Another World (19 page)

‘No, but it wasn’t because I was hanging on to it as raw material or anything like that. I couldn’t destroy it because it had his voice on it. It’s just something you can’t do – like tearing up a photograph. It’s – you don’t do it if you love the person. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but he specifically asked me not to tell any of the family. I felt I had to respect that.’

‘Do you think you can tell me now?’

‘I think
he
can tell you now.’

One tape removed, another inserted. A squeak and gibber of distorted voices, and then Geordie’s in the room, as strong and vigorous as he’d always been, until a few short months ago.

GEORDIE:
No, well, you see the idea was you all joined up together – a big crowd of us lads from the factory all went along together, and yeah, I think the idea was it was a big adventure. Not even that really, bit of a laugh. Better than the factory.

A long silence filled with the tape’s asthmatic breath. He’s in no hurry to talk about this.

HELEN:
So you and Harry were together from the start?

GEORDIE:
We were in the same company. They didn’t do that so much, after the Somme, they learned the hard way. There were families, whole streets, where the lads were wiped out. After that they split brothers up.

HELEN:
Too late for you and Harry.

GEORDIE:
Yes.

HELEN:
What was it like being together?

GEORDIE:
Ah, well, now, what was it like? Well, you know, Helen, in my young days, men weren’t supposed to be frightened. If you were, you didn’t own up to it, it was something you were ashamed of. Now it’s all gone the other way. The idea now is: everybody’s frightened all the time. War, I’m talking about. Trouble is, that isn’t true either. Not everybody’s equally frightened all the time. There are some men who’re – I won’t say fearless. But as good as. Because fear to them’s like putting petrol in the engine. Harry was like that.

HELEN:
Did you mind that?

GEORDIE:
No, I was proud of him. In the run-up to the Somme there were these tremendous bombardments, they were supposed to be cutting the German wire to ribbons. And there was this officer in our company, he just didn’t believe it. He used to take parties out cutting the wire, he used to say, if I cut the bugger meself I know it’s been cut. This night – it was more like a raid than a patrol, they were waiting, their faces blacked up, helmets on, all you could see was the whites of their eyes and their teeth. I patted Harry on the back, and I says, Good luck, Harry. And they all bust out laughing, it was the wrong man. Well, no harm done, give ’em a laugh, but you know ever since – and I can’t get this out of me head – ever since there’s a part of me mind that thinks, If only I’d recognized him, if only I’d said, Good Luck to the right man, he wouldn’t have died.

Is that all?
Nick thinks. One tiny incident magnified by a lifetime’s guilt at having survived. He opens his mouth to speak, but Helen raises her hand.

GEORDIE:
Jerry twigged it. A flare goes up, all hell’s let loose. They all come crashing back into the trench, and I’m looking from one blacked-out face to another, trying to find Harry, and they’re worse now than they were when they set out. It’s just lumps of mud, walking. One of them’s bleeding. ‘Where’s Harry?’ And the officer counted them, one missing. And after the shells coming over died down a bit you can hear this scream, and it goes on and on and on. I know I’ve got to go out.

A long silence. When he starts to speak again it’s in a more reflective tone.

GEORDIE:
One thing they drilled into you: you don’t stop for the wounded, never stop for them, doesn’t matter who it is, you don’t stop. You don’t go back for them, you don’t risk your life for them, you don’t risk anybody else’s life. And of course they’d got to drill it in, because the natural thing is to look after them. You’ve been living together, training together. But at this stage, you know, we were still innocent. In lots of ways, I think we were. And there was a feeling that with brothers, it was different. You were almost expected to do it. And so when I said I wanted to go out, nobody stopped me. I’m scooping up mud, it’s cold, I’m rubbing it on me face and the backs of me hands, and then I’m off. It’s like being naked. Out there, I mean. It’s like the trench walls are part of your body and when they’re not there any more you feel… skinned. Harry shouts – I’m virtually sure this is true – ‘Don’t come out.’ But of course I keep going. Just as I’m crawling the last few feet a flare goes up, he’s screaming, all I can see is the mouth, little blue slitty eyes, and his guts are hanging out. I touch his leg. He knows I’m there because he goes still. I suppose he might have thought I’d come to take him back. And then he starts screaming again and that’s easier because I know I’ve got to stop him making that noise. I’m crawling up his side, all I can see is the open mouth, and my fingers are digging into his chest, finding the right place and then I ram the knife in and the screaming stops.

Silence. Nick looks at Helen, and sees from her face now how she floundered and groped for words then.

HELEN:
It must be terrible to kill somebody you love.

GEORDIE:
Yes, it must be.

Helen was closer to the microphone than Geordie. Nick hears the intake of breath.

HELEN:
You didn’t hate him.

GEORDIE:
Didn’t I?

HELEN
: You said yourself you were proud of him.

GEORDIE:
I was proud of him when I was a kid, some of the time. The rest of the time I hated him.

HELEN:
But that’s a child’s hatred, Geordie. Kids are always saying they hate people, they wish they were dead, but they don’t mean it. They don’t act on it.

GEORDIE:
They don’t get the chance, do they, most of the time? But –

HELEN:
Yes?

GEORDIE:
It’s not that. You see, when I’m remembering all this, it’s like falling through a trapdoor into another room, and it’s still going on. I don’t remember the mud on my face, I feel it, it’s cold, gritty. And I see everything like that, until I get to Harry’s wounds. And then what I see in my mind’s eye is something like fatty meat coming out of a mincing machine. And you know I’ve seen lots of men disembowelled, and it’s not like that. It’s… I know that what I remember seeing is false. It can’t have been like that, and so the one thing I need to remember clearly, I can’t. Nothing vague about it, you understand. It’s as clear as this hand… only it’s wrong. So how do I
know
I couldn’t have got him back?

HELEN:
How do you know it wasn’t murder?

GEORDIE:
Yes, that’s it. Exactly that.

Helen presses stop and ejects the tape. Nick says, ‘ “I am in hell.”’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you think that’s survivor’s guilt?’

‘No.’ She ignores the spurt of aggression. ‘I think it’s pretty much what happened.’

‘And he was alone with that. There was never anybody to say, “You did the right thing.”’

‘No, all he had to go on was his own memory. And it let him down.’

‘You know that bit about the mud, actually still feeling it? I think I finally understand something, because I don’t remember him saying: “I am in hell.” I hear him say it. Quite loud, almost shouting. I was pulling out at the top roundabout, and…’ He makes as if to hit himself in the eye. It’s easy to tell her about the voice. What he can’t tell her about is the scent of Antaeus, though it’s been in the room since he arrived, and it’s growing stronger by the minute.

She comes closer, and stands looking down at him, clinking the ice cubes round her glass, groping for something to say that will carry some comfort. ‘You can’t sum up a person’s life in their last words. I mean, think of all the people who must have said, “I need the bedpan.” Think of George V. “Bugger Bognor.”’

They manage a laugh. He looks up at her. Slowly, she puts the glass down. Nick feels a moment of self-doubt. He doesn’t know whether it’s the proximity of death that’s caused this overwhelming lust, or if that’s just an excuse. The scent’s overpowering now. She places her hands gently on either side of his head, muffling all sounds, all voices, even his own, and then, leaning forward, very gently, her legs between his spread thighs, she presses his head to her breasts.

TWENTY

Nick spends the last few hours before Geordie’s funeral tackling the house rose, cutting branches and tearing away handfuls of dead twigs and leaves. It’s a wonderful, addictive job, like eating peanuts, and it’s not possible to think of anything else at all. He’s wrestling with a particularly intractable knot when: ‘Careful,’ Miranda says, steadying the ladder, and her concern brings him back to himself. ‘Fran says it’s time to get ready.’ ‘All right, love. Tell her I won’t be long.’

He goes upstairs, changes into his funeral suit, and then goes down to greet the relatives who’re coming in the cars to church. They’d decided to leave the coffin lid open, and now he’s glad of it, for most of the mourners are old enough to want to observe the custom of saying goodbye to the dead face to face. Nick’s reluctant to go into the room himself. He’s not sure he can bring himself to search for further changes of expression, but in the end he does. Miranda stands by the coffin stoically lifting the face cloth for each one as they come and go. ‘Doesn’t he look peaceful?’ they all say, because it’s what you do say, as conventional a response as wishing a bride happiness. Nick looks at Geordie’s face and hears his voice again: ‘I am in hell.’

It’s accompanied him throughout the five days since Geordie’s death, like a cerebral parasite. He wakes in the morning knowing he’s heard it in his sleep. He stands by the coffin, resting his hand on the polished wood, and prays for silence.

They all retreat into the kitchen while the undertakers’ men take the coffin out, then troop down the drive and into the cars. Driving with Frieda in the first car Nick fixes his eyes on the hearse in front with the pale wooden coffin and its white wreaths on top. Barbara’s sent flowers, which is good of her, she needn’t have bothered, and there are bouquets of spring flowers from the great-grandchildren.

Walking into church behind the coffin, shuffling slowly along, he’s aware of faces. No more than three rows full in the front of the church, but then, leaving a respectful gap between themselves and the family, come the packed rows of neighbours, and friends from the British Legion: the seventy- and eighty-year-olds for whom he’d been a kind of mascot, presiding, ramrod straight, over their increasingly stooped and bowed gatherings.

I know that my redeemer liveth and that he shall stand in the last day upon the earth
.

Following the coffin down the aisle, Nick wonders whether Geordie had believed anything so grand. Somehow the subject of religion never came up. He’d not been able to answer any of the Vicar’s questions about Geordie’s beliefs. They file into the pew. Nick’s relieved when the intoning of these certainties is over, and the hymn begins. In the choice of hymns they’d been on firmer ground. Geordie was a great singer of hymns in the bath, and the more sonorous and resounding they were the better.

Oh God, our help in ages past,

Our hope for years to come,

Our shelter from the stormy blast,

And our eternal home.

He’d have approved of that. As does the congregation, whose, for the most part, frail and quavery voices are buoyed up by the familiar tune.

Beneath the shadow of Thy Throne

Thy saints have dwelt secure;

Sufficient is Thine Arm alone,

And our defence is sure.

Among the memorial tablets lining the north wall is one belonging to a man who’d have gone bankrupt if his contemporaries had believed the last verse. Nick’s surprised to see the name Fanshawe, until he reflects that while they lived at Lob’s Hill this would have been their parish church, just as now it’s his.

Time, like an ever rolling stream,

Bears all its sons away;

They fly forgotten, as a dream

Dies at the opening day.

An odd thought for a funeral, when everybody’s promising to remember for ever, but then again he hears Geordie say: ‘I am in hell.’ Present tense, the tense in which his memories of the war went on happening. A recognized symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder, a term Geordie probably never knew. Though he knew the symptoms well enough, he knew what it did to the perception of time. The present – remote, unreal; the past, in memory, nightmare, hallucination, re-enactment, becoming the present. I
am
in hell.

But suddenly, as the congregation thunders out the final verse, Nick begins to feel angry on Geordie’s behalf. It’s too easy to dismiss somebody else’s lived experience as a symptom of this, that, or the other pathology: to label it, disinfect it, store it away neatly in slim buff files and prevent it making dangerous contact with the experience of normal people. But suppose, Nick wants to shout at rows of faceless white-coats, suppose you’re wrong and he was right. Suppose time can slow down. Suppose it’s not an ever rolling stream, but something altogether more viscous and unpredictable, like blood. Suppose it coagulates around terrible events, clots over them, stops the flow. Suppose Geordie experienced time differently, because, for him, time was different? It’s nonsense, of course. And just as well, because if true, it would be a far more terrible truth than anything the passage of time can deliver. Recovery, rehabilitation, regeneration, redemption, resurrection, remembrance itself, all meaningless, because they all depend on that constantly flowing stream. But then Geordie’s truth had been terrible. Ultimately, for him, all those big words had meant nothing. Neither speech nor silence had saved him.
I am in hell
.

…
And our eternal home. Amen
. With a rustling of thin paper, an epidemic of emphysemic coughs, the congregation sits down, and listens to the Vicar doing his creditable best to speak poignantly and justly about a man he had never known.

Afterwards Helen reads the beatitudes, and then they follow the coffin out into the churchyard, and stand around the open grave, the hot sun beating down on to the backs of their necks. Nick’s funeral suit is made of winter-weight wool. Within a few minutes he’s feeling queasy and wishing the Vicar would hurry up. Miranda’s wearing a short black dress. Fran’s outrageously bright in raspberry pink, but what can she do? She has no black maternity wear, and it’s too close to the birth to buy a new dress. Gareth looks bored, though he wanted to come, apparently. Frieda, perfectly turned out, black from head to toe, looks satisfied and anxious, which means it’s gone all right so far, but there’s still the tea to come.

The grave’s lined with plastic grass, and he’s sorry for that. When the time comes he picks up a handful of earth and throws it on to the coffin lid. He sees Geordie’s face lifted up as the clods of earth land a few inches from his nose. Don’t say it, Nick pleads. Silence. Perhaps he’s appeased at last, or merely waiting some more opportune time.

Then it’s over. They can go home.

Frieda says, ‘It’s just as well we got that extra joint,’ and so it is, for once the first hush and nervousness are over, they’re a hungry as well as a noisy crowd. Miranda goes among them with a tray of drinks and soon port-wine complexions are turning an even richer hue, and the papery skins of old ladies are developing a hectic flush on a couple of glasses of sweet sherry.

Nick talks to some cousins he hasn’t seen for years and will probably not see again until Auntie Frieda goes, though Geoffrey, by the looks of him, might go before her. Geoffrey is Harry’s son, a frail old man, leaning on a stick. Looking at him, Nick sees a small boy emerging from the Scout Hut, his tummy stretched to bursting point with jelly and custard, boasting to his pal about how much he’s had to eat. ‘I’d rather have me dad.’ And little Geoffrey’s face falling, as, for the first time, he connected the treats with his missing father. ‘Never knew my father,’ he says to Nick, accepting a glass of beer instead of the wine that disagrees with his stomach. ‘So Uncle Geordie was always a bit of a hero to me.’

In the womb when Harry was killed. There must be hundreds, thousands, probably, like him, Nick thinks, white-haired sons and daughters of murdered children.

He stands and looks around, proud of his family, proud even of Gareth, who’s handing round miniature sausage rolls and politely answering questions from people who don’t know where he fits in.

But the heat of the room and the thick suit’s making Nick feel sick. He doesn’t feel he can remove his jacket, but surely now he’s entitled to slip out for a quick cigarette. The buzz of voices dies abruptly as he steps out of the french windows. Groping in his pocket for cigarettes and lighter, he goes round the side of the house where he’s least likely to be disturbed. Decaying cabbages, with their flabby, mysteriously runed stalks and thick yellow smell, line the path. He hears footsteps coming round the corner of the house, and braces himself for more condolences, but it’s only Miranda.

‘I’ve brought you this’ – handing him a glass of beer so cold the glass is sweating. ‘You looked boiled, Dad.’

‘I feel it.’ He doesn’t know what she looks like. In the past few days the long hair and skirts have gone. Instead, there’s a short, rather jagged hairstyle and what used to be called, in his younger days, a pussy pelmet. Eighteen, that’s what she looks like. ‘I’ll be glad when this is over.’

They sit together in silence for a while. Then: ‘I’m going home tomorrow,’ she says.

Home. It hurts. ‘You will ring me and let me know if there’s anything I can do?’

She smiles, irony just perceptible in the depths of her eyes, like the glint of a fish turning. He knows, she knows, there’s nothing he can do.

Upstairs, Gareth, who’s eaten a sausage roll, is flossing his teeth. As his fingers see-saw the thread between the difficult back teeth, he keeps his gaze fixed on his eyes in the glass. Hanging on a nail beside the toothbrushes, there’s Nick’s grandfather’s mirror, the one he used to use for shaving, though it’s made of steel, and makes your face look swollen and blurred. Last night, Nick was telling Gran about seeing Geordie’s body taken out in a body bag, and how horrible it was. When Gareth’s grandad died, he was sent upstairs out of the way, he wasn’t supposed to see anything, but he did. He looked out of the spare room window and saw them humping this black plastic sack, and Nick’s right, it was horrible. Gareth spits, and swirls away the pinky splat. Then he replaces his toothbrush, and reaches for Nick’s, intending to do the usual brisk rub round the lavatory bowl. Only he feels he can’t do that now. He looks at the toothbrush in his hand and returns it to the rack.

Downstairs, the chattering rises to a climax before at last the first few people begin to say goodbye. By responding very loudly, Frieda manages to indicate to everybody that it’s time they were off.

Nick follows Geoffrey out to his car, then copes with the rush of people who are suddenly leaving, wondering, as he shakes hands and thanks them for coming, whether all the funerals they attend are as cheerful as this. Probably not. Geordie’s death has convinced these seventy- and eighty-year-olds that there’s life in the old dog yet. He’d been twenty years older than any of them, and so the pretence of grief was rapidly abandoned. This wasn’t mourning for somebody who’d died so much as a celebration of somebody who’d gone on cheating death for years. He turns, hand outstretched, and it’s Helen. Kissing her, he’s aware of the scent of Antaeus, fading. Not on his chin either – somehow he doubts if he’ll ever finish the bottle. He watches her walk away, sifts through his mind for a trace of guilt or regret, finds none. At last, his arm around Fran’s shoulders, he can stand in the doorway and wave the last of them goodbye.

Frieda’s playing with Jasper in the kitchen. They’ve become good friends in a short time, these two, and it’s just as well since she and Fran have arranged for her to move in at the time of the birth. Life’s sorting out, settling down, arranging itself into new patterns. Even Gareth seems happier, amazed to find that at his new school in York computers are on the timetable, in every classroom, one for each pupil.

But for Nick, among all the green shoots, there’s still the ache of loss. And so, when the dishwasher’s been loaded, the paper plates thrown away, leftovers wrapped in clingfilm and stored in the freezer, he says, if nobody minds, he thinks he’d like to go back to the church. He’s afraid Miranda might want to come with him, or Frieda, but Miranda’s got packing to do, and Frieda says she’s going to put her feet up and thinks Fran should do the same.

It’s not dark, or anywhere near dark, when he gets to the churchyard, but the sun’s moved round behind the church, and its shadow lies, thick and black, over the graveyard. Going straight to the grave, he’s surprised to find it already filled in, and wreaths piled on top to hide the raw earth. Damp moss, wrapped round the stalks of one bouquet, has dribbled wet through the cellophane of the dedication card, blurring the words: ‘In loving memory.’

Nick stands and looks down, then moves along to the grave, a few feet further on, where Grandad’s parents are buried, deriving some consolation from his family’s long attachment to this place. He finds himself looking for Harry’s name, and then remembers.