by Greg James
She sat down by Tom.
“Mr Potter?”
He was still staring through the wired window at the grey sky outside.
Grey Vetala Stones Black Teeth Grinding Grinding Grinding
He was grinding his teeth, she could hear them.
Dilys took her bible from her bag, and clearing her throat she began to read to him.
“'Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see. All the people were astonished and said, 'Could this be the Son of David?'
But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, 'It is only by Beelzebub, the Lord of Flies, that this fellow drives out demons.'“
He sucked a streamer of drool back into his mouth with a loud smack.
“'Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, 'Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by the Lord of Flies' will, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.'“
“Fuh-”
His eyes were trembling, tears welling at the corners.
“Flies?”
His shoulders shaking, he turned to face her. He looked at Dilys with an intense stare, his gaze wandering to her crown and shoulders, pupils wide and dilated.
“There are flies in your hair. Loads. I can see them.”
Dilys closed her bible, “No. There are not any flies in my hair.”
“There are. There are some in my hair too. They’re in everyone’s hair. Everyone here. Whispering in their ears, telling them what to do. Flies! Grey flies everywhere.”
“Are you sure?”
He nodded, insistent.
Dilys looked back, checking that the door was closed. What she was about to do, she knew she should not do. She had him talking though, she had gotten through to him and whatever had been done to him here had only succeeded in getting him to communicate through violence. She had to keep the connection. His pupils were slowly contracting, he was listening to her, talking. She could not let him drift away now that she had managed to drag him out of whatever hell he had been dwelling in behind those eyes, those beautiful eyes. She unwound her hair, letting it fall in a slightly-curled chestnut cascade, and ran her fingers through the loosened tresses. Tom was shaking his head in childish wonderment as she did, his face frowning, puckering and relaxing in curious spasms.
“No flies.” He said, awed.
Dilys smiled at him, “No flies.”
It was on that day that she gave him the silver crucifix to wear. The Lord had brought her to his side, she was certain of this. She felt it in a soft, warm place that is near to but not the heart. She was sure he felt something too because Tom got better, slowly but surely, it was a miracle. That was what Dilys thought and so did Tom when he was aware enough to comprehend his own recovery. A miracle, a rare and precious thing.
And it lasted until the day that Dilys died.
*
It was stupid really, but just looking at pictures of her made him feel a little better. In them she was young and then became old, but always bright and smiling. Tom saw himself in them and he too was always the same, in love, but not bright and never smiling. The man in the photographs was sombre, his face drawn as if in pain, shoulders tense, set and hard, with eyes lowered into hoods, his brow furrowed from thinking too much with a faraway vacancy shining in his eyes.
The curse of it all, the sights he had seen; the dirt of a war long gone clinging to the folds in his brain and staining his heart, his old hands still had the shakes. At night, he saw faces rising up through the grey sea of dreams, so many dead, millions upon millions, all in that short time, four bloody years filled with more deaths than a century should have been. He wished that he had known how it would be then he never would have signed up, he would have been a conchie instead and worn the white feather proudly as a badge of honour, not done what he had done and fought through that mess for a brighter tomorrow that never ever came.
No, instead there was a second world war, the death camps, Hiroshima burning, Vietnam screaming, Serbia raped raw. Now, Afghanistan was being torn apart. Tomorrow, who knew who would be next? Country after country taking turns in going to hell; massacre, holocaust, genocide, slaughter, from horizon to horizon, a century spent grinding out nothing but darkness, a dreadful cycle, one of extinction.
It kept him awake into the early hours of the morning, his sore, sleep-deprived eyes soaking in a new day’s dawn, then watching it fade away, feeling his heart beating in time with the guns and the bombs, it was in his blood, he was a part of it and it a part of him.
Dilys had done her best by him but there was only so much she could do.
“I’ve seen things, sweetheart. Things you wouldn’t believe. No-one would. Not even boys who were at Passchendaele, Ypres or on the Somme. Felt things no man should have to feel. It’s my burden to bear, love, not yours.”
She’d cry every time, tell him that he was talking nonsense. He could see she was terrified of him when he spoke like that, that there was something in him she could never ease or understand. She once said that she was sure that she saw the silver crucifix around his neck tremble when he spoke about the war. Tom fingered the bare loose folds of his neck-skin, where the crucifix she gave him once hung, remembering the day he threw it away.
*
The funeral was a small one. Most of their loved ones were dead, that was the peril of living to a ripe old age, everyone else died before you. When you are young, you fear death and want to live forever, but when you are old, you realise how horrible that would be, to go on, even for a few decades more than most do. It’s hard enough because you see too many bodies in coffins and you stand in the battering rain, head downcast, sky overcast, listening to words you know are a certain lie, deep down.
Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
In sure and certain hope of the Resurrection into eternal life,
Ecetera, ecetera, blah, blah, blah...
Certain? Little in life is certain, Tom thought. Actually, make that nothing, not love, not hope, not the future, it all rots and falls away eventually.
Hands squeezed the skinny crooks of his arms, shook him by the hand, mouths smelling of cigarettes and undercooked ready-meals were muttering condolences under their breath. They were all getting too old for this and too few, impolite as it was, every man and woman there was wondering if next time it would be them, lowered down into the silent earth, buffeted against cushioning that would soon split, crumple and decay, clearing the way for the waiting worms. Tom shut his eyes, not against tears but against such thoughts. It was Dilys in there. He had seen a lot of horrors, imagined worse, but he did not want to think about her rotting away, it was bad enough that she was gone, leaving his life empty and so cold.
What was he going to do now?
What was there left?
Tom reached up to the small clasp at the back of his neck, undid it, pinching the ends of the chain between his thumb and forefinger. The crucifix spun before his eyes, left to right, right to left, rain struck it, ran down it, dripped off.
Tom hurled it down into the grave, listening to it thunk as it struck the coffin lid. Instantly, he regretted what he had just done, Dilys had given him that as a keepsake and he had just cast it away as if it meant nothing. Leaning over the lip of the grave, feeling the damp soil give, Tom looked down the six foot drop, contemplating jumping down and retrieving it.
“’Scuse me, mate. You movin' on? I’ve got to finish up here.”
The speaker was a shovel-bearded man dressed in mud-scored jeans, steel-toe capped boots and a thick winter coat, his gloved hands brandishing a spade rusty with age. Tom took a reluctant step back from the edge of the grave, his eyes s
till on the crucifix lying on the coffin’s lid.
“Mother Earth’ll look after it for you, don’t worry. And the silver’ll keep the vampires away.”
Tom looked at the man, not responding.
The grave-digger scratched at his long beard. “Sorry. Morbid sense of humour. You need it in this job.”
Tom smiled and nodded, understanding. He turned and walked away, listening to the patter of earth falling onto wood, a gust of rain struck him in the face and Tom was glad that he couldn’t tell if the moisture on his cheeks was the weather or tears.
He left the wake early, not wanting to talk to anyone there for long. Home was where he wanted to be, away from everyone, able to indulge his grief and self-pity in peace. If he stayed on, he would only get drunk; argue with Ernie about the National Front, flirt with Maureen, maybe even get somewhere with her, she was a lightweight when it came to wine and plenty had been set out on the table in the scout hall.
Let someone else have a crack at her, Tom thought, I'm well past the time of life for that sort of thing.
But he thought about Maureen; her white perm, fake pearl necklace and toothy smile. Short and plump with a bosom he had always secretly craved. He fixed himself a scotch with a dash of lemonade and sat in his comfy chair in the dark. Home alone for the first time in years, busy undressing Maureen in his mind’s eye, too soon she changed, becoming Dilys, her face sad, reproaching him for his carnal fantasy.
Tom glugged down the last of the scotch in the glass and made another. He had lost the one joy he ever wanted that day. He could feel meaning slowly and steadily draining out of his life like blood running from a wound. The days ahead were long grey empty spaces without her there to colour them in, the house they shared for so long would become neglected but he would live on, with his shoebox of sepia memories, he would live on. And because of what happened to him during the war, because of a deal that he made, he would live on for a very long time.
Chapter Three
A flat cap sat on Tom's head and the wind blew into his watering eyes as the ceremony at Lone Pine Memorial continued. First time here without Dilys, dressed in his Sunday best, head bowed in deference and respect. Before him stood the monolith, one of many that had been erected, a wreath of remembrance was carved into its sandy stone. Tom coughed like a hag. A mouthful of the brown sludge of age came up and he spat it out.
Not long to go now, old son, he thought, I hope.
The sky overhead was overcast. A few teardrops of rain had fallen but no more than that. The scarlet of the wreaths of poppies at the foot of the weathered monolith were the only bright colour on show today, plaques and medals had been polished especially, all was as it should be. Tom listened to The Last Post as it was played, his eyes closed, remembering, keeping the memory of what once was alive. Soon, Tom thought, it will be a memory of a memory, the last of us, those who were there will be gone, snuffed out. Then, they will all forget and there will be more war and more death and eventually they will all stop caring altogether. The last note was sounded, the trumpet was lowered. Tom opened his eyes and lost a heartbeat.
A crack split the monolith, coursing down its length. The day grew dim around him as the stone of the monolith began bleeding heavily, brackish black torrents pouring from it, seething down to the ground, scattering the poppies, turning the petals of the flowers to ashes and muttering dust. The strange haemorrhaging went on and on, an obsidian tide washing in from oblivion’s shores, staining the skins of all around him with its tarry stuff, some of the people about him had their mouths open and Tom could see splintered teeth coming into being as their jaws cracked and split. Every one of them had flies in their hair. The monolith then crumbled away without a sound, leaving a shining shadow, a Stone, a mirrored prism of absolute darkness, polished and pulsing, singing a desolate wordless song, drawing him to it, to lay his hands upon its surface, to feel the crawling inside of its shadows, to commune with the nameless and the dead.
*
Light then dark, dark then light, white darkness resolving into oblongs and squares. Then, there was the rattling, rattling, rattling, the thump and thump of rolling, rolling, rolling along. He could feel the misadjusted wheels skidding and catching on the rough, patchy textures of the road, jolt after jolt shook his bones. His elbows banged against his seat, buzzing, fuzzy, stinging, his eyelids sticky with sleep’s natural glue, and his tongue felt slow and heavy, too big for his mouth.
“Where am I?”
The interior was scabby, old leather and rubber peeling. Someone was standing beside him, having come up noiselessly. Tom craned his neck, looking up into the faceless egg of the Conductor’s head, the skin of it hanging slack, wet and dead. The Conductor stroked the dull metal of the Bell Punch machine mounted on his breast, a needle stabbed out of it, long, thin and wicked. At its point, Tom could see a clear venom gathering, a bead of nightshade, an azalea tear. Tom watched it grow, swelling and swelling, his throat too dry for him to cry out but his mouth was open, going through the motions. The needle fell, quick and sudden, driving in through the flesh, piercing him to the bone. Tom found his voice and let out a howl. And, in that howl, was the memory of all the horror that was his life, and how it all began.
Chapter Four
It felt like the jolliest of adventures, at first, as the posters said it was. After signing up, there were weeks of practice and training; stables, stables, stables and signalling, signalling, signalling. Lieutenant Bell lecturing them on directing, plotting and range-taking. The schedule was remorseless. At the time, to Tom, being called to the Front seemed like something far away, a pipe dream, never to happen, the worst hardship they endured was being soaked to the skin during the semaphore lessons, the stiffest penalty being to suffer a head cold afterwards.
Then, one day, it happened.
It was time to leave, make their way to war. The word travelled around camp during breakfast. The small chop, bread and jam they ate in those days had seemed frugal after the bounty of civilian life, but after a year on the cliffs of Gallipoli, the memory of it would be enough to make men salivate in their sleep. It had been a beggar’s banquet, unappreciated until you had spent months gnawing on wooden biscuits and swallowing apricot jam that was clotted with dead flies.
Tom’s mob boarded a ship called the Berkshire. On board, he won praise from Lieutenant Bell for being first up and last to fall out. His horse, Old Duty, always led the others as the men turned out to exercise the regiment’s nags on the steaming decks. They were passing through the tropics en route to Egypt where they would join up with the Anzacs at Mena Camp, outside Cairo. When the men were not on duty, they laid about, dozing and reading and, on pay nights, the lower decks became a gambling den. The mess-tables were awash with notes, coins and keepsakes being passed back and forth, shouts, cries and masculine bellows filling the air at each loss and gain.
Then, Lieutenant Bell’s voice would ring out, “Lights out, you men!”
Silence would descend in time with the dimming of the lights. Jollity, frivolity and the angst of the penniless was switched off by those four barked syllables. Tom would stay awake as the others slept, turning the recent past over in his mind, night after night, moving him to tears, winding him up, until, with his brain exhausted, he fell asleep.
At Mena Camp, his nocturnal hours were no easier, so after lights out, Tom would seat himself at the entrance to his platoon’s tent. A fag in his hand, its cherry casting a hot umbrous glow, watching the sun go down, enjoying the noticeable chill that suffused the muggy desert air. It made his senses feel flinty and sharp as night drew in around him and he stamped his feet to keep them warm. The sky became a dark blue velvet, hemmed by the pale petticoat streaks of fading day as the stars burned above. To his left, the pyramids broke up the unceasing dunes and hollows of the desert.
“Look upon my works ye mighty and despair,” Tom whispered.
Only the lowing dust devils heard him speak these words.
To his righ
t, through the palm trees there was a village a mile away. Something had disturbed the dogs there, Tom could them hear them baying and howling, not a pleasant sound to listen to when you were alone at night. He sucked hard on his fag, his mind unsettled and writhing.
Hot air gusted by him.
Tom rubbed his eyes.
They were stinging but not with sand, clamminess overcame him, making his stomach queasy. The world became luminous for a moment, far too bright, strange colours blossomed before his eyes, he felt his lungs fill with and expel a sour vapour. Then, the night was cool and clean once more. Tom collected himself, taking another drag on his cigarette, deciding to make it the last one of the night.
*
The morning trumpet sounded reveille, and it was greeted with the usual chorus of curses, grumbles and threats.
“Up, you men! Fall in! You hear me? Did you not hear the reveille, you lazy bastards?”
Everyone dressed, paraded, scarfed down their breakfast and prepared to go about their day’s work. Mena camp was a colossal place; a huge triangle of tents, makeshift roads and horse lines reaching to the outer boundaries of the pyramids’ lands. Tom’s company were stationed by a grove of palm trees. Orange-sellers, nougat vendors and other colourfully-robed merchants were regular trespassers, white-clothed figures with nut-brown skin coming down from the Cairo road to stare at the new arrivals, leading their strings of camels and goats around the perimeter, ogling without an ounce of shame. The soldiers laughed and stared right back at them, sometimes making faces.
Tom spent most of his mornings grooming Old Duty. The nag was always coated heavily in desert sand, he rubbed his brush across the animal’s hide with vigour, showering himself with grit and dirt until he had to stop to cough and sneeze it all out.
Lieutenant Bell often stopped by. “Potter, the condition of this horse is a disgrace to the line. I thought you were a farmer, knew something about animals. It seems to me you never set eyes on one before you signed up.”