In Too Deep (11 page)

She smiled, but it bent sadly at the corners, and it took every single ounce of my hardly legendary willpower not to sweep her up into my arms and to speckle her face with kisses.

‘So,' she continued, after a pause, ‘let's both accept that I really do intend to call. It would, after all be nice to go back home, if only to show the children where their mother came from, and to see how much the old place has changed. We could catch up, I could introduce you to my family, we could tell stories and embarrass one another to within an inch of exploding. But let's also accept and understand that it may not actually happen, okay? And if this should be the case, I think it's best that we prepare ourselves. If I'm wrong, great, but let's both assume that this will be the very last time we ever see or speak to one another.'

‘Which makes this goodbye the real thing, is that it?'

‘Who knows,' she said, whispered. ‘But maybe.'

I nodded.

‘The thing is, Bill, assuming the worst, I think that if there is one thing, anything at all, that you regret not saying to me back when we were kids, why not go ahead and mention it? Or if you have a question that you'd like answered, I promise that I'll be as truthful and upfront as I possibly can.'

It was just like her, to be the bigger person. She scraped back that frond of hair from her brow again and tucked it back into her clip-held fringe, her eyes fixed on mine. I looked for love, or even some hint of affection, but if some such feeling did truly exist still, it was so well tucked away among the more determined details that recognition proved on the difficult side of impossible. Practical to the last, she wanted loose ends bound so that they might be more easily forgotten.

I pretended to consider her offer, though the important questions had already formed an orderly queue in my mind. Why she had broken up our friendship? Did she ever regret the way she had treated me, dropping me like a stone the first time someone more exciting showed her the least bit of interest? Were there ever moments when she found herself longing for the better times we shared, back when I'd make up the most ridiculous stories just to make her laugh, or did she ever take a minute out of her day or night to imagine how differently her life might have turned out had we continued with our romance? And lastly, I suppose, did she ever look for or recognise herself among the casually coded pages of stories and novels that I have written?

The answers to any of these questions would have satisfied an ancient but still wickedly irritating itch, and I felt myself tottering on the edge of such a lucky dip, but just as I was about to speak, something deep inside caused me to hold my breath.

She gazed up at me, expectation rich on her pretty lips.

‘I can't think of a single thing,' I said at last. ‘You were right, Rebecca. We were just kids, and it all seems so long ago.' I smiled, and it felt like a release, like I had kicked my way out of a stifling second skin. ‘But it's been lovely to see you again after all these years. You look as good as I remember, and I'm happy that your life has turned out so well.
'
Then, without giving her time to rebuke or encourage anything more, I leaned in and kissed the corner of her mouth.

‘Goodbye,' I whispered, then turned away.

An hour later, I sat in a fourth-floor waiting room, still with fifteen minutes to spare before my appointment. The storm had well and truly drummed itself dry, and late-afternoon sunlight seeped through the window and fell in a golden spill across part of the floor. To pass the remaining time and just for something to distract me from my thoughts, my fingers rubbed their way through the clammy pages of an old issue of the
National Geographic
. With the greatest of effort, I trawled the words and glossy photographs of articles about a revitalised Sarajevo, the courage of a solo round-the-world yachtswoman and some scientific wishful thinking as to the possibilities of micro-organic life existing on Jupiter's third and largest moon, Ganymede, but all the offered facts skipped through my mind and away, and finally I gave up on my reading and dropped the magazine back onto the coffee table. Then, for just a minute, I leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes and let in thoughts of who I was and of who I had become. Amid jumbled notions of missed opportunities, lucky escapes and a surely infinite clutter of alternate realities, I sighed happily.

Everything had happened so fast, and when Cavendish tried to make sense of it all the details just swam together, a mass of confusion.

His battalion had been marching since eight or so that morning, but even though the day had turned the corner of noon, their destination, Castletown, still lay miles away. The men had settled into the routine of mindless walking, fourteen of them drifting along behind the Lieutenant's slow-moving car and holding their rifles slung across their shoulders or cradled in their arms.

The ambush hit along a twisting stretch of road that left them helpless to fight back, a broad hairpin bend that leaned into high ground with the perfect cover of woodland sweeping down from the right and the land falling away steeply into the valley on the left. A shot rang out, squealing against the metal of the car, and then several more shots were fired in such quick succession that there was nothing for the soldiers to do but hunch low and try desperately to crack off return shots of their own.

A few had run, and he had been one of those.

Now, the muddy sky heaved and gave up its first cold drops of rain. Within a minute or two it overcame its initial hesitation and became the downpour that had threatened since dawn, but even the weight of that was not enough to mute the occasional bark of gunfire off in the distance.

His lungs hurt from running. When he finally stopped, he'd made perhaps two miles, and he bent over at the waist and checked the chambers of his pistol while he tried to catch his breath. Knowing already that the gun had been fired empty, but hoping, nonetheless. He holstered the weapon, buttoned the flap closed, and looked around. Christ. This part of Ireland was nothing but fields. Two miles and he was no closer to anything.

Then he saw them, the men, six of them, stretched out in a line along the land's southern incline and starting down through the fields towards him. He had nothing but an empty gun, and there was nowhere to run. With a sigh of resignation, he watched them close in; well, there had to be a loser in every battle.

‘Right,' one of them said. ‘We'll have that gun.' He looked very young, too young for all of this, not more than fifteen or sixteen. But that was the kind of war this was, and age had nothing to do with it. This one's narrow, drooping frame made him seem taller than he probably was, but he held a rifle low and looked comfortable enough with it, like he knew how to use it, and his voice had a detached ease that made it through what should have been an otherwise smothering sing-song brogue.

Cavendish watched the rest of the men move in and then spread out around him in a loose arc, then he nodded and slowly drew the pistol, careful to hold it only with his fingertips, and tossed it onto the ground. Its barrel speared in the soft tilled earth of the field, but that didn't matter.

‘It's empty anyway,' he said, raising his hands up and away from his body. The rain was coming down hard now, and he stopped holding himself against it and just gave in. The men were ten feet back and the line they held was to give him a chance to run, if he was of a mind to make this easy for everyone.

The one who had already spoken seemed in charge, even though there were men in this group who had to be forty if they were a day. They watched him for their lead and he instructed mostly in gestures. A shift of his head, just the smallest movement, and one of the men stepped forward for the gun, checked it and pushed it inside the waistband of his trousers. A glance, and another of the men moved in behind Cavendish, dragged his arms down from their spread and bound them at the wrists with a hard, fibrous twine that quickly bit into the flesh.

‘I'm Reilly,' the young man said, though there was no need for introductions or explanations. ‘Commander of the Rathgannon column.' He glanced back over his shoulder. ‘In case you're wondering, you're the last. The rest are dead. We got most of them on the road. It was easy enough running down the rest.'

Cavendish stared at him, giving away nothing, even though all was already lost.

When he was tied securely, they began to walk, down across this field and the next, down to where the valley flattened out. There was the sound of a stream, the unmistakable beat of fast-running water even through the percussive shuffle of the rain, but there was nothing to be seen, not yet. Only fields, muted shades of green running one into the
next.

The men kept Cavendish ten or twelve paces ahead of them, but no one spoke any more. There was something comforting now about the rain, how it fattened the air, its coldness making everything feel clean. When they reached a low river they didn't even slow, simply waded out into it and across. The far bank was slippery and they had to struggle on hands and knees to climb it, and as Cavendish was first he knew there was a moment when he could have tried running. But he didn't, just stood there until the others were on their feet. One of them said, ‘That way,' and pushed him on, but gently. Everything had already been decided, of course, and in a strange way they no longer felt like enemies, even though their rifles were never far from his back.

After about twenty minutes they reached a copse of elms. The rush of another unseen stream beat noise into the day, its urgency agitating and unsettling. Reilly raised a hand, and some of the men fanned out to ensure that the place was secure. A formality, but it was attention to even the most trifling of details that ensured survival. Not strength, not even courage. ‘What are you?' he asked. ‘Scottish?'

Cavendish nodded and said that, yes, he was from a place called Dumbarton, not far from Glasgow.

‘What in Christ's name brought you over here?'

There was no answer to that, none that would have made a difference. A wife and family who needed food, no work anywhere.

‘Well,' Reilly said, as if it was out of his hands now, not really his decision at all. ‘You've made your choice, Tan. If you have a prayer that you want to say, now would be the time.' Cavendish looked at the young man for a moment, then lowered his eyes and shook his head gently. He'd long since fallen out of the habit of praying. And anyway, how would God hear him out here?

Two men had moved behind him, and they took him by the arms and shoulders, led him to a spread of open ground and urged him to his knees. He went without a struggle. The ground was muddy and moss-ridden; the coarse wool of his trousers drew in the moisture like a sponge. It crossed his mind that his body might never be found, not out here, not for months or even years. Some day a man out hunting for rabbits or pheasant would happen across his bones, and maybe he'd report his find or maybe he'd just hurry away, not wanting to get involved.

‘I have a letter,' he said, looking up. A white light poked through the tangled branches, causing him to wince. He hoped that they wouldn't think it was because he was afraid. He'd spent two years in the trenches, had survived first Verdun and then Passchendaele. Now he was going to die, alone and unknown, slumped on his knees in some godforsaken bog-end of a field in Ireland. ‘Here. In my breast pocket. It's to my wife. Could you see that it gets sent?'

Someone off in the trees snorted softly, a contemptuous sound, but then Reilly stepped forward, unbuttoned the pocket and removed the letter. His young face grew hard and strained, many times its own age, as he stared for a second or two at the envelope, maybe reading the scrawled name and address through the myriad creases and sweat stains, maybe just trying to feel some hint of another man's life. Then he slipped the letter into his own pocket. Cavendish gazed up at him, waiting for the assurance of a nod or a positive word, but none was forthcoming, and at last the light's glare forced the captured soldier to look away.

‘Close your eyes, if you like,' Reilly said, and Cavendish, head still slung low, nodded and tried. But the darkness spun time into something terribly unwholesome, and every breath was made unbearable by the idea that it might be the last. There was nothing much to see, just a gleaming pond of grey mud and an array of filthy, clotted boots, some with the leather worn so thin across the toes that hints of their steel caps showed through. He heard a click as a pistol was armed very close to his left ear, and he pinched his lips tightly together and swallowed hard.

The first shot put him down, and was probably enough, but Reilly turned the body over with his foot and lowered the muzzle of his own pistol right against one staring eye before firing off a second shot. Some of the other men turned their heads away and looked very pale, because killing was not yet a taste that they could bear with comfort. Reilly made a scraping sound in his throat and spit into the mud beside the body as if trying to rid his mouth of just such a taste, but actually it was a gesture for the others, because if they were going to win their war they'd need many more days like this, and they'd need to see this as a success rather than an atrocity. ‘Fucking Black an
'
Tan,' he hissed, then stalked off into the trees, to say a prayer and to be sick.

Out on the beach, this late in the evening, there were only two shades to the whole world, the brazen yellow of fading light and the blackened press of shadows. Jack had said goodbye to everyone in the village, had already locked up his home and handed over the key to the new owners. By this time tomorrow he'd have put down the first day of a meticulously laid-out future, but standing here, basking in the last hour of his old life and with the dark sea spread out before him, the stillness as immense as the sky above, it was impossible to believe that any place as hectic and demanding as London could even exist. Tomorrow, he'd be a part of that other world, tomorrow and all the days after, for the rest of his life. A world made better by Cassandra, but still, a world that would feel strange to him.

The tide was coming in, but slowly. Low waves broke hushed against the beach, the short dogleg of shoreline penned in by cliffs and the sand shone just a shade deeper than the small wintertime wedge of moon. He hugged his arms against the cold of the coming night, watched the stars sparking into view off to the east, pinhead sharp and emerging through the darkness, and decided that there would be a stiff frost by dawn, enough to whiten the fields. But by dawn he'd be one of a crowd, bustling through an airport and then a tube station, choking back his uncertainty and trying with all his might to smile. He walked slowly just inside the high water line, feeling the sand firm beneath his heels. There were so many reasons to go, he told himself, and none, really, to stay. London would be a well-spring of excitement. A new job was already waiting, a position as copy-editor for a tabloid newspaper that might not be the most inspiring in the world, not yet anyway, but which at least put him close to the cutting edge and would surely lead on to bigger, brighter things. He'd have a foot in the door, and from there, well, who knew what might happen. And of course, London had Cassandra, his true reason for going, if the truth be told.

He knew by the way she looked at him that she loved him, and wasn't that enough to qualify him as the luckiest man in the world? Her face came easily to his mind, the settling night a help now, a blank canvas just waiting to be filled. With pale, unblemished skin, deep almond-shaped, hazel-coloured eyes and sleek elongated features, she was beautiful and gentle, and when they were together he always felt as though the rest of the world just ceased to exist, or to matter. Once, out for dinner, they had sat staring into one another's eyes for a solid hour, not speaking, hardly more than smiling, and they'd been so entranced that they'd forgotten even to eat. Finally the maître d
'
had wandered over and discreetly cleared his throat, but he was an elderly man who had seen everything there was to see in a restaurant, and he leaned in and suggested, not unkindly, that it would save them both a good deal of money to do their stargazing elsewhere. ‘Sir is a lucky man,' he had uttered, in that tone used for imparting secrets, after Cassandra had excused herself to powder her nose. That was a London thing, too; nobody around here ever powdered their nose. Perhaps it was the sea air that made such a chore unnecessary. Jack had listened, considered those words, then nodded agreement to the maître d', but a part of him couldn't help but feel detached. He was fulfilling a duty, he supposed, living up to what was expected of him. It was civilised behaviour to date a beautiful woman, to take her out for meals or to the theatre, perfectly in fitting with the new life that he was building for himself, far away from the shore. And he was very fond of Cassandra. Every time her mouth curved with happiness, his heartbeat raced a marathon. That had to count for something, and was probably more than a lot of people had, but love was such a big word.

People take so much for granted, he decided. Like walking on a beach in the darkness. This was utter solitude; even the scant sounds of the town couldn't make it to the water's edge. Out here, he might have been the last man on earth. Well, he often felt that way. It was lonely, sometimes, but not really so bad. The waves broke softly, chasing a pale frothy fringe up across the sand to within a few yards of where he walked, and he kept an idle pace, just savouring the relentless ease of the sound, the gentle conversation between the sea and the land. The darkness of the hour thickened, making him tremble. He tried to wish that Cassandra could have been here with him, that they could be walking hand in hand, sharing whispers and kisses and whatever was special about this moment. But it wasn't an honest wish. Perhaps to torture himself, he tried to picture her smile, but the effort was half-hearted. Another image stormed his mind instead, one that he had been avoiding ever since he'd made his decision to move to London. A memory, of a night not unlike this one, but years ago, ten at least, though it seemed longer, centuries ago. A night spent right here on the beach, but not spent alone.

He and Katie were far too young to know what love was. Everyone said that, all the adults who acted as if they were authorities on everything, and they spoke seriously, the amusement evident only in the gleam of their eyes. ‘Have a good time,' his own father had told him, ‘but don't be a fool about it.' Jack didn't think anyone could help being a fool though, not where someone like Katie was concerned. She wasn't beautiful, not in the conventional meaning of the word; she had a hard-boned, almost masculine, face and skin that suffered with the seasons, she wore her hair long and massively unkempt and battled constantly with her weight. But the person she was far outshone the negatives, until they meant nothing. Maybe the adults were right, maybe they were too young to understand what love was, but all he knew was that when she spoke to him he lit up like an inferno and whenever he thought about her he felt as though he'd been lifted up to the sky. If it wasn't love, he decided, it would surely do until love came along.

The moon blazed, small and bleak, a spun conch shape bleached to bone. He stared at it as he strolled, wondering what it knew. Only part of the face was visible, a war-damaged sliver of a face, but he felt the one eye's stare. The moon saw everything and everyone, he supposed, even as it dragged the water like a blanket up over the beach. Back then it had stared down on him and Katie.

‘When we have kids,' she said, ‘we'll take them walking here every night.'

‘Kids? Slow down a bit, Mother Jones. There are some things to do before the kids come along, you know.' He was smiling, but the silence spun out and dredged up the unspoken things in his words. Katie was walking close beside him, her fingers interlaced with his. In her free hand she carried her sandals. She hated to get sand into her shoes, said that once the grains got in there they could never be made to leave. To help ease the silence of its burden, she glanced at him, held his eyes a moment and smiled, showing pretty teeth.

‘Come on,' she said. ‘Let's go for a swim.'

‘What? Christ, Katie, it's the middle of winter.'

‘It's March,' she said. ‘That's practically summer.'

‘Well, still, I'll bet the water's freezing. And what if someone sees us?'

‘So what if they do?' Her smile widened, then seemed to shiver away. Gently, she pulled her hand from his; with reluctance, he let her, and just stood watching, not moving, while she unbuttoned her coat and then wrestled free of her heavy wool sweater. In less than a minute she was naked, the first time he had seen her so. She stood there, her shoulders hunched and vulnerable, her eyes demurely lowered, and the moonlight bathed her body in that pale, ethereal glow of miraculous things. The details of her flesh were just as he had often imagined, stocky yet fragile, porcelain yet grainy, a young bundle of contradictions; yet he seemed to sense that there was something different about her too, something more than his mind could ever have guessed. Perhaps he'd been sensing some danger.

When her vulnerability grew too intense, she turned and ran into the tide, shrieking wild, terrified laughter with every wading step. Jack watched, but hesitated in following. He felt nervous about the cold and about everything that the night entailed. But the running and receding tide-line dared him across, and he was sixteen years old, and the sea and Katie would only wait so long.

They met waist-deep, a flailing embrace that knocked them off-balance and drew them further out. He went under, flushed with panic, then resurfaced and thrilled to the whole world in his arms. The searing cold made breathing difficult, and what followed was a dizzying dream of laughter, flesh, lapping waves and shifting sands. And then suddenly she was gone.

He shuddered at the memory, and hunched deep into the comfort of his overcoat. Tomorrow, he'd be in London. He stooped to pick up a stone, a palm-sized piece of quartz made smooth by centuries of waves. The water had pressed and flattened, but it was time that carried the real weight, he knew, time that changed the face of everything. Even in the darkness, he could make out little white veins across the stone's surface, crisscrossing lifelines. He heaved it as far as he could out into the water, then waited too long before realising that the sound of the splash was probably too small to catch.

People knew at a glance that he had not been to blame. Even Katie's father had come to him, later, and in a small voice said that sometimes things just happened. That the world was not perfect and that God, if there was such a person or a thing, had a lot to answer for. Those must have been difficult words to say.

At the end of the beach, he stopped. The rocks rose up deep against the night, poking black reefs that led out to the headland. The sand beneath his feet was still fine, but a lot of kelp had gathered just here and the cold still air carried a cloying tinge of iodine. He knew that it was almost time to leave. He had already cried his fill over Katie, had already said goodbye a hundred times. Swallowing gulps of air in an effort to remove the ache from his throat, tasting the iodine on his tongue and on his lips, he turned at last from the sea and started up the foot-worn path towards and through the dunes above. But as he neared the top he froze. A breeze had started up from somewhere, just enough to carry some sound past his ear before dying away, and it had all the sense of a whispered word. He turned slowly, afraid of what he might see, but there appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary, just the pale dogleg of the sand, and the sea decked dark and beaded with moonlight. He considered everything, seeing details as they were, free of guilt and pain. Then he raised a hand and waved ‘so long'.