by David Mark
‘Tree came down near you, I heard.’
I felt it in my chest. A tightening, like somebody was pulling at the straps of my bra.
‘It did,’ I said, and hoped she’d shut up about it. ‘Crashed down on the Kinmont tomb. That’s where Fairfax was heading, so they say. To tell the family about the damage.’
‘In that weather? On the Spadeadam road?’ Janet wasn’t having any of it. ‘He must have had a bang to the head.’
‘Got himself muddled, I reckon,’ I said, and I suppose I meant it. ‘He took a shine to Cordelia. Maybe he was trying to play hero.’
Janet’s features went pointy. She was cross. ‘Cordelia, is it?’ she asked, in her fake lah-di-dah voice. ‘She was in your house?’
‘I told you, the storm came down.’ I don’t know why she were being such a cow about it. I tried explaining. ‘She would have got drenched walking all the way back up to her place.’
Janet sniffed and gave the map more attention. ‘Well, you know her better than I do so I couldn’t say whether she can handle the rain or not.’
I got myself a bit flustered. Janet turned her shoulder to me, just like she did at school when I admitted to playing with somebody else while she had been at an uncle’s house over the summer. She didn’t like to share me.
‘What you got there?’ I asked, trying to lighten the mood.
‘Map,’ she said, pettily.
‘Where of?’
She thrust the map at me. Her look said I might as well take this as I had already taken everything else, whereas life had given her nothing but slaps and cow shit. She loved to tell people she’d only been put upon the planet to be shat upon. Our John had a reply to that. Said it were nobody’s business what went on in another couple’s bedroom.
I turned over the map. Saw more of Fairfax’s spidery writing on the other side. I couldn’t make much of it out but he seemed to have been copying out of a reference book. The words ‘Le Tanneur’ were underlined and he had scribbled a drawing of a stick man hanging from a rope in one of the gaps between his sentences. I found myself reading before I could tell myself to stop.
‘… born 1910, Limousin area, links to Alsace region, apprenticed to a leatherworker … arrests for theft, violence, sex assault … jailed for knife attack on suspected love rival … freed by Vichy Government. Trained by Milice due to local knowledge. Excelled in interrogation. Witnesses to incident in Tulle describe “dispassionate” way in which he used burning coins on the skin of victim. Left victim alive …’
I tried to stop reading but I found myself entranced by the words.
‘… fled in 1944, three weeks after D-Day. Captured by Maquisards. Evidence to suggest he was disfigured in the traditional manner … large swastika carved into skull … last seen in 1946 in rural Normandy … thought to have been killed by Resistance or living under assumed identity after collaboration with security forces …’
I felt cold all the way through. Didn’t know whether to throw the map down or start a fire and toss it on the flames. The words were ugly.
‘What’s this bloody thing?’ asked Janet, looking behind the sofa and dragging out a large, butter-coloured box. She put it on the table and opened the clasps. ‘Typewriter! Well I never. Fairfax as a secretary, eh? I’d never have given it credence.’
I looked at the object she was staring at. It was a nice looking bit of kit; white, circular keys and a black body, all oiled and greased and expensive-looking. It had the name ‘Remington’ stencilled on the front.
‘He typed, did he?’ asked Janet. Then she looked around at the bundles of paper with their scribblings in ink. ‘Well I never. Why all this scrappy writing, eh? Why not just type it all up?’
I stared at her as she pressed the keys. She fiddled with it the way she would have fiddled with any object she had discovered. None of it mattered to her. She was here to poke about, and so far, nothing she had found satisfied her curiosity. I didn’t like the way she played with it. Didn’t like the tension between us. So I let myself down good and proper. Blurted it out like a kiddie with a secret.
‘Did you hear what we saw?’ I asked. I tried to make it sound juicy – to get her back on side.
Janet took a moment, as if deciding whether the gossip was worth changing her face for. In a moment she decided it was.
‘Aye, Sally in post office said when the tree came down there were bones and all sorts came out. You must have had a fit with your nerves.’
I nodded, quick and urgent. ‘There were more than that,’ I said, and suddenly I felt excited, like I was about to run a race or go to a dance. ‘One of the bodies that flew out – seemed like it hadn’t been there long. And there hasn’t been anybody buried in the Kinmont grave for nigh-on forty years. This bloke had on a suit and new shoes and he was carrying a bag. There was still meat on his bones. And his face! I swear, had I known him I could have recognized him – that’s how far from a skeleton he was.’
Janet moved closer. There was a flush of colour in her cheeks and she dropped her own voice; delighted.
‘And you told Fairfax?’ she asked, and her mouth went into an ‘O’, like the end of a trumpet. ‘That’s what he shot off for, I’ll bet. Went to find Sergeant Chivers. He might have been up at the air base. Spends a good bit of time up there, according to my Maurice. And if Fairfax was wanting to play hero …’
I nodded, twisting the map in my hands. I felt hot under my vest. It was sticky in the room, despite the storm. It was that muggy, unpleasant heat that makes your hair stand on end and everything tastes funny. Had I done right? Was there any wrong to be done?
‘I feel so guilty,’ I said, hoping she’d have some nice words for me in return. ‘He was only out driving in that silly car because of what I told him.’
Janet weighed it up and seemed to decide there was no sport in being a cow. ‘He wouldn’t have shot off to tell the Kinmont lot without seeing the damage for himself,’ she said. ‘So there must have been something to see. So why haven’t I heard about a body being found in the graveyard?’
I heard the crinkling of paper as I twisted the map into a Christmas cracker and unfolded it again. I couldn’t shut myself up now. Had to keep talking.
‘There was no body when we went back to check,’ I said, dropping my voice. ‘The tree had smashed through the tomb and there was stone and mud and bits of all sorts on the ground but whatever we’d seen, it was gone.’
‘You’ve told Chivers this?’
‘I kept it a bit vague,’ I said, and if I were the type to blush, my cheeks would have burned.
Janet nodded. She reckoned I’d done right. ‘Best off out of it,’ she said. ‘Could have been anything and if you’re not certain then you don’t want to go putting yourself forward. Not if it cost old Fairfax his life.’
I must have looked like I was going to cry at that because Janet immediately took a step forward and rubbed my arm. I took a handkerchief from my sleeve and wiped my eyes and nose. ‘It was frightening,’ I said. ‘Horrible. Horrible.’
Janet nodded. I could see her struggling with herself. She wanted more from this story. Wanted some other delicious titbit.
‘Cordelia was convinced,’ I said, almost whispering. ‘Wouldn’t be told. Convinced, she was. Ready to swear blind we’d found a body. But it’s a graveyard. I mean, there’s bound to be bodies. And what do I know about the freshness of corpses?’ I shuddered at the sound of the word. ‘It could have been a hundred years old and just looked like that because the crypt had stopped him turning mushy. Who are we to say?’
‘True, true.’ A smile split her face. ‘Imagine if it weren’t old, though. Imagine if it were a body. Like in the films. And you’d stumbled on where he’d been stashed.’ She got playful then. Started being the bully she could be at school when fancy took her. ‘He might have been watching! Whoever stashed him there. Might have seen what you saw. Ooh, Felicity, you could be in bother.’
I put my hands over my ears. Suddenly I was se
ven years old again and she was telling me where babies came from and I was crying and begging her to stop. She didn’t when we were kids and she didn’t then. Kept right on. Kept teasing. ‘You heard anything from your friend Cordelia these past couple of days? Like you said, she’s up there alone. And she’s the one who wouldn’t let it drop. Funny place is Gilsland these days. All those people passing through, and who knows what goes on at the base. Sometimes it’s what you see which gets your eyes closed permanently …’
‘Stop it,’ I said, and I suddenly felt like I was coming down with a chill; all shivery but hot and sticky.
‘Maybe that’s what happened to Fairfax,’ said Janet, revelling in it. ‘Saw what you saw and got himself in bother.’
‘No!’ I yelled, and it sounded loud in that little muddled room.
Janet stopped and her face reddened. She’d been mean and knew it, but as ever, her embarrassment became temper.
‘You’re a soft soul, Felicity. Was just playing with you. I’ve no time for this now anyways. I’ve got children to feed. You sort this out if you like but when I said I’d help I didn’t know I was clearing up a bomb site. I’ll see you in the week.’
I didn’t speak as she left. Just stood shivering and feeling wretched. I didn’t like being such a weakling but Janet had always enjoyed seeing how long it took to pull my hair before tears came to my eyes.
I went back to tidying. Sorted the stuff into neat piles and took the dirty dishes to the kitchen. Put the map back in the tube without really taking any notice of the words or the place names. I went to the kitchen and washed the pots and poured the milk away. Couldn’t face upstairs. Didn’t want to see the state of his bedroom or breathe in the aroma of an old man’s privacy. Stayed downstairs. Made a pile of useful foods from the fridge and loaded them into a fruit box to take home. I could smell Fairfax in that kitchen no matter what I did. Could smell the man I knew and not the sloven who had left the filth in the other room. I had a sudden memory of him, leaning against the metal draining board, notebook in his hand, asking me questions about my memories of Dad. Memories of school. Of seeing the work crew from Camp 18 fixing fences out towards Low Row. His pencil was a blur. He looked happy and sad as he wrote, like he was enjoying it but knew the enjoyment came from a sad place, if that makes any sense. He wrote to feel close to Christopher, but that was as close as he would ever get.
I spent a few moments in the pantry. There were jams in there from a decade back. I recognized my own handwriting on the damson jelly label from ’61. There were tins of meat and trays of eggs. A barrel for biscuits full of crumbs. Tea. Tins of baked beans, stacked like mortars. A first-aid box, issued in wartime. I thought there might be plasters inside. Maybe gauze. I used to burn myself on the cooker a lot and if he had any spare ointment I knew where it would find a good home. I opened the box. The keys stared up at me like treasure. A great bunch of them, like somebody would carry on their belt in a castle. Church keys. Crypt keys. Keys to the outbuildings in the church grounds.
Maybe a whole minute went by as I stood looking at those keys. I’m not sure my brain has ever worked as fast. I don’t even know where the impulse came from. I just suddenly had a flash of something I didn’t know I knew, like when you look at your husband’s crossword puzzle and somehow just know the answers to the questions and you daren’t tell him in case he thinks you’re calling him a fool.
I took the keys. They were cold and heavy and there was mud on the body of the biggest one. I slipped them into my sleeve. They made a bulge like a muscle and felt cold against my skin. I closed the door to the pantry, pulled on my coat, closed the back door and stood on the back step like a thief. The rain had eased but the road was not far off being a river and I knew I would get wet to the knees just walking back to my own front door. Might as well turn right at the junction instead of left. Might as well hurry down to the church while John was at work.
When I tell you this was out of character I don’t want you to think I’m exaggerating. I swear, this was so unlike me it felt like I had just decided to fly to the moon. I don’t even know what I was planning. Perhaps I had been bitten by the bug of excitement and needed to do something daring. Maybe I liked that feeling of my heart beating in my chest.
The rain started coming down again as I fumbled with the lock of the church. It was set in an iron casing, sunk into wood so weathered and worn it could have been a timber from the ark. There was no doubting which key would open the church door. Nor any protest from the lock as I turned it. The lock had been well-tended. Oiled and frequently used.
I pushed open the door to the church as if I was breaking into a torture chamber. I stood in the doorway for an age. Felt the cool air on my hot, damp cheeks. Stood in that great rectangle with its wooden pews and its distant ceilings, vast flagstones and its dark shadows. The stained-glass windows offered almost no light and there were no switches on the wall but instinct made me reach out to the recess by the door and close my hand around the waxy candles. I found matches too. Lit myself a feeble torch that turned the half-black air into a golden circle of red, purple and yellow.
There were footsteps on the dust of the floor.
Almost sleepwalking, shivering so hard that the candle was fluttering in my hand, I followed the footsteps to where they became lost in a big old smudge of different patterns. Fairfax had kneeled here. You could tell just by looking. He’d eased himself onto his side by the third row of pews. I peered forward, squinting. Felt around in the old wood of the pew. A keyhole. A mouth set in the wood. I found a likely key and slid it into the gap. It opened as easily as the door.
I reached inside.
The papers were ragged. Crumpled. Even in the half-dark I could see they had been blackened and singed. They had been saved from fire. They still smelled of smoke.
Why did I take them? I still don’t know. But the words that I read on those grey and yellow pages changed me so deeply they may as well have been carved into my heart with a blade.
EXTRACT. TR 046.
… I recognized the boy strapped to the bonnet. I don’t think I knew his name but he was familiar to me in the way that somebody you see every day on your way to work is familiar to you. Almost enough to nod hello to. The sort you can’t instantly place if you see them out of context. I was looking at him with my head angled, unconsciously mirroring the way he was looking at me. He wasn’t really alive any more. He wasn’t dead either but the way he looked; the absence in his eyes, none of that looked like life. It was Milice work. Favre’s work. They stood beside the men in uniform. Shadows. Three or four of them; blobs of oil among the grey of the uniforms. Torturers. Killers. Zealots. We feared them more than we feared the Germans. They had chosen this life. Opted to kill their own kind.
‘Move. They are staring. Come. Come.’
I was still gazing at the Maquisard’s face. Freedom fighters – that is how they have come to be known. The Resistance. Good men. Brave men. But this was no man. He was no older than me. But he had not eaten so well nor enjoyed the comforts of a warm bed or a hot bath. He had lived hard. There was dirt on his face beneath the dried blood. He was already filthy before they started hurting him.
What can I remember? I don’t know the words for it. Confusion, more than anything. Some fear, but not the way you would think. We didn’t know what was going to happen. Nobody did. It was just the noise of the half-track’s treads crunching over the stones – those boots brisk and neat as the men in uniform closed off the streets. Our questions were muted. We asked each other – not the intruders. We whispered in one another’s ears. Did anybody know? Had anybody done anything wrong? Had somebody told lies?
The officer who spoke was dark-haired. Round-faced. He didn’t close his mouth all the way when he wasn’t speaking, as though his jaw had been broken at some point and improperly set. Mother would have told me off for hanging my mouth open like that. Would have called me a panting dog.
He didn’t seem angry. Even looked like he ad
mired the village. Glanced around admiringly, as if he was holidaying and found himself pleased with his choice of destination. He was shiny and clean. The men he led were not. They looked bloodied and exhausted and they looked at us with eyes dark as the treads of the tank.
‘For every one of my men you have killed, we will kill three Maquisards,’ he shouted, in the silence of the square. ‘You will tell me you are not Maquisards. You will tell me there are no Maquisards here. You will feign ignorance and spit on the ground at the mention of their barbarous deeds. And many of you will be telling the truth. But the truthful ones will pay the price for the lies of the others. We will offer no mercy. If we shoot a child, we have stopped them growing into an enemy. If we kill a woman, we have stopped them breeding a new generation of swine. Tell me, now, who are the Maquis among you. Speak up and you will have my thanks and forgiveness. Keep quiet and you will die. We have rope and bullets and my men have lost brothers. They long for blood. It will be yours if you do not speak.’
We did not speak. Not for minutes. Then Mayor Geroux stepped forward. We have no Maquis, he said. Let the women go. Let the men pay the price if blood was what they sought. Let the women and the old men leave. Let the children leave …
The officer shot Mayor Geroux with his pistol. He was still talking when the bullet entered his head – punching a black hole into his top lip. The back of his head blew open like an aerosol thrown on a fire.
That was when the boy on the front of the car woke up. He started shouting curses. Angry, bitter, spiteful noises that seemed to come from beneath him; as though he were a mouthpiece for Hell. I think they’d have let him die easy if he’d just kept his mouth shut. But he was proud and he was foolish. That was when Favre came forward. We didn’t even know he was there. But even as the mayor lay dead on the ground it was the presence of Favre that made us shake with fear. His reputation was that of a monster. He had been a leatherworker before the war. A good one at that. Rumour had it he had been born in a little village in the Dordogne. Others said he was a German by birth but had grown up in France with Jewish parents whom he butchered before he was fourteen years old. We never knew what to believe. He was just the name in the darkness; the handprint on your window. He was in prison when war broke out, I’ve learned that in the years since. When the Vichy Government decided to establish the Milice they did not discriminate against men with blood on their hands. Do you know of these men? They were the Nazis’ hired sadists. The Milice were brutes. Rapists, killers, torturers. And Favre was the best of them. He could make people talk. Could make them tell things they did not know that they knew. He went to work on the Maquisard in front of us with a leatherworker’s knife. The boy withstood for a long time. Then Favre asked for a brazier full of coals. We watched as he heated a handful of coins in the fire. One by one he seared them into what was left of the boy’s skin. When he whispered his confession into Favre’s ear, Favre nodded to the captain. He had given them the town. The distant place where six hundred men and women would die amid the flames.