Inch Levels (24 page)

He didn’t pile it on, though: for every toboggan, he said, you could count a pathway and a shovel, sweat and the snow up to your knees. It isn’t, he said, all toboggans and frozen lakes. ‘I hardly know what a toboggan is,’ she told him. Imagine a boiling summer, he said and clouds of dust that blow in from the prairie (‘I hardly know what a prairie is either,’ she said) and along Winnipeg’s wide, straight streets and the Red River running low and brown; imagine the grass in August turning a brittle yellow. The snow and winter fun, he said – that’s all true, but there’s more to it all than that.

He asked questions too. Easily, at first: naturally, interestedly. What about you? And what about you? But he sensed a barrier there, he wouldn’t push or probe. He waited, instead, for her to come to, for her to come out of herself. She might.

*

After a few minutes of this glassy standing and staring, she came to: the roaring in her ears began to ease, the painful sensation in her throat to sink away a little – although perhaps she was simply becoming more adept at thrusting it down with her heel, thrusting it back inside herself. Certainly she knew how to keep her eyes dry now. Her father was far away. She looked around. Anthony had been standing quietly all this time and waiting for her and now he raised his eyebrows, took her hand, squeezed it gently.

‘Not a bad place, is it? All in all?’

She laughed. ‘Oh no. Not bad, all in all.’

‘Right,’ and he tugged at her arm, ‘come on then. Chop chop.’

Sarah laughed now, and allowed herself to be pulled gently along. They made their way along the edges of the hall: and soon enough she met people she knew from the base, from the kitchen, from the hospital. She began to relax, she was happy to step out onto the dance floor. And she was a good dancer: she had learned the steps in the kitchen long ago, to tinny music from the old black wireless. The steps came back to her at this moment, as they quickstepped and waltzed around the hall to the honking notes of the show band. She was a good dancer – better, in fact, than Anthony, whom she began to guide confidently.

Later – back on the base, one bed among a row of beds, unable to remember how she got there, how she got home in one piece – later, she lay shaking. She could piece together certain parts of the evening: shards, elements in a jigsaw. But the night as a whole – no. She was dancing inside, then was outside, walking across the frosty, cobbled square. Her hand was taken, then raised voices and a brawl and pieces of glass flying through the air – and the story, everything, fell to pieces. She could not remember how it happened.

The Guildhall was, suddenly, too hot, too noisy and crowded – she had to get out. So they retreated, down the polished wooden staircase and through the echoing hall and back out into the square. Now he took her hand: he meant nothing by it – or rather, he meant everything. But no harm: he meant no harm. They had danced, or she had danced and he had followed, was the truth, until their faces were pink and shiny and their clothes damp and reeking of tobacco fumes. But the air became grey with smoke and the hall steaming hot and they had retreated down the stairs and out into the chill, damp air – and now he took her hand.

She said nothing. She looked at his hand and her hand and she said nothing. It was almost pleasant, wasn’t it? – and after all, they had been dancing, been hand in hand, arm in arm, for the best part of an hour. So this was – fine, she thought: and a moment later, she was pushed violently and she careered into Anthony’s chest and they both fell; and there was a ferocious splintering, a crack of glass on the cobbles, and she screamed.

A glass bottle had exploded on the ground close to their faces. Splinters of glass pierced his temple; she saw thin streams of blood on his cheek. He lay there, dazed; she raised herself on her hands and looked around, looked up.

‘So it’s another fucking soldier, is it? Come to save us all.’

A man was standing a little way away. He was tottering a little from side to side and as Sarah scrambled to get up, this man aimed a kick roughly, drunkenly in the direction of Anthony’s head. He missed and now Anthony rolled hastily, out of range of the heavy boot. Sarah pushed herself onto her heels, sliced her hand on a piece of glass, saw the man lose his balance and fall against the Guildhall’s red sandstone walls. ‘Bastard,’ the man said. ‘Bastard.’ He was drunk, but not roaring drunk: he could still unbuckle his belt in a second and in another second whip it through the air. ‘Bastard. Fucking bastard. Coming over here and telling us what to do. Fucking bastard. You and all the rest of you bastards. It’s not our fucking war.’ Spit flew from his mouth and he wiped his face with his sleeve and aimed another lash of his belt. It hissed as it flew through the air and caught her arm; it hissed again as it caught Anthony’s arm as he lay on the ground.

With a tremendous effort, Sarah got to her feet and stood, swaying for a moment on the gleaming cobbles. She too had struck her head on the ground, though it was not this blow, not a concussion that made her stand like this and sway. The man in his drunkenness fell once more against the sandstone, away from her as she stood reeling. Her arm was throbbing from the lash of the belt; blood was trickling from her hand: she looked at it, wiped it across the front of her coat. She was disembodied: she was light with – shock, with something; she rocked on her heels. On the ground beside her, Anthony rolled over and then got to his feet. Blood was trickling here too, trickling from his temple and down his cheek and onto his collar.

He said, ‘Sarah,’ – and the drunken man lunged once more. She watched, rocking, floating, the scene in front of her, but now it was silent; the volume gone, the noise turned off. Her father was drawing his leather belt: it was singing shrilly as he whipped it through the air; and in the next room, behind the door Cassie was crying. But no, it wasn’t her father: and she watched as Anthony’s fist slammed into the man’s cheek, as he fell, as Anthony kicked him in the stomach, kicked him hard, again and again. The man lay on the ground, unmoving now – and Sarah moved, she was gone, blindly through the prurient crowd that had collected to watch. Within a few seconds, she had stumbled underneath the dark arch of the city gate and was walking, running up Shipquay Street. The noise of the world had returned now: excited voices on the square behind her and, in the black sky, the drone of a plane dropping, coming in to land.

*

Anthony had the better of him now, but still – better to make sure. He took the man’s head in his two hands, brought it sharply down on the cobbles. There was a clear crack – and now someone at last lunged forward, caught his shoulders.

‘You don’t want to kill him, so you don’t,’ said the man, a Derry man at his elbow. ‘Do you? You’ve done your worst: it’ll have to be the hospital for him as it is. Come on now,’ the man went on, solicitously, ignoring for the present the figure prostrate on the ground, ‘come on, you’ve done your worst.’

Anthony looked around. ‘Where is she?’ For Sarah was gone. She was there a minute ago, but now gone; now nowhere in sight. ‘Where did she go?’

The man pointed towards Shipquay Gate. ‘That way. But you need to get your face seen to.’ From the crowd, voices joined in with eagerness; this man had proved his worth. ‘You do. Your face is all blood, so it is.’ But he ignored them, ran across the square. She was gone.

Patrick was a dead weight. He was weighing himself down. He knew how a cat behaves when she is reluctant to be moved: she turns herself into a lead weight, a dead weight.

Which was the way to do it. No point making it easy.

‘You’re not making it easy for us,’ said the nurse, ‘are you?’ She was panting slightly, although she was young and strong, and he was neither now. He was twig-thin. They wanted to turn him, to check his back, his buttocks, his calves for evidence of bed sores. ‘It’s for your own good, you know,’ reproved the nurse. ‘We’re not just doing this for the sake of it.’

He kept his silence, his eyes closed. They tugged and pulled.

‘All clear here,’ one of them said at last. ‘Terrific.’

‘Terrific,’ the other echoed. ‘That’s right.’

The sheets were crisp and fresh now, and his body checked over as though it was an Ordnance Survey map. The women were on their way out of the door. Tea was on its way in.

The season had turned, in the course of these – these two weeks or three weeks or whatever it was. From his window now – for there were no more genteel little rambles across to the window and back; everything had to be deduced from the bed – Patrick could see the trees beginning to crisp, to yellow; the occasionally blue sky was paler, its fitful summer vibrancy gone for this year. Of course the bell continued to toll, unchanging, in the school belfry across the way: but he knew without looking that the boys entering and leaving the school gates were beginning to wear coats and anoraks. Time was up.

‘Did you hear about –’ one of the nurses said as the door opened and closed with a sigh. Did you hear about – but they were gone now, out of earshot; and only the sentence remained, suspended there in the air. Time was shifting too much, backwards and forwards: slipping now back into a hateful past and now forward into this painful, truncated present. Now it was happening again: voices rang and shoes squeaked and trolleys rumbled in the present: he closed his eyes, and footsteps clipped and cutlery clinked and tinkled in the past. Did you hear about? There was nothing else to do: and his mind settled on the sentence, set to work worrying at it as though it was a bone. Gnawing, turning it over and over. Did you hear about? Did you? Did you hear about?

Patrick’s mind settled on himself. Did you hear about? – when did you? What was the context? The questions jabbed and stabbed: this was a court of law.
When
did you hear about? – are you certain? Did you have suspicions before that? What, none? And he shook and shook his head. No suspicions. Misgivings? – yes, plenty of them, his mind dwelling on his brother-in-law: but of course that could be put down to his own spite, his own small-mindedness.

Suspicions, no.

And now his mind settled on his sister. How had Margaret kept her composure, even for a moment? In his mind’s eye he saw the scene: the Formica-topped cafe table, and his hands warm and snug around a mug of coffee, and Margaret’s hands snug around her cup. And now their mother appearing at the door of the cafe, and starting – actually, visibly giving a start – as she saw them: and then moving towards them: the morning turning, now, in a new direction.

‘Did you hear about the mother of that girl who went missing?’

Yes. Margaret had heard, by then, about the mother of that girl who went missing. Lying in his blue bed, Patrick closed his eyes. She had heard. Robert had told her, that very morning.

*

‘You didn’t hear the news about that woman,’ Sarah said, and glanced around the cafe. ‘The mother of that girl who went missing: you remember, they found her at Inch Levels.’

His mother wasn’t asking. She was telling: she looked – not avid, the way that people tend to look avid when they have shocking news to impart, when there was news of a scandal or tragedy: they wanted to be first in, like some town crier of old. His mother wanted to be the first with the news for sure, but she didn’t look avid.

There was something about her today, something different. She had seemed as composed as ever, but now he noticed – yes, in fact she lacked that customary cool. Was that it? He watched her from his usual distance – what was it? A shaking? The feeling was wrong: she seemed to be – vibrating in some way. The air was already vibrant with noise: one of the girls behind the counter sorting knives and forks and spoons into their places, with scant regard for her customers’ aural comfort. But his mother was vibrating at her own register: had she been a sherry glass, he thought, you’d almost say she was about to shatter.

He watched her, from afar. He shouldn’t judge: he knew this, but he did anyway.

‘She drowned herself,’ Sarah went on – and yes, she sounded a little different too; her voice thinner, more tremulous.

‘Walked into the sea,’ she said, ‘yesterday afternoon.’ She rearranged her long, purplish scarf more snugly around her throat. ‘Just walked into the sea.’

This was October: a month, already, since Margaret’s gluttonous birthday dinner and now their father was fading, failing in front of their eyes. Clutching one of his canes a little more tightly, walking for shorter distances; his skin paling, thinning. Martin wasn’t fighting it, either: ‘Let it be,’ he said, when someone – not generally Sarah – hung over him, fussing. ‘Let it be.’ Not much to be done about it, and he knew it: they all knew it, even before the doctors reported. A series of new strokes, after a long respite: little strokes; and a bigger one could come at any time. ‘They’re a little like earthquakes,’ one of these doctors told them, confidingly. ‘You find yourself waiting for the big one to strike.’ As if that was a consolation. They’d just have to watch, he went on, and wait and be on hand, OK?

Patrick nodded; and ‘OK,’ Margaret agreed. Though it didn’t seem like much of a prescription, she said later. ‘You’d think they’d train them in how to use language. An earthquake? – I mean, it’s hardly a useful analogy.’ But Patrick didn’t agree. ‘Useful enough,’ he said. After all, they
were
hanging around waiting, weren’t they?

The waitress had finished rattling cutlery now, and was moving on to glasses, cups and saucers.

‘It was on the radio,’ Sarah said, ‘this morning.’

Margaret was cupping her coffee now in the palm of her hand, looking out of the window at the street. The distant hills were bluer and the sky paler and the cherry trees in the Diamond were beginning to sport bare limbs rather than foliage; their long yellow leaves littered the pavements. A few hundred yards away, cordon tape fluttered in the wind; a police Landrover squatted. Patrick saw this; he looked away.

Sarah said, ‘Did
you
hear about this?’

Margaret put her coffee cup down carefully. She shook her head. Patrick, tucked into the banquette beside her, cupping his coffee in the way that Margaret had cupped hers, glanced at her – just an instant’s glance – but said nothing. Sarah continued talking in that same tense, highly strung manner; and Patrick watched her: his instincts now up and buzzing, raring to go to work, a tiny point of chill in his heart. Covering some tracks – some unknown tracks – instantly, without a thought.