The usher was there all the time I was talking to Graham Rossiter. I’m sure of it. Watching through one of the windows that give onto the car park. He’ll have seen me talking. He’ll have noted the way I put my arm around Graham Rossiter’s shoulder and walked him back to his car. So much for judicial impartiality, eh, Michael? But I said nothing I shouldn’t have said.
You told me things you shouldn’t have told me, Michael, and I’ve never been able to forget them. They went into my mind like dirty water and turned everything dark. You remember that village you went into, on your first tour of duty? Your platoon had information that Vietcong were in there. Trouble was, you couldn’t tell them apart, not once they were deep into a village and dressing the same and going out to the fields the same. They all looked about fourteen at first, until you got used to the way they were. The girls were slender and quick moving. In the city they had narrow feet but in the villages their feet were horny and splayed from walking barefoot. But all of them had small feet, compared to western women. You told me that when you first came home the American girls looked gross, with their big tanned thighs and their shorts and their way of laughing with their mouths open that showed all of their white teeth. And their tits bouncing, not like the shallow breasts of Eastern women, that rise and fall under silk.
The village was quiet. You all moved forward like you’d been trained, but there was nobody there. You looked in one empty hut and then another. They’d all run off where you’d never find them. The frustration of it came up into your throat like a physical thing. It was like trying to grab hold of water. Calvin was there. You told me how he crouched and went forward into the last hut. Then there was a shout from the back of Calvin’s throat. Afterwards a cry. He came out pulling a girl, who looked about fourteen as usual. She had a baby in her arms and she was shaking it and its head was flopping about. Even from the distance it looked bad. It had nothing to do with Calvin. It was dead before he went into the hut. Still warm and soft, as soft as it was when you picked it up out of the girl’s arms, because Calvin wouldn’t touch it. And she let you. She was so far gone that she looked at you as if you might have come with medicine to put it back together again.
She’d suffocated it. Not meaning to, but being left behind somehow and panicking because of the noise of the soldiers, and knowing what that meant. Not knowing you didn’t mean her any harm. Not being able to run fast enough, probably. The baby was quite new. It had started crying and she’d been so afraid she hadn’t known what to do. That thin cry newborns make, which gets everywhere. She pressed it against her closer and closer. Probably it was her first baby and she didn’t know how to stop the crying. Or she tried to put her nipple in its mouth and it was too distressed to suck. It arched back from her and screamed again. And there was the baby in your arms and she was crying and wriggling on the ground as if she would force herself down through the dust into the earth. Her face was streaky with spit and tears. Calvin said, ‘And when they come back she’ll say we killed the fucking baby.’
And you’d never touched it. In fact you’d never held a newborn baby before that you could remember. But you reached out. The baby was light and limp. However much you cradled it, it hung from your hands. You didn’t know what to do with it. Your platoon commander came over and gave orders and the girl was led away. The priority was to get the men out of there. There were Vietcong in the area for sure, or why would the whole village have cleared out like that? It might have been a grenade she was cradling in there. You were just lucky all it was was a dead baby.
You told me, It was as soft as a little kitten. And you know, Simone, I don’t believe I’ve ever held another baby since then. You poured out more white wine and drank, staring into darkness where the stars weren’t sparkling but just hung there so close they lit the sweat on your skin. I knew you were still feeling the lightness of the baby. Its non-weight. I don’t know why I keep thinking of it, you said. The thing about war that you don’t expect before you get there is that things keep happening without anyone wanting them or intending them or planning them. There’s no shape to it. Afterwards you make a shape and you call it history. You can argue about the shape, but what you can’t say is that there never was a shape at all. Then you said, I kept thinking of the Bible, Simone. That part that says ‘Dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return’. Because that’s what the baby was like. It was like the dust over there, warm and silky. And then it spills out through your fingers. Not because anybody means it. Because of carelessness and because it’s so easy to do. The worst things just got done, like that girl with the baby, not even knowing he was dying. Because fear makes you stupid, you’ll do anything if you think you’re going to die. He had a line of dark blood coming out of his nostrils. I can still see it now.
Then we drank the rest of the wine, the whole jug of it. It was tasting warm and metallic by then, but it lifted us away from what you were saying. I stumbled getting up and there was a clink of stone, but you didn’t notice. You didn’t want me to say anything or be anything, only listen while you poured out all that stuff as if once it was in me it wouldn’t be in you any longer. Or at least, not so much.
But you were wrong, Michael. Talking made it grow. It grew in me and it grew in you. My listening to you didn’t help anything.
Maybe you’re right, and I’m not a good judge. I have to do a lot of listening still, but in the end I have to act. I have to move forward. I have to make orders even if they aren’t going to make any difference. Some things can’t be changed, but I think what I’m saying to you now is that you have to go along with the idea you can change them. And maybe that’s all the law is : an idea of how things could be, and a belief in change.
I get home, park the car and walk round the side of the house. They’re shooting in the garden. An arrow flies past me, then another.
‘Look, Mum!’ yells Joe. ‘Look what we’ve made.’ He runs up and shows me the bow. The wood is fresh cut, already darkening at the notches.
‘It’s holly. Dad showed us how to make them.’
The bows are thick and tough, the strings taut. I forget how Donald can always do things like this, giving them time and getting them right. Matt glances across at me with Joe, then he poises himself, fits an arrow to the string and draws back his bow. There’s a target of crayoned red and white circles pasted onto a piece of board. In his haste to show me how well he can shoot, Matt mistimes and yanks too hard on the string. His arrow drops to the ground. He flushes and darkens. A year ago he’d have trampled the bow into the grass; now he picks up the arrow, fits it against the string again, squints alongside, draws and lets go. The arrow rises high, missing the target but cutting the air with a sharp, satisfying hiss.
‘Good try,’ says Donald. ‘Hold the bow level next time, and look straight through at the target. You’re coming on.’ Matt nods, accepting it.
‘Watch me!’ shouts Joe. Scarcely looking at it, he lays the arrow to the bow and lets it fly. His coordination is so sweet that I can scarcely bear it for Matt. But for once Matt is relaxed. He shows me the shaping of the bow, the notches cut for the string. I smooth the wood with my finger.
‘Dad did it. He said yew would be even better, but holly’s OK. It bends right back but it doesn’t break.’ He looks at Donald then ducks his head down shyly, hiding his pleasure. Donald smiles at me.
‘You know those nests in the eaves?’ he asks. ‘I’ve found out what they are. I looked them up in the bird book. They’re house-martins. They’ll come back year after year.’
‘Will they?’
‘The book says they will. They’re colonial.’
‘They’ve colonized us, you mean?’
‘That’s right. They’re supposed to be lucky.’
‘Does it say that in the book?’
‘I’ll show you later. There’s a bit from Shakespeare.’
‘We’re lucky, then.’
I look at the cluster of mud cup nests under the eaves. Back and back, year after year
. I wonder how long they’ve been coming? I love this long, sloping light. The children look as if they have grown out of the ground and don’t belong to us at all.
‘Come on Matt, have another try.’
I step back. The three of them are caught by the sun. The grass shines as if lit from another world, and their pointed shadows cross it like ladders, meeting and parting. They confer, heads together, as Donald makes a minute adjustment to the depth of a notch with his pocket-knife. Joe bobs, liquid around the solid shapes of his brother and father. Then they all turn to the target, and one by one they shoot.
The boys would go on shooting for ever. But the light’s thickening, and I’m hungry.
‘I was going to cook us something,’ says Donald.
‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll take the boys and get fish-and-chips, when they’re ready.’
Donald frowns. ‘Isn’t that a bit –’
‘It’s Friday.’
Straightaway I’m thinking of the loan. The thought of money drags too many other ideas after it, and too much anger. I want to yell at him, ‘I work like a fool all week and you’re telling me I can’t even get fish-and-chips for the kids on a Friday night?’ But I know that Donald feels just the same.
We walk slowly round to the back door. The light is beautiful, and the air blows over the marshes, warm and sweet.
‘Just sometimes, I think I could get used to living here,’ says Donald.
‘You’ll get to know people.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘I’m going walking in the morning,’ I say. ‘Early on. I need to walk the week out of me.’
‘I’ll come with you, if you like.’ He doesn’t look at me as he says this. The air brushes us softly, and I look up at the house-martins’ nests.
‘Well, if you wake up,’ I say. He knows what that means. His face stiffens, he pushes the door open and the smell of the house surrounds us, still damp even now, before winter comes. My clothes have a tang of damp on them when I shake them out of the wardrobe.
‘Could you light a fire?’
‘I’m trying to stock up with wood for the winter, Simone. It’s not cold yet.’
‘No, but it feels cold. Just for tonight.’
I see Donald’s hand on the doorframe, as sharply as if I’d just given birth to it. He has beautiful, long, articulated hands. He is never clumsy. I look at his hand and shiver at the thought of it touching me. Everything is too cold in this house. Damp, cold crevices. I try to drive out the smell of mice with disinfectant. The sea rots everything.
‘Light the fire.’
‘All right.’
‘I’ll take the boys in a minute. I don’t know how they can still shoot in this light. I can’t see the target.’
Because from one moment to the next, as I look, the dark comes closer. The dark comes like this, like grandmother’s footsteps. It’s the end of September, after all. The end of every warm day is threaded with cold. Soon the sea will be warmer than the land, and it will send mist inland which won’t clear until midday and will start to creep back at two o clock. I remember last autumn, the mists and the white pastille of sun that kept appearing and disappearing. I would drive across the marsh with my fog-lamps on, and the windows wound down so I could stick my head out and peer to see the edge of the road. I don’t like the fog. Once or twice I’d feel panic bursting in me, putting a distant, ringing sound in my ears and making my heart beat thickly and swallow up my breath. I would make myself breathe slowly. I would make my shoulders drop, and relax the muscles of my face. I would drive on, taking the car forward steadily over the wet rope of road slung over the marsh. Sometimes I was afraid to look in the driving mirror for fear of the square of fog looking back at me. And I know all I’m afraid of is fear. If I took the car out of gear and let it glide to a stop, the fog would be all around me. It would come into my body at every breath. And then I’d open the car door and step out onto the road which would be slicked over with fog, and I’d climb down the bank, jump the ditch and walk off across the spongy ground that sucked at every step. I don’t think I’d be afraid then. Maybe I would, when I looked back and realized I couldn’t see the ditch, or the road, or my car, but I think I’d just walk on with my hands in my pockets, smelling the salt through the fog and feeling the faint beginning of the breeze off the sea that was going to clear it.
The boys are outside in the dusk. They can still see, though we can’t. The electric light has made us blind. They are calling to one another, whooping as they run to pick up their arrows. They are like wild things in their own wild world. I’ll call them in a minute. I’ll have to call and call before they come in. They’ll bump in the doorway, blinking at the light. Their cheeks will be cold and fresh. They’ll look at me but they won’t see me, only the arrows that dazzle them. All evening the memory of shooting will flood back on them: racing to the target, crouching over it to see just how close they’ve shot, jumping aside when the other one yells Out of the way! I’m going to shoot! Then back with the arrow, running, feet thudding, ready to spin round. Turn, aim, shoot. The arrow vanishes into the dark air, then strikes the board with a dull puck! Nearly in the centre. If they could do it one more time, just one more time, one more last time.
I drive back with the boys the six miles from the village to the crossroads where a fish-and-chip van parks for three hours on Friday night. The warm, greasy smell fills the car and the packets rustle in their plastic carrier every time we corner. I drive fast, to get back before the fish-and-chips go cold. It’s never the same warmed up in the oven. The car swings and jolts through the dark. The boys sing to the Oasis track that blares from the deck, and we plunge between the hedges which will thin and die away any minute now as we come back onto the marsh.
We draw up outside the house and see that Donald’s lit the fire. The lights are switched off and there’s a shadow of flames in the windows. The boys shove their way out of the car.
‘Matt, you take the fish-and-chips. Don’t both grab unless you want it all over the floor.’
The fire burns bright. The boys sit almost in the hearth to unwrap their parcels of fish-and-chips. It’s still hot. Joe pulls the batter off his cod and eats it separately.
‘Here you are, Mum,’ says Matt, handing me his longest chip, and I dip it in a pool of salt. Joe lunges for the salt packet and spills it.
‘Quick.’ I reach over, take a pinch and throw it over my shoulder, into the fire. The flames burn blue, then yellow again. The soft chips spread a film of grease over my tongue. The van doesn’t do good chips, but the cod is perfect: crisp batter, not too thick, and flesh which falls apart in milky, juicy flakes.
‘Want some more vinegar, Mum?’ Matt souses his own chips again, and holds the vinegar bottle over mine.
‘I’ve had enough. You can have the rest of my chips. Share them out between you, mind.’
Donald eats silently, staring into the flames. Sparks spatter onto the stone hearth and he kicks a log deeper into the nest of fire. The heat is wonderful. My stomach is warm and heavy with food, my skin flushed from the fire. We’ll finish this, then we’ll go to bed. I don’t want the lights back on. The house laps round us, dark and safe as a cave.
Then I feel the window behind me. The glass is bare, naked to the night. My back prickles with cold. I want to turn, but I don’t turn.
‘Joe, close the curtains.’
He stands up, stumbles, crashes over Matt’s feet.
‘You stupid bastard, watch where you’re going. You’ve spilled my chips.’ Matt grovels in the hearth, picking chips out of the ash.
‘Don’t talk to your brother like that,’ says Donald sharply. ’And don’t eat food that’s been on the floor. Throw it in the fire.’
Joe hunches over the chips, eating fast and watching his brother.
‘OK then,’ says Matt, and hurls chips, paper, batter scraps and all into the fire. He stares at his father, daring a response out of him as the greasy paper catches light.
/> ‘Don’t, Donald. Matt, come and sit by me. Come on.’
I always keep the plumpest, most succulent end of my fish till last. I pull Matt down beside me, keeping my arm tight around him.
‘You can share mine. Come on.’
He might twist free of my arm, run upstairs and rage in his room all evening. But for once he doesn’t. He doesn’t know how to nestle into me any more, the way Joe does with his easy way of getting the love he needs. But he stays, stiff inside the circle of my arm. The best he can do is to stop himself from turning away from what he wants.
‘Do you want some fish?’
He shakes his head, lips pressed together. But I think he wants to be here. His want pulls on me.
Here they are, and here I am. Is this your kingdom, Simone? What you worked so hard to get after you left me?
And now it’s late. They’re all asleep; the boys curled in their beds and calm, sleeping their sleep which is just beginning to lose the sweet, grassy smell of early childhood. Even Matt is quiet, and when I looked in on him his face was still, flung open on the pillow, both younger and older than he really is. Donald is sleeping, humped up in the bed as if fending off something he can’t forget even through layers of unconsciousness. He cries out, but the words are never distinct enough for me to hear what he’s saying. I sit up in bed, holding my knees, and watch him. You can’t watch a person sleep without some stir of tenderness; or pity, though there’s nothing to pity. Only the state of sleeping. I remember my father when he died, how carved and hard he was. I pushed my finger into him and there was nothing there but resistance. Even when he was angry, I had never before touched him without him yielding. I had touched a pig hung up in the butcher’s and felt its solidity. That white, stiff stuff was fat. If you leaned close you could smell its intimate, charnel smell. In me, fat was warm and yellow. I didn’t understand that my living flesh could change to that hard white. And then change again, and soften as it began to decay. My father’s eyes were shut. I touched his eyeball and it felt hard, too. I was eight years old.