The Returners (18 page)
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It’s strange how memories come back. Not like a dam opening, torrents of water tumbling through, but more like a small crack that allows a bit of water through, then a bit more, then gradually increases in size until there is nothing to hold back the flowing water from flooding downstream where it belongs.
He didn’t try to save her.
He let her die.
He killed her.
Yan’s dad wasn’t there.
She didn’t leave me.
My head drops down into my hands. My body is moving, juddering; I realise I am crying. I cover my face with my hands.
I stay like that for a long time, until I am almost unable to move.
It is later. Minutes, hours; I don’t know. I hear footsteps, then I feel an arm wrap round me; I open my eyes. It is Douglas.
‘How do you always know where I am?’
He smiles. ‘You’re not that complicated,’ he says.
‘Yeah, well.’ I shrug.
‘You remember,’ he says.
I nod. ‘I remember.’
‘Are you ready to accept your fate, Will? Are you ready to be who you are destined to be?’
I wipe my eyes and pull away from him.
Everything has changed.
‘A Returner, you mean?’
He nods.
‘Absorbing human misery? Remembering the sins of the world?’ My voice sounds different; I don’t recognise it.
Douglas hears it too; he nods again, but there’s a flicker of something in his eyes. Uncertainty; wariness.
‘Yes, Will,’ he says.
‘No,’ I say. ‘No, I’m not.’
He looks disappointed. ‘I thought you understood, Will. I thought you saw that acceptance is the only way.’
‘People don’t change?’ I say.
‘People don’t change,’ he agrees.
‘Except they do.’
I stand up, start walking. Douglas comes after me; he has to do a half-jog to keep up.
‘You think I’m wrong? Will, change is impossible. Given the same choice in the same circumstance, we will always make the same decision. It’s hard-wired into us.’
‘No.’ I stop suddenly and round on Douglas. ‘No, you keep saying that but it isn’t true. Dad changed. He loved Mum, he was a nice guy and he changed.’
‘He simply allowed his true feelings to surface,’ Douglas said.
‘No.’ I fold my arms. ‘No.’
‘Will, please. What you are doing can only hurt you. Fighting will only make things harder.’
‘You know what my so-called destiny is?’ I crouch down next to the river, pick up a stone and throw it in, disturbing some seagulls, who flap their wings irritably.
‘We cannot know each other’s destiny,’ Douglas says.
‘Yeah, well, let me tell you,’ I say bitterly. ‘There’s going to be a holocaust. Worse than the Nazis.’
‘Worse?’
‘As bad. Does it matter? I’m going to kill people. Hundreds of thousands of them.’
Douglas looks at me sadly. ‘You’re scared?’
‘Scared?’ I grab his shoulders. ‘Scared? No, I’m not scared. I’m terrified. And not for me. For the world. For the people I’m meant to send to their deaths. Don’t you see? I can’t just passively sit back and become a monster. I won’t do it. I’m not going to do it.’
‘But –’
‘But nothing.’ I release Douglas. ‘But nothing, Douglas. Everyone has a choice. Everyone. All the time. You can walk through a door or decide not to. You can let your past dictate your future, or you can throw two fingers up at it and walk away.’
‘It’s not that simple,’ Douglas said. His eyes are cloudy, as though I’ve reminded him of something he doesn’t want to think about.
‘Yes, it is,’ I said, firmly. ‘You know, Claire pointed something out to me this morning. Rwanda. I remember Rwanda, Douglas.’
He frowns uncertainly. ‘But you weren’t . . .’
‘Weren’t there? No, I wasn’t. I was meant to be. So how come I remember it?’
‘I don’t . . .’
‘I’ll tell you how,’ I interrupt. ‘I was watching from the wings. I wouldn’t go back, see? After Auschwitz I refused to go back, refused to be a part of all the suffering. Said I couldn’t do it any more. And so I watched what happened in Rwanda from wherever I was. Watched those people being mutilated, raped, knifed to death. Watched a boy trapping hundreds of people in a school to let them die. Watched all that brutality and all that doing nothing to stop it. And I realised that running away wasn’t going to help anything because others would just step in. Running away achieves nothing. Claire was right. You have to stay and fight. That’s why I came back. I came back to fight. And I’m going to, Douglas. I’m going to.’
‘You came back to fight?’ He looks shocked, uncertain. ‘I don’t understand. I –’
‘And it’s not just me, either.’
‘It’s not?’
‘You have to choose too, Douglas. You have to choose to fight back.’
‘Fight back?’ Douglas frowned uncertainly. ‘Will, that is not our role. That is not why we’re here. That is not –’
‘Yeah, I get it,’ I interrupt rudely. ‘You’re here to suffer. But how about you change that? How about you take people like me on, pin them to the floor instead of letting them beat you up?’
‘Pin you to the floor?’ Douglas is shaking his head in bewilderment.
‘And argue. Argue with me and people like my dad and the others who think that foreigners are to blame for all our problems, or people who believe different things, or people who eat different food or watch different television programmes. Tell them they’re wrong. Make them see it. Force them to see it.’
Douglas’s mouth is open, but he’s not saying anything.
‘Yan’s dad didn’t kill Mum,’ I say. As I speak, I find myself blinking back tears. ‘It wasn’t his fault. It was Dad’s fault.’ Douglas is still silent. I take a deep breath and continue. ‘It’s not Yan’s fault that Claire likes him more than me. It’s just the way it is. And Yan’s brother . . .’
‘His brother?’ Douglas asks tentatively.
‘The one I used to steal money from. The one who fought back. You should learn from him. All of you. If he can do it, you can too. You can change everything. And even if you can’t change everything, you can change some things. Just some things can make a difference.’
‘Will,’ Douglas says, but I’m already walking away. My time is up; I’ve got to go.
The police car is parked right outside our house; everyone will have noticed. People are watching from behind curtains, pretending they need to walk down the street when really they’re just trying to find out what’s going on, to get a glimpse of whatever drama might be about to unfold.
Our front door opens; Dad is there, a policeman standing next to him. He’s got the same expression on his face as Douglas had – bewilderment, confusion.
‘Will? Will, son, where have you been? What’s going on? The police are here. I can’t get hold of Patrick. No one will tell me anything. Will?’
He’s trying to sound gruff, confident, but I can see the doubt in his eyes.
It’s me and you, son. We’re a team
.
I walk towards him. I feel calm. Calm and purposeful. I wait for him to step aside, then walk into the house, into the sitting room. I sit down on the sofa, wait for him to sit down on his chair. Where he always sits.
He perches on it. He’s leaning forward expectantly, drumming his fingers on his leg.
I take a deep breath, then I look at him, right at him, right into his eyes so that he really hears every word I say.
‘He didn’t do it, Dad.’
‘What are you talking about? You mean that Yan? That filth? That . . .’
I hold my hand up. ‘Stop,’ I say. I feel very powerful suddenly. Like I felt when I was pummelling Douglas only different. Better. It feels more real. Less dangerous. More myself.
Dad looks at me warily. ‘Don’t you tell me to stop,’ he says, but there is no conviction in his voice.
‘Yan didn’t kill Mr Best. Yan’s dad didn’t kill Mum. It wasn’t them. And you know it.’
Dad opens his mouth; it stays like that for a few seconds but nothing comes out of it. ‘I remember, Dad. I remember it all.’
He looks at me in confusion. Then his eyes fill with fear. ‘No, son. No, you’ve got it wrong.’
‘I remember. You killed her. You did it, Dad.’
‘No!’ He looks at me wide-eyed. ‘He did it. He killed her. He filled her head with ideas. He made her unhappy with me. We were a team. We were the three musketeers. He was going to take her away from me. Patrick warned me about him.’ He puts his head in his hands. He is sobbing now. ‘He –’
‘Patrick is a liar. She didn’t do anything, Dad. They were talking. They were only talking.’
He is disintegrating before my eyes. I feel pity for him.
‘I’m not going to go along with Patrick’s lies. Yan is someone’s son, Dad. If we lie, if we persecute someone for something they didn’t do, we’ll be on the wrong side of History. We’ll be the enemy. We’ll be the horror, Dad. Don’t you see that?’
A policeman walks towards me. He handcuffs me.
‘I’m arresting you, William Hodges, on suspicion of –’
‘What?’ Dad roars and pushes him to one side. ‘What are you talking about? You can’t arrest my son.’
‘He can, Dad. I confessed to the murder. It was me, Dad. I did it.’
His eyes are wild now. ‘No. No, son. You didn’t. You –’
‘I hid the knife at Yan’s house,’ I say. ‘Under the floorboards. I did it. I was in a bad mood. That’s what happened.’
‘No, son.’
‘Yes, Dad.’
He watches silently as the policeman leads me out of the house. Then he runs out towards the police car.
‘It wasn’t you. It was me,’ he cries. ‘Me and Patrick. We set it up. We did it. Take me. Take me.’ He is begging; his voice is hoarse.
The Police Commissioner gets out of the car, where he has been waiting all this time. His eyes flicker over to mine. My idea. His plan. I hadn’t been sure Dad would admit the truth; I hadn’t cared. Prison didn’t frighten me. I’d seen it as a form of protection. For the others. For the people on the ships.
‘You set it up?’ he asks Dad. Dad looks at me again, looking for answers but there are none; he nods.
‘Don’t take my son,’ he cries. ‘He didn’t have anything to do with it. It was me. Me and Patrick. We wanted the boy locked away, wanted people to think . . . They don’t belong here. Leave my son . . .’
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July 18th 2016
There was this day, a few weeks ago. I was walking by the river, like I do sometimes, and maybe I was tired, or maybe I just felt like sitting down, I don’t know – it doesn’t matter. The point is, I sat down on one of those benches that have people’s names on them, dead people, dead people who used to sit there before you did, maybe before you were even alive. I was just sitting there, hanging out. I wasn’t doing anything in particular. Wasn’t thinking about anything in particular. Watching the ducks, mostly, as far as I can remember. I saw a few people I know – Claire, Yan, walking along, maybe holding hands. I wasn’t looking; it’s nothing to do with me whether they were holding hands or not. I couldn’t care in the slightest – but I pretty much ignored them like I usually do. Other people are overrated in my opinion. Unlike ducks. I mean, how could a duck ever upset you? Ducks don’t look at you like you’re a total freak, or say stupid things, or ask you questions they know you don’t want to answer. Ducks just hang out, like I was doing. They just get on with it.
The reason I’m telling you this is that, as far as I can remember, that day was the last time I felt happy. That is the last thing I can remember before everything changed.
But the thing about change is that it’s unavoidable. The changes you dread, the ones you think are going to ruin your life, they’re never all bad. You just have to look closely, just have to wait for the good bit to surface.
Dad’s in prison now. Turns out Patrick’s group, his political friends, they weren’t just political. Turns out they were self-styled political terrorists. They thought a spate of murders up and down the country that could be blamed on foreigners would shake people out of their complacency, make them realise that the country was being taken over by foreigners, that they were sucking everything good out of our nation, that they had to be stopped. They set Yan up. He was just one of their victims. One of many, as it turned out. Half the group were involved in the criminal justice system, which made it easier for them to hide what they were doing. Dad was just one of their converts.
I could have been one too.
Maybe.
Probably.
I go and see him every day. He has good days and bad days – sometimes he thanks me, tells me I’m a good lad, promises he’s going to be out soon. Other days he won’t look at me, says I betrayed him, says I’m no kind of son, that he wishes I’d never been born. I don’t mind. He’s right both ways. To be honest, my feelings about him waver too.
Yan’s free anyway. He’s going to medical school apparently. Claire told me. She said she still wanted to be my friend, said she was really proud of me and that I could go and stay with her again if I wanted to, what with Dad in prison.
But I said no. Turns out as well that my mother has a sister I didn’t know about. Mum and her fell out when Mum married Dad; they never spoke after the wedding. But she’s going to move into our house while Dad’s away. She looks a bit like Mum and she’s got the same twinkle in her eye. So that’s kind of a good thing, right?
Claire says I’m her project. She’s got me reading up about politics. I’m thinking about joining the party that Mum joined. It feels good. And she knows when I’m losing it too – she knows how to snap me out of it when I feel myself beginning to freeze over.
I’m forcing myself to live in the present too, not allowing myself to let the ice descend. I recognise it now; anger, then ice, then chunks of time I can’t account for. Chunks of time when I hurt people, unencumbered by conscience, by morality, by . . . me.
And Douglas is trying too. All of them are. Trying to fight back, even just in little ways.
I have normal dreams now. Ones that involve flying and turning up for exams without any clothes on. Ones that aren’t about death and suffering and torture. I still have one of the old dreams. The one about the future. But it changes now. Sometimes it’s the same as it was before, but sometimes I’m on the other side, stopping the ship from sailing off. And sometimes there is no ship, sometimes the world is different and people don’t hate each other after all. Claire says that’s because the future isn’t set, because there is no destiny, just the life you carve out for yourself. She says I can carve out any life I choose. I like it when she says that.
And so I sit and watch the ducks. I’m on my own again, but I’m not lonely, not any more. And as I sit here, I realise that maybe I will be happy again. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but I do know that it’s open. I know that it isn’t set in stone. Nothing is. Not if you don’t want it to be.
In fact, I think to myself, maybe, just maybe, I’m a little bit happy right now.
