| Questions
by Mary Clarke
I don’t know what I imagined. To find him waiting for me,
to take up where we left off? No, I don’t think so. He is
gone from this world, I’m sure of that… although I never
got to bury his body. What then? To be nearer to him, to walk where
he did? Maybe. Even I don’t know really know the answers.
A remote group of islands, wind-swept and 8000 miles from the nearest
British port and 200 miles from Argentina; why would anyone want
to come here in the first place?
We set off at first light, Lizzibeth and I, for the drive to the
airport. She wanted to come with me, but I said I would rather not
have anyone to talk to. I didn’t want to share this anniversary
with a group of widows. This was my adventure, my pilgrimage. They’d
understand. I’m sure they would. What is it like to be a war
widow, Emily? What is it like to be a seashell on the shore? We
all of us resemble each other, until you get close. Don’t
make any assumptions about me, please.
He was a good husband, my husband, one of the best. In the mornings
he held my body and stroked my hair, and the in evenings…
well. And he cared for his men - too much I think sometimes. I booked
myself on a cruise, a trip around the ‘Fjords of the South’.
I could have gone on to Antarctica, seen the whales and the penguins…
but to do that, I would have to go to Argentina.
The British army landed at San Carlos Bay on East Falkland in May
1982 and the weather was already bitterly cold. They suffered badly
crossing the long stretches of exposed moorland and mountains to
Port Stanley. The Argentine soldiers waited for them, many didn’t
even know where they were or why they were there, and no one had
believed that Britain would fight back. All that way? It was madness.
But they had reckoned without the ‘Iron Lady’ and she
did fight back, in a big way; she launched the Task Force and sank
the Belgrano even though it was outside of the Exclusion Zone.
Here is a boat, still floating, thankfully, a pleasant fishing boat
that now doubles a cruise ship. It must be hard making a living
down here and yet the people look happy enough, happy with their
Britishness. ‘The Falklands War’ was not the first time
the sovereignty of these islands has been in dispute, you know.
Practically ever since European eyes first fell upon them, they
have been fought over. Strategy is apparently what it is called.
If you mean to sail around the world, then they come in handy. Some
people say the war was the making of the British Nation, that it
had forgotten who it was. I have to admit to being impressed. All
those ships refitted in record time and on their way to the South
Atlantic, cruise liners turned into aircraft carriers, aeroplanes
re-fuelling in mid-air. Ah, the glory of war. And we won, we won!
Well, we lost, too. Young men, suckled tenderly by their mothers,
grown strong with their love, filled with their pride – then
sacrificed to the great god of war and turned into so much scrap.
How heart breaking it is. I never saw his body again. To have cared
for every bit of him, known every stretch of skin, and have it taken
away without the chance to say goodbye. Oh, I have cried. I have
cried in the night and he has come to me and wrapped me in his presence
so that I am hushed, comforted; but when the dawn comes it starts
again. Life without him. The show ended twenty-five years ago but
I can’t seem to get off the stage. How much longer am I supposed
to stand here and wonder what happened? Why can’t anyone tell
me how he died? Was nobody else there?
A seal, basking on the seashore. On land a loafing oaf, in the sea,
a ballerina. Look how he slides through the water and ‘splash’,
he jumps for joy. And what a joy it is, I can just about remember,
I think. How I wish that God had seen fit to grant us a child, someone
who could bear his name, perhaps wear his eyes so that I could look
into them and be sure that he existed.
Over there, on that hill, a skull and cross bones shouts a warning
to us. Not of pirates sailing up the Falkland Sound but of a cowardly
menace, hidden in the peaty, boggy soil, bringing death or worse
to those unwary enough to stray near it. We tourists have been warned
to keep away from the minefields; the Falkland Islanders have to
live with them. Did the men who put them in the ground think about
the days when they would wish the ground to be free of them again?
Or were they ‘just obeying orders’? Perhaps they were
some of the Argentine conscripts who spent their war starving and
freezing. There was food, but in the end it was the British soldiers
who gave it to them. What way is that to win a war? Like a gigantic
football match, both sides struggle for victory, but in the end
it seems that it is only the final score that counts.
Well this time the final score was one-nil, no more, to Britain,
and her soldiers returned home, riding high on the decks of the
huge ships that carried them. The ports were jammed with well wishers
waving Union Jacks. And the Argentines? Some soldiers say they were
left at the quayside to make their own way home. Some say they even
had to beg for bus fare. Win or lose, it must have been bewildering.
I heard that since the war, more soldiers have committed suicide
on both sides than were killed in the conflict. It seems that for
some of us, the fighting never stopped.
I asked everyone I knew how he died, but no one could tell me. Once
or twice, I thought I was getting somewhere; an odd hesitation,
a glance sliding sideways. I asked the colonels and the sergeants
and everybody I could think of in between, but always the same answer,
a sad shake of the head. And then the anger exploded in my breast,
somebody must have seen! Or at least, somebody found his body. How
did he die? What were his injuries? Was he shot to pieces, blown
up, drowned? If there was enough of his body left to identify him,
why not enough to say how he died?
The air down here is fresh, and the wind never stops blowing. These
islands witness the beauty of the waves but they also witness barbarity;
whales slaughtered for profit, men slaughtered for political gain.
In ‘The Falklands War’ both leaders needed to boost
their popularity, but only one succeeded. Margaret Thatcher became
the darling of Britain, but it was the end for General Galtieri.
Such a strange place to pick a fight for popularity. Wild islands,
tiny compared to the vast ocean in which they sit and so, so remote.
Surely if the Falklands belong to anyone, they belong to God, and
in that way they belong to us all.
In the days following the end of the war I had to make a decision.
Britain entered a period of feel good prosperity, Argentina brooded.
My questions and my nationality made me unpopular. I was getting
nearer to the truth and somebody did not like it. One night a man
followed me in the dark and beat my body, kicked my head and almost
drove the life from my lungs. My teeth snapped, my nose broke and
my blood flowed into the gutter. The following day, when I dared
to look into the mirror, deep purple flowers had blossomed around
my eyes. I knew what I had to do.
But it was hard. To leave meant leaving him and I had made a promise,
even though death had released me from it. When I agreed to become
his wife, I agreed to become part of his life. What would they think
of me where I was going, those women who mourned? I would never
be one of them, never be able to share my memories of him without
enduring their looks of accusation. I would lose him as surely as
if he had never existed.
Perhaps that is why I am here. Somewhere on this craggy island he
is buried, even the man who dug the hole cannot tell me where, because
he perished too - or so they said. I am sixty now, and the dark
haired beauty who caught my husband’s eye is just a memory.
In a quiet moment I call out his name, but the wind whips the words
away from my mouth. You see, the problem is, I was born in Britain,
but my husband was born in Argentina.
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