Hero

by Paul Butler

  “Lucy, what happened to your doll?”

  “What doll?” she answers with an odd smirk.

  “Your doll, of course. The one you were carrying.”

  “Oh, you mean Tommy,” she says nonchalantly, looking off into some distance beyond the station’s low roof. “I thought you saw it. He committed suicide. Look.” She turns theatrically and with a forlorn shrug, indicates a point on the rails behind us. The rag doll lies over a track just a yard or so ahead of the engine’s colossal iron bumper. There is something outrageous in the contrast between the toy’s pathetic stuffed body and the might of the train. As the engine gives a dragon sigh, blowing steam from its funnel, my stomach churns and my hands drop from Lucy’s shoulders. The conductor trills three times on his whistle then drops his flag so swiftly I hear it slice through the air. There’s a single slow chug, more steam, and the squeal of pistons released into motion. A great iron wheel begins its slow turn, and the bumper noses itself forward.

  It’s a physical pain—a sharp spasm somewhere deep in my belly—that spits me from the spot. Pigeons drop from the station house eaves as my shoes pound along the platform, their small black eyes sensing catastrophe. I catch a coo of disapproval as I half-fall, half-jump from the platform ridge onto the gravel of the railbed.

  “Stop!”

  The conductor’s voice is much louder, much fiercer, than I would have credited given his small frame. Even as I leap in front of the iron monster, gripping the rag doll, eyes closed in expectation of the pounding force of iron against my bones, I realize he’s been here before. This slightly built man in a rural station in England has seen people throw themselves before the oncoming juggernaut. He’s witnessed first-hand what ton upon ton of heavy freight does to soft flesh, what an iron wheel rolling snugly along a slightly rusted rail can make of the limbs of a former soldier, or those of his widow or mother.

  The engine gives a ferocious hiss, and the train’s shadow blocks out the sun. But I am standing on the other side now, air tugging hard upon the inner seams of my lungs. I know that mighty thoughts ought to be running through me, insights about God and universal justice, unexpected memories perhaps of my own birth, tiny fists beating at my mother’s face. But I encounter no such revelatory stream, no lifetime running before my eyes. Instead the near-disaster has both dulled and fragmented my mind, and I find myself dwelling ponderously upon minute details. My main emotion is gratitude, not for my life, but for the fact that, for the moment at least, the train blocks me from the sight of the conductor.

  I turn to look at the empty platform behind me. A woman in a dowdy brown hat is watching me from the station wall. She doesn’t look away when I meet her gaze, and shakes her head slowly. After a second my gaze drops from hers and rests upon the rag doll, which hangs upside down from my fingers. The implied shame of my altered posture annoys me. I don’t want to feel anything but defiance. The ill-defined reason for this swell of pride hardly matters; within its fire burns an instinct that my actions are no madder than anyone who might want to judge them. Why should I not be insane in such a world? We all have a right to choose our mode of madness when everything is so off-kilter.

  Light breaks between carriages as the train gathers speed, and I know that in a moment I’ll have to face the conductor and any other official who might want to call me to account. And Lucy. I’ll have to think of some explanation for why I risked my life to save the toy she threw away. I’ll have to explain it to her parents too if they hear of it. A question, hardly connected, rises like a growing flood around me. Why did I risk my life to save Lucy’s rag doll?

  CHAPTER 17

  Simon

  “You’ll never guess what Elsa just did!” Lucy is excited as she clambers into the back seat. My fingers coil around the wheel. I want to snap at her to shut up, but I know this would be unacceptable even to me. An ocean of nerves, a multitude of twitching ganglia, has risen around me since lunch–time, buffeting the thin and rickety hull of my composure. I catch a glimpse of Elsa’s face in the driver’s mirror, and despite the nerves, I notice how odd she looks, her cheeks white as linen, blotches of red around her nose and eyes. “Daddy,” she continues, “I think you ought to give her your medal, at least for the weekend.”

  “What?” I fire back too forcefully, fixing Lucy in the mirror. “What’s going on?”

  “Elsa jumped in front of the train to rescue Tommy.”

  “Tommy?”

  I turn around sharply—I can’t stop myself—and I notice with some kind of relief she is picking stalks of grass and flecks of dust from the hair of the rag doll.

  “That’s nice of Elsa, Lucy,” Sarah tells her in a voice of such studied calm I suspect she has noticed I am more irritable than usual. She’s aiming to diffuse the situation before I strike out and embarrass everyone. “But I’m sure you must exaggerate just a little.”

  “I’m not,” Lucy insists.

  “Lucy,” Elsa interposes gently. “Don’t contradict your mother.”

  Lucy sighs and flops back in her seat.

  I turn the car onto the road, my chest hammering, and my foot gives freedom to the engine. I want its roar to overcome any more chat. Sarah’s hand comes to rest upon my forearm, and I wonder how much of my mood has been seen through the window of fear, how easily this family can unpick the tattered threads of my emotions. Was it coincidence only that allowed my five-and-a-half-year-old daughter to scratch so near the sorest point of my secret ulcer—my unearned medal? I think about the rag doll’s new name—Tommy. Last week it was Samantha. Why has she changed its gender, choosing the timeless name for the foot soldier? Sometimes it seems as though my daughter has been carefully, meticulously instructed in the stage-by-stage implementation of my downfall.

  Details have occupied me since lunchtime—details urgent and terrifying. Smith is alive, Smith the witness, Smith the spy. Smith, whose index finger stretched through the coiling smoke on the first of July seven years ago. Smith, whose trouser legs twisted beneath him as though empty. Smith, who seemed to point, the hint of a smile upon his thin lips. Smith is alive and closing on me in a way I could not have imagined possible, climbing the stairs to my workplace office, talking to my daughter and her governess, and through them, to my wife.

  Smith’s reappearance is an alarm that rings so loudly as to be beyond human hearing. I am for the moment numbed by the intelligence, unnaturally philosophical between bouts of terror. It is a mood I am certain will pass once the shock is absorbed.

  The paradox of course is that those who have slipped into the position of my adversaries—Sarah, Lucy, and Elsa—do not even need details to capture the essence of my crimes. Lucy already knows something is suspect about my medal. And to my wife I am a particularly demanding and tiresome charity, one whose needs are perpetual forgiveness and the consistent sacrifice of her own common sense to my hysteria.

  Question: What kind of monster would ignore the needs of an old comrade who lost his legs? Answer: A man who nearly faints when a subject displeases him. Such a man is as much of a tyrant as one who bellows and threatens, although if truth be told, I have actually done this a good deal too. I know all this, and the unworthiness of such a creature pierces me to the core. I have leaked my inadequacies constantly, allowing them all to believe the worst their minds can conjure, and it is this long-withered expectation, from Sarah at least, that for the moment dulls my terror regarding Smith. Now and again, since the first shock in the Beehive, some sickly knowledge trickles into my brain, reminding me that Sarah’s present opinion of me, however low, is preferable to the truth, and that truth is the new knell chiming upon my doorstep.

  My fingers are trembling, so I curl my hands into fists and lay the base of my palms upon the wheel.

  “Can we go on a picnic tomorrow?” Lucy asks in a singsong voice.

  My spine stiffens again and Sarah, preoccupied, doesn’t seem to catch the question. I hear Elsa say quietly, “You’ll have to ask your mother, Lucy, when we’re
all home and settled.”

  “Mummy!” Lucy yells, deciding not to wait. “Can we go on a picnic tomorrow?”

  I give a groan, audible only to Sarah. She fires me a cautionary glance before turning to address her daughter quietly.

  “Yes dear, if you like.”

  “Can we go in the car?”

  “Daddy has to take the car back to Ipswich tomorrow. But we can take our basket down to the beach.”

  “Why does he have to take the car?”

  “Lucy,” Sarah replies, the ghost of a remonstrance in her tone. “Daddy has to go to work.”

  “He can leave the car and take the train, can’t he?”

  We hit a bump in the road, and conversation ceases while the chassis lurches once or twice before steadying itself. I can sense Sarah repressing a gasp, and her hand reaches to steady herself against the door.

  “But someone has to drive the car, Lucy,” she says breathlessly.

  “You can drive, Mummy, or Elsa can.” More quietly, she adds, “You can’t be worse than him.”

  The wheel seems suddenly hot beneath my palms. On a ridge fifty yards ahead, the trunk of a large oak stands close to the road like a beacon. Almost casually, I consider speeding into it, targeting the driver’s side for the point of impact. I can’t imagine it would result in anyone’s death, even my own. I’m not going quite fast enough for that. It would merely be a convenient prop, a way to end a conversation not to my taste, a way to distract me from the greater threat that awaits me after today.

  My foot presses down on the accelerator. The engine gives an animal moan as I swerve onto the grass verge, the oak’s trunk approaching hard. A leftward twitch of the steering wheel, and the tree zooms past.

  Sarah makes no noise at all. The lack of a gasp or shriek speaks volumes. She knows how close we were. Most likely Elsa and Lucy do also. As the car leaves the verge and crunches onto gravel once more, skidding briefly, the unnatural silence continues. I can feel Sarah’s stiffness, sense she is hardly breathing.

  My own pulse begins to slow and I think about the missed chance, all the collateral benefits that might have accrued from a serious accident. I could, for instance, claim amnesia in advance of any questions about July 1, 1916. A broken arm or mangled leg might be a cause for sympathy. An injury to Lucy or Sarah might be grounds for divorce. The slow, life-debilitating torture of an unhappy home lacks the clear-cut drama that Sarah needs for decisive action. She is too mired in her own kind of guilt for not being at the front herself, for belonging to the wrong sex, to suffer the way she might have wanted. I am her substitute, her sackcloth and ashes. Only a real and growing danger to her child would be enough to force her hand.

  CHAPTER 18

  Sarah

  I close the passenger door, unnaturally aware of the gravel beneath my shoes. Like a voyager who has only narrowly escaped shipwreck, every detail of the physical world around me seems exaggerated. The oak leaves whispering over the driveway seem supernaturally charged with life and intelligence. I can almost believe that eyes lurk in their darkening flesh. There’s something in Simon’s silence, too, that confirms a vague sense of something new, something worse than anything that has gone before.

  Lucy’s footsteps scuttling on ahead, her flight to Elsa, not to me or to her father, makes me wonder if she too has noticed that we are entering a new and dangerous phase. Elsa opens the front door and marshals our daughter through.

  Silently, without a sideways glance at the husband who has almost killed us all, I follow them. I don’t hear Simon’s footfalls behind me and wonder what he is planning, motionless beside his car.

  As I move into the darkness of the house I leave the front door open behind me. I know closing it will seem to my husband like a fresh offensive. Isabelle appears from the gloom of the hallway that leads to the kitchen. A strange, worried smile is on her face, and she is wringing her hands.

  “Has Mr. Jenson returned with you, Mrs. Jenson?”

  “Yes, Isabelle.”

  Another flicker of emotion passes over her face, and she struggles with something for a moment.

  “Why, Isabelle?”

  “Your mother was thinking of coming to dinner but she didn’t wish to disturb you all if Mr. Jenson was at home.”

  Tilting my head to the side, I let the implication emerge plainly from the dimming half light. A distant squeak and dull clanging from the water pipe indicate that Elsa has taken Lucy upstairs for her bath, something I used to do myself, especially after a journey. I feel helplessness tug in every direction.

  “Why would my mother be ‘disturbing us’ at dinner if Mr. Jenson is at home any more than if he wasn’t?”

  Isabelle blushes deeply, and the corners of her mouth turn downwards. I feel suddenly cruel, making her accountable for my mother’s message—if indeed it was given to her as a message at all and not an underlying strategy behind a far more circumspect communication. Poor Isabelle was never suited to the kinds of subterfuge ladies of my mother’s generation require.

  “It’s all right, Isabelle,” I say at last. “She’s welcome to join us regardless of Mr. Jenson’s presence.”

  The extended silence and the open door behind me make me suddenly too cautious to commit to Simon’s appearance at dinner, and I’m eager now to end the conversation in case his entry into the house were to prove as wildly inappropriate as his driving. But the slam of the car door reverberates through the hallway. It’s loud enough to render any such discretion on my part not only pointless but rather absurd. Isabelle visibly cringes now and makes a face like a child forced to lick a lemon. I hear the car chugging into motion and the rubber tires skidding against gravel, scattering stones far and wide. With an animal moan the vehicle seems to come closer and louder. Then, after another mighty roar, it fades slowly until it becomes obvious Simon has rejoined the road and is driving away. The sound of the engine is indistinguishable from Simon’s own voice; it is the conduit through which his true feelings are conveyed.

  “That will be all, Isabelle.” My own gaze is now averted from hers, my lips pinched. “I’ll speak to my mother.” Shame is hardly necessary as at the moment I’m quite beyond caring. I wonder from which interior cavern the instinct to play-act the long-suffering wife has emerged, and it occurs to me it’s more for Isabelle’s sake than mine, an attempt to place marital strife in a preordained category that might be less threatening for her. A furious husband is easier to accept than an irrational one. A man on fire through jealousy, obsession, or a gambling habit—whichever Isabelle chooses—is far less dangerous than one whose mood has no explanation at all. I don’t usually address her in a manner quite so indicative of formal hierarchy, and this could be to help her too, an attempt to bring predicable order to chaos. In any case, it seems to work, as she shuffles off gratefully like a fly unexpectedly freed from a spider’s web. I turn towards the still-open front door.

  The deepening colours of early evening envelop me easily as I wander the shortcut between my marital and child–hood homes. Green and copper beeches jangle their leaves overhead, and high nettles block my path, causing me to meander like a rower on a twisting river. Emerging within the boundaries of my mother’s back garden, I’m greeted by the stump of the oak tree that was felled by the 1911 storm. The boulder and the pond—landscape of the adventures and fairy tales Charles and I inhabited—are so overrun with nettles and dock leaves that at first they are hardly visible. I glimpse the boulder peeking through layers of vegetation, its surface brick-red under the influence of the bloating evening sun. The pond merely shows as the dark hint of a clearing, little more than a shadow, hovering beneath the army of uplifted leaves.

  I hear a buzz, and a dragonfly passes in front of my eyes, its elongated body black against the fiery horizon, its whirring wings scattering colours—blue, violet, and indigo—like powdered paint into the air. These hues seem to settle like stars on the nettles around me and just for an instant, I see them: my brother and myself. Charles is swing
ing a stick this way and that against the “bush” as he tries to make the sacred water hole, his fair hair tufted, his face flushed pink in the effort. His rather diffident sister, a year older than he, is following in his wake, distracted perhaps by visions of the dark-haired Simon, who she sees only in tantalizing glimpses around the grounds of his own house, or dark-suited like an adult on the way home from the nearby grammar school to which Charles will transfer next year. The young man—for so I think him—smiles shyly when he sees us, a beautiful white smile with a touch of bashfulness. When we invite him to join us he retreats.

  Something swells inside my chest and dies away, and I have the curious sensation that time itself has pulled a trick on us, slipping the years from beneath us while we weren’t looking. It seems not only unfair, but also faintly absurd, that we cannot step back into that era. I imagine the calendar as some petty-minded official given to obeying instructions, however illogical, to the letter. There simply has to be some higher authority to which I can appeal.

  I let the feeling hang for a moment, then my eyes focus on a cluster of circling gadflies that have appeared in the wake of the dragonfly. A cloud swells in the eastern sky like a vast cow’s udder inflated and sent aloft. Sensing a sudden heaviness in the atmosphere, and the premonition of an evening chill, I hurry on to the house.

  I find my mother inside the sitting room, where a door hangs open, allowing the oppressive tock, tock of the hallway’s grandfather clock to echo around the walls. I can hear my mother’s maid, Jenny, who I hired when my mother insisted on giving me Isabelle. Jenny is clattering pots deep inside the kitchen and I assume that, in the absence of any reassurance Simon will not be there, Mother has decided she is not coming to supper after all.

  Mother raises her eyes from a small dark-covered book when she sees me and smiles in the kind, pained manner that has become her habit in the last few years.