The Absolutist (30 page)

We looked at each other. I examined his face for signs of remorse, for anything that might indicate shame, and for a second I thought I could see it there. But just as quickly it vanished, and was replaced by a cold stare, a look of disgust, and an attitude of repugnance that a creature like me could have been spawned from his body.

“I leave tomorrow,” I told him. “I have nine weeks of training at Aldershot. And then I go. I thought you’d want to know.”

“I assumed you were already over there,” he replied, picking up a bloodstained cloth from the counter and rubbing his hands in it. “Or did you not want to go?”

“I wasn’t eligible for a long time on account of my age,” I said, recognizing the slight.

“How old are you now, then?”

“Seventeen,” I said. “I lied. Told them I was eighteen and they let me in.”

He considered this and nodded. “Well, I’m not sure why you thought I’d be interested but I suppose it’s worth knowing,” he said. “So unless you’re after a bit of mince or—”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked him, trying hard to keep my voice steady.

“Tell you?” he said, frowning. “Tell you what?”

“She was my sister, for pity’s sake.”

He had the decency to look away, to stare down at the joints of meat that were spread out before him and not answer me immediately. I saw him swallow again, consider an answer, turn to look at me with just a hint of regret on his face and then, perhaps sensing it himself, run a bloodied hand across his eyes and cheeks and shake his head.

“It had nothing to do with you,” he said. “It was family business.”

“She was my sister,” I repeated, feeling the tears start to form now.

“It was family business.”

We said nothing for a few moments. A woman slowed down as she approached the front window, examined some of the meat on display, then looked up, appeared to change her mind and carried on walking.

“How did you hear, anyway?” he asked me finally.

“I met Sylvia,” I said. “Just today. After I got off the bus. It was a coincidence that we should run into each other. She told me.”

“Sylvia,” he said, snorting in disgust. “That one’s no better than she ought to be. She was fast back then and she’s fast now.”

“You could have written to me,” I said, refusing to speak about anyone but Laura. “You could have found me and told me. How long was she ill?”

“A few months.”

“Was she in pain?”

“Yes. A great deal.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said, bending over slightly, an aching pain at the pit of my stomach.

“For God’s sake, Tristan,” he said, coming around from behind the counter now and standing before me; it was all that I could do not to take a step back from him in disgust. “You couldn’t have done anything to help her. It was just one of those things. It spread through her body like wildfire.”

“I would have wanted to see her,” I said. “I’m her brother.”

“Not really,” he said in a casual tone. “You were once, I suppose. I’ll give you that. But that was all a long time ago. I think she’d pretty much forgotten you by the end.”

To my surprise, he put an arm around my shoulder then and I thought he was going to embrace me, but instead he turned me around and walked with me slowly towards the door.

“The truth is, Tristan,” he said as he guided me back out on to the street, “you weren’t her brother any more than you are my son. This isn’t your family. You have no business here, not any more. It would be best for all of us if the Germans shoot you dead on sight.”

He closed the door in my face then and turned away. I watched him as he hesitated for a moment in front of the display case, examining the various cuts of meat, counting them off in his head, before disappearing back into the cold room and out of my life forever.

“Perhaps I was wrong,” said Marian as we made our way back through the city, walking in the direction of the railway station. “I rather ambushed you, didn’t I? Bringing you in to meet my parents like that.”

“It’s all right,” I said, lighting a much-needed cigarette and letting the smoke fill my lungs and calm my nerves. The only thing that might have matched it for pure pleasure was a pint of cold ale. “They’re decent people.”

“Yes, I suppose they are. We drive each other mad on a daily basis but I suppose that’s par for the course. Given the choice, I’d like a home of my own. Then they could visit and we could be friends and there wouldn’t be any more of these daily confrontations.”

“I’m sure you’ll marry some day,” I said.

“A home of my own,” she insisted. “Not someone else’s. Like you have.”

“Mine is just a small flat,” I told her. “It’s comfortable but, believe me, it’s nothing like you have here.”

“Still, it’s all yours, isn’t it? You answer to no one.”

“Look, you really don’t have to walk with me all the way back,” I told her. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful but I’m sure I can find my way.”

“It’s all right,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t mind. We’ve come this far together, after all.”

I nodded. The evening was starting to close in, the sky was growing darker and the air colder. I buttoned my overcoat and took another drag of my cigarette.

“What will you do now?” she asked me after a few minutes, and I turned to her, frowning.

“I’ll go back to London, of course,” I said.

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. What are your plans for the future, now that the war is behind us?”

I thought about it. “Tomorrow morning I shall be back at my desk at the Whisby Press,” I said. “There will be manuscripts to read, rejection letters to send out, books to edit. We’re doing a presentation of future titles to some booksellers next week so I have to prepare a few notes on each one.”

“You enjoy working there, do you?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said enthusiastically. “I like being around books.”

“So you think you’ll stay where you are? Seek promotion? Become a publisher yourself?”

I hesitated. “I might like to try my hand at writing,” I told her; it was the first time I had admitted this aloud to anyone. “It’s something I’ve dabbled in a little over the last few years. I feel I might like to take it more seriously now.”

“There aren’t enough novels in the world already?” she asked, teasing me a little, and I laughed.

“A few more won’t hurt anyone,” I said. “I don’t know, I might not be any good, anyway.”

“But you’re going to try?”

“I’m going to try,” I agreed.

“Of course, Will was a great reader,” she said.

“Yes, I saw him with a book from time to time,” I said. “Sometimes one or two of the fellows might have brought
something with them and it would get passed from hand to hand.”

“He was reading from the time he was three years old,” she told me. “And he tried his hand at writing, too. He wrote a completion for
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
in a most ingenious way when he was only fifteen.”

“How did it end?”

“In exactly the way that it should,” she replied. “Edwin came home to his family, safe and well. Eternal happiness ensues.”

“Do you think that’s the ending that Dickens intended?”

“I think it’s the ending Will believed would be the most satisfying. Why are we stopping?”

“This is Mrs. Cantwell’s boarding house,” I said, looking up the steps towards the front door. “I just have to collect my holdall. We can part here, if you like.”

“I’ll wait for you,” she said. “The station’s only across the road. Might as well make sure you get there safely.”

I nodded. “I’ll only be a minute or two,” I said, running up the steps.

Inside, Mrs. Cantwell was nowhere to be seen but her son, David, was behind the reception desk, consulting a chart, the tip of a pencil pressed to his tongue.

“Mr. Sadler,” he said, looking up. “Good evening.”

“Good evening,” I said. “I’ve just come to collect my holdall.”

“Of course.” He reached down and picked it up from behind the desk, passing it across to me. “Did you have a good day, then?”

“Yes, thanks,” I said. “We’ve settled everything regarding the bill already, haven’t we?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, following me as I walked towards the door. “Will we be likely to see you again in Norwich?”

“No, I don’t think so,” I said, turning to smile at him. “I rather think this will be my one and only visit.”

“Oh dear. We didn’t disappoint you that much, I hope?”

“No, not at all. It’s just … Well, I don’t imagine my work will bring me through here again, that’s all. Goodbye, Mr. Cantwell,” I said, extending my hand, and he looked at it for a moment before shaking it.

“I want you to know that I tried to fight, too,” he said, and I nodded and shrugged. “They said I was too young. But I wanted it more than anything in the world.”

“Then you’re a fool,” I said, opening the door and letting myself out.

Marian took my arm as we made our way across to the station and I was both flattered and upset by the gesture. I had waited so long to write to her, spent so much time planning this meeting, and here I was, ready to return home, and I still had not steeled myself to tell her about her brother’s last hours. We walked in silence, though, and she must have been thinking the same thing, for it was only when we entered the station itself that she stopped, removed her arm and spoke again.

“I know he wasn’t a coward, Mr. Sadler,” she said. “I know that. I need to know the truth about what happened.”

“Marian, please,” I said, looking away.

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” she said. “Something that you have been trying to say all day but haven’t been able to. I can tell, I’m not stupid. You’re desperate to say it. Well, we’re here now, Tristan. Just the two of us. I want you to tell me exactly what it is.”

“I have to get home,” I said nervously. “My train—”

“Doesn’t go for another forty minutes,” she said, looking up towards the clock. “We have time. Please.”

I took a deep breath, thinking,
Will I tell her? Can I tell her?

“Your hand, Tristan,” she said. “What’s the matter with it?”

I held it out flat in front of me and watched as the index finger trembled erratically. I watched it, interested, then pulled it away.

“I can tell you what happened,” I said finally in a quiet voice. “If you really want to know.”

“But of course I want to know,” she replied. “I don’t believe I can go on if I don’t know.”

I stared at her and wondered.

“I can answer your questions,” I said quietly. “I can tell you everything. Everything about that last day. Only I’m not sure that it will offer you any solace. And you certainly won’t be able to forgive.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, sitting down on a bench. “It’s the not knowing that is most painful.”

“All right, then,” I said, sitting next to her.

H
OBBS HAS GONE MAD
. He stands outside my foxhole and stares down at me, eyes bulging, before putting a hand over his mouth and giggling like a schoolgirl.

“What’s the matter with you?” I ask, looking up at him, in no mood for games. In reply he just laughs even more hysterically than before with uncontrollable mirth.

“Keep it down!” cries a voice from somewhere around the corner and Hobbs turns in that direction, his laughter stopping instantly, and he makes an obscene comment before running away. I think no more about it for now and close my eyes, but a few minutes later there’s an almighty commotion from further down the trench and it seems unlikely that I will be able to sleep through it.

Perhaps the war has ended.

I wander in the direction of the noise, only to find Warren, who’s been here about six or seven weeks, I think, and is a first cousin of the late Shields, being held back by a group of men while Hobbs cowers on the ground in the very definition of supplication. He’s still laughing, though, and even as some of the men move to pick him up, there’s an expression of fear on their faces, as if they’re not entirely sure what might happen if they touch him.

“What the devil’s going on?” I ask Williams, who’s standing beside me, watching the proceedings with a bored expression on his face.

“It’s Hobbs,” he says, not even bothering to look at me. “Looks like he’s lost the plot. Came over to Warren while he was asleep and took a piss on him.”

“Jesus Christ,” I say, shaking my head and reaching into my pocket for a cigarette. “Why on earth would he do such a thing?”

“God knows,” shrugs Williams.

I watch the entertainment until two of the medics arrive and coax Hobbs to his feet. He starts babbling to them in some unfamiliar dialect and they take him away. As he turns the corner out of sight I hear him raise his voice again, shouting out the names of English kings and queens from Harold onwards in perfect order, a hangover from his schooldays perhaps, but his voice grows fainter around the House of Hanover and disappears altogether just after William IV. He’s taken to the medical tent, I presume, and from there will be shipped back to a field hospital. He’ll either be left there to rot or be cured of his ailment and sent back to the Front.