Journey from Darkness

by Gareth Crocker

  ‘God was watching over you.’

  Derek wanted to say that God had forsaken the trenches and the soldiers in them – that if he was there, his indifference to the horror was unforgiveable – but instead, he nodded respectfully.

  ‘So many dead. And for what?’

  ‘I don’t know, Father. I’m not sure anyone does.’

  The priest kept his eyes locked on Derek, dipping in and out of his memory. ‘I have to ask. Do you still have your father’s diary?’

  ‘You remember it?’

  ‘Of course, I held onto it for so long I can still feel its presence in the room. Do not let the old face fool you. There is very little about my boys that I don’t remember. Especially the good ones.’

  Derek hoisted up an eyebrow. ‘You must mean Edward.’

  ‘I say what I mean. You were two of the best boys we’ve ever had here.’ Feeling his words falter, he forced a smile that was too bright. ‘Now, make an old priest happy and stay for dinner.’

  ‘That depends, Father.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Do I have to get back into the ring to earn my supper?’

  Father Gabriel laughed, his head rolling back. ‘Speaking about that fight, there’s something I want to tell you. Something I’ve been wanting to tell you for years.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘First let me give you what you came here for.’ He spun around and headed back to his desk. He dipped his hand into a drawer, and then just as he had done sixteen years before, he withdrew an envelope that was to have an enormous bearing on Derek’s life. ‘Edward managed to secure almost half your passage to Africa. He took two jobs to try to raise the rest of the money before he was due to set sail, but ran out of time in the end.’

  ‘He shouldn’t have worried. I already have some money and will do what I have to–’

  ‘The money has been taken care of, Derek.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  Father Gabriel reached into his robe and withdrew a second envelope. He walked around the table and placed both of them in Derek’s hand.

  ‘If this is your money, I cannot possibly accept it.’

  ‘You will accept it. It is the Lord’s will.’

  ‘But–’

  ‘But nothing. There is nothing to talk about. We have all that we need here.’

  ‘We both know that’s not possible, Father.’

  ‘Listen to me. King’s Cross was here long before either of us and will be here well after we are gone. The Lord will always provide for this place. Take the money and be thankful. Do not insult an old man. Doing this for you gives me great joy and hope at a time when both are in such short supply.’

  Derek shook his head and tried to object further, but Father Gabriel threw up an arm as he so often did when an argument had run its course. ‘Come, let’s eat. I want to know everything that’s happened to you. And now that you have what you need, I can tell you about that fight you had with your brother.’

  Reluctantly, his fingers addled by guilt, Derek slipped the envelopes into his jacket.

  ‘So Edward really never said anything to you about that punch of yours that knocked him out?’

  ‘No. I think he knew how bad I felt about the whole thing. He didn’t want to make me feel any worse. In fact, I can’t remember us ever speaking about the fight. Why?’

  Father Gabriel shook his head, his eyes turning heavenwards. ‘I should have known.’

  ‘Known what?’

  ‘I’m sorry to break this to you, and this may come as some surprise, but Edward allowed you to knock him out. He dropped his guard on purpose that day.’

  Derek halted in mid-step. ‘He did what?’

  ‘I think you heard me.’

  ‘A–Are you sure?’

  ‘Quite sure. I saw it at the time and when I confronted him later, he admitted to it.’

  ‘But why would he have done that? It doesn’t make any sense. We were both so angry with each other. We were both desperate to win.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that Edward did not share the same lust for anger that you did.’

  ‘B–But even so … I still don’t understand. Why would he let me hit him?’

  ‘Because he knew how much winning that fight meant to you. It was as simple as that.’

  Derek paused for a moment, sorting through the information. It all made sense. Edward had been in complete control of the fight before that last punch. The truth fell quickly and comfortably into place. So comfortably, he wondered if perhaps a part of him had always known it.

  ‘Can you believe that? In all my years here, that’s the story I tell the most. It’s now part of the pre-fight speech I give to the boys.’

  Suddenly, another thought occurred to Derek and he laughed, lifting his hands to his face. ‘Did Edward tell you what happened to him at Delville Wood? How he was wounded?’

  Father Gabriel shrugged. ‘All he said was that he was stabbed … bayoneted … if that’s what you’re asking.’

  Derek closed his eyes and began to shake his head. ‘But of course he never told you why, did he? He never said who the bayonet was meant for.’

  3

  Four months later

  Derek had always been fascinated by large ships, moved by their sheer scale and ambition. To him, they were the imaginings of a child made real. Evidence of the good that man was sometimes capable of. Ever since he was a boy and had first laid eyes on one of the great vessels, he had harboured dreams of boarding one. He would spend hours roaming the docks, wishing his were among the many privileged faces that looked down from the gleaming decks. He could recall the intensity with which he yearned to be on board, could still feel the heat of his jealousy. It was the seething, petty envy of a child at great odds with both the world and himself. A child missing the calming influences of a father.

  But today, so many years on, it was finally his turn. Standing on the upper deck of the grand SS Balmoral Castle, the pride of the Union-Castle Mail fleet of ships that sailed fortnightly between Southampton and Cape Town, Derek fought hard to contain his excitement. To his utter amazement, he noticed that many of the passengers around him appeared almost bored to be on deck, more interested in the lunch bell than in the journey that lay ahead. He wondered how that could be. It seemed unfathomable to him. On the dock below, hundreds of people waved and clapped exuberantly, as if to compensate for the passengers’ indifference. Derek tried to imagine his younger self in that audience, gritting his teeth, his hands gnarled into fists, but could not summon the image. He was no longer that bitter boy with the poison in his blood. He had made his peace with the misfortunes of his childhood and was now just grateful to be alive and could barely wait to be out on the open sea.

  As the twin funnels of the SS Balmoral Castle bellowed to life and its cavernous red-and-white hull swayed gently on the deep black water, Derek reached into his pocket and withdrew Edward’s letter. He filled his lungs with the rich harbour air and unfolded the page.

  Derek,

  I’m writing to you from under the shade of an immense baobab, which the Shangaans call the ‘upside-down tree’ owing to its distinctive branches which resemble something of a root system. They believe that when the earth was young, the gods grew so angry at man for his failings that they tore the baobabs from their celestial garden and cast them down at earth where they landed upside down and continued to grow.

  I consider it a blessing that you were not among these early inhabitants as you would have presented an obvious target for the gods and almost certainly would have been crushed by one of these flying trees.

  That aside, I must confess that the longer I am here, the more I find myself lending credence to the beliefs of the local tribesmen – even their folktales seem rooted in at least some version of the truth. It is difficult not to be swept away by Africa’s rich mystical charms. As the bushveld seeps into my veins, I have grown uncertain of many things. What seemed important to me before, now holds less sway in my lif
e.

  I am relieved to hear that Father Gabriel remains in good health and will admit that I am intrigued by your charge that ‘we have a score to settle’ following some revelation he has shared with you.

  I have searched my mind and can think of no worthy score that requires settling. However, given the porous nature of your memory, you will no doubt have forgotten all about it by the time you dock in the Cape.

  I cannot begin to tell you what it is like working with the elephants. Whatever you have imagined it to be, it is beyond that. Sadly though, their numbers continue to fall. The poaching is relentless. The details of which I shall share with you when you get here. There is so very much to discuss.

  Before my ink runs out, I have an admission to make.

  As you know, I was never particularly fond of ships, but I would be lying if I told you that I was not mesmerised by the marriage of dark ocean and starlit night. To this end, may I recommend that you look out for the majestic Southern Cross – a distinctive kite-shaped constellation – which shall come into view in the second half of your voyage. If you can’t find it, ask an adult to point it out to you.

  I can see you smiling from here, little brother. Let us hope the gods do not share my prolific eyesight. A baobab could easily sink a ship.

  God speed.

  Edward

  Derek had read the letter more than half a dozen times and it still made him laugh. Shaking his head, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a grainy black-and-white photograph that had accompanied the letter. It was a picture of Edward sitting on a flat rock with a large elephant wading out into a river behind him. A polished sky, smooth as marble, framed the image. He smiled at his brother’s unkempt beard and absurd shoulder-length hair and again began to laugh. He turned the photograph in his fingers and reread the note on the back for the umpteenth time.

  I have grown a beard so the gods can tell us apart.

  As the SS Balmoral Castle finally slipped its tethers and raised anchor, Derek knew that, like the great ship, there was nothing left holding him to England. His place had always been with his brother.

  And, after almost two years apart, he was finally going home.

  4

  After lying wide-eyed in his bunk for more than two hours, his mind pitching and swaying between his brother and the elephants, Derek sat up and put on his boots. He reached for his jacket at the foot of the mattress and rummaged through its pockets, finally withdrawing the only possession of any real value he had ever owned – his father’s pocket watch. He squinted in the gloom and saw that it was already well after midnight. By now, most passengers would have retired for the evening.

  It was time.

  He rose to his feet and quickly made his way out of his cramped quarters and onto the ship’s main deck. Invigorated by the fresh ocean air, he hurried up a narrow staircase which spiralled out onto a lofted wooden platform barely half the size of a theatre stage. Just as he had anticipated, it was deserted. He walked over to the railing and felt a surge of excitement flush through him. Some time at sea had done nothing to dampen his enthusiasm; he remained enthralled by the voyage. He stared out over the black horizon and still had trouble convincing himself that what he was seeing was real. Since leaving England, every time he had closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep, he had fully expected to wake up in the Godless trenches of Delville Wood. He would expect it again later when he returned to his cabin. He would likely expect it for the rest of his life.

  There was something truly extraordinary – almost otherworldly – about being stood out on deck, alone, in the dead of night. His senses tingled. Although they had entered warmer waters, the wind from an approaching storm made his legs shiver. As he took hold of the salt-scrubbed railing, watching the pale white wake being churned up by the ship’s enormous propeller, he couldn’t stop himself from smiling. This is what he had dreamed of as a boy. Standing perched on the bird’s nest of a ship, in its darkest hour, as it sailed through waters vast and deep to a land he had only ever read about, a land that had once enthralled and captivated his father. Swaying in rhythm to the tide beneath his feet, he looked up at the night sky, an ink mirror to the abyss below. And then, without even having to search for it, it appeared to him. It was unmistakable. The Southern Cross constellation that Edward had written about. A diamond kite, pinned against the vastness of space.

  ‘Look at that,’ he whispered, suddenly and unexpectedly afflicted. He first tried to blink away the tears, but then slowly gave himself to them. After so many months adrift, he was now only days away from being reunited with his brother. The war was over and somehow he had survived it. Somehow he was standing on this great ship. And somehow this ship was ferrying passengers, not soldiers.

  A crack of lightning, like the white snap of a bone, flashed on the horizon.

  He raised his arms to the sky and laughed. And cried. And waited for the sweet rain to fall.

  5

  The last time Derek had boarded a train, he had been on his way to the frontlines, sandwiched between two obnoxious English soldiers. As he sat trapped for hours between the pair, he had no choice but to endure their forced laughter and false boasts about the many German scalps they had claimed in the preceding weeks. He remembered how they had even taken bets with the men around them as to who would notch up more kills in the days ahead. He was embarrassed to call them his countrymen. Both men chewed and rolled cigars in the corners of their mouths as though they were wealthy gamblers sat around a high-stakes poker table. Both revelled in telling cruel and callous jokes, slapping their legs to the tone of hollow laughs. Both stank of arrogance and bravado. And both were dead by the end of the week, their bodies bloating in the scarred veins of France’s death pits.

  Derek rubbed his eyes and tried to wipe away the memory. As he stared through the window and marvelled at the sight of the African sun – an orange half-moon slipping between the stone cleavage of two distant mountains – he realised how stirring a train ride could be when it wasn’t ferrying you into the black light of a war. It also helped that the landscape they were winding through was as beautiful and as varied as anything he had ever seen. They had passed through great mountain ranges in Cape Town and woken up to the barren moonscape of the Karoo desert the next morning. Later that afternoon they were carving through lush green valleys and by the following day were passing through vast tracts of farmland that seemed to stretch and curve endlessly from one horizon to the next, a lake of corn and sunflowers. And all the while it was gloriously, magnificently warm. The sun that pushed against the carriage, coupled with the rocking of the train, was something approaching heaven. At a time when so many in Europe were sat huddled around boilers and empty kitchen stoves, slowly starving to death, Derek had just enjoyed a sumptuous steak dinner with more fresh vegetables than he had seen in six months. He had followed the meal with two glasses of fine Cape wine and a double sherry and was now basking in the glow of both the drink and the dying sun. It was early days, he knew, but southern Africa was already proving to be everything he had hoped it would. Everything his father had written about.

  As he closed his eyes and rested his head against the face of the window, he was smiling as he drifted off to sleep. For once, there was no blood in his dreams. No screams. No hellfire. No dead eyes. But of all these mercies, one was greater than the rest. His recurring nightmare of the young German girl who grew old waiting for her father to return home from the war finally took a different path. Through the driving snow, a man appeared at her window and gently spread his fingers across the glass. She pushed her small hands against his and, as he smiled at her, she dissolved into tears.

  ‘Father,’ she whispered.

  6

  Derek could barely hold a thought in his head. If everything had gone according to plan, then Edward would be waiting somewhere on the platform ahead of him.

  As the train drifted into Johannesburg Station, its brakes hissing under the weight of its many carriages, Derek was already s
tanding at the door, his meagre possessions slung over his shoulder in an old army bag. ‘C’mon … c’mon,’ he urged, banging his fist on the window.

  He was forced to watch in frustration as the old conductor shuffled down the platform, slowly unlocking carriage doors as he passed. Derek scanned the waiting crowd through the dirt-smudged glass, but could see no sign of Edward. When he looked back for the conductor, scores of disembarking passengers now flooded his view, most pouring into the welcoming arms of loved ones. When his door was eventually opened, he half-leapt and half-spilled from the train. There were now hundreds of people swarming around him. He stepped into a narrow clearing and called out for his brother. Moving around in an arc, he snatched his head around to see if anyone had reacted to his voice.

  ‘Edwaaard … Ed …’ he shouted again.

  He was about to call out a third time when, through a throng of bodies, he saw flashes of a bearded man pushing through the crowd. There was something familiar in the way he carried himself; something about his gait that struck a chord. Derek immediately started towards him, trying to get a look at his face.

  ‘Sorry … please let me through,’ he uttered to the blurred faces as he hurried between them. He rounded a large family whose members were screaming and bounding up and down in a reunion that seemed years rather than months overdue, when he got his first clear sight of the man. He immediately drew to a halt, barely twenty feet away from him. As if their matched countenances somehow translated into synchronised movement, Edward did the same. As people crisscrossed between them, oblivious to what they were treading upon, the Hughes brothers remained rooted to the spot.

  Staring at his brother but saying nothing, Derek let his bag drop to the floor. Edward opened his mouth to speak, but held his words when he saw Derek raise his arms and lift onto his toes.

  ‘And now?’ he called back, laughing. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘You said I would forget,’ he fired back, curling his fingers into fists. ‘But I haven’t. We have a score to settle.’