The Lie (20 page)

‘Nearer to
Frederick
? Because you run when the bells ring?’

‘I don’t run, I walk. I’m not a little girl now.’

The bells rise to a clamour, and then they stop. Felicia doesn’t move.

‘One thing I do know,’ I say, jerking my thumb churchwards, ‘is that Frederick’s not down there.’

She tugs on her gloves. ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’

‘I came to mend the furnace, but I suppose you won’t agree to it, given it’s Sunday.’

‘Oh! I’d forgotten. I’m sorry, Dan. I ought to have remembered.’

‘Yes, you ought,’ I say. ‘You can’t go forgetting things you’ve agreed with other people, not if you want to keep your friends.’

‘Are you my friend, Dan?’ she asks, soft and wheedling, and smiling a little too, as if she thinks it’s funny to be the Felicia who can speak to me like this.

‘That’s not up for discussion.’

She laughs outright, a crow I haven’t heard out of her for ten years maybe, and then she strips off her gloves. Jeannie looks up at the sound of her mother laughing, and abandons the sowpig. ‘You’d better come inside,’ says Felicia. ‘Jeannie, come here. Let me take off your coat and hat, and you can play with your horse.’

‘Seeing as you’ve just damned your immortal soul, maybe you don’t need the furnace lit after all.’ And then I remember the eggs, and lift them out of my coat pocket tenderly, and give the bag to her. ‘New laid this morning,’ I say. She puts her fingers into the straw and strokes the shells.

‘They feel warm,’ she says. ‘Do you think they’d hatch, if I put them by the range?’

‘They’re for you to eat.’

‘I’ve got enough to eat.’

‘You don’t look as if you had.’

‘I’d like to keep chicks.’

‘They’re work, Felicia.’

‘I know that. But it would be nice to have them running about. Jeannie would like it. We haven’t even got a dog. I haven’t got a dog,’ she corrects herself.

‘You could get one.’

‘Of course I couldn’t. I don’t know where I’m going to be. You know I’m going to sell this house.’

This chills me so much I’m silent. Felicia’s life alarms me. She camps in the house as if she’s been billeted there, not as if it’s her home. She might forget to eat. She’s thin and pale enough as it is. When she piles her hair up on her head like that, and puts a hat on top, she looks as if the weight of it will break her neck.

‘I saw girls with bobbed hair in London,’ I say. ‘Running for omnibuses.’

Felicia makes herself busy with Jeannie, and doesn’t reply. I follow them into the house. Felicia takes off the little velvet coat and hat, and hangs them up carefully. I watch the bend and sway of her, and the line of her body as she stretches up to the peg. It’s hard to believe this child ever came out of Felicia’s body. I turn my thought away quickly. Under the coat, Jeannie is wearing a red woollen dress with smocking. Felicia takes a pinafore off another peg, and buttons the child into it.

‘Now you can play,’ she says.

‘You should have a peg low down for her, so she can reach it. She’d soon learn to hang up her own things. I’ll put in a peg for you if you like,’ I say.

Jeannie’s horse is a battered plush horse’s head on a pole, with a mane of real horsehair. I remember Felicia riding it. Jeannie is too young for that, but she sits on the floor with the horse’s head in her lap, and croons to it.

‘She loves that horse,’ says Felicia. ‘She takes it into bed with her.’

‘Can you leave her to play here, while we go down to the cellars?’

Felicia laughs. ‘Of course I can’t. You don’t know much about children, do you, Dan? I’m with her every hour of the day, unless Dolly has her. But I went down early to fetch her home, because I didn’t want Dolly taking her to chapel. Jeannie’d be frightened if I went down to the cellar and left her. I can carry her. It’ll be an adventure for her.’

‘I’ll carry her, if you like.’

‘You can try.’

I can see Felicia doesn’t expect the child to come to me. I pick her up, and she’s stiff in my arms at first, resisting, her face turned away. I’m afraid she’ll cry, so I gentle her as if she’s a pony we’ve stolen out of a field.

‘You’ll come down with me, won’t you, Jeannie? Your mother’s going to hold the light and we’re going to follow after her. You’ll be able to see her all the while.’

After a minute, I feel her body yield and curl into my shoulder. Felicia’s looking at me, her face softened.

She leads me back to the cellar steps. I duck down, shielding Jeannie’s head against the low doorway. This time Felicia has brought two lanterns, in spite of the brightness of the day.

‘I’ll show you where the tools for the furnace are kept.’

There are shovels, and curious long pokers with the end at right angles to the stem, brushes, wrenches, pliers, a selection of flue brushes. I hand Jeannie to her mother and go back and forth with the tools until everything I might need is laid out on the stone floor in front of the furnace. There’s a tool which levers open the furnace door. Inside, there’s the dry smell of combustion. I empty everything: Josh has laid the furnace with paper, wood and coal, then coke in a pyramid above it. The paper has caught, but the wood is singed, no more. I riddle out under the grate, and remove the clinker. There’s not much there. I take the flue brushes, the longest first, and angle it up the chimney. I jab it as far as I can from side to side, but there’s no rush of soot, as there was in the cottage. Some dirt falls, again not much. I go back down the passage, to see if Felicia’s waiting with Jeannie, but the cellars are empty. She must have taken the child back upstairs.

We used to be able to crawl into the passages that led to the hot-air ducts. We could only do it when the furnace was cold, in summer. They were wide enough for a child. And maybe wider than that. I remember us scampering down them like rats, not having to squeeze ourselves.

It’s cold down here. I hunker in front of the furnace again, and contemplate it. There must be a blockage deeper in the system, which is making the furnace shut down before it’s properly alight. I lift the lantern high. Over in the corner of the furnace room, there’s a gap at the side of the inward air shaft, where the chicken wire that should cover it is broken. The gap is big enough for a rat, or a bird. If a creature came in and flew about, it might become trapped; but where? It would need to be within some sensitive part of the mechanism.

The furnace sits like a spider in the heart of its web. We used to play games in the tunnels. I remember sitting tight for what seemed like hours, barely breathing, listening for footfalls or the shuffle of Frederick on his hands and knees. The biggest tunnel is opposite the furnace. I don’t know what its purpose is. Unlike the other ducts, its brickwork has no metal lining. Maybe it was built for a purpose that was later abandoned.

The tunnel draws me to it. I know I won’t solve the problem of the furnace by scrambling about in the bowels of the house, but I want to. Felicia is upstairs, far away. This house is too solidly built for me to hear any sound from above ground.

We used to put a wooden box beneath the opening of the tunnel, so that we could climb up and then inside. I remember that now. Even for a grown man, the height is awkward. I put my hands on the brickwork, heave and haul myself upwards. It’s much more effort than I remember, and I’m too big. My body fills up the space and my head bangs against the roof of the tunnel. I scrabble for a handhold, wriggle, kick myself inside. Now I’m lying full length, and it’s easier. There’s not enough room to get up on all fours, but I can push myself along, using my elbows. It’s not dark in here, not truly dark. I feel safe. The tunnel doesn’t narrow, but it comes to an angle where my body remembers turning once, easily, eeling with a child’s elasticity around the corner. I can’t do that now. I turn on to my side, tuck my head down and lead with my right shoulder, pushing myself forward with the tips of my boots. I’m moving. I’m going round.

Halfway, my boots lose their grip. I am wedged. I’m not going to make the turn. I can’t go forward, and as I flail my feet for a grip, I know I can’t go back either. There is nothing to push against. I’m in the wrong position.

Slow. Slow. Think about it. Don’t let yourself panic, boy. You do that, you’re stuck for sure. Inch by inch, grating the side of my head against brick, I turn my head. The head is the biggest part, you’ve got to get that through.

O dream of joy is this indeed O dream of joy is this indeed O dream of joy O dream of joy O dream

Don’t let yourself think beyond the line, Dan boy. Don’t go beyond the line. There’s nothing behind you. Breathe steady now. Go steady. Go on.

I come round that corner like a fish, as if something’s pulling me. Now it’s dark for sure. The tunnel’s widened out somehow. I don’t remember it being like this. I feel behind me. There’s chicken wire over the brickwork. Or is it brickwork? It feels too cold and damp for that. There’s a smell of rotting sandbags. Damp has got into this house for sure. Maybe old Dennis built it over a stream without knowing it.

This dugout is like the Savoy
.

You’ve never been in the Savoy in your life, you old blowviator
.

‘Frederick?’

I shuffle until my back is against the wall. He slumps beside me, head down to his chest. The effort of getting into the dugout has exhausted him. I’ve done most of the work, pushing and shoving, holding him so he doesn’t fall into the mud and water at the bottom of the shell-hole. I’m afraid for his leg but more afraid to leave us exposed.

I put out my hand and feel the rough brickwork of the tunnel underneath Albert House. I’m in a muddle. Tiredness does that to you. You think you’re doing one thing when you’re really doing another. You even think that you’re awake when you’re asleep. Men have been shot for that. You can march asleep on your feet.

I’m in the dugout in the side of the shell-hole. I’m under Albert House. Those two things are true, and I go in and out of them. The thing that doesn’t change is that Frederick is here. I shift position, and he also shifts. He’s sleeping, after all the effort of getting here. The weight of him is a real thing, slumped against me. I put my right arm around his shoulders, to support him. He is dense, heavy, cold. This is how I know he isn’t a ghost. You can put your hand through a ghost, and not feel it. He won’t feel it either. But even though he’s so deeply asleep, Frederick knows I’m here. He sighs, and turns his head in towards me.

Why didn’t I think of looking for him here? Of course a man would come home to his own house.

‘Frederick,’ I say again, not expecting an answer, just wanting to say his name aloud. He isn’t ready to speak yet. He only wants to sit here, leaning against me, drifting deep. I hitch myself more comfortably, and get a firmer hold of him so that he won’t slip away. Maybe I’m imagining it, but he seems a little warmer now. Slowly, slowly, the cold of him will give way. It can take as long as it takes. I’m in no hurry. There’s nowhere in the world I’d rather be.

‘You’re all right here with me, boy,’ I tell him. ‘We’ll cuddy down, shall we?’

I can feel him smile against my arm. I know why he’s smiling. It’s because I’m talking like me, not like him. Not like any of those books in the Dennis library either. I hold him as close as I can and rock him, hardly moving him because I don’t want to hurt his leg. I rock him in the same way that blood rocks inside the body without showing on the surface, on and on. All the while I’m opening inside myself, the way I never have before. I don’t know even what there is inside me. Darkness, maybe, more and more of it, velvety and not raw the way it is when you stare into the night, full of the dread of morning. I rock Frederick even more gently. We’re neither of us moving now.

I don’t think we’re in the cellars of Albert House. The sides of the shell-hole are wet. There’s a hell of a noise outside, like a thousand furnaces exploding. I feel it coming through the earth. Perhaps it’s time for the evening hate. As long as they don’t come to retake their listening post before dark, we have a chance. The whole day has passed and they haven’t come. When it’s dark, we can crawl. I can carry him on my back. I’m strong enough for that. I’ll get him out somehow.

‘How’s the old leg now, Frederick?’

He doesn’t answer. Saving his energy, I know. He understands about the dark coming down again, and that the night is our chance. We can’t stay here. He does smell of blood. It’ll be drying now, crusting over. Down in the water at the bottom of the shell-hole there’s the plop of a rat. It might be a frog. At night you hear them croaking. There are hundreds of them in the shell-holes. Creatures come from all over. They’re perfectly at home, even though this place is like nowhere the world has ever seen. Frogs and crows, rats and beetles, the fattest bluebottles you ever saw in your life. Cockroaches. As for magpies, the churned-up clods are thick with them. It beats me where they all come from. When you put out your hand in the morning there are slugs all over the sandbags.

Blanco had a slug trail across his face, right to the corner of his mouth, and the slug was in his hair. You should have heard him yell when I told him. His hands flailed up in his hair. I’d have said a rat was worse. But mostly rats won’t bite a living body. They’ll walk over you but they know the dead from the living.

Frederick does smell of blood. Better leave it until we can get him to a dressing station. A light wound you can dress. Anything more serious, leave it be unless you know what you’re doing.

‘Not long to wait now,’ I say. ‘It’s getting dark. We’ll soon have you out of here.’

I think I’ve been asleep. Time jumps forward, then it joins up again. My mouth feels swollen. I want water. There’s water in the bottom of the shell-hole, shining. If I go down I’ll never be able to climb back. I’m sure there are rats in the water. They swim with just their whiskers showing, and their eyes. The dugout is high up in the slope of the shell-hole, not far from the top. The Germans have even cut steps up to the lip of the crater, so as to get up and down easily. This shell-hole does them credit. They were listening to us all the while. Telephoning to their artillery the time of our attack. A very thorough approach, as Mr Tremough used to say.