The Returners (14 page)

Yan’s dad saw me first; he motioned to Mum, who looked up startled.

‘Will! Hello, darling!’ She sounded flustered. ‘Gosh, you’re home early. I was just . . . We were . . .’

I don’t remember what else she actually said. But I do remember that she was more attentive than usual. She helped me off with my blazer, took my school bag and took out my packed lunch things. Then she started to clean them, running the hot water tap and squirting washing liquid on to the brush before scrubbing the box inside and out. Usually she wiped it with a piece of kitchen roll just before she filled it in the morning. I watched her silently. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Yan’s dad watching her too.

‘You all right, Will?’ he said in his thick accent. He was trying to look relaxed, but I knew he wasn’t.

I nodded awkwardly. I looked at my feet.

Yan’s dad stood up.

‘Well, thank you for the tea, Chloe. Your mother makes very good tea,’ he said, smiling at me as though everything was OK.

I nodded.

Yan’s dad made his excuses and left. ‘We were just having a chat,’ Mum said cheerfully. Too cheerfully. She looked at me for a moment, her cheeks slightly flushed. ‘No need to tell Dad, is there?’

I shook my head. I made my decision easily, but it still sat heavily on me. Best friends didn’t lie to each other. Best friends who lied to each other didn’t stay best friends. Everyone knew that. If Dad found out . . . I pushed the thought away. I’d heard Mum and Dad arguing late at night. I’d heard noises, crashing noises, the noises people make on television when they’re fighting. Whenever I heard fighting noises, Mum would be extra cheerful the following morning. She’d wear more make-up, wear brighter clothes, as though hot pink would make everything OK again.

Mum followed me around for the next hour, helping me with my homework, feeding me biscuits, asking me about the television programme I was watching. Eventually she sighed and slumped down next to me on the sofa. She put her arms around me. ‘Some people burn bridges; some people build them,’ she said. ‘Do you understand, Will?’

I shrugged.

‘The bridges I’m talking about – they’re not real bridges. They’re talking bridges. Friendly bridges. So if someone upsets you, or you upset them, you build a bridge by saying sorry. Or by listening to them. Do you see?’

I thought about it. ‘I told Claire she was rubbish at football on Sunday,’ I said eventually. ‘But afterwards I said she was better at other things. I wanted her to still be my friend.’

Mum looked at me for a moment – she looked like she was going to cry, but instead she leant over and kissed me on the forehead. ‘You’re a good boy, you know that, don’t you?’

‘Am I?’

‘Oh yes, my darling. You’re
my
good boy. You’re the very best boy I could have.’

I still remember the glow, remember the warmth in my stomach after she said that. Her very best boy. That’s who I was – not Will, not the boy who came second from bottom in spelling tests, but my mum’s very best boy.

I’m not anyone’s best boy any more. I’m not good at all. I’m the opposite of good.

g

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I don’t coo like a pigeon this time. Torturers don’t do that sort of thing, do they? I just climb right up and knock on her window. It’s the dead of night – it takes her a while to wake up. Then she reaches up and pulls the curtain open. She has that sweet look of dreams – soft, warm skin that’s been crumpled against a pillow, a slightly confused look in her eye. I get a sudden desperate urge to be her, to have the innocence of not knowing what’s gone before and what’s coming in the future. To just live life as it happens.

She frowns at me, then opens the window. ‘I’m tired, Will. Is this important?’

I nod and clamber in. She yawns and falls back against the pillow. I sit at the end of her bed; I pull one of her soft, warm blankets around myself.

Claire sits up again. ‘You look awful. You’re shivering. You’re . . . Will, what are you wearing?’

I look down – I am wearing socks that have been dirtied by the road, pyjama bottoms and a T-shirt. My socks have holes in them.

I shrug eventually. ‘I was in a hurry,’

‘A hurry.’ She is looking at me suspiciously. ‘Why? Not the dreams again?’

I nod. Then I shake my head. How can I explain? I suddenly feel very old. Very alone. Maybe it was a bad idea to come here. I don’t want to infect Claire with my misery, with what I know. I don’t want her to turn on me, and yet I’d be disappointed if she didn’t.

‘Will? Tell me. Tell me what’s up.’

‘It’s kind of the dreams, but worse than that,’ I say carefully. ‘I had them again, but they’re not dreams. They’re who I am. I’m one of them. One of the Returners. Not even one of them. I’m evil, Claire. I’m the devil. I saw myself. I saw who I am. They were real, Claire. They happened. I was there. I was there . . .’

The tears that would not come before are streaming now. Self-pity? I despise myself even as I cry. Claire puts her arms around me; I pull away.

‘I don’t deserve your sympathy,’ I manage to say. ‘I want you to hate me. I want you to despise everything about me.’

I realise I mean it – it would make me feel better. My revulsion with myself is not enough.

‘OK.’ She’s teasing me – I can tell from her eyes.

‘I’m not joking. This is serious, Claire. You have no idea how serious.’

And suddenly I am afraid. Afraid I might hurt her, like I’ve hurt others. I edge backwards. ‘I should go.’

‘Will.’ She folds her arms irritably. ‘You’ve woken me up. At least have the decency to tell me why.’

I swallow. My throat is parched. My eyes fall on a glass of water on Claire’s bedside table. She follows my gaze and hands it to me. I drink it immediately; the water is cool and soothing. I don’t deserve it.

I take a deep breath. ‘The people,’ I say. ‘The people who’ve been following me. The Returners. They lied to me.’

‘Of course they were lying,’ Claire says, rolling her eyes. ‘OK, Will. Look, I know things aren’t easy for you at the moment, but come on. There’s no such thing as a Returner. I don’t know who these people are, but they are just one big lie; they really are. You have to tell someone about them. Maybe . . .’ She frowns, her brow creasing gently. ‘Have you thought about going back to that doctor?’

My eyes narrow. ‘You mean the shrink?’

‘Doctor,’ she corrects me. ‘He was nice, wasn’t he?’

I don’t say anything for a moment or two. The disappointment is too great, like the plug has been pulled out and I’m running down the plughole. She thinks I’m mad. I thought she understood. I thought we were friends again.

I have no friends.

I have no one.

I steady myself. I concentrate. I breathe slowly. I allow my blood to freeze; that way I am safe.

‘Interesting theory,’ I say, a new edge to my voice, ignoring her comment about the shrink, ‘but you’re wrong. They do exist. They are Returners and I’m one of them. Only I’m not. I’m different.’

‘What do you mean different?’

‘I’m the bad guy.’ I say it flatly, no emotion. It sounds like I’m talking about a film.

Claire raises an eyebrow. ‘The bad guy?’

‘I’m the devil.’ It’s strange – it feels almost as if I am showing off. As though I am proud of this fact.

Claire looks at me curiously, then sees that I’m serious, that I’m not smiling. She opens her mouth, then closes it again. A few seconds go by; they seem to last for ever.

‘The devil?’ she asks eventually. ‘What do you mean exactly?’

‘I mean,’ I say, ‘that I’m the one who causes suffering, not the one who suffers. My dreams . . . they aren’t dreams. They’re memories. I remember now. I have killed people. I have tortured people. I am the devil.’

I feel strangely calm.

‘You kill?’ Claire looks at me sceptically.

‘The lines of people,’ I say quietly, as though I’m talking about something utterly mundane. Detachment. Complete detachment. It is not me, it does not matter, it is nothing. They are nothing. Everything is nothing.

‘I could smell the ash. And I thought I was with them, one of them. I thought that’s what it was. But I wasn’t. I was the . . .’

Her eyes are on me, staring. They make me feel uncomfortable. ‘The ash? What ash? What lines?’

‘At the camp. I was at Auschwitz. I wasn’t a prisoner, Claire.’

‘You weren’t?’ She looks scared now. It’s sinking in. She will understand soon. She won’t be able to look me in the eye. It will make what I have to do easier.

‘Yan’s brother,’ I say. ‘I’ve been stealing his money. I didn’t know I was doing it, but every day I’ve been beating him up and taking a fiver from him. Every day.’

‘You’re the one who’s been beating up Yan’s brother?’

I nod.

Her eyes are wide, clouded. She is trying to make sense of the nonsensical.

‘That’s you? You’ve been doing that to him?’ She is incredulous. She is outraged. ‘It’s not enough that bigots have been scrawling graffiti on their house, putting bricks through their windows? You’ve been beating up that poor boy? You?’

I nod. It feels strangely cathartic to confess. I need her judgement, need her to hate me.

‘And you really don’t remember?’

‘I do now.’

‘The whole family have been so worried,’ Claire says. ‘They tried telling the school but no one listens to them.’ She shakes her head bitterly. ‘Because they’re immigrants.’

She lets the word hang in the air for a few seconds. Then she rounds on me again. ‘He . . . won’t talk about it. They tried not giving him money but the . . . you, I mean . . . It made it worse. He came home with a broken nose.’

She isn’t talking to me; she is talking to herself. She edges backwards, catches me looking at her and flushes. Then she stands up, goes on the offensive, to hide her embarrassment. I can see it all now, can see every reason for every action. How? Because I have seen it all before? Because I have lived so many lives?

‘And it was you all along? Jesus, Will. Do you know what it’s done to him? To the family?’

‘No. Anyway, I came to say goodbye.’

‘Goodbye?’

‘I’m going away. I wanted you to say sorry. To Yan’s brother.’

Claire looks angry. ‘Tell him yourself tomorrow. Don’t run away, Will. Face up to it.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘No.’

‘You can’t just run away from what you’ve done. You think that’ll make it OK? It won’t. You have to make amends. You have to face up to what you’ve done, pay the price.’

‘No, Claire,’ I say, a shade of anger slipping into my voice. ‘There’s another thing. Before I go.’

‘Yes?’ Her voice has lost any trace of warmth, of friendship. It is as though the sun has gone in. I shiver.

‘Yan,’ I say. ‘He didn’t do it.’

‘I know. Everyone knows. Everyone except . . .’ She stops herself just in time from mentioning my father and Patrick.

‘They planted evidence,’ I say. ‘A knife. To make it look as though it was him. I heard them talking about it.’

‘Heard who?’ Claire gasps.

‘Dad and Patrick.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘Yeah. Well, anyway, now you know.’

‘But that’s not enough. You have to tell someone official. You have to say that in court. You have to.’

‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘I have to go. I’ve done all I can, OK?’

I clamber on the bed and open the window.

‘You haven’t done all you can. Yan’s still in prison.’ Her bottom lip is sticking out, like it used to when she was younger and having a hissy fit because she wasn’t getting her way. On impulse I lean forward and kiss her, right on the mouth. She is soft. She is warm. For a second I feel complete, I feel like a person, like there are other possibilities, another way . . .

But there is no other way. I know that.

‘Bye, Claire,’ I say. She says nothing – she is too surprised to speak. I haul myself out of her window and clamber down the wall.

g

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It’s not late any more – it’s early. Very early. The sky and the water are beautiful; it’s like they’re both reflected in each other. Both bright, light, shimmering. Both full of the hope and optimism of newness, of fresh starts.

I wrap my arms around myself – it’s chilly, the kind of chilly that suggests that it’s going to be a hot day, that there are no clouds hanging around to spoil things.

A day I won’t see.

A day I won’t enjoy.

I wouldn’t enjoy it anyway, I remind myself. Does evil enjoy itself? Can it?

I stare at the river, deep into it. I’m at the same spot, the exact same position I was in when my mother . . . drowned herself . . .

I wish she was here – wish she was sitting right next to me, to guide me, to help me.

I don’t know what to do, Mum.

Yes, I do. I know exactly what to do. It’s just . . . I’m scared.

I see two figures walking towards me – they’re still a way away, but I recognise them. I look away – I’m ashamed at the relief coursing through me. Because as long as they’re here, I won’t be able to do it. And yet I also feel afraid, in case they try to stop me. Will I be strong enough to resist? Will I be brave enough?

I hear them getting closer. I still don’t turn around, even when Douglas sits down next to me on the bench. The girl sits on my other side.

‘Will,’ Douglas says by way of a greeting. ‘We thought we might find you here.’

‘Yeah?’ I stretch my legs out. I don’t want to touch either of them.

‘It’s not the answer, Will. You can’t run away.’

‘I’m not running away,’ I say angrily. ‘I’m taking control.’

‘No, Will. Returners can’t take control. What you’re doing is fighting, resisting. You shouldn’t. You’ll only get hurt.’ It’s the girl talking. I turn to look at her, at her haunting eyes, her pale skin and slight frame. She looks so fragile. I wonder what she remembers, what she has seen.

But she’s wrong. She has to be.

‘No,’ I say simply. ‘You’re wrong.’

‘She’s right,’ Douglas says soberly. ‘You don’t have control. No one does. Humans don’t control where they are born, to whom, into which century. Returners don’t have control either. You can’t change what you are, Will. You can try to run but you’ll still be you. You’ll come back somewhere else. Accept your destiny, don’t fight it.’

‘Don’t fight it? Easy for you to say.’

I turn, momentarily, and see his eyes. His sad eyes. I hang my head.

‘I didn’t mean that,’ I say. ‘I know it’s not easy for you.’ I look at him searchingly, then at the girl. ‘You haven’t told me where you’ve been, what you’ve been through.’

Douglas smiles. ‘We would be here for days if we told you everything.’

‘Edited highlights then,’ I say. ‘Lowlights, I mean,’ then feel guilty for making a joke of it.

‘Only when you’ve stared suffering in the face can you laugh at it,’ he says, reading my mind, or guessing really well. He winks at me. ‘Never be afraid to laugh at anything – black humour is one of humankind’s survival mechanisms. Without it we really are in trouble. Doctors are renowned for their grim humour – surgeons are the worst.’

I feel myself smiling back. A half-smile anyway. It’s strange – how can someone who’s only ever suffered be so comfortable to be with?

I sit back, pull my knees into my chest. ‘So tell me.’

Douglas leans into the bench. ‘We’ll tell you,’ he says. ‘So long as you promise not to do anything stupid.’

‘I promise,’ I say.

‘OK then. Let’s see. What do you know about India?’

I shrug. ‘Not much.’

‘Well, you should,’ he says. ‘India is a beautiful, rich continent, full of some of the most vibrant people in the world.’

‘You were there?’

‘Several times.’

‘And?’

He smiles and shrugs. ‘The wars when the colonialists left – they were brutal. I was raped several times –’

‘Raped?’ I look at him in horror.

‘As a woman,’ he says. ‘I have lived as woman and man. So have you. In that life all my children were killed in front of me, all of us were left to die.’

I think of something that makes my hair stand on end. ‘Was I there? Was I one of the –’

Douglas shakes his head. ‘Not then. But our paths have crossed, Will, many times. As I’m sure they will again.’

‘And you don’t hate me? You don’t want to hit me? To kill me?’

The girl’s hand moves to my arm. ‘Will, it’s not like that.’

‘No?’ I round on her. ‘Then what is it like? Please explain, because to be honest I really don’t get it. I mean, I’m an evil bastard, right? And you’ve endured horror and pain in all your thousands of lives or however many there have been. And yet you’re here with me like we’re old friends.’

Douglas lets out a sigh. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘after a war, soldiers find it hard to talk to civilians about what they’ve been through. They often become recluses; marriages break up and old friendships are torn apart. Ex-combatants can often only talk to each other because only then do they know that they are understood, that they aren’t being judged, that they can be themselves. Soldiers on the other side, the enemy, understand better what a soldier has been through than his own wife.’

‘We’re all soldiers together?’ I look at him incredulously. ‘That’s rubbish. I’m the soldier; you’re the civilians back home who’ve been bombed to smithereens.’

Douglas clears his throat. ‘OK, how’s your history, Will?’

I shrug. ‘Not great,’ I say testily.

‘You know about the First World War?’

‘Some.’

‘Have you heard about the armistice? The Christmas armistice?’

I shake my head.

‘Ah,’ Douglas says. ‘Well, let me tell you what happened. It was 1914, December 24th. The trenches were a grim affair. You’ve heard of them, I suppose?’

I roll my eyes. ‘Sure. Mud and stuff.’

‘Mud, ice, dead bodies, lack of sanitation, yes,’ Douglas says gravely. ‘And then on Christmas Eve there was a ceasefire. It wasn’t organised or anything. It was just Christmas. And the Germans didn’t want to fight any more than the British or the French or the Belgians. They sent notes over asking for a ceasefire. They gave each other cigarettes, chocolate cake. They sang carols and celebrated Christmas. They even played football.’

‘Seriously?’ I frown. ‘You’re not making this up?’

‘I’m not making it up, no,’ Douglas confirms.

‘OK,’ I say dubiously. ‘But what has that got to do with me?’

‘Don’t you see?’ Douglas looks at me carefully. ‘We are soldiers on different sides of the same battle. We are here because of each other. And there is no fighting at the moment. We are at peace.’

I think about this for a while. ‘And the next day?’ I say eventually. ‘What happened when it was all over?’

‘When it was all over?’ Douglas looks at the girl, who squeezes my arm.

‘Then it was back to war,’ she says. ‘They started fighting again.’

‘Right,’ I say uncomfortably. ‘So it didn’t mean anything.’

‘It meant everything,’ Douglas says. ‘The dividing lines were not between people. They rarely are. They are between political stances, ideologies, beliefs.’

I look out over the river. I feel confused, uncertain. I turn to the girl. ‘Was I there? During the First World War. I don’t remember it.’

She looks over at Douglas, who nods. ‘You weren’t there,’ she says. ‘You died in the Mexican Revolution.’

‘The Mexican Revolution.’ Images flash into my mind – of heat, of power, of attackers. ‘I was attacked.’ I look at Douglas hopefully. ‘I was attacked. Me. I wasn’t the one who . . . I mean, they killed me. I remember it.’

‘After you massacred anyone who rebelled against you,’ Douglas says wryly. ‘You ruled the place for thirty-four years before you were deposed.’

My shoulders slump. ‘Right. Yeah,’ I say. I sigh. ‘So anyway, you were telling me about India.’

Douglas frowns. ‘Will, I can tell you, but the stories are all the same. India, Africa, right here in the UK. There’s Mongolia, six hundred years ago – I was beheaded as part of an ethnic cleansing exercise. Russia, forty years ago – I was sent to Siberia, to a work camp, died of hypothermia. Hungary, five hundred years ago – stoned to death as the Ottoman Empire spread into my country. Humans may progress, Will. They may think that they are moving forward because they have invented clever machines and because they control the land and sea. But man’s capacity to inflict and endure pain is constant. Man’s desire for power, to beat down his competition – it hasn’t changed in the slightest.’

The girl nods. ‘The stories don’t matter,’ she says. ‘They’re all the same in their different ways.’

‘All the same.’ I repeat her words. Something is bugging me, but I’m not sure what. And then I realise what it is. I stand up. I want to be looking at both of them. ‘So what’s the point?’

‘The point?’ Douglas frowns.

‘You said that Returners exist to absorb the pain, to remember it for humankind.’

‘That’s right.’

‘But what’s the point, if people carry on doing terrible things, if I keep coming back, and others like me, to inflict more suffering? What do you achieve?’

He smiles sadly. ‘We can’t change humankind,’ he says. ‘Human nature is what it is. Driven by desire for material things, for love, for conquest, for knowledge. The best and the worst come out of this desire.’

‘But if history just keeps repeating itself, then why remember? When it doesn’t do any good? I mean, people are always rewriting history. And what’s the point of remembering if you don’t remind people once in a while?’

The girl looks at me sadly. ‘Memories don’t have to be at the forefront of the mind to exist, Will.’

‘But nothing ever changes.’

‘It does. It just happens slowly.’

‘So what happened in Auschwitz will never happen again?’

She looks uncomfortable. ‘It’s not like that,’ she says.

‘Then what is it like?’

‘You are asking the wrong questions, looking at this the wrong way. What Emily is trying to explain is that our paths are all set,’ Douglas says gently.

‘Emily?’ My head swings round to look at the girl. I realise I didn’t even know her name.

‘Names don’t matter,’ she says, reading my mind.

‘Nothing seems to matter to you,’ I say bitterly. ‘Not the fact that I don’t know your name, not the fact that some people kill other people, not the fact that some people torture and maim other people. But it does matter. It all matters.’

‘It matters, but not in the way you think,’ she says. ‘We are comrades throughout time. Names are transient.’

‘Maybe to you,’ I say staunchly. ‘Maybe you’re beyond names. But I’m not. I’m Will Hodges. And I am not going to do this. I’m not going to do whatever it is you think I’m going to.’

‘We don’t know what you’re going to do,’ Douglas says. ‘But it is not for you to choose.’

‘You mean my choice has been made for me? No. No way.’

‘Not made for you, no. But we will always make the same choices. We are who we are.’

I shake my head. ‘I refuse to be who you say I am.’

He stands up and takes my hand. Emily takes the other one; I feel warm suddenly, as though I have just come in from the cold. ‘I don’t think I have explained it very well,’ Douglas continues. ‘Returners hold on to humanity’s violent secrets out of love, out of hope.’

‘Hope?’ The word makes me feel uncomfortable.

Her eyes, looking at me. Begging me. Hopeful.

‘How can you feel hope when you know your life is doomed to be full of suffering?’

‘We need hope and love, Will. Without either of those . . . well, that’s when the suffering will start in earnest. That’s when everything will come to an end.’

‘And returning brings hope?’ My voice is heavy with sarcasm.

‘Absorbing the pain stops hope from being destroyed.’

‘Hope gets destroyed,’ I say bitterly. ‘Trust me.’

Douglas looks at me sadly. ‘Tell me, Will, is there love in your life? Is there hope?’

I think of Claire. Think of Dad. I think of Mum.

But she’s gone. They’ve all gone. It’s just me on my own. I have to deal with this, take control. I am in shade, I am in scrubland, I am in a swamp, I am sinking. I feel myself getting angry. I am resentful. I feel pain and it hurts and I want it to go away, and it is Douglas’s fault, I see that suddenly. He is making me feel bad and I want him to go, want them both to go, and yet they are still here.

‘Go,’ I bark.

Douglas shakes his head. ‘We won’t leave you, Will. We know what you intend to do, and we won’t let you do it. It will only cause you more pain. You have run away for long enough; you need to accept things as they are.’

‘I’ll do what I want,’ I say. The anger is rising up like a tsunami, quick and deadly.

‘Of course you will. But allow us to guide you at least.’

‘Guide me? Guide me?’ I am furious. I feel rage coursing through my veins. I grab him, I throw him to the ground. He doesn’t resist. I kick him. He lets me. It makes me more angry, more bitter. He is pathetic. I am strong and he is weak and he will
learn
, he must
learn
. . . I throw myself down on the ground on top of him; I am hitting him, grabbing him by the neck. My hands hurt; it feels good. It feels as though I am wresting control, as though I am in charge. I am just doing to him what he wants me to do, what he expects me to do. He is responsible for this, and he must pay. He must pay.