In The Garden Of Stones (31 page)

“
I am such a fecking idiot. Even if Colin did forgive me for
what I said, and there’s no reason why he should, it would take a
blasted miracle worthy of Jesus Christ himself for him to be able
to pick up a phone and tell me so. And even if he could, he
wouldn’t do it. Too damned proud for his own good.” She swallows
the last of the wine straight from the bottle. “He doesn’t have my
number for a start.”

It takes
two attempts to get to her feet. On elastic legs that don’t want to
hold her she stumbles into her bedroom to fall fully dressed onto
the bed, spread-eagled on the quilt like a drunken
starfish.

Chapter 31

“
Mmmnnnnffffffffff.”

Four in
the morning and Grace staggers into her tiny bathroom. Eyes screwed
up against the light, she rummages in the cabinet, looking for the
paracetamol tablets she knows are in there.

Pounding
head, feeling sick - the downside of drowning one’s sorrows in
cabernet sauvignon. Maybe finishing that last bottle wasn’t such a
good idea after all.

She
finds the pills, swallows two down with a glass of water, and
traipses back to bed. Snuggled under her quilt she closes her eyes
and is already slipping back toward sleep when, without warning, a
feeling of confused desolation throws itself at her, making her
shudder, gasp and sit up.

“
Colin!”

She
finds herself standing in middle of the rose garden, or what’s left
of it.

“
What the bloody hell happened here? It looks like a
hurricane’s blown through.”

She
cannot believe her eyes. As far as she can see, all is devastation.
The garden is in ruins. Flower heads are smashed, separated from
their stalks, their beautiful fragrant petals scattered like
confetti. Plants and shrubs have been hacked down or crushed flat
as if huge heavy boots have stamped on them. The once neat lawn
resembles a roughly ploughed field, so many are the deep gouges
scoured into it.

In the
centre of the gravel circle, the cherub fountain has lost both its
head and the stone seashell it carried on its back. Water gurgles
up from the pipe in its neck and trickles down its chubby body into
the reservoir.

She
follows the trail of destruction to the greenhouse and what she
sees stops her dead in her tracks.

“
Holy mother of God!”

Most of
the panes are broken, shards of glass blasted from the inside into
the vegetable beds more than ten feet away. Others hang
precariously from their frames like deadly icicles.

A large
jagged hole in the wall of glass marks the exit of the Chinese
patterned jardinière she likes, itself in three large fragments.
The aspidistra it housed however appears to be undamaged. Not for
nothing is it called the cast iron plant.

Grace
has to tread carefully if she is to avoid being cut by knife edged
glass splinters, or by the scythe blade snapped from its handle at
the joint by sheer force of use. Close by is another abandoned
weapon of mass destruction, the garden spade.

Inside
the ruined glasshouse is a wreck too, the trestle work table where
just yesterday Colin had been potting up his seedlings has been
overturned, spilled plantlets, compost and broken terracotta pots
littering the floor.

Further
along the path she finds the water barrel on its side, its contents
spilled into the onion bed, forming a lake between the
furrows.

She
picks her way round the upturned butt. It is then she spies smoke
curling up from behind the hedge, and her stomach rushes into her
throat.

“
Oh my God! The hut! It’s on fire! COLIN!”

Her walk
becomes a trot and then a full on run, each stride eating up the
distance to the arch leading to the cemetery, any breath not being
used to fuel her sprint calling out for Colin.

She
skids to a halt in the gravel. The hut is still standing and is
intact, not the burned out wreck she expected to see. The bonfire
is out too, nothing left there but a pile of white and grey ash and
lumps of charred wood. The plume of white smoke she could see is
coming from the hut’s stone chimney.

“
Oh, thank God!”

She
pushes open the rough wood door and barges into the hut. Inside
smells of hot metal and burning wood underlaid with the sickly sour
scent of damp wool and stale sweat. Flames dance behind the glass
door of the stove and a thin tendril of steam curls from the
kettle’s spout; both add to the stuffiness of the room. For some
reason a blanket is slung over a length of twine strung between two
of the hut’s walls, dividing the space in two. There no sign of
Colin.

“
Where is he?”

A sigh,
a groan and a creak from behind the dividing blanket wall. “I’m
here?”

He steps
out, rubs at his eyes. They look swollen and tired in a face pale,
and drawn under smears of dirt and a rough start to a beard. His
shoulders are slumped and he seems to be favouring his left leg.
His whole body screams exhaustion.

“
I saw the smoke. I thought the hut was on fire,” Grace
says. “You okay?”

He
shrugs.

“
You look dreadful. Are you not feeling well?”

He
sways, staggers, and drops heavily onto one of the
chairs.

“
I think that answers that question.” Grace lays her hand on
his brow. It is hot and dry. Feverish. “Looks like you’re coming
down with something. Your body must be sick. You should be in
bed.”

He does
not resist as she helps him back to the cot.

“
Can I get you something?” she says. “A glass of
water?”

“
No.”

“
You want to lie down?”

“
No.”

“
Okay. You sit quietly. I’ll go back, call Simon, get him to
look in on you.”

Colin
shakes his head slowly. “Don’t bother.” It comes out thick and
hoarse, like he has a sore throat.

“
If he can help–”

“
I don’t want his help. I don’t want anyone’s
help.”

“
Not even mine? Or especially mine?”

No
answer.

She sits
down beside him on the rumpled bed, making it creak as if its
fragile frame might give way under the weight of two bodies, and
puts her cool hand against his flushed cheek.

“
What happened to the garden, Colin? It looks like a herd of
elephants has run riot in it. Was there another storm or
something?”

“
No.”

“
Something must have happened because it’s trashed. All the
lovely roses are spoiled.”

“
I know.” Pause. “I did it.”

Grace
stares at him. “What? Why would you–? You love the garden. Why
would you do such a thing?”

Colin
lets his head fall back against the wall, scrubs his fingers
through his hair, raking at his scalp.

“
I didn’t mean ta. It just… I don’t know …” He stares up
into the rafters, catches his top lip with his teeth, sucks in a
deep breath and blows out a sigh dragged from the very depths of
him.

“
I think I must have had some kind of brainstorm,” he says.
“It was like a bubble of rage rising up inside, and then something
exploded inside ma heid. I must’ve had a blackout or something
because the last thing I remember is you giving me a bollocking,
the next I’m in here with a headache like the worst hangover I’ve
ever had without the aid of a vodka bender, all bloodied and
bruised with a throat full of barbed wire. The garden is wrecked
and you’re nowhere to be seen.” He holds out his trembling hands,
the fronts and backs scratched and grazed, the knuckles swollen and
bruised, the nails torn. “I’m just glad ye weren’t here. If ye had
been, I might have … God, it doesn’t bear thinking about.” He
buries his face in his hands. “I coulda kilt ye and no even known
aboot it.”

She runs
her hand up and down the soft fabric of his shirt sleeve. “Shhhh.
It’s okay. Nobody got hurt. It’s just a few plants and panes of
glass. Nothing major. We can put it right again.”

His fingers start to work on the threadbare sheet, plucking
and pulling at it. “Why
did
ye come back if ye think I’m such a coward hiding
here like a rat under a bucket? Why aren’t ye gone fer good and be
glad ta do so?”

“
I didn’t really have a choice. I was… drawn here. And I
didn’t call you a coward. I said you were taking a coward’s way
out, opting for the easy route instead of fighting back. I’m sorry
if it came out wrong, but I was angry and you were being so
defeatist, talking about dying when there’s people out there who …
who care about you and want to help you. I lost my rag and wasn’t
thinking straight. I’m really sorry.”

Pick.
Pluck. Sigh. “No. You’re right, I am a coward and I am hiding. I’ve
taken refuge in this place, hoping everything out there would
simply go away, and then everything will be back the way it was
before all this–” He sweeps a hand down himself. “It won’t though,
will it, no matter how much I want it to?”

She
feels her heart clench and fall into her stomach. “No sweetie, I’m
afraid it won’t.”

He draws
his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them, making
himself small and tight, as if trying to stop himself falling apart
at the seams.

“
I can cope with the physical injuries,” he says. “I can get
used to them, adapt, tolerate the pain, but I can’t–” He swallows,
tics and shrugs. “It’s what’s going on in here–” He doinks his
fingers rapidly off his temple. “That’s what’s killing me … it’s,
it’s–”

He is trembling now, a savage quaking that makes his teeth
chatter as if he’s frozen to the bone. Fever
and
chills.

“
Show me,” says Grace, taking his tremulous hands in hers.
“Like you did before.”

“
I-I d-don’t know how I did it b-before. It just s-sort of
happened.”

“
Then don’t think too hard about it. Just let it go. Let it
flow into me.”

He
closes his eyes, frowns, and there comes that dizzying
disorientation again as a rush of emotion sluices out of him and
into her.

Inside
his head is a swirling morass, like oil on water, shifting,
changing, writhing as he relives every single moment of the event
in horrible graphic detail, over and over again, like a movie on a
loop.

He is
seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting it, tormented by guilt at having
been saved when his comrades couldn’t be, being knocked backwards
by overwhelming sorrow and grief that come at him without warning,
in waves. And then there is the anger, twisting and coiling its way
through everything like a thick black snake, a simmering - bubbling
rage at the futility and the injustice of it all, at the pure
bloody pointless waste.

A lava
chamber of fury builds inside him, growing and burning until it’s
ready to explode, and it terrifies him that when it does, all his
control will be gone, like it was in the garden, and rather than
smashing up a few plants and panes of glass, he’ll end up turning
his rage on another person with the ultimate result.

And so
he tries to shackle it inside, to keep it close, withdrawing from
the world and taking it with him, not only to keep everybody else
safe, but to save himself.

But he
knows it won’t be denied, and all the while he’s holding onto it it
is feeding on him like a cancer.

Every
day it gets stronger and harder to control, and he gets weaker,
until one day the tipping point will be reached when it takes total
dominance and he becomes slave to its bidding, and he knows it will
make him do some terrible things and he will be powerless to stop
it.

He knows
that time is close and that’s why he should end it now, before it’s
too late and he, or someone he loves, is lost to it.

It has
only been a matter of seconds, but now she understands everything.
Post traumatic stress disorder. The gift that keeps on
giving.

“
Oh God, Colin.”

He sucks
in a deep juddering breath and closes his eyes, squeezing out two
fat tears to slide down his cheek and into the coarse
bristles.

“
So now ye know why I want them to give me a needle and send
me on ma way,” he says. “All that goin’ on inside ma heid, it’s
drivin’ me out of ma mind. I canna take it any mair. I just want it
all ta end. I don’t want ta hurt anybody.” He lets out a bray of
pain. “Why didn’t they put a bullet in me out there in Helmand and
bury me in the sand? Why Grace?”

He folds
himself further, tighter, forehead pressed to his knees, and she
lets him cry until his eyes run dry. All the while he clings onto
her hand as if his life depends on it. She won’t flinch, even
though the hold is so tight that the bones of her fingers grate on
one another, the pain exquisite.

There are no words to stem the flow of pain from this
broken heart, and so s
he runs her hand up and down his back in slow
comforting strokes, offering a quiet presence of calm in his sea of
torment,
and
t
hey
sit entwined on the
flimsy bed as she kisses his hot neck and hushes him, and tears of
her own find their way onto her face.