The Cartographer of No Man's Land: A Novel (38 page)

“I see,” Ida said, tying on an apron and bustling to the stove. “Well now, I’m going to make your mother a sleeping tonic, then we’ll finish cooking this—whatever’s got started here. Fetch me the brandy, Simon. I’ll heat some milk. What’s that smell?” She whipped open the oven and pulled out the duff. “You boil this, Simon. In a bag. You don’t bake it. Can’t anyone in this family cook?”

“How is she?” Simon asked.

“Worried. Upset. Like you. Like all of us. What else would she be?” Ida attacked the duff with a knife to loosen it from the pan. “She’ll come round.” She tipped the pan over and dumped the remains in the sink. “There, now,” she said, pouring milk into a pot and uncorking the brandy. She gave it a sniff and took a sip. “That passes muster. I’ll just test it again. Yes, it’ll help your mother get through the night. The shock of it, you know. For her. Duncan, too.” She peered out the window. “Go see to him Simon. I’ve got my hands full here.” She lifted Fred up and stirred the milk.

Simon did as he was told and found his grandfather on the bridge over the causeway. He stood a few feet from him, knotted up with anger and sorrow at the war, at his grandfather for suddenly caring and for needing care. But his grandfather didn’t seem to notice him. Apparently out of breath, he was leaning over the railing. “Maybe the war will be over soon,” Simon said. “That way he’ll come home and get better, both.” When his grandfather just shook his head, Simon added, “People say German morale is broken.”

“Oh?” His grandfather pushed away and stood straight. “And where’d you get that piece of intelligence? Lady Bromley? The world’s authority on the war.” He took out his tobacco pouch and filled his pipe. “Just yesterday, I heard her tell someone our troops don’t use gas.”

“Well, do we?”

“Good Christ, we’d use
flame throwers
if it didn’t set our own on fire! How’d you like that? Being burned alive? This is war, Simon, not some Christian mission. And I’ll tell you, Hespera Bromley’s only mission is to outshine the ladies of Halifax in providing for the troops. Those comfort boxes, those ‘little needfuls’—balls of string, chocolate and pins—
pins
for God’s sake—end up in the hands of desperate men for whom the only good package is a round of bullets and a gun to shoot them. Comfort to those at home is all those boxes bring.” He struck a match on his thumbnail, cupped his palm and drew the flame to his pipe in rhythmic pulses, sucking his cheeks in, eyes on Simon. “You need to get your facts straight.” He waved the match out.

“Why are you always against him? You don’t even care he’s wounded.”

“Don’t you speak to me like that, boy! I told you. I’m against this fool war, not him.”

I’ll speak to you any damn way I please, Simon thought as he pounded back up the hill. He found a stick and swiped at the bushes. He wanted to kill the German bastard who sliced his father’s arm. He wanted to slice up every word that came out of his grandfather’s mouth.

H
AVING ENDURED THE SUPPER
that no one wanted to eat, dishes done, Ida gone to her sister’s, his mother and Young Fred sound asleep, Simon stood in the kitchen trying to collect the jagged confusion of the day. The idea surfaced that his father might never make it home. He threw on a wool shirt, checked the stove, grabbed two apples and slipped out the back door. For a long time he stood with his head against his father’s shed, but he could not face its abandoned brushes and paints.

He went to the barn instead, where he fed Peg and Rooster an apple each, comforted by their nuzzling. Rooster looked for more. “Don’t get used to nighttime treats, now,” Simon murmured. Finally, he turned to go. Leaning against the barn door, staring up at the stars, everything spilled over itself. His chest heaved with the effort of keeping tears at bay. “He’ll make it. He’ll make it. He has to,” he whispered.

Up the hill, his grandfather’s house was dark, not a light on. But there was smoke coming from the chimney. Had the old man forgotten to bank the fire?

Reluctantly, Simon walked up the rise and along the path and slowly opened the front door. The fire in the parlor was still going, just as he’d thought. No screen. And there, sitting in his wingback chair, still wearing the apron, was his grandfather, a bottle of brandy between his feet.

“Gold and diamonds,” his grandfather’s voice boomed out. “King and country.
Plunder
in the name of valor. That’s what he died for!”

“Whoa, Grandpa. Dad’s just wounded
.
” Simon came over and stood in front of him, shocked at the opened vest, loose collar, disheveled hair.

“My brother, Geordie, I’m talking about,” Duncan growled. “Seventeen years ago today.” He took a swig of the brandy from the bottle. It was then Simon saw the gun in his lap. A jolt of panic went through him.

“Went back to the old country, the so-called homestead in the Lowlands. Couldn’t make a go of it. Tossed about for something to do. I said, why not the army? Just about pushed him into it. Thought it would keep him off the drink.” He swirled the contents of the bottle in his hand and took another swallow. “It didn’t. Joined the cavalry.” He set the bottle on the floor. “Met his death in Africa.”

Simon had hardly ever heard his grandfather mention his long-dead brother. He lowered himself into the opposite chair, calculating how to get the gun.

His grandfather slumped his hand on it. “Came to me in a crate, packed with straw, this did. Bequeathed, you might say. A note, unsigned, said, ‘Your brother, George Gordon MacGrath, wanted you to have his pistol.’ ” He picked it up. “Colt .
45
. Ever seen one?”

“Uh, no sir. Is it . . . loaded?” Simon reached a cautious hand out for it.

“Course it’s loaded!” His grandfather gripped the gun harder. “One bullet missing. Maybe Geordie put that one through his head.” Turning it over in his hands, he said, “Not his medals, nor a pair of cuff links, nor a well-loved book. Just this pistol—a message as sure as there ever was one.” He paused and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Make a man partake of the brutality of combat day after day, and he either thrives or is broken by it. Either way, it strips him down to base instincts until finally, his humanity fails him, and he’s defined by this alone.” He sat back, defeated. Simon kept his eye on the gun.

“Suffering comes to all of us,” Duncan began again, staring into the fire. “Lost my wife and baby, and a few years later, a boy on the Banks. A boy younger than you. Watched him
slip through my fingers
.” He looked up sharply. “A boy I didn’t know, was known to me then.”

Simon nodded, unblinking.

“Ever seen a boat sink? No? It’s like watching someone die. She hovers for a moment on the edge of life, then is sucked down all at once and the seas cross over as if she’d never been. I’d have given my life for that boy . . .”

The clock ticked loudly, every swing of the pendulum measuring out the silence. Simon jumped when his grandfather started up again. “Saw my own boy slipping through my hand, all I had left in the world. Came back to him. Stayed on shore. Tried to be a good father, a good man. Paid attention to the state of my soul. Then comes Geordie. Dead on the veld. For what?” He pounded the arm of the chair and leaned forward as if about to spring at Simon. “If we can’t find meaning in death, how can we find it in life
?
Tell me that! Was Geordie’s purpose to die for the greed of other men? Is my son to do the same?”

Simon swallowed hard. Amazed at how steady his own voice was, he said, “Dad’s not dead. He’ll get better.”

“He will, will he? And then get another chance at being killed? My God.” His grandfather weighed the gun in his hands. “Thought I’d learned something about humility. About vulnerability, damn it! How vast the ocean, how small the boat. But I’ll be
damned
if I know what more I’m supposed to learn through the suffering of my only son.” He cast a withering look at Simon. “Eh? I
begged
him not to go.” His eyes were fierce. “But it wasn’t enough! He had to go. And for what? My every effort come to nothing.” He stood suddenly, waving the pistol about. Simon lunged for it, and in the struggle his grandfather crumpled to his knees, then half-crawled past Simon to the stone hearth and gripped it with his hands. He leaned there, shoulders shaking.

Simon picked up the pistol, heavy and black, and backed away. The last of the embers blinked red through the ash.

“Hall chest,” his grandfather said in a ragged voice. “That’s where I keep it.”

Simon slid the key off the top of the chest. His grandfather fumbled with the fire screen, cursing it and righting it twice before it stayed in place. Simon opened and closed the chest and turned the long shaft of the key in the lock until he heard it click. By then his grandfather was in the hall. Head down, he thumped his hand on the newel post and ascended the stairs with labored steps, swinging the bottle of brandy by the neck. “Go on home,” he said, voice blurry. “Midnight ramblings of an old man.”

S
IMON STOPPED WHEN
he reached the bridge. The boulders were slick with yellow-brown rockweed. The pungent smell of low tide hung like fog, and the shallow water lapped the stone walls of the causeway below. A light wind ruffled his hair. He reached in his pocket for the cigarette Zenus had given him and cursed the fact that he had no matches. Then he leaned out over the railing and uncurled his fist and let the key fall from his hand. A brilliant swath of green bubbles foamed around it and trailed up as it plunged to the bottom. Phosphorous. Of all nights. He picked up a stone and threw it over, and another and another, desperate to churn the water into green bubbling light and to feel himself plunging down through it until he disappeared into its unending iridescence.

But there was more to do. He left the bridge and headed for Mader’s Cove and walked down Philip’s wharf, grabbing a set of oars as he went. He took the ramp down to the float and pushed Philip’s little tender off into the water. He set the oarlocks and slipped the oars in as quietly as he could, grateful for the bit of wind that damped the sound. With every stroke, phosphorous danced around the oars and in the wake. He rowed, green light trailing, past the black bow of the
Elsie,
past the
Glory B
, and out to the open water. He could have rowed forever. Finally, far beyond the boats and the cove and well into the bay, he shipped the oars and set the pistol on the forward seat and knelt down before it. A dull black menacing shape, it slid sideways as he shifted his weight. He wondered how the bullets got in and how you got them out and if there really were bullets in the chamber. But he didn’t want to know. He lifted it up by the handle, feeling the weight of it in his hand, then leaned over the gunwale and held it suspended above the black water. And let it go. Soundlessly, the pistol, encased in pale green froth, plunged down. Its phosphorous trail bubbled up, then thinned to a narrow beaded column and disappeared. Simon stared until spots formed before his eyes, then crouched back to the center thwart. Looking up, he found the Big Dipper, but it brought him no comfort, and he began to shake. I am alone, I am alone, I am alone. I want my father back. Hunched over, rocking with hands in his armpits, for a long while all he could hear was his own ragged breath and his own heart pounding.

How long he stayed like that, he didn’t know, but when he looked up, nothing was familiar. Then he realized the wind and current and ebbing tide had him drifting fast past Owl’s Head. He was too far out. He could feel a cold wind against his face, wet with tears, and he began to shudder. He’d never make it back. The black ocean grew blacker and the wind stronger. A vision of his father rowing the boat in long even strokes helped him shove the oars out. Helped him grip the oars and pull. He tipped his head up and sighted up the handle of the Little Dipper until he found Polaris. True North. Not the brightest star, his father once told him, but the one around which the others collected and moved and found their bearings. He kept his eyes fixed on it, and arms aching, but no longer shaking, rowed the boat back to the harbor, where the wind shifted and, like the breath of God, pushed him along into the cove and back to Mader’s wharf.