Armistice (12 page)

“What the hell are you playing at?”

“I wanted to see him,” she replied.

“Did he have ‘I murdered Daniel Case' tattooed across his forehead?”

“You're being ridiculous,” said Philomena.

“Listen to me—”

“Why?” demanded Philomena, her voice rising. “Why should I listen to you?”

“Because I told you about this.”

“You told me that something terrible had happened but there's nothing being done about it; that's what you've told me. And we're in the street.”

“So?” he demanded.

“The way you're acting anybody watching is going to think I'm under threat from you. I didn't know I was going to get that close to him. I didn't plan it. But I don't see why you're so steamed up about it.”

They stood there for a few moments, their hot breath showing in the air. Jonathan's like a stubborn animal, she thought. A goat. Are we just going to stand here?

“What if he ventures out again and comes this way?” she suggested.

They began to walk, side by side, a wide space between them, but not an empty space. The very first public house they came across, by mute consent, they entered. Philomena said what she wanted to drink and he made the purchase while she found an empty table. In a mirror she watched him grimly knock back a large whiskey chaser while the proper drinks were being poured. The shot seemed to sort him out. When he sat down he'd become much more reasonable.

She said: “Tell me the next bit of the story. What happened when you made your allegation?”

“Hmm,” he said. He looked straight at Philomena, warning her that he wasn't going to spare her. She nodded her consent.

“I don't know how long I'd knelt on the battlefield holding Dan's body. Someone—a stretcher-bearer—eventually gently pried him away from me. I was covered in Dan's blood, though didn't realize it at the time. I stumbled back to our dugout to find that it appeared to have been visited by someone intent on searching his possessions. Whoever it was had been in a hurry because Dan's kit was scattered all around. I knew instinctively that the searcher had been Anthony Dore, looking for the pledges, and later I assumed that he'd found them; otherwise why make it the first line of his defense that there had been no card game? If the pledges ever turned up
the first line of his defense would be destroyed and the rest of his lies exposed.

“Still bloody, I went out and sought the location of Dan's body. I found him covered in a blanket, on a stretcher, outside a medical tent. I gently searched him, but the IOUs weren't on him. He felt cold, already. Nobody could tell me if Anthony Dore had been to visit him.

“Major James might have had a few, but he listened attentively to me, and made notes. At the end he grunted a few times then silently contemplated me for what seemed like an age before saying, ‘Get cleaned up while I look into this,' and I realized how bloody I was. I found some water and had a dab at the worst of it, and waited irritably for any word. I tidied up Dan's possessions until I was called to return to Major James' dugout.

“It was empty, so I waited. Footsteps behind me warned that someone had entered. Major James started speaking before he reached his seat. He was brisk: ‘Priest.'

“‘Sir.'

“‘At ease.'

“‘Sir.'

“‘Your allegation.'

“Major James opened a file. I tried to read upside down the official letter on top of the papers in the file. It informed someone that someone had died in action. It was accompanied by a B104-82A notification of death.

“‘I've taken it seriously,' said Major James, ‘because of your personal standing, but the bullet that killed him is enemy—
we dug it out; Major Chiltern's dead so no one can corroborate that there was a card game—'”

Jonathan looked around to make sure no one in the pub was eavesdropping. “I said to him, ‘Is Captain Dore saying that there was no card game?'

“‘Yes, he is,' confirmed Major James.

“‘Oh,' I said, ‘But these are the cards,' dumbly holding them out.

“Major James took them from me, turned them this way and that. ‘That is a pack of cards, yes.' He gently returned them to me.”

“You had the cards?” exclaimed Philomena.

“Yes, they were in our dugout. When I stumbled on them, for a moment I was elated. I was excited that they were evidence—was halfway out of the door to show the major—but he was right. It was only a pack of cards. You see, I thought that Dore would deny he'd murdered Dan, but it never occurred to me that he'd deny the existence of a card game. Clever bastard. Anyway, the other reasons Major James gave for not pursuing my allegation were compelling: no sign of the IOUs, no witnesses to the death. I didn't even see it myself. Regardless of which—‘I believe that Captain Dore murdered Second Lieutenant Case, sir,' I repeated.

“‘I advise you to be very careful about voicing that allegation,' said Major James, chopping the air with his hand. ‘I've conducted this unofficial inquiry very hush-hush, so that it can't rebound on anyone—'

“‘Dan was trying to tell me something,' I countered.

“More footsteps entered the dugout. Major James leaned in toward me. ‘You know how it is,' he confided urgently. ‘He was probably asking for his mother.'

“Anthony Dore was standing alongside me and I barked, ‘Where are those IOUs, Dore?'

“‘Captain Dore,' said Major James, correcting me.

“Dore turned to Major James and opened his palms as if to say, ‘You see, what can I do?'

“‘Second Lieutenant Case was your friend, wasn't he, Captain Priest?' asked the major.

“I remained silent. I was having to stop myself leaping sideways at Dore. I'd viciously elbow him in the ribs to double him up, grip his head, pull it down and smash my knee up into his face. I'd wipe that supercilious grin right off it. He wouldn't have a mouth left to grin with by the time I'd finished.

“‘Was he your best friend?' Major James continued. ‘How long had you known him?'

“‘Six weeks,' I replied.

“Major James raised an eyebrow. Dore looked sideways at me and his lips parted and he inhaled, and for a moment I thought he might challenge my claim. I bristled and clenched my fists and I knew if I ever did hit him I wouldn't be able to stop. Sensing an impending explosion Major James put himself between me and Dore, his back to the latter. ‘Look at you,' he said quietly to me, ‘you're all in. We're all in. But also “up.” Exhilaration plus relief plus exhaustion plus everything else.'

“Major James stepped away to a distance from which he could address both me and Dore.

“‘Captain Dore's letting this go, aren't you?'

“‘Yes sir.'

“‘As long as you never make such an allegation ever again,' added Major James.

“I turned to Anthony Dore: ‘I saw the look in your eye and I know the truth and you know that I know.'

“And Anthony Dore turned to me and said—he explained, patiently, kindly, as if tolerating unruly behavior from a misguided minor—that if I did repeat the allegation to anyone he'd have to instruct his lawyers.

“I bridled and was about to snap when Major James again stepped in. ‘Captain Dore knows that you're a hero, and that Daniel Case was, too.'

“At which I walked out. Without saluting. Or permission. Anthony Dore was posted to another zone soon after—”

A surge of laughter from a far corner of the pub had made Jonathan break off. Philomena watched him swill the dregs of his drink, stare into the bottom of his glass, his mood altering.

“I detest being dominated by these thoughts. I don't like the no-sleep no-rest life I've found myself in. Some days I feel like I died, that I'm a ghost, a wraith, muffled from the humans teeming this city, moving much more ponderously than they. Then I see another specter, recognize another spirit wading, head down as if into a headwind, having to think where to plant each step, with what degree of force to grip
the ground, drive on; someone else flexing the joints consciously, aware of the effort to do the simplest, taken-for-granted things, and I avoid them, not wanting to be like them. I force myself to wade out of that viscous air that I so easily slip into. I'm normal again for some, impossible to predict length of time. Normal? No, not normal; normal was before.”

He got up and went to the bar, saying: “Same again?” not waiting for a reply.

Philomena sat stunned. That last speech of his had been like watching someone strip to their soul. She didn't have to ask him “What's your life like?” He'd told her. But he hadn't looked nor sounded as if he were asking for sympathy. That was what made it so moving. He was describing a much more eloquent version of her walk with a black dog in a long dark lane. Again she watched him down a chaser while the drinks were poured. When he returned he sat and said, “Sorry about all that.”

“Don't apologize,” she said. “No need.”

“I just go on,” he said.

“Who do you go on to?”

“Myself. Self-pity: ugly, weak, repellent. Never talked like that to anyone before. Won't do it again. Don't know what came over me. Usually just blather on to myself. First sign of madness, they say.”

Philomena puffed her cheeks and blew a stream of compressed breath out in order to indicate that she couldn't possibly know.

“But there again,” he continued, “they say that if you think
you're mad then you can't be. Only those who don't recognize they're mad can actually be mad.”

Philomena watched a muscle twitch in his cheek near his mouth. His eyes turned darker.

“If I could be certain. Verification; proof … If I was … I've sometimes thought that if I could be certain I'd … And he knew I was, he knew that I was … He'd have to know I was …”

“Yes,” said Philomena.

“Yes, what d'ye mean, yes?”

“I know what you mean,” said Philomena.

“What do you know from that incoherent ramble?”

She looked around and lowered her voice. “If you could be certain that Anthony Dore murdered Dan you'd do something. You've often thought you would, but he'd have to know you were doing what you were doing in revenge for what he'd done to Dan.”

They looked candidly at each other for a long time. Jonathan felt no hostility from her; however, he still wondered if he should deny that physically avenging Dan was what he'd meant. No. If she ever accused him of making that threat he'd just deny it. He'd play Anthony Dore to her Jonathan Priest. He was never going to
do
anything, anyway. He'd just continue to fester.

The publican reached for their glasses and said, “Time.”

Jonathan grabbed his back and drained it. When they were alone again he grinned and said: “Now we've established that I'm potentially unhinged, shall we go on somewhere?”

Yes, thought Philomena. There's plenty more to know about all this.

He took her to an underground club—you had to descend some iron stairs to enter it. Once inside, Philomena looked around the place a little anxiously and he guessed she felt ordinary and provincial in comparison with the strikingly individual people at the bar and tables. For instance, someone who might have been a woman but who was in a man's suit greeted them. She had a light man's voice or a raspy woman's, whichever way you chose to look at it. Jonathan was known there. Nobody paid much attention to him and Philomena beyond a few glances. They sat and ordered drinks. A pianist played a baby grand in the corner. Dreamy music, with spaces between the notes.

On the wall behind their table hung a large photograph. It looked as if it was of a porcelain urinal. Philomena craned to see it. Yes, it was a photograph of a urinal. She looked around to see if anyone was laughing at her for looking at it. Jonathan smiled and said what sounded like “dooshom.” She was stumped for a moment. Jonathan pointed and again said, “Dooshom—it's a picture of the dooshom.” She gathered he was voicing the artist's name. There was a title to the photograph of a urinal—
Fountain
, it said. She now understood that the urinal was some sort of a joke. Anyway, she mused, the world had gone to hell in a handcart so why not hang such a photograph on a wall.

They watched the pianist.

“Satie,” said Jonathan, “one of the new lot.” He looked at Philomena and she nodded, believing he was supplying the player's name. He realized the misunderstanding. “Satie's the composer.”

Philomena watched the pianist not called Satie for a while longer. The drinks arrived and she asked a question she'd been saving. “How do you know whether your clients are inn—”

“If they tell me that they're innocent, I proceed on that basis,” interrupted Jonathan, obviously weary of the question.

“But do you believe them?”

“I proceed as if I believe them. My job is to give them the best possible defense so that the justice system can—”

“When I watched you in court, that man—”

“What man?” demanded Jonathan.

“The war cripple, yesterday.”

Jonathan inhaled sharply. She'd just let slip that she'd watched him, prior to meeting him. He felt his heart quicken. What was the significance of this? What should happen now? He should ask why she hadn't mentioned this before. She didn't appear to be about to say anything more about it. She looked distinctly unembarrassed. But he could hardly accuse her of keeping secrets, could he?

“Do you think he was guilty?” she asked.

“It doesn't matter,” replied Jonathan.

“It mattered very much to him what you thought. He was terrified when you ignored him after the innocent verdict was read out.”

“Did you speak with him?” asked Jonathan.

“No.”

“Then how do you know that about him?”