White and Other Tales of Ruin (35 page)

But right now wasn’t the time.

Now, I had to get home.

And Laura was there. Huddled on the doorstep like a shame-faced kid come home after her first night away. She was in a worse state than me, and when I saw her I burst into tears. She looked up, smiling and crying at the same time, and our tears weren’t of sadness or despair or fear. They were because never, ever have two people been so happy to see each other alive.

I knew what we were, and I whispered it into Laura’s ear as the world went on around us.

“
We’re survivors,” I said, “because there’s always a survivor.”

I believed that.
They
let us survive.

I know that I should tell people what I know and what I’ve seen, but somehow it feels secret and forbidden. And every time I work my way to doing so I see Laura sitting in the sunlight or browsing through a book or cooking us a meal, and I dread changing anything. It’s all so perfect now, it’s drawn us together, and it really feels as though we’re doing Janine — my wife, Laura’s mother — proud.

Besides, sometimes I see demons in the dark.

So I live with the guilt and bad memories, and the certainty that every time I go to a concert or sports match with Laura I can cast my eyes across the crowds, and know that amongst them there are people who will suffer an horrendous fate. Normal people who will find Hell, not because they need it, but because Hell needs
them
. For fodder.

I feel terrible. I hate myself for saying nothing.

But I live with it.

There are worse things in life, after all.

* * *

The First Law

1. THE DEVIL’S CHAPLAIN

On their fifth day adrift at sea, they saw an island.

At first, there were only teasing hints of land: a twisted clump of palm fronds; darting specks in the sky which may have been birds; a greenish tinge to the underside of the soft clouds in the north, just above the horizon. They should have felt impelled to paddle towards it, but five days of sun, thirst and heat had drained them of hope. They lay slumped in the boat, their skin red and blistered, tongues swollen, lips split and black with dried blood.

Their ship had been torpedoed and sunk five days earlier. So far as they knew, they were the only survivors. They had begun to feel cursed, not blessed.

“
I think there’s an island there,” Butch said, “unless the clouds are green with envy.” He was small, normally chipper, and one side of his face was badly bruised from the sinking. He knelt at the front of the lifeboat and stared out across the sea, a grotesque figurehead.

Roddy closed his eyes against the blazing sun, but still it found its way through. It was as though his eyelids were turning transparent through lack of sustenance. The lifeboat had been capsized when they found it, and any supplies previously stored on board had been swallowed by the sea. On the third day it had rained, and they had managed to trap enough water in cupped hands and bundled clothes for a few mouthfuls each. Since then, they had gone thirsty. Roddy felt life seeping from his body with every drop of sweat.

Ernie was the only officer with them, but thankfully he had refused to pull rank. He seemed to acknowledge, as they all did, that their position levelled anything so fleeting as grade. They had all been thrown together by the disaster of war, into the same class; that of survivor. So he prayed out loud instead, and at first his praying had helped, until Roddy had commented on how prayers had not aided the other three hundred of the ship’s crew. Since then Ernie had been sitting at the stern, spouting occasional brief outbursts of worship as if to goad the others into violence.

It was not that Roddy had no sense of religion. It simply felt redundant out here, in the middle of the ocean. Today, he thought, God was indifferent.

“
Definitely an island,” Butch said. “Look. Leaves, or something. Covered in bird shit, too.”

Roddy managed to raise his head and upper body until he was sitting up. Joints creaked in protest, he moaned in sympathy. His stomach felt huge and heavy and swollen. Ironic, seeing as he had not eaten for days. The sun beat at his forehead like a white-hot sledgehammer, trying to mould him all out of shape. He followed the direction Butch was indicating and saw an island of dead things floating by. But among the brown leaves, several huge egg shapes clung on with wispy tenacity.

“
Coconuts,” he said.

“
Must be migrating,” Butch commented.

Norris, apparently asleep until now, raised his hairy head. “Do they migrate?”

“
Stupid bastard,” Butch muttered, but it was to himself more than Norris. Survival may have thrown them together, but it could not change the way they all thought of the cook. He was unliked and unlikeable. He had been on three ships which had been sunk in the past year, and if anyone attracted the badge of Jonah, it was Norris. He took any such suggestion to heart and fought the man who made it, which only drove the gossip underground and made it harsher.

“
Shut your mouth, Norris,” Ernie said. “Of all the people God would choose to put on our boat of survivors —”

“
I put myself here, mate,” Butch cut in.

“
Of all the people,” Ernie continued, unabated, “we get you.”

Norris sat up and winced. “What do you mean by that, you trumped up shit?” His lips were bleeding. Skin had sloughed from his burnt forehead, and now hung down over his eyes. Roddy wondered vaguely whether it helped to keep the sun at bay, and almost put his hand up to his own forehead to see whether he was in the same state.

“
He means,” said Max, “that you’re a Jonah. A curse, a bad omen. You’re the ancient mariner, and you wear our lives around your scrawny neck.”

“
Ancient! You’re the ancient one, you old bastard. Look at you, big and bald...”

Norris trailed off when he saw that nobody was paying him any attention. Max did not bother to fill him in on the significance of what he had said. Butch was banging on the gunwale with the palm of his hand, trying to attract their attention. Max stood in the centre of the boat, and Roddy marvelled once again at his resilience. He was over six feet tall, big without being fat, bald as a baby and about as mild-mannered. The wrong man for a war, Roddy had always maintained. Max was intelligent, educated and sensitive, and Roddy had seen him cry more than once. He was also one of the bravest men Roddy knew. But his was a bravery gained by confronting his fears and grabbing them by the throat, not the blind boldness of rushing a machine-gun emplacement without a second thought. That bordered more on foolishness in Roddy’s book. Max was brave because he would never let his fears defeat him.

“
Now I see it,” Max said.

Butch stood as well, but became annoyed when he could not see the island.

“
Sit down, shorty,” Max growled. “I’m lookout for the next couple of hours.”

“
All heart, you are.” Butch sat but remained staring forward, as if willing the island into view.

By now it was obvious that the tides, winds and fate were carrying them towards the land hidden below the horizon. The ceiling of clouds reflected dull green, giving them a tantalising glimpse of what the island may contain. Hours passed. The sea lifted, tilted and dipped them closer. Ernie sat at the stern and said thanks to God. Hope had begun to bleed into their thoughts, reviving them, aggravating their hunger and thirst with possible assuagement on the island. Ernie prayed, and they all heard and wanted to believe him. Maybe God had been watching them, guiding them on their way with a wave of his hand, steering them towards the island, and salvation.

As darkness began to fall and the land slowly emerged out of the sea, Roddy felt an emptiness inside. It was as though he were looking at a nothing, a physical manifestation of the void in his beliefs. He tried to thank God, but found his thoughts as cold and as empty as the island before him appeared.

He looked around at his companions. None of them seemed inclined to paddle to reach land any quicker. It was as if they were all enjoying these final, brief moments cast aimlessly adrift.

The sounds from the island hurt their senses.

After five days at sea, with little more than the soporific waves and their own voices to listen to, the cacophony of the breaking waters was almost unbearable. Half a mile out from the island the sea smashed into a barely visible reef, turning white and violent. Their boat nudged its way through a toothless gap, as though guided in by a helping hand, and Ernie sat with his eyes closed and his mouth working, prayers tumbling forth like bodies from a sinking ship. Spray from the disturbed sea swept across the boat and soaked them. Roddy could not help opening his mouth and tasting the water; salt stung his dried and split lips, and the bitter tang of the sea drained once more into his throat.

“
Thank God,” Norris said, and Ernie agreed.

“
Can’t wait to meet the native women,” Butch called dryly.

“
Thought you had a missus at home,” Max said.

“
At home, yes.” Butch nodded, and Roddy could not help but laugh at his semi-serious expression. His laughter was short-lived. It was not the place for it, and they all felt that; silence reigned once more. Merriment did not sit right with the roar of the surf behind them.

When the boat nudged onto the beach, Roddy felt a sick lurch in his guts. Everything was suddenly real, solid, and he noticed the pattern of grain in the wood of the boat for the first time. He saw how some of the oar mountings had begun to rust and dribble a red stain onto the timber. He could feel the tightness of his shoes, the abrasiveness of their insides as though they were already full of sand. He was even aware of his own body, in more detail than at any time during the past five days. His bruised left elbow, where he had struck it jumping from the burning and sinking ship. The splinters in his hands and forearms, from his struggle to turn the capsized lifeboat upright. His memories held weight, too. He thought of Joan, his girlfriend back home, and realised that she had barely entered his mind since the sinking. Now, with the possibility of survival clear again, images of Joan were flashing back. Her willing smile, bottle-green eyes, generous nature. A hard, bitter kiss on the day he had left her to go to war. For a while he had thought that she was blaming him, but he knew now that her anger was directed elsewhere, at an unfairness impossible to personify. Her bitterness had stayed with him, transferred in the kiss.

The island was reminding him of who he was.

Butch climbed from the boat and fell drunkenly to his knees on the wet sand. Max followed, then Norris, who staggered further along the beach. He was staring beneath the palm trees skirting the sands.

“
Come on,” Roddy said to Ernie. The officer remained at the stern of the boat, unresponsive, rocking with the gentle movements of the lagoon. “Ernie!”

Ernie’s eyes blinked to life. Moisture replaced their dark sheen. “God brought us here,” he said, but it sounded more like a challenge than a statement.

“
Yes, sir, He did,” Roddy said, though he doubted any truth in his words. He would like to think it was the case, but his faith said no. His faith, drummed into him by his parents and peers, hanging in a void in his heart where truth ached to penetrate. “God brought us here.”

“
But why?” Ernie stood and walked unsteadily along the boat, pausing at the grounded bow. He looked down at the sand, staring at the smudged footprints of the others already on the beach. Then he glanced back at Roddy, and his voice was distorted. “Why?”

“
Why what?” Roddy asked, but the officer was climbing from the boat, stepping gingerly as if afraid that he would sink at any moment.

Roddy followed. He felt a moment of disorientation, so used was he to the constant movement of the boat. His stomach lurched as it tried to maintain the motion, then settled again. The sand was warm, even through his shoes.

Norris had wandered along the beach, the others waited in the shadow of palm trees. Leaves hung from the high branches, pointing down at the men like the wings of great sleeping bats.

Roddy fell to his knees with the others, wondering why he did not feel at all liberated. “At least it seems pretty verdant,” he said. “Where there are palms, there’s water, and birds, and animals. Fruit too. Food and water. Safety.”