Tremble (55 page)

The elderly man sitting alone, obviously shaken, catches the attention of the young woman. She crosses the room to his table and offers a polite curtsy.

“Excuse me for interrupting, sir, but I was wondering whether you might be a relative of a dear friend of mine whom I have not seen for some three years—a Mr. Alistair Sizzlehorn. You bear a strong resemblance to him. He was a most promising archaeologist with the British Museum at the time of his disappearance. We were intimates; indeed, I waited a good year for him before I considered other suitors.”

Alistair stares fully into Margaret’s face until the scrutiny moves from impolite to plain alarming. As the older man’s countenance gathers intensity, Harry, the young merchant, fearing for his fiancée, places his arm across her shoulders, as if to protect her.

The elderly gentleman stands suddenly, breaking the moment. “I am sorry, I have never heard of him. Now, if you will excuse me there is someone I have to meet.”

Alistair Sizzlehorn makes his way around the street corner and out of sight of the teahouse. There he leans heavily against the wall, emotion shaking his aged body.

Off the Cape of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805

T
he signals had gone up and the Lord Admiral’s immortal words—“England expects that every living man will do his duty,” followed by the more pointed message, “Engage the enemy more closely”—had been read eagerly by every sailor, from the midshipmen to the gunners. Nelson’s direct appeal had spread through the men like a virus, infecting them with a heart-pumping patriotism mixed with something far sweeter: the love of a great commander and the soaring sensation of being part of a momentous occasion that everyone knew would change both history and the fate of England itself.

“Damn Bony, and damn the French and the Spanish,” whispered Norwich Pebblesmith, an eleven-year-old drummer, to his companion but his words were lost as the instruments began their frenetic beat. Ahead, the massive Spanish three-decker, the
Santa Ana
, seemed almost within arm’s reach. It towered over the
Royal Sovereign
but already the English cannonballs had smashed into the hull of the flagship and shattered the beaked bow. All around the small boy lay the injured and the dying. Somewhere there was screaming, but the drummer held firm, focusing on nothing but the motion of his wrists, which now seemed to be thrashing through treacle. In front of him, Vice-Admiral Collingwood stood defiantly dressed in his epaulettes shouting orders, exhilarated by the stench of gunpowder and blood, his face flushed, his eyes glittering dangerously.

Suddenly the deck shuddered and there came a massive crunch and the sound of splintering iron and wood as the
Royal Sovereign
rammed the crippled
Santa Ana
.

Norwich was thrown to the deck. As he lay there dazed, staring up at the billowing smoke that scarred the otherwise perfect blue sky, he noticed a whitish creature lazily flapping its way toward the Spanish vessel. At first he took it to be a bird, but there was something unnatural about the manner in which its wings lifted and descended. Rolling onto his side Norwich crossed himself, believing he might have seen the manifestation of a dying man’s spirit or, worse still, Old Nick himself.

Falkland Islands, 20 May 1982

I
t was white and covered in fine pale hair that looked translucent in the light. Red beady eyes swiveled around in a head that was delicate, almost noble in its structure. The nose—an organ dedicated to the invisible art of scent detection (Nature had cared little for its external appeal during its evolution)—was an intricate labyrinth of folded skin and quivering tissue shot with a lattice of minute veins. The two oversized ears covered most of the small domed head and were similarly complex organs that seemed to promise a view right into the creature’s skull should one be so brave as to peer inside. Its wings, when spread, were a startling ashen hue and reminiscent of the battered fabric of a beach umbrella. The mouselike torso boasted two bright pink nipples—a rude reminder that the animal was a fellow mammal. Two claws, seemingly grafted carelessly at the end of each wing, looked like a mistake in design. Its minuscule penis (hidden beneath a fold of gray skin most of the time) and furry scrotum hung upside down against the animal’s body along with everything else. The creature lived in Chaplain Murphy’s quarters, its wooden perch located in the corner of the crowded cabin, next to his missal and a large bottle of whiskey.

The bat had been HMS
Ardent
’s mascot for as long as the current captain could remember—and he had been with the Royal Navy for a good thirty years. The tradition was that the creature’s welfare was entrusted to the chaplain in residence, which was how Father Murphy had acquired the animal, inheriting it from Chaplain McDougal upon his retirement.

It was easy to keep, requiring little food except pieces of fruit from the galley and the occasional bowl of milk, which it would drink delicately, balancing like a trapeze artist from its perch, furry white neck stretched out, the inverted snout dipping down to the creamy surface and its long pink tongue steadily scooping the liquid up into its hairy mouth. It had no name except Bat, and had been on the ship for so long that only new recruits ever noticed it.

Father Murphy had once tried to identify the exact species the animal belonged to, but had been forced to give up as its albino appearance had proved a source of confusion. It most closely resembled the fruit-eating bats of the Amazon, but its snout was longer, its teeth sharper and its wingspan proportionally longer than the miniature bats in the tattered copy of
National Geographic
he had found in the library. It
squeaked only very occasionally and its droppings were dry and pelletlike—easy to sweep up. Perhaps the strangest thing was that the bat had no scent whatsoever. This disturbing characteristic seemed to contribute to its invisibility and it was easy to forget that it existed at all.

Father Murphy, a corpulent man in his late sixties, had nevertheless grown fond of the creature and had taken to reading his favorite psalms aloud to it. The bat would hang quietly from its perch, occasionally lifting its head in the chaplain’s direction, a quizzical expression on its mouselike face. After moving on to the New Testament the cleric noticed that the animal responded particularly well to the parable of Saint Francis of Assisi, thus convincing him that it possessed an intelligence. In his more inebriated moments, Father Murphy imagined its brain would be a grid, like you might see peering through a gun sight, made up of muffled sounds, its dimensions divided by echo and the scent of heat. Very different from his own brain, but possessing an intelligence nevertheless.

A closet animal liberationist who felt morally conflicted over the imprisonment of the creature, the cleric had persuaded himself that the animal was happy. Being albino it would never have survived in the natural world anyhow—an observation Father Murphy found comforting whenever the bat shook its waxen wings restlessly, as if the distant memory of flight had suddenly fallen upon it like a shadow.

But today the bat was not happy, it wasn’t even content. The thud of rocket fire vibrated through the metal hull of the ship and the animal could smell the acrid scent of battle permeating the musty confined air of the cabin. With one claw the bat preened behind its left ear, then hopped along the perch to peer haplessly at the empty food bowl below. It hadn’t eaten in over four days. Swiveling its head around, it stared at the bunk where Father Murphy—an amorphous miasmatic collection of scents and movement to the bat—usually lay. The bunk too had been empty for several days.

The screech of an overhead jet cut through the cabin, disorienting the bat, which flew upward and knocked itself blindly against the ceiling, then fell down onto the soft mattress where it lay like a crumpled rag.

“You poor thing.” Reginald Smithers, twenty-six and on his first commission as a ship’s chaplain, and in the middle of his first war,
stared down at the disheveled animal. Then he gingerly picked it up with one hand. The furry creature stirred into life, one questioning eye cocked up at the clean-shaven cleric.

“He’s dead is old Father Murphy. Killed in action administering the last rites. Rotten bad luck,” the priest told the bat as he carried it to the perch. Carefully stretching out a claw, the bat grasped the wood and swung itself back into position. It swayed slightly, as if rocking itself in mourning, all the while staring at the empty bunk.

“No need to grieve too hard—he lived a full life and went down like a soldier. He’s bound to get a DCM posthumously,” the chaplain continued with forced cheerfulness while filling the food dish with pieces of chopped apple and orange from the ship’s cook.

“So it’s just me and you from now on,” he finished, wondering what kind of affection he would get from a bat. Still, it was better than no companionship and Father Smithers, afflicted with acne and an unfortunate effeminate manner, had been having trouble developing any camaraderie at all with the seasoned paratroopers eager for combat.

Resolutely he swung his kit onto the bunk and sniffed. They had removed Father Murphy’s clothes several days before but had left a rusting chest of possessions beneath the bed, assuming that the church would claim responsibility for them. The bed had been stripped but still held the musky smell of the dead cleric: mothballs and an old-fashioned sweetish aftershave.

Reginald knew that the night air was freezing but he also knew it was icy fresh and full of sea salt. He wrenched the porthole open and retired to the en suite bathroom—a luxury afforded only to the clergy. Stooping to step through the low metal doorway, Reginald sighed deeply then shut the door.

The bat cocked its head and gazed at the porthole. Beyond, the black sky was alight with the dramatic phosphorus trails of missiles and the smoldering lights of the starlight shells as they floated toward the ground with a deceptively benign beauty. The spectacle stirred something in the very depths of the bat’s primordial psyche. This was its domain, the kaleidoscopic burning landscape a trigger that ignited all of its instincts.

The creature edged its way to the far end of the perch then opened its wings fully. Flapping wildly it made a straight path for the open porthole and, after hovering for a second, was swallowed by the night.

The paratrooper hunkered in a ditch contemplating the vividness of everything around him. Fear had heightened his senses; he had seen action in Northern Ireland and knew the difference between the exhilaration of adrenaline and the nauseating sweep of fear—the feeling that your eyelids were pinned to your head, all senses pulled tense, as open as they could be, drinking in every second, every slight flutter in the gray panorama as you waited for death to spring out at you. The deadly jack-in-the-box, the one second element you hadn’t calculated on that got you every time. This was war, the butting up of the pig’s head of Life and its convulsing end, the pounding minute in which all your memories collided violently into a dangerous clarity where limbs moved before thought or morality.

A fighter jet screamed overhead. Five seconds later a nearby explosion turned the sky a bright white-yellow and they were showered with dirt. Crouching, Lieutenant Clive Scarsgard checked himself. Fine, all in one piece, amazing. The luck of the Irish, you might say, except he wasn’t Irish.

As his ears stopped ringing he realized his feet were starting to freeze. The icy water that filled the bottom of the trench was seeping into the shitty puttees he had been forced to wrap around his ankles because the second-rate DM boots they’d been issued were too short. Fucking crappy English design, Clive thought for the hundredth time in the last twenty-four hours, wondering whether the Argies crouching in their tents on the other side of no-man’s-land had better boots. Probably. Next kill he made he was going to take the boots he promised himself.

Bullets whistled overhead and the dull thud of distant explosions peppered the air. He leaned back against the frozen mud and stared up at the sky. It was fucking amazing, he reflected, marveling at the iridescent streaks of phosphorus hanging like rips in a canvas, seeming to promise a luminous heaven behind the velvet skin of the night. The absurd thought that the army might include in their recruitment campaigns the idea of war as scenic occurred to him. He wanted to laugh out loud. Gallows humor; the hysteria of the man awaiting execution.