Rawblood

by Catriona Ward

  I remove my socks. Wad one into a pad, whack it on my shoulder, bind it there with the other. There we are, Florence Nightingale. Feet naked and squeaky inside my boots. I rinse what I can. It doesn’t look good.

  The train beats on like a drum. Cherries, dirty knees and peppermints look up for an instant when I re-enter and then away. What is it like, to be them? They must have friends and families and lives and eat supper and … so on. My family is dead. I had a friend but he let me go. Perhaps he’s dead too, now.

  ‘I shall smack,’ the maroon voice says.

  I peel apart the pages of the newspaper, soft under my fingers like damp, inscribed skin. Only an hour or so to go. Breathe.

  ‘Thomas, I will smack.’

  At Tiverton the door opens again. A shiver goes through the compartment; we’re ruffled like a cage of soft brown hens. I keep my head down. An Exchange telegram from Paris states that … Boots enter … died yesterday at Cannes. I can smell him. Pipe tobacco and hair oil. And uniform, which smells like metal polish and sailcloth and soap. Now I’m in trouble (I think I’m a corporal but I’m just not sure). About this time he came under the influence of Courbet, which is to be observed in the full-length portrait … there’s a soft give of the seat when he sits and I bounce. Next to me … of a girl in a white dress, holding a sunshine.

  ‘Cigarette.’

  He offers the box only to me, so I have to take one. I nod. He nods. It won’t be the end of it. This is something I’ve already learned: the relentless ‘we’ of war will not allow us to part as strangers.

  We smoke. He is above all a colourist, although he was not only that. He was also, without being that exclusively, supremely a painter of women. I can smell my blood.

  The woman with the peppermints says something to him about the weather. I feel him shift in the seat beside me. When he speaks it is so exciting that I am betrayed for an instant into looking. A flash of collar and jaw and windburned neck.

  ‘Somehow a whole year’s homesickness seems to catch up with me at once,’ he says. ‘Makes me feel like jumping in a lake.’

  The cherries and the peppermint laugh. They feel for him. I think.

  ‘I’ve never met an American before,’ says one.

  There comes the shift of him on the seat. Bleeding in a stolen uniform was terrible. Bleeding and sweating profusely in stolen uniform is much worse. Stings to buggery. He made his own one particular type of woman, the Parisian of the ‘midinette’ or shopgirl class …

  ‘They call it sunny France,’ he says to me. ‘It may be for the weather or the girls, but like everything else it’s purely a comparative matter.’

  I wish people would not look at things over one’s shoulder. Particularly that shoulder. The wool clings wetly to the wound. Can he smell it? I give what I hope is a knowing smile, no teeth. His neck, in my peripheral vision, is prickly … all the charm that, and far more character than, the eighteenth-century painters gave to the great ladies of their period.

  ‘France is just a whole lot sunnier than Germany, you see. Chuh! That’s all it is, I reckon.’

  I nod, training my eyes on the paper. Probably it will be the verdict … If I don’t chuck now, it could be all right. This is important to remember. But the smell. Perhaps it’s a comparative matter. Perhaps there’s been so much blood for him that my little shoulder nick doesn’t even touch the sides, as it were.

  He says, ‘It isn’t the things that happen that scare you. It’s the things that might.’

  There’s a curious thrum in the seat. He’s shaking. I take the half-smoked cigarette from my mouth and give it to him, keeping my head down. Probably it will be the verdict of posterity …

  He can smell the blood all right. He might not know it but he can. He trembles. Time rolls back in that peculiar way it has of late and for a moment it’s another boy who’s warm at my side. I know, then. I will go to see if he’s alive. I hope I remember the way. I hope I see him. I hope he hasn’t forgotten me.

  Don’t worry about that. Keep it simple. Read. Renoir was the greatest painter of the nude of his time; his pictures of the nude are not without sensuality, but it is a sensuality inseparable from art. The woman in black produces a paper bag. She eats lemon drops. She offers the bag to him. Small white shapes. He says no with a palm. It’s all up for me, an astringent scent of lemon comes off them, joins the cigarettes. It’s not going to be all right. I’m finished. Heat stings my throat. The tide rises.

  ‘Hey,’ the soldier says. ‘You’re bleeding.’ He leans in and looks at me with level eyes, and I see myself in them: thin, dripping, hunted. The train is slowing, easing into stillness. A dented tin sign. It’s a stop too early, but I’m off. Doors, knees, shuffles, apologies. I go, fast.

  Solid ground. Voices like horns call for urgent things, whistles hurtle thinly through the night. I’d thought it was cold on the train but I was a fool. This is cold that freezes your lungs. I move crabwise across the platform towards the footbridge. The dark has a humming, violent texture through which shapes move too suddenly.

  Two guards unpack a crate; long, slim oblongs of wood. Stack the coffins on the platform, gentle. They puff white breath into the air. The conductor collects the coffin tickets, face solemn. Corpses, pauper fare. Two shillings and sixpence.

  ‘All right, mucker?’ says a guard to the conductor. He’s bulging out of his uniform. He has large fieldmouse eyes and a thick column of a neck. He is solid enough to spare concern. ‘It’s all a bit much now and then, isn’t it?’

  The conductor nods, weary.

  ‘I was at Ypres,’ the guard says. ‘The second one. Lost two toes. Two toes! Bloody hell. Lucky. Still, shook for months. Still. Lucky.’ The conductor nods and makes to go. ‘Two toes,’ the guard says again and sticks his hands in his pockets. He whistles into the night. He wants something from the exchange that can’t be given. Some hope, some assurance of the meaning of things. His eyes are suddenly on me. He calls, ‘All right, bombardier?’ Bombardier, then, not a corporal.

  The white lattice of the footbridge, the very height of it, its temerity in simply existing. A tricky moment on the way down, where gravity nearly takes me with it. Lo and behold there’s a nice dark corner by a shed where I’m safe with some weeds and a bit of gravel. Alone. The relief. I make myself as small as possible, and vomit. I empty myself onto the ground.

  Eventually the whole thing’s finished. Doubled over, I breathe. I feel light enough to float away.

  I scratch gravel over the mess I’ve made. The uniform. I’d rather get rid of it, but I need it. There are miles between me and Rawblood. I am keen to end it. And she goads me on. Bile rises, confusion rises. No. Breathe. Keep it simple. Remember what to do. Go to see if he’s alive. Then home. I touch his letter in my pocket like a talisman. Burn it, Papa whispers like a secret.

  I know it’s not Papa, not really. The words are meaningless. My broken head. Like a record, stuck. I know all this. But here, in the cold, in the dark, I’m glad of his voice.

  The mist is heavy. A woman is calling, somewhere. ‘Please,’ she says, and then, ‘I am sorry.’ I go through the white blank, towards her voice. When I come upon her it is sudden, but expected. I am meant to find her here. She lies turned and twisted on the broken ground. The cambric of her dress a wet sheen. Mud is thick along the hem; it reaches slick fingers up her skirt. Ribbons of cold cloud move through the uncertain light, touch her cheek, wet with tears, which mix with the blood on her face. Her hair lies down her back, gold.

  I see the child beside her, then. He’s small and dark and serious. He pulls with small hands, trying to raise her. He looks at me with brown deep eyes.

  Think you’ve broken something, I try to say and she turns and sees me. She cries out. It’s a shuddering ragged sound, so full of fear. Don’t move, I say but she’s already crawling, pulling herself along the ground away from me. One of her arms scrabbles on the turf. The other drags behind, wasted and limp. She turns, her small face distorted. As I ma
ke towards her she opens her mouth and moans. Cracked, high. It pulls at my guts. The child begins to cry. She pulls him to her with her good arm, Alonso, come. She shields him, her lip curling in contempt. My papa was afraid of mist, too, I say as I approach. And his name was … Their mouths widen into round ‘o’s, mother and child begin to scream. And just like that they’re gone. Hidden in the shifting white.

  I cast about, calling for her. Here and there the mist is pierced by late afternoon light. Sometimes, ahead, I hear her breath, heavy in the wet air.

  Stop, I call, y—

  I’m awake, cold and sudden. The sting of winter air on my cheek.

  The wind is high in the vast sky. Around me the moor is white, scalded under the moon. No mist, no afternoon, no wet cambric. A scent of rot and phlegm. When I look down I see I’m at the very, very edge. Not in it, but nearly. Gummy, dark bog squeezes up around the tips of my boots. From somewhere comes the sound of a cleaver, rapidly striking the block. It’s the sound of my heart.

  I wait. I stand very still. The bog sighs gently underfoot. I wait as the chopping grows slowly fainter. And then I shuffle back, inch by inch. The soles of my boots shiver and slip on patches of sphagnum, glossy and cold. Beneath the moss there is a frozen crust of peat. Beneath that is the slow liquid sucking dark.

  When the grit of the path is well underfoot I stop. Slip a hand beneath my jacket, beneath the mess of bloody wool. I feel my way across the shoulder to the bitter, pulsing edges of the wound. I shove my thumb hard in. The air sings sharp. I do it again, harder, and now it all goes black and thick and sweet. I don’t know how long for. Red stars collide. I’ve gone too far, I think, vaguely, through the din.

  The pain washes away in small tides. It leaves behind a broken hole. The hole runs through my core and up to the insides of my eyelids. I won’t sleep again. The moon blazes on the path ahead.

  The dreams are coming thick and fast. She’s impatient for me now. There are no words to express it – the terrible freedom, the malice and rage. To look through her eyes is to know the dark centre of the world. I dread it and it is thrilling.

  Hard brushy land gives way to straw scent and dung. When the first outbuildings are in sight I move among them for cover, making my way sideways, crossways. The heat of beasts in the sheds, their quiet exhales like tiny waterfalls in the fields beyond. Beneath my feet the seamless frost becomes corrugated. Hard ridges. Cart tracks, wheel tracks, a bicycle, an automobile, fossilised into the surface of the earth. Close now.

  My toe catches in the hard edge of a hoof print and I fall. My face meets the iron-hard earth. Slender licks of hot blood course freely from my nose to my chin. They trickle down inside my collar. Damn, and all that. I blow a hard breath out, heave myself up and move on. When I look back across the white land, black blood spatter and footsteps trace my progress in the moonlight. So much for stealth.

  A building, low and irregular. An unrisen loaf, flush against the land. Little black trees are twisted around it. The mirrored gaze of windows, the unlit dark interior. Well, why would it be lit at this hour? The walls move gently, undulating. My shoulder is missing. It has simply floated off. I search the ground for stones and gather them, freezing, into my hand. I throw them in clattering handfuls at the window, then at other windows above me. Dark shining glass. No one comes.

  I swarm up the ivy on the old stone walls. I used to climb like this, I think, over the roof … Pieces of fractured memory overlay each other uneasily. Not sure of a sudden where, or rather when I am. Just climb.

  By the window I collect everything into order. Hope strains my edges. I tap lightly on the pane. I knock. I whisper his name. After that, I knock once more. My next knock breaks the glass. I call quietly through the hole. This is not sufficient, because he does not come. No one does. ‘Come out!’ I am hissing, spitting like a kettle. I’m shouting through the broken glass. The dark places within are silent.

  In the bone-white moonlight looking on the barren house. Of a sudden I see that everyone is dead. How could I forget this? It becomes apparent how ridiculous was my thought: that this rule might not apply for some. That a person might not be dead simply because I hope that they are not dead.

  Everyone is dead. Their hopeful white and green bodies have been tossed in a lofty spray of mortar fire, splintered, delivered into fountains, particles, spread in veils of red across the ground and sky. There is no longer a name to shout. He is a haze, a miasma of blood over Passchendaele. Verdun. Arras. Cambrai. La Marne. Gone. The house is dark, like other houses.

  Pieces of the day collide in my mind like driftwood. The man’s face after I struck him, pale and innocent, his closed eyes. Shards of glass. Girls and trains and terrible stuck-on eyes. Vomit in the back of my throat. The vast sky and the bog beneath my feet. All shot through with moonlight and blood, always blood. Terrible place, my head.

  My hands cannot find their grip. Cold branches slip through my fingers. I fall. Wide, cold air rushes past. He’s dead. I hit the ground.

  *

  She sits in the chair before the fire in my room. She looks peaceful, now, in silhouette against the flames. Her golden hair lies in a thick twist at the nape of her neck. She looks into the fire, one finger strokes the brocade of the chair. Can’t see her face. The light plays about the edge of her jaw. What is she thinking of? She’s in my room but I don’t mind it. Where’s the child? Longing fills me like a cup, I can’t explain it. Where is he?

  Sorry I scared you, I say. She turns and her eyes are white mistletoe berries. She takes the poker from the embers. ‘Do not you go near him,’ she says. The tip is a hot orange shard. I approach her with light cat feet.

  Clatters, flurry, voices. I come to. A beam moves across the yard like a searchlight. An engine coughs. I force my aching limbs up. I flatten myself against the wall of the farmhouse.

  Light pours across the yard from the barn. Figures move across it, intent. Someone calls to someone else. Three men, a lorry.

  He stands in the barn door, a straight silhouette against the light. A familiar voice, raised, taut like cord. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Can’t be right,’ and then something else.

  The barn. Didn’t think to look there.

  ‘Have a look-see, then,’ says one of the men. Slow voice. Warm tones, kindness. They take something long and heavy from the back of the lorry, carry it into the barn with oofs and thunks.

  I edge closer. The dark night quivers. The scent of lemons is everywhere. If they find me I’ll bite them till the blood runs down like a pierced peach.

  Three, four voices slide over one another. His familiar one raised high in argument. The words come fast like rain then slow. ‘Have it your way,’ the slow voice says.

  Agreement is struck. A rift of sound. Wood rings against wood; an engine grinds into life. Slams, and someone calls, ‘All right. Ho!’ The engine rolls away into the distance. I don’t move for a long time. I watch the barn where it looms high in the purple air.

  A long bar of yellow falls into the night like a path. I follow it. The cobbles are sleek underfoot. The scent of early morning fills the dark.

  The barn door stands a little ajar. A lamp hangs on a beam, throws a rough yellow circle. Everywhere, the scent of straw. He sits by the long pine box. It’s stained with travel, rimed and wet. The coffin lid’s askew, hastily pushed aside. He looks into the depths. His face is strange and shining.

  He’s different. The hands are brown, quick. That’s right. But scars run across his cheek, cross his eye like the tributaries of a river. New, white seams. His hair’s the same dark mess it was when we were children. My palm remembers it. His eyes blue, white, but there are dents under them, purple shadows which I don’t remember.

  Tom Gilmore. Different, but not dead, after all. I watch them: Tom, the coffin, caught as they are in the warm rustling light.

  I could go in. I could sit beside him. I could place my hands on his. I could slide my hand into the open neck of his shirt, feel his warm thudding heart und
er my palm, turn his face to mine, and ask him, Who’s in the coffin? Who’re you crying over? Whatever his answer I would put an arm around his shoulders, feel the warmth of him along my side. We’ll go, I’d say. Let’s leave it. Go and live by the sea, where there aren’t people, only gulls and the sun.

  A warm hairy head brushes my palm. I leap in shock. A tail waves in the dark like a sword. The dog smiles at me, white teeth frame the pink tongue. Hot breath, the rough drag as it licks my hand. The dog makes a friendly high-pitched greeting.

  Tom is looking at me. Our eyes meet through the dark. He recoils, and then shouts. He scrambles up in the hay. Hostile, blank gaze. He doesn’t know me.

  I stumble across the frozen farmyard, bloody, shaking. I run for the dark southwest hills, for home. I was wrong to come. I don’t know what I thought would happen. He meant what he said in the letter. It was goodbye after all. He has let go.

  Behind, I think I hear his voice. Iris. But I don’t stop, I don’t turn. I run.

  In the dawn I crest the final hill, see it to the southwest. I am climbing the steep incline, mindless, reckless, almost parallel to the ground. I am filled with singing, a joyful rage. I’m coming, I tell her. You’ve taunted me enough. Come and get me. My blood is high. One hand anchors me, clutching at icy tussocks, I haul myself up arm over arm. My breath is good and hot in my throat. And the little stubborn thought surfaces: that perhaps, just perhaps, she won’t get me … Earlswood did not kill me, Goodman did not kill me … Maybe I’ll get her. Doesn’t matter, really. Either way it will end.

  I pitch forward, aching fingers desperate, as if gravity has been recalibrated. Actually I have reached the top.

  The valley laid out like a pewter plate. The branches of the cedar of Lebanon below, stretched wide. Shards of grass retreat brilliant into the distance like reverberations.