‘So it’s not entirely fair to think, and I’m sure you do think this, that I never had the slightest care—’
‘Victor,’ she says, slowing him down, ‘it’s been a year. A long, hard year. There are things I can’t even begin to tell you because I wouldn’t know how or where to begin, and because, well … honestly Victor, it’s just a bit too late for all this. Don’t you think?’ And she doesn’t say this with anger or resentment or any great emotion at all. She says it with the calm deliberation of someone stating a fact.
He stares at her long and hard as if the possibility had never occurred to him. ‘Is it?’
‘Yes.’ And this time there is a touch of sadness in her voice. ‘Besides …’ she waves a dismissive arm through the air, ‘… you’re going soon. Going to heaven knows where. And heaven knows what. What is the point?’ She slumps back in her chair. ‘How simply awful.’
‘Why awful?’
‘Why?’ She looks at him, astonished. ‘Aren’t you afraid?’
She turns away, on the verge of sobbing, determined to stamp it out before it starts. But, at the same time, registering that she does care. Not enough to call it love or change her mind, but enough to tell her that something fine and good has survived the mess of the last year.
He looks about the room, quite possibly searching for the words to express thoughts he’s held for some time, but not spoken until now. ‘You … How can I say this? You … come to look forward to it. To want it.’
She swings back to him, half puzzled, half knowing what he means. Half praying for him, half bursting with anger at him again. Idiot! He can’t mean that. ‘To want what?’
‘It.’
Tea, cakes, are almost dumped on the table.
‘They train you, day in and day out, week in, week out, until you actually start getting good at it. And you can tell you’re getting good. And that’s when you start to look forward to it. To try it out.’
Her eyes widen as she listens, and then she snaps. ‘Can you hear yourself?’
He leans back in his chair, staring at the baby and nodding. ‘Yes. I don’t say this proudly, but because it is the case.’
‘They’ve trained you to kill. And now you’re looking forward to going off and killing Germans. Germans who could be your family, or some sort of family friends. Or just ordinary, decent people who have no choice because some nasty old fool has ordered them to go off and kill or be killed. Just like nasty old fools the world over. Or they might kill you. Have you thought of that?’
‘Yes.’
‘I suppose you’d like to try that out too?’
‘You get used to the thought.’
‘Do you?’ She almost rises from her chair. They both stare at the uneaten cakes. ‘That’s how they want you to think. It’s death they want. They love it. They’re sick. All of them. And not just your generals and majors and sergeants. It’s everybody. We’ve all got the same sickness. Just look around you. All that grieving and wailing.’ Her voice grows louder as she continues. ‘Deep down they love it. It’s death they want. They can’t get enough of it. Can’t you feel it? And all the tears and weeping—’
‘Sssh!’
‘No.’
‘People can hear.’
‘Let them!’
‘Keep your voice down!’
‘I will not! You’re a fool, Victor. A perfect fool. Just the kind of fool they want. And you believe all the muck they print in the papers, do you? Honour and duty? There’s no honour, Victor. It all ends in mud and death! They love it. Everybody!’
Victor turns away from the eyes of the tea-house and stares at the child in the pram, sleeping through it all. Maryanne’s outrage runs its course. There is a silence. The tea-house customers return to their talk.
‘My eyes, perhaps. Yes. My eyes.’
‘Your eyes, yes. I just hope he doesn’t have your wits.’
Victor’s composure suddenly collapses. He snaps. ‘Do you ever let up?’ Heads turn again. They are a scene. He doesn’t care. ‘Do you?’
She sinks back in her chair, staring out the window at the hot, scrappy afternoon.
Victor continues. ‘You really are your own worst enemy, you know.’
She sighs and closes her eyes. As if to say, yes, you are right. That was unnecessary. More than that, cheap and untrue. Why do we say these things? She opens her eyes and nods at him, and there is tenderness there, caught up in all the anger; how could there not be?
He nods back, a small peace is declared. When he speaks his voice is soft, sincere. ‘Did it never occur to you that I came with the offer of a chance? To help?’
‘A chance?’ She shakes her head. Her tone is mellow as a sudden ache, and a sweet one, rises up in her. ‘Victor, Victor, we never had a chance. Oh,’ she corrects herself, ‘we might have. Once. At the very beginning. If we go back and work through it piece by piece, we might find a point at which we had a chance.’
And it is here that he looks away, squinting his eyes, caught perhaps by a sudden pang of feeling that he seems, with all his will, to be fighting back in case he makes a spectacle of himself. And Maryanne fully understanding the riot inside him that he is trying to quell, concedes that yes, this might have once worked. And there is a sadness in her she never realised was there: for him, for her, for the child, for that orphan moment that they let slip from them when this thing might have worked.
He recovers, she recovers.
‘I suppose there must have been a time, a moment when we had a chance.’
He nods slowly, reluctantly. ‘But not now?’
She sighs, shaking her head. ‘We missed it. No. Not now. Just look at us. You’re about to march off to God knows where and God knows what, and I’ve found I’m stronger than I thought or I knew. And I’ve got a whole other life. And you, you have …’
The waitress suddenly appears and they both look up at her. She stares down at their uneaten cakes and untouched tea as if, Maryanne imagines, it were some kind of insult. The cakes, the tea, the place – not good enough for them. It’s what she’s thinking, all right. But she says none of it. ‘Finished, then?’
Victor and Maryanne look at each other and nod without looking at her: both contemplating the question in ways the waitress never intended or thought of. The waitress clears the table. They rise. The baby wakes, crying: hot and thirsty. He sucks on a small bottle, eyes open, eyes on the stranger in front of him.
On the city street they stare at each other, as if to say, well, this is it. And, of course, it is. Maryanne sighs, a slight shake of the head.
‘Be careful, Victor,’ she says, leaning forward and kissing his lips. ‘Write and visit. You can always visit. We’ll be here. And do be careful.’ She adds this as if saying: They’ve got you in their grip now. They don’t care about you. You’re just another tin soldier. Look out. And again she notes that something good and fine has emerged from the mess. ‘Oh, it’s not just the eyes,’ she adds, looking at the child in the pram, the hint of a tender smile on her lips, ‘it’s the widow’s peak as well. Can’t you see it?’
He scrutinises the baby’s face, smiles and nods, then leans over the pram and kisses the baby’s eyes and the peak of black hair on his forehead that they both agree are Victor’s. Then they face each other. Yes, they nod, this is it. He returns Maryanne’s kiss, then swings about, slowly, almost thoughtfully, and gives a slow wave to the two of them as he makes his way up the city lane, now shaded, the sun too low in the sky to touch them.
18.
A cool change, one of those sudden cool changes, blows over the city, breathing life into the parks and gardens. People have come out of their houses, floating along the footpaths and drinking in the cool air, like flowering deserts drinking rain. She walks the baby through the parks and streets. It is her favourite time of day. The sun is low, the sky a peach glow. An hour ago everything and everybody looked wretched and scorched. Ready to wilt. Or explode. Creatures wandering through the streets of some sand-blasted d
esert town. Now all is changed and she could be walking through a freshly painted scene, mellow and serene.
She has walked up the hill towards the parliament and is about to turn for home when she sees a poster stuck to a tree: ‘NO MORE WARS’. She gazes at the poster with vague recognition, then realises that the meeting that Vera invited her to is being held today. In the gardens, not far away. She can see the crowd as she reaches the top of the tree-lined street. Maryanne smiles: for the change in the weather; the happy accident of stumbling upon the meeting; the child, cooled by the breeze and kicking in his pram; and those few affectionate parting words with Victor. After all, they could be their last words, and it’s nice to know they were good words: that some fine fondness emerged from it all. Let us sing in gladness …
She turns the pram, and as she nears the gardens, she hears an amplified voice. A speech. Somebody is talking through a megaphone. The meeting has already begun. People are lounging on the grass, in groups or alone. It looks more like a picnic than a political meeting. It is as though the cool change, with its sweet breath, blown by some kindly god, has banished the beast for a time. For this is just a gathering of people, not a mob. Neither snarls nor howls rising from it, no scales in the sun, no ancient monster stalking the grounds. Just people.
And it is while she is surveying the scene and succumbing to its calm that she looks to the stage, vaguely taking in the words of a young woman, noting the voice is familiar, then realising she knows her: Vera, face shining with that impossible youth of hers, blonde hair tied back, crisp white shirt and tie like a schoolgirl. Vera, the girl from the posh side of town, with whom Maryanne really ought not to have much in common. But if this wretched war has done anything good at all it has thrown people together from all parts of the city who might not normally cross paths, smashed a few things that needed smashing and paved the way for the likes of this young Vera. Currently on the stage. Addressing the crowd as if she has been doing this for years.
Maryanne steadies the pram, applies its brake, shakes the child’s rattle for him, then settles on the grass. Until now she has simply been taking in the spectacle; hearing, but not really listening. Now, she is. And noting that, even through the megaphone, Vera has one of those public-speaking voices that you listen to without really trying. It is a combination of what she says and how she says it. She’s unafraid. So confident. A born public speaker. She wants to change things, and she just might. Vera and her kind.
‘Jack Milhaus,’ Vera is saying, ‘woke one morning to read a small article in the newspaper. Just a paragraph. Nothing much. An unlikely story about military secrets, and spying, under our noses.’ Here she pauses, lowering the megaphone for a moment and looking round at the gathering. ‘We all know the story. He thought nothing of it. Just one of those odd stories that come and go. But it didn’t go. And one morning they came for him. He was told that he was the spy under everybody’s noses. He could have laughed at the madness of it all, but nobody was laughing as they led him away. And life became a mad dream. But it wasn’t. It was real. Suddenly, this was his life. This was who he was: Jack Milhaus, spy, betrayer of his country, Hun. And the story grew and grew. Until it took over his whole life. And ours!’
Here she pauses again, letting her words sink in, calculating what next to say, for, amazingly, she seems to have no written speech. And Maryanne is both listening closely, as is the whole assembly, and admiring Vera, who seems to grow somehow the more she speaks.
‘Until the whole city was turned against just one man and nobody stopped to think why,’ she goes on. ‘We were all meant to hate him, because the more we hated him, the less we thought and the more we were theirs! The hate-makers. This is what war does: turns ordinary, decent people into monsters! Nothing good comes of it. The sickness is mass hysteria. The symptom is Jack Milhaus. Or was. We must resist the hate-makers, those who will divide us for their own gain, as we must resist war. Must never let the hate-makers drag us into it. Never again. Join us on the peace march. We don’t have far to go. Just up the hill to parliament. We must resist, and if enough of us do – at home, at work, in the streets and the parks – then there can be no war. Let our boys put down their guns, and let them do the unthinkable: just turn and walk away. Let our boys, and their boys, do what all armies long to do: turn, walk away and come home.’
Here she drops the megaphone again, the applause and cheers loud throughout the park, unsettling the birds, Maryanne notes, which rise from their branches into the air, then descend again. And it is then that a change seems to come over Vera, for she looks around her, silently, a long, long silence, taking in the crowd, the police in the background, as if wondering how on earth to begin upon what she next wants to say, or even if she wants to say it. But she finally does. ‘I lost my fiancé and my brother to this awful war. It has taken them. And it will not give them back. I will not forget them, the sweetest, sweetest boys who ever breathed. My two boys. Gone.’
Maryanne is suddenly frozen. Shocked, she steadies herself on the pram. And it is not simply the impact of Vera’s words, but how wrongly she perceived her. Oh, how quickly we judge, and how wrongly. All that impossible innocence wasn’t innocence at all. And she can see the fight, the resolve, that was always there behind the innocent milkmaid face: the fight she showed when they cuffed her and spat on her – They’ll find we’re not so easily scared. But, the thought suddenly occurs to Maryanne, if Vera is not innocent then who is there left in the world who is? And at the same time, she’s realising that she wanted Vera to be innocent, and made her so. For reasons both worthy and not: to be reassured that there still was such a thing, but also to feel more worldly than her, even superior. Superior enough to judge her quickly, and wrongly. That and more, who knows? And it is while she is asking herself this that she turns her attention back to Vera. To all appearances the same Vera, but utterly changed.
‘No,’ Vera continues, ‘I will never forget them. But the world will. That’s how it goes on, this carousel of war and war and more war: because we forget! But I will not. Not one sweet moment.’ She gathers herself. ‘This whole bloody war,’ she says into the megaphone, her voice trembling and echoing round the hushed gardens, ‘can only make sense if we say no more death. We have worshipped death for too long. Stayed too long at this carnival of death.’ She pauses, ‘No more us and them. Never again. But only if we build a new world from the ruins of this one. And imagine we can. And only if we never let the hate makers into our hearts again. So that no one, and no war, will ever take our loved ones, our brothers, sisters and friends away again. Only then will it make sense. But we have to make it so.’
The silence of the large crowd, Maryanne concludes, is louder than any applause. She has struck home. She has them. ‘And Jack Milhaus,’ Vera says, resuming, ‘wherever he may be now, may he find a separate peace. Heaven only knows, he’s earned it. May we all find a separate peace. Heaven only knows, we’ve all earned it.’ There is a warm burst of applause, and Maryanne wonders where all that applause was when it was needed. ‘Now join us. Let’s march up the hill to parliament and tell them what we think. Let them hear our voices, loud and clear: NO MORE WAR, NO MORE WAR, NO MORE …’
The crowd rises to its feet, cheering. Vera smiles, as if soaking it up like the last of the afternoon sun, drawing strength from it. The Vera she knows, and the one she doesn’t. And, once again, she’s telling herself: how quickly we judge, how quickly and how wrongly.
It is over a month since Milhaus was set free. A month in which the newspapers forgot about him, moved on and focused their eyes on the lady who came forward to save him and in so doing became the new sacrifice for the beast; she who was branded Madame X, and the Hun’s whore. The princess who betrayed them and has now disappeared from public life. And, rumour has it, who has been banished from her mansion, from her children, from the whole fairytale life she led, and sent somewhere far away – perhaps until public memory fades and she can return, perhaps not. And Milhaus? Milhaus, the god
who fell, has disappeared from public view, as if he never existed. And the whole episode, what was the Milhaus case, has suddenly become yesterday’s news.
Maryanne watches the crowd form a line: slowly, smiling and laughing, as though they are at a picnic and about to join in a three-legged race. The line forms, the banners are raised, and the procession to parliament begins. And this time, Maryanne observes, the police don’t move. They stay in the background, some even smiling. They don’t move: the crowd is too large, their numbers too few. And at the front of the line is Vera, wearing, Maryanne notes, the hat she retrieved from the street when Vera was spat upon and fell to the ground. She is surrounded by other women, some of whom Maryanne recognises from the offices. But Vera is at the centre. This, it is understood, is her idea. Her march. At first she smiles as she greets the women and men around her in the front lines, then she turns to look up the hill to the parliament, becoming serious, that steely resolve, the fight in her behind the posh face, apparent again as she raises the megaphone to her mouth and begins chanting, the crowd joining in: NO MORE WAR, NO MORE WAR, NO MORE …
Maryanne stands as they approach, and as the front row passes her, Vera drops her megaphone, stops her chant and waves. She is in her element. And the more Maryanne observes her, as she waves back, the more she becomes convinced that this is not the last time Vera will lead a march: to parliament or wherever else her cause takes her. What it must be, Maryanne marvels, not only to want to change things, but to imagine you can.
She turns the pram, the child now tired, his rattle resting on his chest, and walks back through a summer evening more lit with hope than any of the recent summers or seasons past. The beast has prevailed, but maybe the beast’s time is up. For the worst in us can only sustain itself for so long. And perhaps people know, somewhere inside where their better selves lie, that they have lingered too long at the festival of the beast.
Year of the Beast Page 18