Peacetime (34 page)

‘Hold him,' Mathias told Mercer. He ran into a nearby building and emerged with a can of water, which he held to Jacob's lips and poured. Jacob swallowed little of what he was given, and most of the water ran over his chin and his chest, leaving a spreading stain. He could not sit unsupported and his head continually fell forward. Mathias fetched more
water, but again Jacob was able to swallow only a little of it.

Mercer took out his handkerchief, soaked it and wiped Jacob's brow. Whatever it was he was suffering from had clearly worsened since he had last seen him several days earlier.

‘What's he doing here, so far, in this condition?' he said to Mathias.

‘He said Bail was raging at the men picking over his yard. He carried that.' He motioned to the sack of his belongings that Jacob had brought with him to the airfield. It was inconceivable to both of them that he had come so far in such a weakened condition.

‘Was he looking for you?' Mercer asked. Coming across the open countryside, the airfield lay between Bail's and the tower.

‘If that's what you prefer to believe,' Mathias said.

Beside them, Jacob gave a choking cough and slumped forward. They held him upright. Mathias rubbed his back as he went on coughing. Saliva fell in thick strings from Jacob's mouth, and Mercer wiped this away.

‘I think Lynch was there, too,' Mathias said, his voice low. ‘He said “Lynch”, that's all.'

‘And so he ran,' Mercer said.

‘I imagine he was more or less ready to leave, not to witness or to add to Bail's final humiliation.'

‘Lynch's arrival can't have helped the situation,' Mercer said.

‘
If
he was there. You can't blame the man for everything.'

Jacob's coughing subsided and he mumbled something neither of them properly heard. He indicated the can, and this time when Mathias held it to his lips, he was able to drink from it. After that, his exhaustion
was complete, and he fell back between them, his eyes closed, his breathing short and laboured.

‘We can carry him to the tower,' Mercer suggested.

‘Or I could make him a bed here,' Mathias said, indicating the brick shell close by. ‘I'll stay with him.'

Mercer looked at the building. Most of its roof was missing and its floor was overgrown with nettles. He insisted they carry Jacob to the tower.

They waited several minutes longer and then explained to Jacob what they were about to attempt. He made no response to this, convincing Mercer further that he needed to be taken indoors and to a proper bed.

They lifted the barely conscious man and worked out how best to carry him.

Mathias retrieved the sack, and they started to walk. They avoided both the ploughed earth and the broken runway, and went instead along the rim of a bank which curved away from the tower before turning back towards it alongside the road.

It was by then almost dark. The sun had gone, but the horizon was still brightened by it.

It took them an hour to walk along the bank and come close to the tower. They rested every few minutes and spoke reassuringly to Jacob. Sweat continued to form over his face. Both men felt the bones in his arms and in the fingers of the hands they held.

Mercer told Mathias to cross the open ground close to the dunes and to come to the tower out of sight of the houses, where, despite the darkness, someone might see them and come to investigate. In all likelihood, he said, Lynch would already have returned, and would now be anxious to make his presence felt, angry that Jacob had earlier eluded him. Mathias considered this unlikely, but said nothing.

They finally arrived close to the tower and Mercer went ahead alone and unlocked the door. Only when he was certain they were not being watched did he return to help carry Jacob over the remaining short distance.

Once inside, and with the door bolted behind them, both men rested. Jacob sat where they had lowered him. He remained barely conscious, less aware than ever of what was happening to him, or where he now was. He continued to mumble, increasingly agitated by whatever he was saying or by the lack of response to his words, and still they could understand little of what he said.

It would have been impossible to manhandle Jacob up the stairs into the room above without causing him even more pain, and so Mercer brought down his thin mattress and several blankets and they made a bed for him on the floor where he sat. Mathias took off his shoes, beneath which his feet were bare and dirty and bruised.

Waiting beside Jacob until he was asleep, and his breathing more regular, Mercer and Mathias then went upstairs and sat at the table. Still unwilling to attract attention to their presence, Mercer lit no lanterns and they sat together in the darkness.

‘I can do this alone if you need to go,' Mercer said. He stood a bottle and glasses on the table.

Mathias acknowledged the opportunity he was being offered, and shook his head.

‘First thing in the morning, I'll get a doctor,' Mercer said.

Mathias looked at his watch.

An hour later, when the darkness was complete, and during which time Jacob had remained asleep and his breathing grown calmer, Mathias insisted on taking
one of the chairs into the room below and sleeping beside him. ‘I'll keep watch over him,' he said.

Mercer offered to share the responsibility, but Mathias refused, promising to wake him if anything happened.

Mercer woke with a start several hours later, taking a moment to remember what had happened during the previous day and night. It was three in the morning and the moon cast its cold glow all around him.

Something had woken him, and as he lay in the silence the sound of someone crying rose up to him from below.

He went down to the lower room.

Mathias was on his knees beside the makeshift bed with Jacob's head resting on his thigh, one hand pressed to Jacob's cheek and the other stroking the hair from his brow. He looked up at Mercer's appearance and put a finger to his lips.

Mercer went closer and crouched beside him.

‘He started crying in his sleep,' Mathias whispered.

Here, too, the room was illuminated only by the light of the moon.

‘What can I do?' Mercer said.

Mathias indicated where the blankets had fallen
from Jacob's legs, and Mercer retrieved these and laid them over him.

Jacob, meanwhile, continued to sob; his breathing slowed and then erupted without rhythm.

‘Is he dreaming, do you think?' Mercer asked Mathias.

‘I think this happens most nights. I stayed at Bail's once, and the same thing happened then. Bail told me he had seen Jacob wide awake and wandering among his piles of scrap at all hours of the night. I was afraid he might choke.' He spoke without taking his eyes from Jacob's face, his fingers now caressing the side of Jacob's mouth and chin.

‘He ought to be in hospital,' Mercer said.

‘You can tell him that a thousand times, but it won't put him there. He's beyond all that. And it's beyond us to intervene. The simple and unavoidable fact is, he has taken his life back into his own hands and he will never again relinquish a single moment of it.' He held up his hand for Mercer to see the dark hairs which lay threaded between his fingers.

A louder gasp than usual silenced them both and they sat without speaking until the convulsion subsided and Jacob lay still again.

Eventually, Mathias lowered Jacob's head back to his pillow, turning it so that he might rest on something dry. He picked the last of the hairs from his fingers and threw them down. He rose slowly, rubbed his legs to free them of cramp, and then he and Mercer went to the far side of the room, where they sat beside the window and smoked.

‘He told me once that he'd saved a lock of Anna's hair,' Mathias said. ‘He even showed it to me. He wouldn't let it out of his grasp. He said it was his most precious possession. More precious even than his
glass. A month later, he said he'd burned it in his kiln. I thought at first that this was something symbolic for him – that the burning hair might pattern or colour or become in some way imprinted on a piece of his glass – but he only laughed when I suggested this to him and told me it was none of those things. Then he confessed to me that it had not been Anna's hair he had saved, merely some he had cut from another corpse which in some way resembled Anna – I imagine there were plenty to choose from – and which bore the same colour hair. He'd tried to convince himself that it was her hair, but then, all those months later, he saw what a hopeless and undermining lie he was trying to sustain. He said he was a cripple walking with the aid of rotten, crumbling sticks.'

‘He wasn't with her when she died,' Mercer said.

Mathias shook his head. ‘She had died in the infirmary several days before he learned of the fact. A woman who swilled the floors there told him she had seen Anna's corpse being removed along with all the others at the end of the previous day. He'd sought the woman out to ask her how well Anna was responding to her treatment and whatever medication she might have been receiving, and the woman had insisted on being paid before telling him what she had seen. He told me that at first he thought she was lying to him, that it was a cruel scheme of hers to get more from him. Apparently, she told him to please himself what he believed; she had plenty more anxious relatives to sell her information to.'

‘He believes they killed her,' Mercer said.

‘Of course they killed her. That was the whole point.' Mathias had started to shout, but quickly lowered his voice. ‘What else do you think was meant to happen? It might have been called an infirmary, but
that was all. What mattered more to him, what destroyed every vestige of his belief in himself, what brought him here, to this place, and what has kept him here crying in his sleep every night, is the simple and undeniable understanding that, once beyond his own desperate need to protect her and keep her alive, she herself – his blessed Anna – simply lost the will to live. She had suffered for too long. They were by then the two halves of the same small and blighted world; nothing else existed for either of them. I wonder if you or I can have even the slightest notion of how much he lost when she died.' Mathias paused. ‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘You understand all of this as well as I do. I've known him longer, that's all, and, God knows, it took me long enough to work it all out for myself.'

Mercer put his hand on Mathias's shoulder and Mathias nodded. He was close to tears, and this simple gesture drew him back from them.

‘In the final March of the war,' Mercer said, ‘I was seconded to the US Sixth Armored Division. It's a long story. We drove in half-tracks along an autobahn near a place called Giessen on our way to Berlin.'

‘Giessen,' Mathias said. ‘I know it.'

‘The road was steeply banked, and all along the grass verges, both sides of the road, sat thousands and thousands of surrendered German officers. We knew they were officers by their caps and by the shine of their boots. Thousands of them, all just sitting there in the sun and watching us race past them. You could almost feel the hatred and the contempt being poured down those banks towards us. The Forty-fifth Division had arrived at Dachau only three days earlier, and everybody in that unstoppable convoy at Giessen knew what they'd found there. None of us had seen it, but everybody knew. Nothing stopped in those days. Move, move,
move. Your armies were in disarray. We were through and beyond what remained of them even while they were planning their defence strategies. Nothing stopped, nothing stood still to take account of anything. Every mile east was another mile of territory conquered, another minute or an hour or a day closer to the end.'

‘Some of those men on those banks will never stop hating you,' Mathias said.

‘I think we understood that even then. I never forgot that day. I don't fully understand why, but something about it – its unnatural calm, perhaps; seeing all those men; knowing what I knew – something of it will stay with me for ever.'

‘A kind of epiphany,' Mathias said.

‘I wouldn't make so grand a claim for it,' Mercer said, but knowing he was close to the truth.

‘Only because you have your useless English notions of reserve and decorum to maintain.'

Mercer acknowledged this.

They sat without speaking for several minutes. At the far side of the room, Jacob appeared to have grown calmer. His breathing remained shallow and erratic, but he no longer sobbed. The smoke from their cigarettes settled around them in the night air. Outside, a low mist once again covered the ground.

‘I have something similar to tell,' Mathias said. ‘Something that I, too, will never forget, and which helped everything make sense to me. Or if not sense, then which at least helped me to understand men and the things of which they are capable. I know that this, too, sounds like a grand notion, but it is something I have never forgotten. I imagine there are others – Roland for instance – who would tell you the same tale.' He paused, as though suddenly uncertain of his ability to say what he was now committed to saying.

‘Go on,' Mercer urged him.

‘There is a chapel here in the town. A Methodist chapel, at the end of the High Street.'

Mercer closed his eyes and saw the building. ‘I know it,' he said.

‘In the closing weeks of the war – when you were racing along the autobahns – a much closer guard than usual was kept on us. We were confined to our camp. Even those of us who were already working on farms and in factories were told that we must remain in our huts. You can imagine how deprived we felt. We had all met some good people here, made what we considered to be good friends. We know these people still. We were told by the Camp Administration that the fighting was now taking place in our home towns, that our families and friends in Germany were now in jeopardy – you can imagine how I allowed myself to smile at this after all those years of bombing – and they told us that we were being kept more closely confined because of all those men who might not be able to control or contain their anxiety or anger, and who might do something stupid at whatever bad news they might now receive. They were never any more specific than this, but what could we expect – we were still prisoners.'