Hero (18 page)

CHAPTER 25

Elsa

M
y sinews are alive, and the blood rushes in my ears. It's the same feeling I had immediately before diving in front of the train to rescue Lucy's rag doll. Might it be the rumble and clang of the railway that drives me to desperation? Does the noise echo Beaumont-Hamel as it is filtered through my imagination? The feeling intensifies as the brakes grind hard and the hiss of steam fills the compartment.

After ignoring her for the whole journey, Mrs. Jenson has just thrown her daughter the feeblest of smiles. A five-year-old should be restless, but Lucy has been unnaturally still on the seat beside me. I reached out to her forehead and stroked her hair, suspecting already the child would derive no comfort from the gesture, but unable to do nothing. Although she turned back to the glass, my fingertips caught the touch of her sigh, and it's this sensation that remains: the whisper of displaced air as soft and subtle as the movement under a butterfly's wing.

Something heaves in my chest, an emotion I hardly recognize, especially as it incorporates an element directed at Mrs. Jenson. Up to this moment I have only ever felt for her pity and sisterhood. But as she rises and picks up her purse, directing a quick, nervous smile to the space between Lucy and me, the unrest in my blood names itself as anger and Mrs. Jenson is in the eye of the storm, if only because she has dragged her daughter onto the battlefield. I know she's only a small spoke of a vast, rotating wheel, and that my real enemy is war. War is the culprit that has requisitioned us all, thwarting our energies, either making us barren by killing our men or kidnapping our children. War has stripped the young trees of their bark. It has withered the fruit on the bough.

As I start to rise, easing Lucy from her seat, the steam clears from the window, revealing bright daubs of sun on the station's wrought iron roof supports. Patches of sharp light emblazon the platform's paving, turning grey concrete to cornflower yellow. Before we shuffle from our compartments, the first alighting passengers appear before the window—a lady in a fuchsia dress with black gloves, two lads with cloth caps, a blond-haired child with a mouth like a tulip, red windmill grasped tight in one hand, the other held by a stooping young lady in a shimmering blue dress. The summer seems wildly out of place to me suddenly, a clown at a funeral service. This single thought, and a backward glance at Lucy—at her hair catching some of the gold, at the head of the upturned rag doll being dragged along the compartment floor—brings a wave of agitation surmounting all that has gone before. This time, I tell myself, it is all too much. I say I am against war, yet here I am, ambling along with the rest of them, leading a child into the firing line. Why isn't Lucy at a picnic on the beach? Why is she not holding a cheerful red windmill rather than a grubby rag doll? It's obscene to me suddenly that the summer seems out of place rather than we two women crawling sideways like grim, unthinking crabs, delivering a child into the jaws of some unfathomable conflict.

I catch an exchange from the murmuring line of people in the corridor ahead of us. “Would that impress you?” a tall man with a thin neck seems to ask through the general hubbub, although he doesn't stoop or look in anyone's direction as he speaks.

“Of course it would,” replies an older woman in a broad, feathered hat. But as the line moves on they break apart, the young man moving ahead, and it seems that they are not of the same travelling party at all. Imaginary words dissolve into the scuff of suitcases and shoes, and I try to shrug off a tingle of déjà vu.

By the time we're stepping down the polished metal steps into the milling chaos of the platform, my heart is pounding. I touch Mrs. Jenson on the shoulder, and she turns to me, her eyes clear and trusting with the hint of appeal in the sudden contraction of the irises. I wonder if I have the courage after all.

“I'll take Lucy to the bathroom, Mrs. Jenson.”

Aware of a strain in my voice, and of something missing—a meeting point would have made sense, I realize—I make sure to await her response. She doesn't seem to take it in at first, and I feel as though I must have babbled in some foreign tongue.

“Yes,” she says, distracted by a porter. “Yes, you should. Meet me outside.”

I stoop and take Lucy's limp hand. She turns slowly, but not reluctantly, the foot of her rag doll in her mouth. My imagination spins forward in time, to the gap in the fence beside platform 1 where I have seen boys without tickets evade railway security, to Mrs. Jenson standing at the station entrance, glancing nervously at her silver watch, to Lucy and I scurrying down the street towards the town centre, merging with shoppers and merchants' boys, or perhaps hiding in the station cafeteria until the Norwich-London express roars in for its three-minute pause. Then, veiled by puffs of steam, shielded from Mrs. Jenson's view by trunks and yelling porters, we are climbing aboard in the first stage of a great act of transformation, emerging on the other side of our journey into a true world of childhood with games, rhymes, and bedtime stories that weave their way into happy dreams and uninterrupted sleep.

But at my second step, Mrs. Jenson calls.

“Stop, Elsa. I'll take Lucy.”

She descends upon us like a great moth and, fluttering in quiet agitation, directs a nervous, desperate smile at her daughter, easing the rag doll's foot out of her mouth. Then she turns with a soft, helpless look towards me. “I'll take Lucy,” she merely repeats, and I can't help but be moved by the ache in her voice. Allowing the child's hand to fall from mine, I suppress a swirl of threatening tears.

Mrs. Jenson leads her daughter off, stooping all the way, whispering some unheeded endearments to her child. They disappear behind the red-brick recess that hides the station washrooms.

I stand upon the concrete, lost and squinting against the sun, wondering for whom the helpless water of grief is rising. Is it for the mother who cannot protect or for the woman who cannot bring herself to mother? Or am I holding back tears for the child whose youth has drained from her, apparently unnoticed and certainly unchecked? My attempt—thwarted, thank God—was insane, monstrous. Even as sentiments sway inside me, my heart is pounding with relief at my own narrow escape—such desperate, terrifying folly.

I, myself, am an engine out of control. But knowing this does not help in the least. The chilled water of self-awareness merely adds steam to my fire, adding both unpredictability and an agonizing detachment. I know that when the dam breaks again, that when I next jump in front of a moving object, or try to steal another woman's child, I will experience the exquisite horror of observing myself as an onlooker might observe me. It's as though helplessness is a disease and after seven years of feeling helpless over the lives and deaths of others, I am infected. Now I am helpless over myself.

CHAPTER 26

Simon

B
elow, the factory floor is quiet at last. The men must have gone on their morning break.

Up until a few moments ago, every scrape of palette against concrete was like an eruption in my skull. Several times, I thought of leaving, only to be held here like a prisoner by the dread of my workers' curious glances, by the terrible sense of failure that must come from returning to the open air, and by this pounding head and the multitude of fears it spawns—fear of the sun, fear of reflections, fear of sudden noises.

Coombs knocked only once, and then even more timidly than usual, to tell me about a shipment of horses' hides. His eyes and mouth were a quiver of disquiet, and he clearly knew something was up. I have not seen a mirror, but I know I must look quite brutal. I told him I was ill and he seemed rather relieved. I suppose it didn't occur to him that I could be lying, that I'm hardly going to admit to drunkenness, nightmares, and marital difficulties. What would he think if he had witnessed me earlier this morning, trying to gain entry to the Salvation Army hostel, then wandering the docks in search of a man-sized crevice in the grime-encrusted maze of factory buildings, or a safe, secluded place on the quay where something could be secretly offloaded? What would he think if he had seen me return to the corner nearest the hostel, waiting and watching as the men spilled from the doorway into the street? A masochistic urge wants to blow the illusion away and let everyone who works for me stare upon the obscenity that happens to be the truth. But this impulse is merely the need to be free from myself, to crawl out of my own husk, to allow others to spit and throw stones while I ease myself away to a different reality. Perhaps I'm a great deal less complicated than I like to believe, or perhaps it is merely the headache from which I crave escape. My imagination has enlarged my grotesque behaviour, giving it tragic proportions it does not deserve. This second explanation, once encountered, seems the most likely: I am so crass, so simple, that a cessation of all physical pain will instantly return me to equilibrium. Once the headache clears, I will pick up my pen, issue orders, and take up my duties afresh.

There's a thud on the staircase below, followed by a creak. The break in the silence is as unwelcome as it is unexpected. A glance at the grandfather clock confirms that the men have been gone less than five minutes and should not return for another five. The sound repeats—clop, creak, thud—a combination of movements that seems at once careful and clumsy, slow yet determined, as of someone trying to negotiate the first few stairs with a heavy weight on his shoulder. I sigh at the prospect of another of Coombs's timorous entries, this time no doubt with a sample of leather and a question that he is probably more qualified to answer than I.

The noise follows upon itself immediately. The climber, it seems, is gaining momentum as he ascends. I stare at the clock again as though appealing against this intrusion. The position of the black hands, indicating five past nine, the minute hand just beginning to bulge the line angling down from the figure 1, seems ominous suddenly, a warning that order has somehow gone awry.

The next cluster of movements—a knock, thud, scrape, and creak—is much closer this time. Whoever approaches has reached the top of the open staircase. My stomach, which has been steadily churning with whisky-induced nausea all morning, has stilled, and my headache unexpectedly lifts. The knocks and thuds—they are too irregular to be called foot–steps—are on a level with the office now, and getting louder.

With lightning-flash clarity, the realization strikes. I know who it is. The knowledge, once gained, cannot be lost, however much I might wish to lose it. Meeting Smith now, face-to-face, in the seclusion of my own office—the deepest recess of my private territory—is unthinkable, the idea simply beyond endurance. I was fired by a kind of courage when, accompanied by the rising sun, I drove into town. But with each failure to connect with my prey, each rising notch of sobriety, the lizard of cowardice crawled a little farther from its hideout. Each man who emerged crutch-less from the hostel door brought greater relief and smaller disappointment. Now my hands grasp the desk rim in front of me. My muscles and sinews stiffen. This time he has found me and I am far from ready.

I fix on the door's empty keyhole. The dark shape, two inches or so in length—tiny head, narrow neck, long rectangular trunk—mocks my eyes. There is a key, but I'm not sure where it's kept. Perhaps it's downstairs in Coombs's office, perhaps in the drawer of my own desk, but I haven't time to search. My vision spins to the open window. There is no fire escape and I calculate the drop at ten yards. I'm on my feet by the time a single knock sounds. I can hear soft gasps and grunts on the other side of the door. It must be an effort to balance on crutches while knocking. The noises—human, fallible—seem to reduce the threat, at least slightly. So he has found me before I could find him. The advantage is still mine. He must have heard I was searching.

“Come.” My voice is strained but commanding enough, I suspect, to the hearer.

The handle turns and the door comes open only a few inches. Then, after a slumping sound, the base of a crutch comes into view, its rubber sinking into my worn carpet. Then there appears a black shoe and the hem of a trouser leg, charcoal in hue and sagging above the turn-up. The door opens wide to reveal a man who, even though my mind has been steadily projecting images of a face essentially the same as the one before me, I still barely recognize. The hollow cheeks, the aquiline nose—slightly misaligned just as it was before July 1916—the pronounced chin, and the thin lips all conform to my memory of Private Smith. But something is so different that I am momentarily drained of all fear, deluded temporarily into thinking that this meeting is our first, that knowledge of no prior crime can be retained by a figure so profoundly unfamiliar to me.

He is even thinner than before, and his hair, obscured in memory because of the ever-present helmet, is different from how I imagined, sparse and hanging close to the scalp like young ferns upon a rocky barren. A tentative widow's peak ventures down his forehead. It makes him seem more sensitive.Although I find his frailness calming, it's something else that successfully breaks the thread connecting present to past. It's in his expression, an uncertain movement around those thin lips and the hint of indecision about the eyes. Such softness never dwelt in my recollections of his dying smirk. In my imagination Smith has always been a creature of acute angles, sharp edges. He is the twist of metal that intrudes upon comfort and punctures all sentiment. The change confounds me. If he were here for any other reason than blackmail, one would almost have called this broken man gentle.

“I've been looking for you,” he says, leaning heavily on one crutch. “You're not so easy to find.” A self-conscious smile passes over his face and, perched like a queen ant upon four unmoving legs, he remains just inside the doorway.

“But I hear you found my daughter and that you managed to speak to her.” I mean this to be a warning, a grenade to smoke out the lowest intentions, but my voice does not carry enough aggression and sounds too friendly.