Hero (17 page)

The car hits a bump and leaps, creaking on its axis as it recovers. Turning on the rise, I swerve sharply, avoiding a horse led by an old man with a cloth cap. The animal's haunches ripple as it trots a little nearer to that final destination where it will one day become someone's gloves, coat, shoes—but not for some time as the horse is healthy and young. She twists her neck at my passing and, even in the muted light of the dawn, even through the window, I catch the glint of her eye and the white of her tooth. A neighing—like laughter, though I suspect it is fear—follows the car, and I wonder at the supernatural nature of every living thing that is not human. Does the horse somehow know I will be her reaper one day? Did she sense my presence as doomed animals are believed to sense the eruption of a volcano long before the lava rolls down the mountainside towards the village where they scavenge a living?

Slowly the outlines of roofs, mainly farm outbuildings, impress themselves on the skyline and I know I'm reaching the outskirts. Suffolk, on the map, is like a corroding face seen in profile. The river Blythe, north of Dunwich, bloats towards the sea like a watery eye dripping its aqueous humour. Orford Ness is the tip of a crumbling nose. I have travelled the length of this monstrous visage, speeding into the screaming mouth, to the space at the root of the Shotley Peninsula, its parched and fissured tongue. The analogy, which struck me for the first time when I was on the boat returning from France, seems even more ominously real to me at this moment, a déjà vu striking with the force of thunder.

Movement stirs the morning now. People emerging from the terraced housing appear on either side of the road. Clumps of men—factory workers, bricklayers—move briskly, toolboxes and lunch packages in hand, the odd pickaxe over a shoulder. Most turn as I pass, and I wonder how many were in my own regiment.

The sky is clearing, and few witnesses to the recent storm remain. There are the puddles on the road, a distant, retreating cloudbank visible over the chimney pots, and scarring the sky more directly above, wool-like strings of vapour that put me in mind quite unexpectedly of Nurse Flo and her midnight knitting. As it meets a pothole, my chassis clanks like one of the old girl's needles, and I wonder at the smallness of it all, how earth and sky conspire to pinion a man upon a moment that by rights should be long forgotten in the folds of time and space. Mile after mile of rolling land, wave after wave of the multitudinous sea, separate me from northern France. How many nights have sunk me into oblivion since the first day of July seven years ago? My mind struggles with the arithmetic but I can tell it's more than two thousand. Why upon my return has memory elected to preserve that one incident when so much else has been shed?

My wheels have carried me on towards the dockside of the town centre, but still no plan has emerged with the clearing of the night. The phrase “Salvation Army” has lodged itself into my brain. I have no reason at all to believe he will be there, but the words seem to fit. The physical impairment, the thinness, the context of Sarah's brief description, the application for work—all implied poverty. It is onto this street that I have turned.

I see no activity despite the fact that morning is upon the town. Small, spiralling breezes fail to lift soggy fish and chip wrappers from the puddles. The engine moans as I slow to walking pace, then stop in front of the arched doorway of the mission house and hostel. The car's engine, and the street beyond, is suddenly so silent that my application of the hand–brake sounds like gunfire by comparison. Before any conscious decision is made, I have opened the door and stepped—still light-headed, vision tipping one way and another—onto the pavement.

Words and phrases, excuses for my presence here—emergency; vital that I contact; before he leaves in the morning—are coming to the surface like bubbles in simmering water, and the knock of brass handle on plate sends such a loud echo through the canyon of the street that my hastily gathered courage disperses. For a moment I think I will turn and run. But I hold myself, breathing evenly, watching my shoes. After a time, something stirs within. Remember, you donate to this institution, I tell myself, as the door vibrates to some movement and then opens inwards.

A face appears, its expression either annoyed or agitated, at least as I read it through its pebble spectacles. He is a small man in his forties, fully dressed in cardigan and jacket, which relieves me, as it means I did not get him out of bed.

“Sorry to disturb you at this hour,” I say, surprised at the gravity and confidence of my own voice. “But it is most important I contact a Mr. Smith immediately if he is residing with you.”

The man shakes his head as though bothered by a wasp landing on his ear. “The men are all still in bed,” he replies with an assertiveness that belies his small frame. “I have no idea if we have a Mr. Smith. I only came on at midnight.”

“Perhaps I could come and look over the men in their sleep,” I suggest wildly.

A new expression passes over his face, a narrowing of the eyes and tightening of the lips. He doesn't step aside to let me pass into the hallway, but he doesn't move to close the door either.

“Look over the men in their sleep?” he repeats, not taking his eyes from mine.

“It's very easy,” I say. “Smith lost both legs in the war. He will have crutches or wooden legs by his bed.”

The man seems about to turn his head, as though recalling such a sight. He remains facing me, however.

“No such veteran is staying here,” he says.

Immediately, I disbelieve him. The word “veteran” came to his lips too easily, and he had to make an effort of will not to turn. The reflex surely gave him away.

“Look,” I say, noticing for the first time that I have been breathless through the brief conversation. “Let me through to see for myself. I'll only be a minute.”

I make a move towards the interior. The tip of my shoe pokes over the rust stain that marks the door's position when closed.

The man doesn't move or flinch, but the eyes behind the lenses grow larger. I slip over the threshold and, standing diagonally within the doorway rather comically close like one of two men in the basket of a hot air balloon, I catch a whiff of his rising breath, which carries a vague mingling of boiled vegetables and tea.

“Sir,” he says, “I must ask you to leave the premises at once.”

I thought that being just inside would force his hand but I see he is stubborn and physically sturdier than he first appeared. Inside the cardigan and jacket, which are close enough to brush against me, is a barrel-like chest.

“Do this for me,” I say, becoming quiet and conspiratorial, “and I will make it worth your while. I mean,” I add hastily, “I will help your organization.” Suddenly all twitches and sharp movements, I reach into my inside jacket pocket and draw out my wallet. I feel his slow exhalation—cabbage, carrots, and twice-used tea leaves—and his disapproval as I fumble, removing several banknotes.

“Sir,” he repeats, his voice this time ominously calm, “remove yourself at once or I will fetch a constable.” A glance at the lens-enlarged eyes at unbearably close quarters is enough to crumple my attack. I'm almost grateful to step back and take in the giddy morning air. Without even a curious look he closes the door. There follows the sound of a metal latch fastening.

Breathless still, although I have made no physical effort, I turn to the car, to the empty road, and back again. How extraordinarily ineffectual I have become, even when in the midst of a blinding rage. My shoulders ache unaccountably, and I wonder how the man knew with such apparent clarity that I did not constitute any serious threat. I am, after all, on paper at least, a war hero. If I could fool the officers of the British High Command, why could I not fool the night manager of Ipswich's Salvation Army hostel? I know it's hardly logical, but the injustice of it, or rather the lack of symmetry, stings me around the collar, and makes my eyes wander over the street for some missile—a bottle perhaps, or a fragment of brick—that I might hurl at the high-barred windows above my head. Why should I, a decorated war hero, worry that a little man in a homeless dormitory might call a constable? He doesn't know my whole story, after all. He doesn't know that his lack of respect is perfectly justified. I long for rescue, for one of the former officers now in prominent positions in the judiciary, the civil service, or the police to stride onto the scene and set the little man right.

A gust of wind blows cool about my heels then fades into concrete and brick, taking with it the bottle-throwing edge of my fury but none of my frustration.

I set out walking, my shoulders hunched like those of a bull about to charge, the echo of my footsteps cracking like a whip. But before I have reached the corner my stomach turns over, conviction and energy draining from my stride. Where am I going? My watch is still on the bedside table but I can tell from the stillness of the streets that it isn't much beyond five. Above the shop front of James's Funeral Parlour, a duo of curtainless windows gazes down at me, austere and frowning. I turn the corner into a narrow lane and begin to wander down to the docks. A lone gull circles above the eaves, its black eye seeming to follow me.
I'll have to kill him
comes a voice from nowhere at all, its tone accepting, almost peaceful. It's been hovering above me since yesterday, this knowledge that Smith and I cannot exist beneath the same sky. His name is a blade that I must turn back into his own flesh. I'm trembling, but gently, as though my fury has overleapt itself, settling into a bed of quiet resolve.

The gull lets out a sharp, rising note as it flies from view beyond the eavestroughs and I catch sight of the estuary's dark rippling green. It was a mistake, I realize, to turn up at the Salvation Army hostel door. The man with the barrel chest and pebble glasses will remember me. He even knows who I was looking for. I slow to a standstill.

The grain-processing plant and the brewery buildings rise before me to the left, a chaotic outcrop of grubby concrete and red brick. A funnel of white steam rises from a single dark chimney stack, a mute witness to some mysterious process. How many opportunities does this bleak vista provide for the disposal of an unwanted carcass? I think of the furnaces, cauldrons, and threshers all backing onto a river of slow-corroding brine.

CHAPTER 24

Sarah

I
can't tell exactly how it feels so different, why I know for certain that Simon and I are moving decisively into some new terminal phase. I have spent the last three hours trying to imagine him returning in a mood somewhere close to our own dubious standards of normality, but I can conjure no clear picture to accompany such an event, no grudging smile, no glancing through the newspaper he has brought with him, none of his half-hearted responses to my attempts at conversation. How comforting these small ritual gestures seem now they are quite beyond reach.

When he does return unshaven, unwashed, red-eyed and bleary, how will it feel? The longer it takes for that moment to arrive, the worse it will be. By following on his heels, Elsa and Lucy in tow, I have merely made the decision to plunge headlong into disaster rather than run and cower and eke out a few more miserable hours in uncertainty.

A danger I can't name hovers with mosquito wings in the train compartment. When my gaze shifts to catch Elsa's twitch of a smile—her eyes unnaturally alive to the rocking of the carriage, the clank of the rail—black dots swirl circles in the corner of my eye. The same peripheral vision haunts me when I turn to Lucy, who stares through the window at the racing bushes, at the birds that dart in and out of the leaves, or perhaps at none of these things, but rather at the reflection of some terrible dream. Her fingers hold on to the foot of her rag doll. Its hair is gathering the grit of the carriage floor, but I haven't the heart or stomach to ask her to hold it properly. Who am I to judge her imperfect attempts at stewardship? It is I, after all, who have allowed my daughter to be awoken in the dead of night by her screaming father. It is I who have cancelled a promised picnic and marshalled my child instead onto the grocer's truck not long after dawn, taking her to the station to wait for more than an hour as the dew rises and the morning mists clear around her.

Everything in the carriage goes dark, rails clattering louder as we enter the final tunnel. I catch a sudden, vivid daydream: coming into the light on the other side, sun spilling over empty seats, rays kissing white linen headrest covers, glimmering in pools upon the glass. Even with the mingling of coal dust and factory emissions, the fragrance of the wildflowers triumphs. And the glory of the feeling is in those two words: empty and alone. If only I could scrape back the years to the time before Lucy, before the war. If only I could let drop all the baggage I have collected since those days. My lungs fill with longing, but guilt burns sharply as I exhale—wicked, wicked woman.

Raw light, real light, spreads suddenly over Elsa and over my sullen daughter, whose gaze—judging from her posture and steady wide-awake look—did not leave the windowpane even when the carriage was plunged in darkness. She's mine, I tell myself, just like my limbs, my eyes, my brain. Every decision was made willingly, every impulse acted upon in full awareness. The old saying clangs in my head as the carriage sways and turns, brakes beginning to squeal. It's true, I did make my own bed, and there is no reason I should not be made to lie in it. But I'll go a step further. Like my husband seven summers past, I am about to go over the top to face the foe. But at least my flesh should be safe, as the enemy I approach is merely the turmoil within my own marriage.

Lucy turns her frown towards me as the train chugs over a few final yards. I attempt a weak smile and wonder at myself for bringing her with me. I could have left her with my mother. Elsa strokes my daughter's hair, an unconscious, maternal gesture that isolates me. You are using them both, a voice tells me. But I feel as though I have no choice. The two of them are my armour and my insurance against backing away. I told Lucy we were going to visit Daddy at the tannery to cheer him up. I blurted it quickly before I had a chance to change my mind. Her expression, eyes widening with disbelief, the ghost of a smile playing on her lips, suggested an understanding of irony. If she is wise beyond her years—wise in an understanding of hypocrisy and deceit—I am surely as much to blame as Simon, perhaps more. Now I feel her pale eyes rooting like searchlights around the dark cavern of my mind, perhaps searching for something of value. She turns back to the window as it clouds over with steam.