In The Garden Of Stones (13 page)

“
It’s all so confusing, Mal. The sensations I’m getting.
They are all so real.” She rests her cheek against the now
distorted cushion and closes her eyes.

“
Talk to me, Grace,” says Mal. “Tell me what’s going through
your mind.”

“
Do you think imagination
can
be so powerful as to create a place where I can
feel every blade of grass under my feet, where I can smell the
flowers and the smoke from the bonfire, where I can hear every bee
and taste the juice from the blackberries I pulled from the
bramble,” she says, after a pause.

Mal
nods. “Yes I do. If it weren’t, how would a blind person imagine
what colours are, or a deaf person appreciate music?”

“
What about an imaginary man grabbing my arm and causing
actual bruises?”

“
Ah, now, that’s still open to debate–”

“
Or being stabbed by a splinter of wood, or this–?” She
pushes the sleeve of her sweatshirt up her arm to reveal a patch of
raised watery bumps surrounded by reddened skin. “You can see this
can’t you, or am I still imagining it?”

Mal
leans closer to look at the rash. “Yes, I can see it. What is
it?”

“
Nettle rash. Pinching make believe blackberries in a make
believe garden is not without its hazards. Make believe nettles
sting just as hard as real ones.” She scratches at the angry area.
“Itches like hell. Must put some calamine lotion on it. So what do
you think?”

Mal’s
face once more takes on that unreadable mask that tells her she’s
presented him with something he wasn’t expecting, doesn’t
understand, and doesn’t know how to react.

At least
he isn’t laughing at her, far from it, and she can’t decide whether
that’s a good sign or not.

Chapter 15

There is
no sign of Colin in the garden or in the cemetery. Noiselessly
Grace approaches the hut, and through the window sees movement
inside.

He is in
there, straightening out the rough khaki coloured blanket on his
cot, pulling it as tight as a drum, tucking in the corners in pin
sharp folds in the military style she only believed happened in
movies.

All his own work, or an unconscious representation of my own
compulsive need to tidy?

When he
is done he stands back to admire his handiwork. The door of the hut
is ajar and she knocks gently on it, pushing it open a touch.
“Hello? Anyone home?”

Colin
turns to see her, his expression registering at first surprise,
then recognition, then relief.

“
Grace?”

“
Were you expecting someone else?

“
No.”

“
Can I come in?”

“
If ye like.”

She
steps inside the gloomy hut. It smells of grass and soil and engine
oil. “You okay?” she says.

“
Aye.”

He
maintains a distance between them, keeping her at more than arm’s
reach, shifting from foot to foot. He sniffs and clears his throat.
“I was hoping ye’d come back. I wanted ta apologise fer bein’ sa
rude … again.”

She
shrugs. “S’okay.”

“
No, it’s not. It’s very much not okay.”

He
pushes past her to go outside. Grace follows.

“
Ye were right,” he says. “None of this is real. Not a
damned thing. It’s all an illusion. I’m no in therapy. I did this
by mysel’. I made this place for me, inside ma ain heid because I
needed somewhere to go, to get away from everything and everybody,
and it was working fine, I was happy here in ma ain
company–”

“
Until I turned up and spoiled it.”

“
Aye … no … ach, I don’t know.”

He
lashes out at the dead leaves with his foot. Unbalanced, he
staggers, flinging his arms out.

Grace
grabs him before he can fall. “Whoa, careful! You okay?”

He
closes his eyes, drawing in a few deep breaths. “Aye. Fine. Knocked
masel’ off kilter there a wee bit.” He gazes off into the
shrubbery. “D’ye like strawberries?” he says, presently.

Grace
smiles. “I love strawberries.”

“
Good. Grab that trug over there and come wi me.”

She
takes a long shallow basket from a nail at the hut’s door, and
follows Colin into the undergrowth to a patch of wild strawberries.
Soon the trug is loaded with fresh red fruit.

They
take it back to the hut and sit at the table, the pile of berries
between them.

“
Where are you Colin?” she says, taking one.

Colin
does the same. “Sitting here with you eating
strawberries.”

“
Not what I mean. As your 'inner self' for want of a better
description is here, what is your actual physical body doing right
now?”

“
Not this again.” He pushes a strawberry into his mouth,
swelling his cheek like a hamster’s.

“
Shall I tell you where I am?” she says. “I’m at home in my
nice new flat, stretched out on the sofa with a cushion under my
head and Mr Pickles … he’s my cat, is lying on my legs. I did
intend to have a glass of wine and watch a movie on TV, but instead
I found myself here talking to you and eating
strawberries.”

“
I thought about getting a cat once, to keep the mice
down.”

“
You should. It would be good company for you, but don’t
change the subject.”

He wipes juice from his lips with the back of his hand, and
sucks at his teeth to catch a pip. “The flesh and bone is doing the
same as it always does,” he says. “…nothing. It
can’t
do anything. Hasn’t for a long time.
Its heart is beating; air is going in and out of it, that’s about
all.”

It? Is
this how distanced he has become from his own physical form that he
has reduced it to a mere object?

“
Are you…conscious?”

He
shrugs, drops his eyes and commences to pick at a splinter in the
rough tabletop.

“
Are you in any pain?” she says. “When you stumbled outside,
it looked like–”

Another
shrug.

Grace
puts her hand over his, stilling his worrying of the wood. He
doesn’t withdraw, lets it lie there, small and warm on his. She
squeezes his fingers.

“
Once upon a time, a lifetime ago and in another country, I
was afeart of nothing,” he says. “Game for anything, try anything
once and sod the consequences. Que sera sera and all that bollocks.
Took no mair’n a couple of seconds for all that to change.” He
frowns, letting out an uneven sigh. “Now everything scares me. I
live in a perpetual state of panic. Pain, sickness, violence,
death, it’s all out there around the next corner, waiting for me.”
He swallows hard, licking his lips. “In here, I’m away from it all,
a world of my ain making where I don’t have ta think about
anything. It’s safe. I’m safe. There’s nothing and naeb’dy here
ta–”

He slaps
the tabletop with the flat of his hand, making Grace jump, pushing
himself up from his seat, and in his ungainly way striding from the
hut.

Alone at
the table, Grace takes another strawberry. It yields to her bite,
giving up a mouthful of juice; deliciously sweet, as a ripe fruit
should be. Divine. Too divine. She’s eaten more than she can
normally stomach, yet still feels she can manage just one more,
craving the flavour, the sweetness despite the fact that, if she
thought about it logically, she shouldn’t be able to taste anything
at all, or get any of the little seeds stuck in her
teeth.

Come to
think of it, she shouldn’t be able to feel every tiny imperfection
in this naive hand made tabletop either, shouldn’t be able to
smell...wood smoke?

She
peers through the hut’s only window to see Colin outside poking at
a crackling bonfire with a long stick. A thick pall of grey smoke
belches from the fire, then settles into a curling white wisp, and
Colin, satisfied the fire is going well, uses the stick as a prop
to lower himself onto an upturned log, sitting at a right angle to
the fire with his legs stiffly out in front of him.

He rests
his head against the stick, eyes closed, shoulders hunched, face
crumpled.

“
He lied when he said he wasn’t in pain.”

Grace
needs to wash the strawberry stickiness from her hands but there is
no sink and hot water here, only a water jug and bowl on a hand
made table. No soft and fluffy towel either. She has to make do
with a coarse piece of fabric hanging from a nail. Both do the job
quite adequately. Clean and dry, she hangs up the towel and goes
outside.

“
Can I join you, or do you want to be left
alone?”

Colin
sits up at her approach and indicates another log. If she cares to
move it herself, he says, she can use it as a seat. It’s heavy and
cumbersome, but she manages by half rolling, half lifting it, to
plonk it down beside him. Minutes pass as they sit together
watching the flames consume the cuttings and clippings and
trimmings accumulated from his day’s work in the garden, serenaded
by a thrush perched somewhere high up in a tree, singing out his
joyful melody.

“
I’m in a hospital,” Colin says presently.

Grace
swivels on her log seat to face him. “What sort of
hospital?”

“
A military rehabilitation centre.”

“
Military? You’re what…a soldier?”

“
Until I’m officially discharged.”

“
What rank?”

“
Captain.”

“
That’s pretty high up isn’t it?”

“
Far enough ta get me a table in the Mess, to be looked up
to from below, and be shat on from above.”

“
And you were wounded in the line of duty?”

“
Aye.”

“
Badly?”

He runs
his hand up and down his thigh a few times. “If losing both your
legs above the knee, being set on fire and peppered with burning
shrapnel fits your definition of badly, then aye,” he says, his
voice thin and loaded with bitterness.

“
You lost your legs? But–” She points at his stiff limbs in
their well worn trousers.

“
As you are so fond of saying … nothing here is real,” he
says. “Out there, they are gone. Here I can have them back. Even
make masel’ a bit taller if I want ta.”

“
Oh Colin. I’m so sorry.”

“
Aye, everyone is al’ays sorry. Like it’s gain ta make any
difference.”

“
I don’t know what else to say. I don’t much about these
things apart from what I hear on the news, so it’s the best I can
do.”

He
scrapes the ground with the stick. “I keep telling maself, “At
least you’re still alive”, and, “Half a man is better than no man”,
but it disna help. Neither do inane platitudes and banal sympathies
and everyone telling me to give it time and everything will be
okay. What the hell do they know about it, eh? They’re not the ones
who’ve had their mates’ brains splattered all o’er their face, had
their blood in their mouth, been shot at, set on fire, showered
with burning metal, had their limbs ripped off. They’re not the
ones on the inside of the…of the ever present burning, bloody agony
of it. It’s–”

A boom
sounds in the distance and Colin freezes, eyes sparkling and
darting in a face turned the colour of clay. The frightened rabbit
look is back. Grace asks if he’s okay. He doesn’t answer; his
concentration is elsewhere, on the late afternoon thunderstorm
building in the distance. The rumble fades and he seems to relax a
little, although his eyes remain wary.

“
What … what were we talking about?”

“
You were telling me about what happened to you, about being
in hospital,” says Grace. “But if you’d rather not, if it upsets
you too much, you don’t have to.”

Colin
pokes the stick savagely at the heart of the fire, sending a shower
of sparks spiralling into the air. “There was a bomb,” he says.
“What they call an IED. It was left at the side of the road,
strapped to a donkey–”

“
A donkey? You mean a dead one, right?”

“
No, it was still alive. Tied up in the street. Its panniers
had been loaded with wood … and explosives.”

Grace
covers her mouth with her hands. “Oh my God. The poor
thing.”

“
The bombers got a wee kid to tie the beast up in the
street. I doubt he knew it was primed, he was just a boy, although
you never know, they like to start them out young. The bombers were
hiding somewhere out of sight, waiting and watching until we, there
were three of us, were within a few feet of it, and then set it off
by radio control.”

He
pauses, frowning, “Dan was in front and caught the full force of
the blast. It tore him in half. He died instantly, lucky bastard.
Jimmy … he was standing next to me.” He swallows and licks his
lips. “He lost an arm and half his face … got a great gaping hole
in his skull, but that’s not what killed him. He got what they call
a blast lung injury. The pressure of the explosion … it caved in
his chest, crushing and tearing his lungs, forcing air into his
body, into his bloodstream. It made wee bubbles that blocked up his
arteries and his heart. Nothin’ they could do for him. Who woulda
thought, eh?” He pinches his fingers together. “Tiny little
bubbles?”