clara has told us already, George,’ said Moira, and she and Clara exchanged a smile. George, though, continued to stare at Hal.

Hal had an uneasy feeling that this kindly man did not like him. He didn’t seem the sort of father one would expect to be jealously protective of his daughter, but Hal knew his attention to Clara displeased George somehow. Hal wasn’t somebody who’d ever had a conversation about the workings of his or anybody else’s mind in his life. His own family limited their conversation to the dogs, occasional social engagements and his father’s pronouncements on war or politics, none of which had equipped Hal to fathom the more intimate aspects of human interaction. He had no means with which to approach the problem of George Ward not liking him, and thought only that if he behaved properly, as he intended to do, it would somehow work itself out.

James was grinning somewhere near Hal’s left shoulder, hoping to torment them.

‘Go away, James,’ said Clara, and – at last – her parents took him with them and left Hal and Clara together.

‘Everything all right?’ said Hal.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Clara.

He noticed she wore red lipstick, which she hadn’t when they had met before. It suited her, but the glamour of it, with the dress, was unnerving. ‘Would you like some punch?’ he said.

‘Yes. Where is it?’

‘Over here. Come along.’

They went through the people together and arrived at a waiter with a large full tray.

‘Or a cocktail?’ Hal looked down at her, frowning.

‘I don’t mind,’ said Clara.

‘Right then.’

He took two glasses of punch and handed her one. ‘Not sure what’s in it. Something awful probably, if the food in this place is anything to go by.’

‘I’m sure it’s lovely.’

There was a brief silence of excruciating tension.

‘We don’t get to see an awful lot of girls. Sorry if I’m not up to much small-talk.’

She seemed relieved. ‘You’re fine. It was easier at home, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes. Much. Now we’re all dressed up. Makes things trickier.’

‘You’ve only seen me in slacks. With dog hairs on them probably.’

‘Not that bad. Frocks anyway.’ He paused. ‘And you looked very nice.’

Clara looked down at her punch. Hal noticed she wasn’t drinking it. The hand holding her glass was gloved. He wanted to take the glove off. He wanted to hold her hand. ‘Would you like to dance with me?’ he said.

‘I’d love to.’

‘I’m not awfully good.’

‘Aren’t you? I’m marvellous,’ she said, and Hal laughed; he knew he’d been right about her.

They danced to ‘Choo Choo Ch’Boogie’, and then ‘Fools Rush In’, and then ‘Mam’selle’. They danced until the supper interval, and wouldn’t be interrupted by anybody.

The cadets, though commissioned into their regiments, kept the pips on their shoulder boards covered all through the evening. At twelve o’clock, it was the girls who pulled the short dark ribbons away, and completed their transformation into soldiers. Some chaps had their sisters do it or, God forbid, their mothers, but Hal – unaware of being watched now, or of anything else – would have Clara for his, and he wasn’t frightened about the promise it seemed to make between them.

After this, and a few months in England on exercises, he was to be sent to Germany with his regiment. He would write to her from there, visit when he could, and when the time came – if she wanted it – he would marry her.

In the dissonant laughing countdown to midnight, Clara reached up to his shoulder to untie the ribbon – had to take off her gloves at last to do it – and smiled at him.

Hal saw nothing but the girl he was with and the service he was promised to, and in the deep silence at the centre of himself he made an absolute commitment to each.

PART ONE

Limassol

Ten Years Later. Cyprus, January 1956. During the Emergency.

Chapter One

The army had rented them a house in Limassol, quite near to the harbour because married quarters on the base hadn’t been sorted out for them yet.

Hal knew the weather had been bad on the crossing from England – even after Gibraltar – and he pictured Clara and the girls laid up in their cabins all the way from Portsmouth. He hoped they hadn’t been too sick; Clara wasn’t a good sailor. He had enjoyed his own journey from Krefeld, flying in bumpy weather with the countries of Europe and wrinkled blue sea passing below, like a clay model you could stick flags in, and move imaginary armies from place to place.

Hal had been promoted to major, and transferred from his battalion in Germany to this one, alone, not knowing anybody. Everything had been new to him. He had set about the business of leadership and his new rank with steadfast energy, and was rewarded by a smooth transition. Sleeping alone in that house for a month, as he had, he missed the company of barracks, and the isolation was grating.

The Limassol house was narrow, in a cobbled street, with no outlook to speak of and barely a lock on the door. It made Hal uncomfortable to think of it, the unsettling lack of security, and that you couldn’t see anything from the windows other than the crooked windows of other houses. If someone were to approach, or set a booby-trap, there’d be no stopping them. A few months before, in Famagusta, an EOKA terrorist had lobbed a bomb through the open window of a soldier’s house as his wife was putting the children to bed. Hal knew his instinct – his agony of responsibility – must be tempered and that the Housing Officer was doing everything he could to get him married quarters at the garrison. But the other soldier’s wife, in Famagusta, had lost half her arm in the explosion. Hal had spoken to the Housing Officer again that morning, reminding him, but beyond doing that he had no power: he must trust everything was being done that could be done. If he didn’t have faith, he wouldn’t manage, but with it, he could live with the knowledge of the other soldier’s wife and still have his own come to be with him.

He lay in the bed that was too big for him, but would be too small for them both when Clara came, and imagined her leaving England for Cyprus. It had been a vicious winter all over Europe. Hal pictured a cold day at Portsmouth harbour, HMS Endeavour vast and cold too, and Clara waving to her mother.

Hal was right. Clara had been sick on the voyage. Meg and Lottie hadn’t seemed affected by the heaving boat at all, perhaps being small and low to the ground their bodies weren’t so disrupted, and she’d had to run after them, bent over, up and down the slippery metal corridors of the Endeavour, what felt like all day, every day, for the whole journey. The twins were sixteen months and had discovered exercise, exploration and teasing their mother.

Clara, whom Hal had taken to calling ‘Pudding’ during her pregnancy in Krefeld, had lost all of her baby weight, and with being seasick all the time and no German – or even English – stodge to sustain her, now barely filled out her clothes at all. She hoped she wouldn’t be too skinny for Hal. He loved her curves.

When she wasn’t chasing the girls up and down the Endeavour, or leaning over the metal bowl of the lavatory, she read to them. She read the new books she had bought for them in London, and she read the old books her mother had allowed her to take from the shelves of the nursery. She held the loose-spined books gently, reading to Meg and Lottie about fairies and trains and England, until all three fell asleep.

The Endeavour made its slow floating entry into the deep east of the Mediterranean. They passed Greece, and the long reaches of Crete. The ancient seas slid away beneath them, the boat throbbed and heaved, the islands and the skies surrounded them. Now she stood in the drizzle, watching Cyprus coming towards her out of the mist.

She had travelled out with an odd assortment of people: an Italian nightclub singer, a young teacher for the English school, who was a shy man barely out of school himself, and a Welsh businessman, with ‘interests’ in Nicosia, who was very boastful; he liked to frighten them with stories of EOKA’s terrorist atrocities, and make them feel as if they were entering a proper war zone, not just a long-held part of the Empire having a little trouble with a few insurgents. ‘It’s hardly the Blitz, is it?’ Clara said to the young teacher one night. It made her feel braver.

Despite the recent war, she had never felt herself a foreigner in Germany: it had the northern European restraint and ragged bombed greyness of home, and she had felt unthreatened there, even as she missed her family. She thought her sense of belonging might actually spring from the war between them, that England and Germany were like two siblings, badly bruised, but forced to carry on in the same house and learn to get on. Cyprus, though, was another thing altogether. Part of the Empire it may have been, but the island was a virtual chip off the Middle East too, Byzantium, Turkey, Greece, all of these parts in crisis, under the British flag, and her husband charged with part of its protection; Clara couldn’t help but feel nostalgia for the dull concrete barracks and modern flats of Krefeld, and Brunswick, that she had called home for the six years of her marriage.

The group of civilians clustered together on the metal deck while all around them troops prepared to disembark and the Endeavour’s crew brought her into dock. Clara knew they were in the way; she was trying to get mittens onto the girls, but kept dropping them, dangling on their elastic. The soldiers were National Service ones, noisy, desperate to be on land. Clara and the other civilians had kept apart from them on the voyage and it was disconcerting to be surrounded now. The Italian singer, who had put on a sort of safari suit with a cinched waist for their arrival, held one of Meg’s hands, and Clara, with Lottie on her hip, held the other. Rain stung her eyes.

The arms of the small harbour were around them now as they drew closer. Clara could see the houses of the town all along the straight front and the waves hitting the sea wall and splashing up. She could see the fishing boats and navy craft bobbing and bumping together on their moorings. She saw black cars and Land Rovers and soldiers, and behind them the jumble of plaster and stone buildings, warehouses, storehouses and the big metal mooring posts, which were mushroom-shaped with giant thick ropes tightly wound around them. She saw soldiers and Cypriots milling about, knotted in groups, waiting. She held onto her children’s small hands tightly.

She saw Hal.

He had seen her first and was smiling, with his eyes squinting against the wind. He raised his hand. Now there was just the waiting for the big slow ship to close the distance between them.

The front door stuck.

‘We’ve had a lot of thunderstorms,’ said Hal.

The girls peered past their mother’s legs into the darkness of the house.

‘Well gosh, it’s not awfully Mediterranean, is it?’ said Clara.

‘Not today.’

Corporal Kirby, Hal’s batman, began to bring the cases in from the Land Rover. Clara was forced into the kitchen; she and the girls pressed themselves against the wall as Hal and Kirby lifted the biggest trunk and took it upstairs.

Clara took off her hat. There was a stove, a small table, a sink and a food safe with a front that opened downwards to make a shelf. The brown louvred shutters were closed on the window at the front, and at the back of the house there was a door with a curtain over it. The little girls silently watched Clara go to it and push the curtain aside. It slid awkwardly on the plastic-covered wire.

The neighbouring houses backed onto a small courtyard where there was a washing bowl for clothes on the tiles, and a tree in a pot that was dead. She turned back to the room. The girls were pale and top-heavy in their buttoned-up coats.

‘Your things are wet, aren’t they?’ said Clara, and took off their woollen hats. ‘Shall we go and see what Daddy’s up to?’

In the front bedroom, Hal and Corporal Kirby were trying to find space for the trunks and smaller cases. Hal turned to Clara as she came in. He looked serious and embarrassed.

‘What a lovely house!’ she said, and he smiled at her.

‘That’s fine, Kirby. Leave it, will you.’

‘Right, sir.’

They heard his boots down the stairs, and the door, and then the Land Rover starting up. Meg and Lottie stared at their parents.

‘How’s it been?’ said Clara.

‘Not bad at all.’

‘Better than Krefeld?’

‘Well, not half so luxurious, as you can see.’

‘We don’t mind.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘Of course not. We’ll make the best of it.’

Clara went to him slowly. She put her face against his shoulder and the girls came over too, and rested their hands on their parents’ legs. Hal put his head down and felt Clara’s smooth hair against his cheek. ‘A month was too long,’ he said. He put his arms round them all as the sound of motorbikes and Cypriot voices and the banging shutters of other houses came up from the street.

Chapter Two

The Episkopi Garrison was west of Limassol. The narrow road left the town and crossed the big headland, with the Akrotiri RAF base fence on the left, then went back towards the sea through orange groves,

Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1