Out of Time (12 page)

‘Yes,' she said. ‘There was. . . a big bang. Everything fell over. It was a bomb, I suppose.' Suddenly she was very tired. She closed her eyes for a minute. When she opened them again she expected to find him gone. But he was still there.

‘Where are your family?' he asked.

‘I don't know,' she said. She began to cry. ‘They were in front of me. I stopped. . . then everything fell down. I don't know where they are. I think they're dead. In the ground and dead.'

‘When did it happen?' he asked. His voice was gaining strength and sounded urgent.

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘Maybe a week. Maybe two. I was under the wall. . . for a long time.'

Frustrated, the boy looked around the room, searching for clues. There was a collection of scraps of paper tied to the wall with a string which hung from a nail. He detached them and looked at them. They were in a language he did not know. He brought them to her.

‘What are these?' he asked. She peered at them.

‘That's my name,' she said, pointing to some words at the top of the first page. She read on, translating, in a faltering voice.

‘It says I am found buried,' she said, ‘about a kilometre from here in the Freedom Square. . . I am. . . I'm not sure how you say. . . asleep?'

‘Unconscious,' he prompted.

‘I have the broken leg. And other things. Cuts. And bangs on my head.'

‘When was this?' he interrupted.

‘July 8,' she read.

‘What time?'

‘Half past three in the afternoon. . . ' She read on. ‘But. . . I am in the ground. . . maybe three days. It says ‘Bury by bomb explosion since 11 am, July 4.'

‘11 am,' he repeated. ‘July 4.'

She put the notes down and lay back on the bed. ‘Who are you?' she asked again. ‘Why do you want to know? Are you sick too? Do you work here?'

‘I'm a visitor,' he said. ‘Just a visitor.'

She was puzzled by this.

‘Where do you live? Where are your family?'

‘A long way away.' He grinned shyly. ‘A long way away.'

‘If you want to help me,' she said, and her eyes filled with tears again. ‘Find my parents. . . in this Freedom Square.'

‘How will I know them?' he asked.

She frowned with the effort of remembering, and spoke slowly: ‘My mother wear a blue and white scarf. Dark blue and white. She is small and old. She has a mark on the back of her neck. . . like this.' She touched her face, paused a moment, then kept talking. ‘My father is taller. His teeth are not very good. The front one is chipped. He wear glasses. He has no hair on the top of his head. His eyebrows, they come together, nearly, in the middle.'

Her voice had been fading for the last few minutes. Now she closed her eyes. Her breathing gradually became even and audible. James waited for a few minutes to see if she would wake up. When she didn't he reached into his pocket and took out Mr Woodforde's machine.

WITH FEAR FLAPPING
and squeezing inside his chest James moved slowly through the square, searching the faces of the people. His hands were sweaty but soon he was sweating everywhere. Many people glanced quickly and curiously at him, for he did not look like
any of the others who were using the square as a thoroughfare. But they were too intent on their own interests to give him any lingering attention. He was free, as free as the traffic and his fear would allow, to conduct his search.

Knowing that the timing given on the sheet was likely to be an approximation, he had set his arrival for ten fifteen. It was obvious that the square was whole then, teeming with uninterrupted life. He edged backwards and forwards through the people, scanning the faces, aware of the price of failure. His hand was on the Return button, always, but he also knew that if he was at the wrong spot at the wrong time his reflexes might not be quick enough.

At about ten to eleven a new wave of people came through the square. James saw a group of nuns, their habits dusty at their ankles, moving through the crowd like beetles in a drought. He was alarmed to see a soldier approaching him with a purposeful look in his eyes. The boy began sidling away. As he did so he thought he glimpsed the girl, about forty or fifty metres away. He turned and plunged towards the spot, intent upon getting there before looking for her again. He knew that if it were she, he might have only seconds to make the vital contact. He wriggled and worried his way through the cumbersome, overloaded people. But when he had travelled about thirty metres he nearly ran into her. He pulled up with a little cry of surprise. She glanced at him without expression, then looked again, this time with puzzled eyes. ‘Was that a glance of
recognition?' he wondered, feeling somehow, illogically, guilty as he slipped around behind her. She was wearing a grey cotton shift over grey cotton trousers and carrying an assortment of heavy bags. Her long black hair ran straight and pleasingly down her back. She stopped and changed several of the bags around, to alter the balance of the load. As she did so, two people in front of her turned. The man was tall, with thinning black hair and dark eyebrows that nearly met in the middle. He was wearing glasses. The woman was smaller and looked older. She had a blue and white scarf around her neck. She smiled at the girl. Then the two adults turned back and continued to forge their way through the throng.

James, now in a panic, darted off in a wide circle that brought him out well in front of them. He turned and stood on his toes, searching to identify them again. He saw that the girl had stopped a second time to adjust her load. Her parents, unnoticing, had continued on their way and a gap had been created between them and their daughter. James opened his mouth to shout a warning. But his voice was lost in a great thunder of sound that suddenly rolled up all around him. The ground was lifted from under his feet and he with it. Although he was raised only about a metre, it seemed to take for ever before he was dropped again. When he was dropped it was as though the ground had been assembled and aligned in a new way and would never be the same again.

The roar of noise was continuing undiminished when
a wall fell just metres from the boy, and he saw people disappear under the cruel cutting stone. Others ran past him, mouths silently open, eyes staring. Everything seemed to be falling, and he was appalled at how long it took. He had shocking, intimate, sudden views of what people looked like inside when they were cut open. He saw people pinned down in an instant, so that they were writhing and flapping like fish in the bottom of a boat. He saw moments of nobility, as people ran back to help others who had fallen, or used their bodies to shield their children. And he saw moments of madness, as people rushed straight under collapsing walls and a man ran back into danger to pick up a small saucepan that his son had dropped.

As the noise at last began to slow and lessen, he saw the girl's parents. They seemed to be unharmed, standing in a clear part of the square, looking frantically around them. Dust and smoke and unnatural breezes were making it difficult to see, but it was obvious that the girl, their daughter, was nowhere to be seen. They talked madly to each other, arms pointing to where they thought she might have been and might now be. Then they began tearing at the rubble with their bare hands. James ran over and helped them, despite his certain knowledge that it was useless. They paused to gaze blankly at him for a moment, then the man said something before they resumed ripping at the rocks and mortar.

Gradually, as the square settled into its new composition of sight and sound, the first frenzy was replaced by
a steady, sweating digging. In various parts of the ruins others were digging too. After some time they exposed the body of a baby, terribly dead. James did not know whether to look at it or not but he helped lay it out under a little shelter of masonite. He recognised and trembled at the memories that this invoked in him. Then he returned to the pitiful scrape they had made in the rubble.

After half an hour or so the conditions in the square changed again. Soldiers began to arrive, some in trucks, some on foot. A few ambulances came in a hurry, and were instantly surrounded. The soldiers took charge. They had some shovels and picks and, as the morning became afternoon, more and more tools appeared. By about four o'clock the scene was one of methodical, if slow, activity. At that point the remaining civilians, James among them, were pushed away from the diggings, until they were massed in a corner of the square, under the supervision of two soldiers. Though many protested at this treatment their protests were ignored. James, whose presence was starting to attract curious glances again, went willingly enough with them. He knew he had to. But he kept his hand on Mr Woodforde's machine, which was thrust deep in his pocket.

Little happened for a while. The soldiers kept working. From time to time there was a flurry of movement as bodies, some dead, some alive, were discovered and lifted carefully from the ruins. At these moments the civilians who were with James crowded as close as they
were allowed, to see if they could identify their relatives. They shouted questions at the soldiers but they were ignored, and the bodies taken away in trucks and ambulances.

Later in the afternoon a bus arrived and the civilians, despite tears and protests and struggles, were loaded into it. The soldier in charge of this operation pulled James aside and talked at him in a rattle of words that James was not able to understand. But finally, seeing the boy's lack of comprehension, he pushed him on board with the others. In a cloud of smoke from the exhaust and amid wails from its passengers, the vehicle began its journey.

The bus was crowded but the journey was mercifully short. After a little time they passed the old convent which James recognised as the building which would soon house the girl with the scarred face. About fifty kilometres further on, along a route which James strove carefully to memorise, they were disembarked at a place that defied definition. It was a collection of huts and tents, side by side with what appeared to be a large rubbish tip. It was surrounded by various types of wire, some lengths of which were placarded with red crosses. The whole place was guarded, but in a fairly casual way. In one corner was a group of old tanks, with mechanics working on them. In a central square about a hundred people were gathered, listening to a speech by a woman in uniform who stood precariously on a black plastic barrel. The bus passengers were ushered to a shambles of galvanised iron shelters and it was
made apparent to them that this would be their accommodation.

Deciding that his position might soon become precarious, James waited long enough to watch the girl's parents settle themselves into an iron lean-to. Then he slipped behind a wall and used his Return button.

He tried to get back into the house without being seen. It should have been easy, as it was nearly dark. But to his surprise there were people all around the building. As he turned a corner he found himself a metre away from his mother. She was facing in his direction and saw him instantly.

‘James!' she cried. ‘Where have you been? I can't believe it! We've been looking everywhere! We've got the Police here and Security and everything! Oh, where have you been?' James stood staring silently at her. He noted with some surprise that there were tears in her eyes. She leaned against the wall and her shoulders convulsed as she half covered her face with her hands. James' father came across the garden, through the trees. When he saw James he started to hurry. James darted past, to the verandah, and entered the house. As he did so he heard his father reach his mother and his mother say, ‘Oh God, what are we going to do? I think he's getting worse.' His father answered in a low tone. James could not hear the actual words. He ran upstairs to his bedroom.

*

HE SAT AT
the window of his bedroom as the darkness brushed past. The night air whistled and whispered its many possibilities. James put out a hand and twisted a leaf around his fingers. He peered across at the old Lab 17, hoping against hope that a light would be showing in it, like old times. But the building was so dark that he had trouble making it out. He sighed and looked away, up at the sky. A few stars showed through the branches and leaves of the tree, but most were obscured. The flashing light of a satellite appeared on its steady journey across the heavens. James followed it with unwavering concentration until it was out of sight. Then, when it was gone, he sighed again, pushed himself up out of his seat by his hands and went to bed. He lay awake, his mind in turmoil. The thoughts crowded around, jumping the queue, piggybacking on each other, leading him in and out of mazes and through mirrors. After a while, still unable to sleep, he turned the bed lamp on and picked up the book he was reading. It was called
Cases in Court.
An old book, by a man he had never heard of. He read again a section he had first come across a few weeks earlier:

At about two am on the morning of the 6th November, 1939, a motor-car burst into flames some 200 yards from the village of Hardingstone, near Northampton. It was first noticed by two young men returning home from a dance, who saw a bright light further down the road. At the same time a man came out of a ditch by the side of the road and walked past them without speaking. Just after he passed them, he looked back and said, ‘It looks as if somebody has had a bonfire'. He then walked on
down the road, seeming to hesitate as to which way to go, then turned towards London and disappeared. That man was Rouse. He was subsequently identified by the two young men and his identity must be taken as sufficiently established without the necessity for any admission of his own. The two men ran towards the flames and then saw that it was a motor-car blazing furiously by the side of the road. They ran on to the village and came back with the village constable. They were unable to approach the blazing car until the flames died down. They then discovered something inside which turned out to be the body of a dead man. They could make no further investigation until the fire was extinguished, by which time the car was completely demolished. It is not perhaps surprising that the trial of Rouse for the murder of the man found inside the car was described as a mystery, because from that day to this no one has ever known who the dead man was, or how or for what purpose he was killed.