Hollow Chest

by Brita Sandstrom

  “Theodore,” Mum started, but Theo didn’t even pause, moving to each window in turn again. By the fire, Grandpa Fitz had woken up and was watching Theo’s progress with an unreadable expression.

  “Don’t worry, Bethy, Theo and I will keep each other company for a while. You go on to sleep. You’ve got work tomorrow, and it’s been a long day.”

  Mum’s lips were pressed so hard together they looked white, and Charlie grabbed Mum’s hand as they both went upstairs. As they got to the top, Charlie could hear Grandpa Fitz murmuring quietly downstairs, interspersed with the occasional terse mutter from Theo.

  “Do you—do you need a story, Mum?” Charlie asked at his door. “I could tell you one, if you need. I could think of one.”

  Mum’s eyes shone like glass in the dim hallway light, and she pressed her fingers to her mouth, just once.

  “Oh, Charles,” she whispered, then came over to kiss the top of his head. “I’m all right, my sweet boy. You go to sleep. Dream only of lovely things.”

  After Charlie had crawled into his cold bed, he waited in the dark, trying to think of a story he could tell Mum, in case she needed one tomorrow. But the only ones that would come to him were all about monsters waiting in the dark.

  10

  CHARLIE WAS UP EARLY THE NEXT DAY BECAUSE it was Theo’s first day of his new job at the factory, and Charlie was determined that it would go perfectly. And Charlie had a plan.

  The idea had come to him in the night, while he had been lying awake, braced for air raid sirens even as he knew they would never come. Theo just needed exactly what Charlie needed: for things to be normal again. Everything so far had been about celebrating that Theo was home, but what they all really needed was for it to be as if Theo had never left. So Charlie was going to treat this day if it were just like any other, and treat his brother as if he hadn’t been gone so long that Charlie had grown six inches, as if Theo didn’t have an injury, or a frown that never left his face. Confidence bubbled up in Charlie as he got dressed, made his bed, and threw open the curtains to find whatever sunlight was to be had. He could fix this.

  Before the war, Theo and Charlie had both been in charge of feeding Biscuits. So that’s where Charlie was going to start. Simple.

  It shouldn’t have surprised him that Theo was already up, but it still did. Before the war, Theo had always slept in as late as possible, and he was impossible to wake without an alarm or Charlie vigorously jumping on his bed. But here he was, sitting at the kitchen table and watching the closed front door with a nameless expression. He wondered if he had ever even gone upstairs last night.

  “G’morning, Theo,” Charlie said around a yawn, the words stretching between his jaws like taffy. “Did you sleep at all?”

  “A little,” Theo said, but his shoulders were tight, and Charlie wondered if he was lying.

  “You’ll probably be so tired after your first day of work that you’ll fall asleep straight away tonight.”

  “Yes, maybe.”

  “I was thinking,” Charlie said, fiddling with the hem of his jumper. “D’you think you’d want to take over Biscuits’s supper? Like before? She eats scraps now, not tinned food, but she likes it, and Grandpa Fitz says she’s probably supplementing her diet with mice, which is disgusting, but she seems happy.”

  Before the war, there had been loads of tinned cat food in all different flavors, but once the rationing started, the government had deemed it “nonessential,” which was both stupid and incorrect. Mum had even helped him write a letter to the local MP explaining that Biscuits was a necessity to their family, and should be fed as such. He had never received a reply. “I won’t be forgetting that come the next elections,” Mum had said darkly.

  “Sure,” Theo said after a beat. He looked a bit surprised, but not upset. That same confidence bubbled back up inside Charlie, and he had to turn around to hide the grin splitting his face. As if to underscore the point, Grandpa Fitz trundled down the stairs with a great deal more noise than was strictly necessary.

  “Great. So, the way that you do it is—”

  “I know how to put food in a bowl, Charlie,” Theo snapped, and Charlie bit his lip. He stole a glance at his brother’s face out of the corner of his eye. Theo looked more like Mum than Charlie did, with wide, expressive features made for laughing. A frown looked unnatural on him; it was an expression that belonged to someone else.

  “Oh, I made you up a lunch.” Charlie pointed to the bag on the counter. “Last night. For your first day. It’s just there.” He swallowed hard, and resisted the urge to pick at a loose thread on his sleeve.

  Theo’s bright blue eyes flashed to Charlie’s, then his whole face spasmed into a smile.

  “Thanks, Charlie. Thanks for looking out for me.”

  “Merriweathers look out for each other,” Charlie said, his cheeks and neck going hot.

  “Yes, we do,” Theo said. His stiff shoulders relaxed a bit, and his coppery hair gleamed in the morning light.

  That night Charlie woke to the sound of air raid sirens in his head again. He was out of bed and in the hall, searching desperately for Biscuits in the dark, when the sirens turned into Theo’s voice, screaming over and over and over again.

  Mum was already in the hall, her face a pale oval in the dark, with purple smudges under each eye.

  “Go back to sleep, Charles, I’ll take care of it.”

  “It’s fine,” Charlie said quickly, “I don’t mind. I can help.”

  “Go back to your room, Charles, I mean it.” But Mum was already going into Theo’s room, so she wasn’t there to see Charlie waiting in the hall next to the door.

  The sounds of Theo’s dream kept hitting Charlie like a fist, over and over. He could hear a lot of thrashing around and something falling to the ground and breaking, followed by a loud, heavy thump.

  Then silence.

  The silence went on, stretching out in front of Charlie like a viscous thing, like honey or syrup. He was caught in it, couldn’t shove his way through it, it stuck his feet tight to the floor. And then he heard something that sounded almost like Mum’s voice, but hoarse and muffled and wrong-sounding somehow, and the silence broke and he was crashing into the room, the door banging into the wall behind him as he threw it open.

  “Stop!” Charlie screamed, his voice high and tiny in his ears. “Theo, stop it, wake up!”

  But Theo’s eyes didn’t seem to see him, didn’t seem to see either of them, not really. He kept flinching away from blows that weren’t coming. His hands were closed around Mum’s arm, his thick fingers digging into her pale skin. Charlie shouted wordlessly, pulling on Theo’s arm with his whole weight and pummeling his fists against Theo’s back when that didn’t work.

  “Mum!” Charlie’s voice ripped its way out of his throat. Her face was getting red, almost purple, as she bit her lip so hard Charlie saw blood, her fingers scrabbling at Theo’s, trying to pry them loose. He was going to break her arm if he didn’t stop. She was trying to say something, but no words were coming out.

  And then an arm was dragging Charlie away and hauling on Theo’s arm. Grandpa Fitz kicked at the back of Theo’s knees so he lost his balance.

  “Help me hold him, Bethy.” Grandpa Fitz’s voice was calm and even. Mum, breathing hard, eyes streaming, grabbed Theo’s other arm and together they held Theo against the wall until his body suddenly went limp.

  “There now,” Grandpa Fitz sighed, easing Theo down to his knees. “You’re all right, lad. You’re all right. You’re home.”

  Theo’s thrashing stilled until he was slumped in their arms. And then he was weeping, tears and snot streaking down his face while ugly, gulping noises came out of his mouth.

  “I’m sorry—Mum, I’m so sorry, I didn’t—”

  “I know you didn’t, shh, love, I know—”

  Charlie closed the door on the sound of them. No one seemed to even see him go, all of them so wrapped up in the monstrous thing that Theo carried around with him. He hear
d Theo crying, loudly and then very quietly, through the wall for another hour.

  11

  CHARLIE PAUSED IN THE HOSPITAL LOBBY. HOW had it only been a few days ago that he had sat next to Sean on that bench over there, so scared that something bad had happened to Theo?

  But something bad had happened to Theo, hadn’t it? Something he wouldn’t talk about, wouldn’t explain.

  But maybe there was someone who could.

  Behind the big desk in the lobby was a lady, looking at him suspiciously over the tops of her glasses. But she seemed to forget about him completely when a woman in a fancy hat covered in fake flowers and, horrifyingly, a small stuffed bird came in with a cloud of perfume and demanded in a cut-glass accent to speak to a “real doctor” about her bunions and not the “backcountry charlatan” she had been subjected to last time. The lady with the glasses straightened her shoulders like she was about to start a fist fight, and Charlie took the opportunity to slip through the second set of doors and down the corridor.

  He hadn’t really been paying much attention to the path they’d taken last time to the ward that housed the soldiers; he had just followed everyone else in line. But he found he recognized a wall with a huge blackboard covered all over in names and numbers, and remembered they had turned left just past it. And then there was the room, the same soldiers lying in the same beds. Keeping his head ducked down to avoid any curious gazes, his neck hot and blotchy, he made his way as quietly as possible down to the drawn curtain and cleared his throat.

  “Pardon me? Reggie?”

  The curtain was yanked back, and Reggie was staring at him owlishly, clearly unable to place him. Then the penny dropped, and his look of confusion spread into that bright smile Charlie recalled.

  “What an unexpected pleasure. It’s Charlie, yes?” He seemed genuinely happy to see him, even after how horrible Charlie had been to upset him and run away.

  “Hello,” Charlie said, bright red and frozen with sudden shyness. “I’m sorry for bothering you.”

  “Nonsense, you’re easily the most interesting thing I’ve seen all day. Sit, sit,” he said, gesturing to the foot of the bed.

  So Charlie did, and he was indescribably pleased to discover that his card with Biscuits painted on it was displayed on the little side table, next to a little cup with a single yellow carnation in it.

  “What brings you by?” Reggie asked.

  “I was wondering—” Charlie started, stumbling over the words. It seemed so silly now to have bothered Reggie, now that he was actually here. “I was wondering if maybe I could ask you something. About my brother, Theo. I know you don’t know my brother, but he’s a soldier, too. He was, I mean. He’s home now. But he’s . . .”

  “Different,” Reggie said, his voice gentle.

  “Yes.” Charlie’s voice sounded like it belonged to someone very, very small.

  “It’s all right, you know. To be sad about that.”

  Charlie did not reply. He wasn’t sure it was all right. He didn’t feel all right about it. He felt sticky with shame.

  “Bad things happened to your brother, Charlie. I don’t know him, you’re right, but I know that. He can’t talk about them right now. He might never be able to talk about them. And I know you probably feel rather helpless, don’t you?”

  Charlie nodded, miserable. Reggie patted his shoulder, his dark eyes kind.

  “I know you love your brother, anyone can see that. He sees it, too. But you probably . . . oh, how to explain it?” Reggie rubbed at his eyebrow, frowning. “I suspect that when he looks at you, he doesn’t just see his little brother. He sees everything that changed whilst he was gone. You’re different, too, I’m sure, than you were when he left. Your mum is older, the shops on your street have moved around. Everything is the same, but everything is different. And that just makes him feel even more different. He doesn’t know where he fits in it all anymore.”

  “But he’s home,” Charlie said. “He fits with us, right where he always did.”

  “I suspect you are all discovering that that isn’t completely true,” said Reggie. “But that doesn’t mean it always will be. Give each other some time. I imagine it took time to learn how to live without him. It will take time to learn to live with him again, too. Lucky for Theo, he’s got a good brother to look out for him. To look out for his heart.”

  Here, Reggie seemed to lose his train of thought, his eyes going unfocused, looking at something quite far away past Charlie’s head.

  “Yes,” he murmured, almost imperceptibly. “Maybe. If they didn’t eat it.”

  Charlie froze, certain he’d misheard. “Eat . . . what?”

  “What?” Reggie flinched, as if Charlie had moved to strike him.

  “You said ‘if they didn’t eat it.’ Eat what?”

  Reggie smiled again, but there was an edge of wrongness to it, like he was working very hard to remember the mechanics behind it.

  “You’ll have to forgive me, Charlie. It’s this time of day. I’m usually under— That is, I’m usually asleep by now. I sleep quite a lot these days. It’s making me a bit foggy.”

  “I’m sorry,” Charlie said, pushing himself up. “I’ll let you sleep. Thank you, for talking to me.”

  Reggie’s smile gained a bit of its old warmth, but there was something like panic building behind his eyes. Charlie ducked past the curtain as Reggie pulled the blanket over his head, and as Charlie left, he remembered how he had felt when his football had hit his great-grandmother’s vase: that he had just broken something fragile and precious that couldn’t be replaced.

  12

  CHARLIE WAS STILL BLEARY FROM SLEEP AND THE same weary, ink-dark dreams by the time he got Grandpa Fitz awake and downstairs. They were both of them blurry around the edges, Charlie with sleep and his grandfather with confused reverie. Theo was still upstairs, no doubt catching up on whatever scraps of sleep he could steal in between his bouts of restlessness.

  Biscuits chirped to get his attention. She was pacing in front of Grandpa Fitz, the way she did when she noticed him doing such improper things as not petting her when she demanded. Grandpa Fitz was drooling just a bit, as he sometimes did when he was having one of his bad days or was simply very tired. Charlie reached out with a napkin to clean it off his chin, but Grandpa Fitz’s hand shot out and trapped Charlie’s wrist in a vise grip halfway across the table.

  “Hollow Chest, that’s what we called it.”

  Charlie tried to pull his hand away. “Huh?”

  Grandpa Fitz made a grumpy noise and let go of Charlie and dragged the back of his hand across his mouth to dry it. “I said that Hollow Chest is what we called it, back in my day.”

  “Called . . . you called what?”

  “What’s wrong with your brother. Hollow Chest.”

  “What’s that?” As soon as he asked, Charlie was suddenly quite certain that he did not want to know what Hollow Chest was.

  “It didn’t happen to me. Do you know why? My secret?”

  Grandpa Fitz slapped at his chest. His fingers poked at his shirtfront until he fished out a thin gold locket that Charlie had never seen before. He held it out to Charlie.

  “Well, open it, boy. Of the two of us, you’re the only one with two hands and nothing but time.”

  Charlie took hold of the locket, nearly dragging Grandpa Fitz across the table when he forgot for a moment that it was still attached to Grandpa Fitz’s neck. Inside was an old, yellowed photograph of a plain young woman, who looked like she had very little patience for getting her picture taken. She looked a bit like Mum, although Mum was prettier.

  “My Lily. She was a nurse at the hospital where they dumped the bits of me they’d scraped off the field. That first night, when they took my arm . . . I could feel it, like hooks sinking into the meat of me. They kept saying that I had to hold on, that I couldn’t give up yet, but all I thought was, what’s the point when my arm’s gone? What’s the point when I’ll never ride a horse or swing a cricket bat aga
in? What’s the point when I’m just going to die of infection in three days anyway?

  “And in walks Miss Lily, spitting sparks she was so cross with someone or other, and told me that if she caught me feeling sorry for myself, she would upend a mop bucket over my head. Tiny little thing she was, you might remember, barely as tall as an umbrella stand. Maybe another lad wouldn’t’ve thought she was much to look at, but I wanted to look at her. I thought she was exactly enough to look at. My own dear Lily, she kept the dark at bay.

  “I’d handed my heart over to her for safekeeping before I even knew which way was up. She never let it go after that; there wasn’t anything in the world what could’ve torn it out of her grasp, not even me. Oh, Lily.”

  Charlie felt very strange, listening to this. It occurred to him that Grandpa Fitz had lived a whole life that Charlie had never known about, and probably would never know about, and so had Grandma Lily, and so had Mum and Dad. And so had everyone, really, everyone in the flat on the one side of their house and the cobbler on the other, everyone on their street, everyone in London. So many stories that he would never know, that maybe no one would ever know, except the people who had lived them.

  It made him feel sad and sort of wondrous at the same time. But mostly sad. He had never met Grandma Lily. Grandpa Fitz didn’t always remember that.

  The old man had gone quiet, staring at the locket he now held gently in his one leathery hand. He was awake-dreaming—that’s what Mum called it when he went off in one of his memory trances, and this seemed like a nice one, so Charlie didn’t wake him. He just cleared up the remains of the meal, leaving a cup of tea for when Grandpa Fitz came back from his memories. He always did, eventually.

  And sure enough, as sudden as waking from a dream, Grandpa Fitz started and blinked, looking around as if surprised to find himself sitting at the table. He shook his head briefly to clear it, a gesture so familiar it squeezed at Charlie’s heart with unexpected tightness.