Home Fires (31 page)

Lester is silent.

‘Think of David. What if you had to live with the knowledge that your boy was on his own when he died, without you or his mother there? Can you imagine living with that, day in, day out, with the certain knowledge that you . . .’ she falters, ‘you weren’t there? Can you?’

Lester’s fat cheeks have drained of colour. A thin blue vein just by his left temple is pulsing gently.

The tears are running down Caroline’s face, but still she finds she has more to say. ‘And now that you have that image in your mind, look at me again and tell me how sorry you are for my son’s death.’

Lester clears his throat and stretches out his hand to take back his wallet. There is a darkness clouding his features.

‘I’m sorry you feel this way, Mrs Weston,’ he says. ‘But I can assure you that we did everything in our power –’

Caroline cuts across him, aware that her emotions are twisting away from her. ‘You’re telling me that my son was provided with the correct body armour, the very latest and best equipment and that he chose not to wear it?’ She looks at him and notices that he is sweating in the pockets of flesh underneath his eyes. ‘You’re honestly asking me to believe that?’

‘Mrs Weston, those are indeed the facts.’

‘I know my son. He would never have chosen not to wear that body armour if he’d been given it. Never.’ Her nose is running and she fumbles in search of a tissue but cannot find one in her pocket. ‘He knew how much I loved him.’ Yet as she speaks, she can hear her own desperation. ‘He would never have put his life at risk if he’d known . . .’

She trails off and realises that she is crying even more than before and can’t stop. Andrew unfolds the fabric handkerchief he carries in his trouser pocket and gives it to her. Caroline presses it to her face, inhaling the scent of washing powder. It has not been ironed so it is crumpled and untidy-looking and she is suddenly, absurdly, ashamed of what Lester might think of them. She scrunches the handkerchief up into the palm of her hand.

Lester falls silent. Andrew pats Caroline’s back gently. ‘It’s been a difficult time for us,’ he says, as though he owes an explanation and this bland little comment, spoken for the simple sake of politeness to a man neither of them respects, does more to trigger Caroline’s anger than anything Lester has said up to that moment. She stops crying. A fizzing sense of contempt rises up her gullet.

‘You’re a liar,’ she says, calmly raising her head to meet the politician’s gaze. Her words are low and level and dangerous and she can see Lester recoiling in shock.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You’re a liar. I know you didn’t give Max that body armour. I just know it.’

‘Caroline –’ Andrew starts.

‘Don’t,’ she says, looking at her husband blankly. She cannot even recognise him. ‘Just don’t.’

‘Mrs Weston, I can assure you that I’m not lying,’ Lester is saying. ‘Your son was one of many men who, despite official advice to the contrary, chose not to wear the new kit.’ He glances at his Blackberry again, clearly anxious that they are taking up too much of his time. ‘A lot of the guys out there are attached to the old body armour because they find it easier to move around in even though it offers less all-round protection.’ He coughs again, drily, as if there is a mote of dust lodged in his throat. ‘It was a calculated risk and, for whatever reason, I’m afraid to say your son took it.’

Outside, the child’s laughs have turned into sobs and Caroline can hear it wailing, almost choking with the effort. Something about that child’s cries stabs at her and she feels herself falling, a brick dislodged in a swollen dam.

Her thoughts shrivel to nothing. The sound of the crying child pounds against the plates of her skull. There is a thumping at the crown of her head and Caroline slumps backwards. Her sight fades and blackens and she is dizzy and everything appears too bright: the daylight streaming in from the windows, the translucence of Lester’s face, the white paper of the children’s drawings and the blazing bulbs of the strip lighting. Her grip is loosening. She is slipping downwards. And then she falls: like a stone in a well, submerged into blackness.

When she comes round, the first thing she sees is Andrew’s face bending over hers. He is stroking her hair, sliding each strand off her clammy forehead and she can feel the concern emanating from him in waves.

‘There you are,’ he says gently. ‘I was worried.’

Caroline tries to sit up but the nausea pushes her back down again. She realises she is resting her head on Andrew’s lap and that they are sitting on a sofa in a cool, air-conditioned corridor. She is momentarily displaced but then she sees a framed colour photograph of the Queen hanging on the wall opposite and she remembers they are in the Ministry of Defence and why they had come here.

‘Where’s Lester?’ she asks and her throat is parched.

‘He’s gone,’ Andrew says. ‘Couldn’t get away fast enough after you fainted. Thank goodness for the security guards. They brought us out here and said we can stay for as long as we need. Do you think you should have some water?’ He bends down and offers her a chilled bottle of mineral water with one of those teat-shaped lids. Caroline unscrews the top and lifts the open bottle to her lips. She gulps down deep, chilled draughts.

‘I don’t believe him, Andrew,’ she says.

‘Mmm?’

‘Lester. I don’t believe him.’

He takes the bottle from her and says, firmly: ‘You have to, Caroline.
We
have to. He’s telling the truth.’

She shakes her head. ‘You don’t understand . . .’ but before she can finish the sentence, Andrew stands up and walks away from her, leaning his forehead against the wall opposite, sagging-shouldered and weary. He rubs the back of his neck with his hand.

‘I can’t take this any more, Caroline.’ He turns to look at her. She opens her mouth to ask him what he means but he raises his palm to stop her. ‘Please, let me speak. I just . . . can’t take it. I can’t take the conspiracies. I can’t take the unpredictable moods or the self-absorption or your total and utter conviction that no one else can possibly understand what you’re going through.’ He breaks off. She has never heard him like this before. ‘It might have escaped your notice, all that time you’ve been downing pills like they’re going out of fashion, but the fact is, I lost a son too.’

He leans back against the wall and as he does so, the nub of his spine knocks against the portrait of the Queen and tilts it to one side. He drops his head, one hand covering his forehead.

She should feel sorry for him. She should go to him and take him in her arms and comfort him as he has comforted her. She should kiss him tenderly and whisper in his ear that she knows; that she alone understands. But for whatever reason, she can’t bring herself to do it. Andrew seems so far removed from her that she has nothing left to give. She wishes she could remember what it was to love him. But every time she looks at him now she can see only the shadow of Max, the trace of what she has lost.

She stays seated on the sofa, the water bottle in her hand, and she waits for him to speak. She can feel the condensation on the plastic dampen on her palm. Caroline grips harder on to the bottle’s ribbed plastic grooves. It crumples and buckles under the pressure of her touch. She relaxes her muscles and lets the bottle inflate and then she squeezes it again, making her hand into a fist. She pushes down as hard as she can. Then she releases. Out and in. Out and in. Like breathing. For several minutes, she surrenders herself to the rhythmic monotony of the action.

After a while, Andrew looks across at her. ‘Caroline?’

She can feel herself sinking into a silent lake. No words come. It’s not as if there’s any point to it, she thinks. He can vent his anger and feel sorry for himself but they both know that in less than an hour they’ll be back on the train to Malvern, back to their play-acted life, back to their miscommunications and misfirings, the endless trudge of the days, the things she hides from him, the care she no longer takes, the hurt looks, the misguided attempts to reach out to each other, the half-sighs and the unspoken resentments. Back to Elsa and the carers and the packets of baby-wipes and the smell of muddied disinfectant. Back to the feeling of horror and shame at what she had done. Back to not trusting herself in Elsa’s company. Back to the dusty windows and the overgrown garden with its weeds and greenfly. Back to the un-plumped cushions. Back to the kitchen cupboards with their packets of icing sugar and out-of-date basmati rice, carefully clipped by Caroline in the days when she thought such things mattered. Back to the postman and the milkman and the junk mail and the gas meter needing to be read. Back to it all. Back to the pretence of life going on even though, for her, it had stopped way back when Max died.

Since then, she has been kept alive by the single-threaded purpose of needing to find out who was to blame for what happened to her son. And now she has discovered that there is no one. No smug-faced Derek Lester denying the money needed for proper equipment. No mustachioed military general sending his men ill prepared into the battlefield. No terrorist blinded by his fanatical ideology. Because, really, the only person to blame is Max – for abandoning her to join the army and then for being arrogant enough to assume that he could survive wearing an old piece of body armour. It is Max who is at fault. But how can she ever accept this?

‘Do you even love me any more?’ Andrew says. ‘Well, do you?’

‘I . . . I . . . don’t know.’

Andrew gives a sharp, derisive little laugh. It is so unlike him, she thinks, to show such rancour.

‘Too in love with your son, are you?’ he asks, and the sarcasm is so unexpected that Caroline shrinks back. Salt water stings at the back of her throat. She gets up, mutely, puts her handbag over her shoulder, leaves the half-empty water bottle in the back crease of the sofa and starts walking away. She does not know where.

‘Caroline, I’m sorry,’ Andrew calls out behind her. ‘Come back. I didn’t mean . . .’

He reaches out to touch her arm but she shifts just far enough away that she is out of his range.

She breaks away from him and runs down the corridor, and presses the button for the lift. She has no thoughts other than needing to escape from Andrew and this stuffy, arid building with its synthetic carpet and its stilted, framed photos of uniformed men. She needs to be outdoors, in the air. It feels as if she has not breathed deeply for weeks, months. She needs to fill her lungs. She needs, more than anything, to see the sky.

Caroline rushes through the rotating doors, her handbag banging against her hip bone. She pushes herself outside and the wind slaps against her like a sail snapping taut and she runs and runs and runs until she can’t tell whether the dampness on her face is mostly sweat or mostly tears and she keeps on going, left out of the exit, then down Whitehall, not noticing the tightness in her chest. She runs past the black cabs, the tourists unfolding maps that crackle and buckle against the wind, past the men in grey suits carrying slim laptop cases, past the woman who is bending down and checking the sole of her shoe. She runs and runs and runs. Her thoughts whirl and eddy and twist until they are sucked down into nothing, until their meaning is muted and dulled, until all that she feels is reduced to a single point: a small, red dot like the sticker placed next to paintings sold. She is not thinking any more. She is simply moving forwards.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she sees it.

She stops, letting the breaths come into her lungs, sharp and juddering. She stares at what stands in front of her.

The Cenotaph. It rises out of the ground, white-grey and with a smooth, linear grace. The stone is immovable, solid, monolithic and yet at the same time, it looks intangible, a hologram that Caroline could reach out and touch only to see it crumble into a thousand scraps of ash. It stands apart from the rush and drone of the traffic: an impenetrable block of stillness that seems to rearrange the molecules of air around it so that instead of simply looking at the monument, she is looking at how it changes the quality of the space it occupies. Pure, unencumbered: a silence instead of a noise. There are three words carved darkly into the surface, each letter casting its own small shadow. The inscription reads: ‘The Glorious Dead’.

It seems odd to Caroline that she has only ever seen the Cenotaph in reproduction before now, staring out at her from the newspapers. She has seen it pixellated and two-dimensional in television news reports, surrounded by rows and rows of uniformed men, their heads bowed, their medals gleaming in autumnal sunlight to mark each anniversary of the Armistice. She remembers vaguely that, last year, there had been four ancient men in wheelchairs at the front of the Remembrance Day procession, their spines curving inwards. The television commentator had explained that these were the only four surviving First World War veterans.

She recalls that one of the veterans had a wreath of red flowers propped on his lap. His legs were covered in a tartan blanket, the bones of his knees jutting up beneath the material. He was leaning, almost crouching forwards and he was holding on to the wreath with white, trembling hands as though afraid it would get blown away. His face was contoured with deep wrinkles but his skin, instead of hanging loose, was stretched so tightly across his cheek and jawbones it looked almost translucent.

At one point, the veteran attempted to get out of his wheelchair in order to place the wreath at the foot of the monument but he had no strength to do it. Caroline could see him trying. But no matter how much effort he put into the slow movement of his arms, into the painful attempt to push himself up from the seat of the chair, into the minute shake of the head when someone rushed forward to help him, no matter how much he wanted to make that single, last, small gesture, he could not do it.