Hero (8 page)

The door slams louder than before and grit or sand scatters on the windowpane. I think of Charles's grave out there beyond the hedgerows, inland from the ruined churchyard. It seems odd that he should have beaten me here—that in returning home the dead have precedent to the living.

Tomorrow Sarah intends to show me Charles's grave. Like a blind man uncomprehending a clear and approaching danger, I agreed, remembering how Charles, Sarah, and I used to run along the stretch of Dunwich beach below the old graveyard, pointing out to one another ridges of collarbones or domes of skulls peeping through the cliff-face alongside ancient pebbles and shells. Never quite irreverent enough to poke and excavate, we would nevertheless construct lives and personalities for the former owners. Last night the idea of visiting Charles's grave, safely half a mile from the shore, promised to realign the present to the past. I could feel the mournful whimsy with which Sarah and I would remember former times. The arrangement felt almost wholesome; it was as though being so close to the source of my guilt, talking freely about it, might somehow weave a tapestry of fiction, obscuring the true nature of his death even to myself. Truth is merely a series of associations that seem real, I thought. In visiting Charles's grave, in giving voice to soft regretful words, I would be creating a direct bridge between now and our days before the war. The experience would muffle and bury those other images—Charles's eyes after the bayonet penetrated, whites enlarged like those of a hard-boiled egg; Smith's forefinger hovering, pointing in my direction. These would be versions only, open to dilution with multiple alternatives.

Now the plan to visit the grave seems obscene—Charles's murderer picking at his bones, making sympathetic noises to his sister while leering like a stage villain at an audience she cannot see.

The wind circles and makes a low moan against the window. Everything built on this coast crumbles to the sea. One day, our house, and Sarah's too, will edge towards the clifftop, splinter at the foundations, list, and fall brick by brick into the rolling, grey ocean. I always found some comfort in this thought. Even in the beginning there must have been a thread of sweet fatalism in my attraction to Sarah.

My mind itches for an escape from tomorrow's plan. I have the glimmerings of an idea. Every fractured sentence my father spoke last night had been about the tannery. Making a valiant effort not to avoid the subject of war, he had lingered meaningfully on army contracts—fifteen hundred jackets, seven hundred pistol holsters, harder leather for four hundred officers' boots of various sizes. We were to cut the leather and send it by train to Northampton. Each time his words died away, leaving only the clink of cutlery on china, and the embarrassed locking, or studied avoidance, of glances over the table, I came closer to realizing that this was our war debrief. Grateful, I wondered why others did not follow the same example.

Turning back the covers, I switch on the bedside lamp and stare at my watch until the convergence of hour and minute hands makes sense. It's just gone quarter past three. Even with the horrors of recent memories and the burdens that weigh upon my conscience, there is something uniquely forbidding about rising at this hour, something that brings a special kind of censure. It is as though, despite our collective claims at modernity, we still believe that imps and demons hold sway over the earth while the moon glides beyond the clouds and dark breezes play with trembling branches.

I find myself dressing before I have a chance to change my mind. Belt, clip, and button will be my protection from the night. I anticipate the crisp, autumn predawn on the four-mile trek to Darsham, the wait upon the quiet station platform, the rattle and squeal of the train carriage, and my arrival at Ipswich before the tannery opens. Troughs of horses' urine and dead animal skin beckon me. Ipswich will be my hideout. I will be as elusive there as a creature of the night.

CHAPTER 9

Sarah

T
he heat of self-accusation rises up my neck as twigs continue cracking under my footfalls. Which of last night's blunders caused Simon's unexpected flight? I feel again the weight of his skull on my shoulder while he sobbed out his soul, but this time the triumph reverses into disaster.

You humiliated him! The taunt keeps pace with my footsteps, the verb stretching over the crunch of dead foliage. Surely this is why he left before daybreak. The tears that spill by night will surely hide themselves by day. A tactful woman would have helped him to restrain himself. A tactful woman would have been more patient, would have given room for his anxieties to subside and for his old affection to unfold when it was ready.

I cannot visit the new churchyard and Charles's grave as planned. My feet carry me in the opposite direction, towards the old churchyard and the cliff. It is as though visiting Charles without Simon would be breaking faith with my brother. I have long envisaged all of us together as an important moment. Through the night I felt the energy of communication rising between Charles, Simon, and I; I felt some joy in the prospect of this meeting and a sense that Charles may be waiting. Daylight has since dispelled the most fevered part of such imaginings, but a wisp of superstition remains. Any part of Charles that might linger could not help but sense my disillusionment were I to go there now. I cannot allow even a chance of that happening.

The ruins of the old church show dark now against the milky sky. My mind sifts once more through Mr. Jenson's nervy explanation, his account of Simon's note to him, his son's insistence on going to the Ipswich works to supervise the new orders. In Mr. Jenson's slightly puffy, rapidly blinking eyes, in the twitch of his half-smile, I saw an attempt at faith. He needed to believe that his son, having served his country, felt duty-bound to help equip his comrades.

Leaving, I tried to keep the sadness from my smile. “How like him!” I said.

Mr. Jenson seemed reassured, and smiled fully for the first time.

A hint of sunlight seeps through the cloud and picks out moles of lichen on the skin of a tilted headstone. The roll and sizzle of the tide become clearer.
Patience
. A voice comes to me unbidden, and I weigh the word. Yesterday in the car, last night weeping on my shoulder, today gone. This is the tide I must patiently obey. It is the struggle to which I last night committed myself afresh. Patience is woman's valour; when the gunfire ceases, our battle begins.

The thought calms me, makes me feel connected to something greater than myself. I watch a swallow dip, rise, and dive past the cliff ridge and I know I must hunker down for the wait.

Something skitters against the windowpane. I've no idea of the time, but it feels like deepest night. Fold upon fold of silence has enwrapped me for hours while I have moved in and out of sleep. Some vague image, half-shroud, half-bedsheet, has pursued me through my dreams, sometimes flapping before my face as I turn a corner of the street, sometimes following me along the beach, its corners rippling like monstrous wings. Is Charles wrapped in a shroud? I wonder. Mother and I were not allowed to view the body, of course. The dead return in coffins nailed shut and sealed tight with cork.

The noise from the window has pulled me through the razor-thin borderline to wakefulness, and watching the darkness above my bed, I consider the noise. Leaves and sand can tap upon the glass when the wind is up, but this is different. Hardly a breeze is present tonight, and the matter cast against the surface seems more substantial, like a scattering of missiles rather than some random act of the wind. I think of Simon, and my sinews stretch in hope. I think of getting up to see. The sound comes again, louder than before. This time a pebble lodges upon the outer sill before falling. I hear its muffled descent through layers of creeping ivy, the only plant to have entirely kept its leaves.

I rise swiftly and, almost in a single movement, reach the window. How strange it is that darkness makes me a creature of grace; in daytime, my tread is heavy and I am rather clumsy of limb.

I draw back the curtain. Its runners chatter like far away geese, then go silent as I peer through the pane into the garden. Beyond the dark trees, clouds swell like mercury. The moon is hidden, but a faint luminous glow spreads over the lawn, delineating each expected shape—the stump of the oak that splintered and died in the high winds of 1911, the ash tree that demarcated the eastern limit of our garden, the pond-side boulder that Charles and I always imagined to be the one from which the valiant knight of the storybook prized his sword—and one irregularity. Standing very close to the boulder is a man. I fix my eyes upon this form, mapping his shoulders, scrutinizing his stance, until I am sure. Then—illogically as he surely cannot see into the darkened room—I wave.

As quickly as I can, I step into slippers and wrap myself in a gown. The brass knob makes a clanking sound, as it always does, when I open the bedroom door, but when I run across the landing and down the stairs, my own tread miraculously keeps its softness. I go through the scullery, which is cold. The key to the back door is always kept in the lock so I merely have to turn it; my stomach heaves as I do so. I find myself slowing down as the door opens inwards, admitting the crisp, still air.

Dew seeps through my slippers as I race, still huddled in my gown, towards Simon. Despite the missile he has thrown at my window, he does not approach me. A tingle of irritation, and perhaps fear, nibbles at my shoulders as I draw closer to him.

A faint blue light catches his eyes. My neck sinks into my dressing gown, needing its warmth.

“You've come back.”

“I've been at the tannery.” His voice is neutral, rather dry.

Some night creature drops from a high branch on the garden's perimeter. The night hushes to our words. Each dying leaf, each burrowing creature, it seems, is listening.

“I know,” I whisper.

“You must have been relieved,” he says.

I see now that his eyes catch the soft light because they are wet.

“Why?” An edge of impatience has come into my voice. “Why on earth would I be relieved?”

He doesn't reply at first, and his gaze drops to the darkened turf. I pull the collar of my gown tighter around my shoulders, feeling embarrassed suddenly that we are standing facing each other, no way forward, no way to retreat.

“They think I'm a hero at the tannery,” he says.

“You are,” I very nearly say, but hold back. Some instinct tells me I have saved myself in the nick of time. I say nothing and just look at him, waiting.

He gasps as though in pain. I see his jaw working like that of a cat trying to bring up a fur ball. “I'm a murderer,” he says at last, and something like a smile passes over his lips, a moment of relief perhaps. “I'm a murderer and a coward.”

Something fires in my blood and I hear him gasp. I feel closer to him suddenly. I have caught a glimpse of what it must be like for him, a sensitive man who has turned wives into widows, robbed families just like ours.

“I want to understand,” I say softly—so softly I wonder whether he could have heard.

The smile comes again, bitter and harsh. The pale blue light now touches his cheeks and is caught upon his chin in a single hanging drop.

“No you don't.”

It feels like a wall of steel coming between us. A long silence ensues as I listen to his breaths, uneven and strained. I remind myself of the stoic queen, and that this is my part in the war—patience, waiting, repetition.

“But Simon,” I say, faltering from this perch immediately, suddenly rather angry, “what can I do? You come to me, then you push me away.”

“I can release you from any obligation if you want.”

It sounds cold and careless, despite the tears, and I was half-expecting it. I want to say yes, and almost do. But this is frustration only, a desire to pinch his arm and bring him to. “Why would I want such a thing, Simon?” I ask, trembling with a new kind of irritation. “I have been waiting for you for so long.”

He turns and looks off towards the tree stump, his shoulders sagging in a kind of defeat.

I watch this change. What answer did he wish for? My thoughts burn around the question, then around the whole tangle of unanswerable puzzles that have returned in Simon's form.

I urge myself to go to him as I did last night, but am held back. Then he was in a chair and I could scoop down into his lap. As risky as it was—and as awkwardly as it had turned out—I could at least picture the action in advance. How does a woman converge upon a man when both are standing? My arms ache at the thought. I can imagine him recoiling, running from me, from the ugliness of the attempt.

We are both silent and I notice a pale mist I hadn't seen before hanging near the far hedgerows. I wonder whether dawn might be breaking somewhere beyond the cover of cloud. He seems to notice it too, and it brings him to. His head jerks self-consciously as his gaze returns to me. In the clearer light his face seems suddenly drawn, hollow at the cheek.

“You should know I'm not the same as when I left for France.”

I'm relieved by the statement, by its honest simplicity. I smile weakly in reply, allowing my sadness to show. He seems to relax.

“I don't know what to do,” he mumbles, “about anything.”

“I know,” I say softly.

His face seems much calmer, and for the moment everything appears to be warm and resolved. But the dawn breeze tugs gently at the gown, and it occurs to me that the next time the pattern will merely repeat itself afresh. He will be angry or drunk. I will walk the same tightrope to bring him painstakingly back to this moment, and we will part on good terms. Until the next late-night chime of the doorbell or the next pre-dawn scattering of pebbles at my window.

An urge comes from somewhere deep in my gut, a movement like spiralling mosquitoes, rising, circling, forming thoughts and words, dispersing, rejoining anew. I am surprised when these words spill from me, when they sound upon the cool air. “Let's do what we planned,” I say. “Let's get married. Soon.”