by Nina Dreyer
Only once had his smile faded, just once had she glimpsed that honest, raw look in his eyes, under the blazing lights of the Imperial bar, when she’d tried to tell him about the angry dead, about the desolation in the outer darkness. There are no nightmares and no echoes of anything in the afterlife. He’d said that. They are all at rest, Marion. All of them. There is no pain. There are no regrets. Do you understand me?
He was wrong. He must know that, somewhere deep down. She thought of her vision of him, ragged and death-white, a pale imprint at the heart of the shadows of No Man’s Land. A white rag of fabric pinned to his chest. One word from his broken throat. Help. Her skin ran cold at the memory.
Eilis’ words echoed in her mind. Nobody knows what he did in the war, other than it was something horrible, something sickening, what do you think your fine Austrian soldier husband would say to this? You’ve been in bed with the enemy all along.
Marion slapped the photograph face down on the cold wooden slab. John had fought at Passchendaele. And so had Erich. It made her want to scream and rip out her hair in clumps, to claw at the walls until her fingers bled.
She rose and stomped the concrete floor.
A thought unfurled in the back of her mind. Maybe if the pale man knew about the seventy corpses at the pole, if the gunmen only knew just how many soldiers John had shot, they’d pardon him. She frowned and bit a fingernail. John had killed so many English soldiers. Probably more than Erich had. Why hate him for that? Why hold it against him? Hadn’t he actually been helping her people, her army? Her skin began to prickle. A wave of nausea rose in her throat, then gave way to another sensation. Something hollow and cold on the far side of shame.
Turning to the black metal door, she began pounding on it.
She would have to get out of here, to run back to the Salon and lock him John a room, to warn him about the gunmen, to force him to leave with her, to listen, to exorcise whatever angry shades of his victims had nested in the dark recesses of his mind. And she would have to do it now. The pale man had given her forty-eight hours. Forty-eight hours before they’d drag John to some withered country lane and put a bullet in the back of his neck, leave him face-down in his own blood. And she’d already wasted at least twelve of them.
‘Let me out,’ she shouted, banging on the door, her voice ringing in the cold corridor, ‘let me out now!’
Nobody came.
John drove in the back of a military truck, rumbling through the city roadblocks. Two corporals sat opposite him under the billowing tarpaulin. One was frowning at a letter. The other smiled wryly and offered John a light. ‘Just come from the Castle, have ya?’
John cupped his hand around the flame and dragged on his smoke. ‘I’d be thick to say no to a lift in this weather.’
‘You must be one of them hush-hush men, then,’ said the corporal, nodding knowingly.
‘Something like that.’
‘Wouldn’t half mind meself,’ he said, hanging onto his helmet as the truck rattled and swayed, ‘better than getting your balls blown off in some dreary slum street, eh?’ He crossed his legs and blew smoke towards the tarpaulin, jiggling his puttee-wound shins.
‘This will all be over soon. You’ll all be going home before you know it.’ John turned and watched Dame Street glide by, throngs of grim pedestrians shuffling past boarded-up shops. Grey light glinted sharply in splattered puddles.
Brock rode in the truck up ahead. He’d been in high spirits that morning, excitedly pacing his office, trailing puffs of pipe smoke and planning their next get-together. Of course Brock would never dream of using the word seance in front of his dour-faced staff officers. On and on he’d crowed about his nest of gunmen, his Limerick runt, the bicycle shop used as a front, a weapons stash.
John watched the old Parliament House glide past, nothing but a bank now, there at the corner of College Green. A stab of winter sunlight illuminated his face. Just like that afternoon two years earlier, when he’d been dragging himself along that street, fresh off the boat from Calais with his kit bag still slung over his shoulder. Every fibre in his body had been aching with exhaustion, his uniform stinking of soot and petrol, the loss of his comrades a tight ache in his chest. He’d glanced around this very street, right under those plane trees on that corner there, hurt to his core to see the bomb craters in the roads, the blasted houses, the shattered windows, the scars left by the Republican rebels on his town. His own town that he’d longed for under bright shell blasts, deep in rotten mud. But it was still home. He’d come home, finally, finally home. He could have fallen to his knees right then and there and kissed the grey pavement. A group of young lads had come up to him, caps pulled down low. John had thought they’d be wanting fags or souvenirs from the front, so he’d smiled and dug in his pockets. But they’d surrounded him, bumping into him with hard, scruffy shoulders. And one, a skinny freckled man, had stepped right up to him and spat in his face, spit dribbling from his chin, hissing you fucking jackeen traitor, you don’t belong here, nobody wants your sort here, fuck off back to Flanders, you bloody traitor.
‘I got me furlough coming up next week,’ said the corporal.
‘Good man yourself,’ said John, clearing his throat. The truck jerked and rumbled over a crater in the road.
‘Can’t wait to get back and see my girl. Nice, sturdy girl she is, always smells nice. All sighs and dimples.’
The other corporal wheezed happily. ‘A dimply arse and lily-white tits, what more can you want.’
The first corporal grinned and punched his shoulder.
John exhaled smoke and thought of Marion, her dark hair tumbling over her shoulder, the way his fingertips raised goosebumps over her alabaster skin. He frowned and chewed his lip. She’d disappeared so suddenly from the bar, and she hadn’t answered any of his messages since. Maybe she was sick of him. He couldn’t bear the thought of it. For days he’d been aching for her, picturing her smiling at him in pale spring sunlight in some Parisian street cafe, or walking barefoot with him on the golden beeches of Santorini or Corfu, with the sweltering sun sparkling on the turquoise waters. He’d make it up to her, when all this was over. If she’d come with him, if she…
Something caught his eye in the street.
From the shadow of a bare elm tree, a man stepped forward.
John only glimpsed him briefly.
The man raised his head to the truck, his face flushed. His arm creeping inside his blue coat.
In an instant, the man flung something, his coat flapping.
John opened his mouth to shout.
A blinding light, a deafening blast.
The street tilted, heaven was down and the truck was up, shreds whirled through the grey air and the cobblestone street came towards him.
John hit the street shoulder first, bones crunching, and rolled until he hit a wall. Boots around him, people fleeing. A stench of petrol.
He pulled himself up on his elbow, shaking his head, dazed, deafened. Gunfire rang out, faint little pops behind the shrill whine ringing in his ears like a whizzbang.
He stumbled to his feet.
The truck lay on its side, scattered across the road. Twisted metal, shredded doors. The other truck had rammed into a statue. Smoke rose from its engine. Soldiers crouched behind it, rifles pointed at the fleeing crowds, faces stunned.
He looked down. A stream of blood mingled with the gurgling gutter.
The corporal. The one with the furlough and the girl. He lay on his back, jerking his hands, clawing at his gut. His legs were hanging off. He was crying for water.
The other corporal was gone.
A blasted helmet lay on the ground by the still-spinning wheel of the truck.
John staggered forward, reaching inside his coat for his revolver. He could hear his own breathing. He could hear his own heartbeat. He could hear, faintly, distantly, the corporal wailing for water.
He stalked around the shredded truck.
On the curb lay the man with the bl
ue coat, splayed, his leg broken, trying to drag himself back and away. It would have been better to bleed to death on Marion’s floor, thought John as he stalked closer.
John pointed his revolver at his face. ‘You fucking murderer,’ he roared, but he couldn’t hear his own voice.
The man shielded his face with his arm. His mouth was moving.
John pulled the trigger and fired, splatter-crunching through the arm, and the man’s head exploded over the curbstone.
John lowered the revolver.
He looked down at himself. All the buttons had been blasted from his coat. His left wrist was twisted at a strange angle. Strange, he thought. Like it was made of rubber. He held it up in the grey light. Only then did the pain come, sharp as a kick in the chest. His legs turned to water.
The pavement hit the back of his head with a dull thunk. He stared up into the columns of smoke rising into the storm-curdled sky.
Marion paced the prison cell, watching the shadows of dusk darken on the white-washed walls.
A bowl of cold soup stood on the wooden bunk, globules of fat glistening on its surface. Marion ran a hand over her forehead and groaned with exhaustion.
She looked up. Footsteps sounded, male voices in the corridor.
A jangling of keys.
The cell door swung open and two men stood in the dim corridor, peering in.
‘Oh no, not charging her with anything, sir,’ said one of the men, a prison guard, ‘probably just some party girl who got lost out after the curfew. We’ve got a bloke in cell 13a insists he’s a Member of Parliament, no less, said he was heading home after an important meeting after midnight, would you believe the tales these drunken eejits serve up, sir?’
The other man muttered something in response, ducked his head and stepped into the cell. He walked towards her with a heavy, uneven gait.
It was Lt. Rothman, clasping his officer’s cap under his elbow.
Marion staggered back. ‘No, what’s happening, why are you-’
‘Miss Hahn. How in God’s name…?’ Rothman glanced around the cell with a look of acute dismay on his face. ‘Don’t worry. I shan’t tell anyone about this. Hettie need never know. I came as soon as I saw your name in the detainee register. Come along now.’
‘Is it the firing squad, then?’
‘What?’ He grimaced. ‘Why on earth would you say such a thing? Now come with me, there’s a dear. We’ll have you out of here in no time.’
He turned and limped down the corridor.
Marion followed him, hugging her arms tightly and wondering how much it hurt to walk with your stump in a prosthetic leg.
Rothman brought her out into a bleak yard. A few wilted weeds shivered between the cobblestones.
A motorcar was parked by the narrow gate, its engine running.
‘I’m to take you home straight away,’ said Rothman, walking over and opening the car door for her. ‘Please come along quickly. This is no place to linger.’
‘No, I have to go to the Salon-’
Rothman raised a hand. ‘Miss Hahn. Listen to me.’ He looked at her with his melancholy brown eyes. ‘There’s been an… an incident. I have orders to bring you home and place you under armed guard. For your own protection. Do you understand?’
Marion began to shake. ‘What’s happened?’ It couldn’t be. Not yet. Not so soon. The pale man had said forty-eight hours. A sudden, tingling cold spread through her. They’d shot him. John. Splintered his spine with a single shot. He was lying on some dirty curb, alone, bleeding… She gripped the sides of her head and felt herself go limp.
Rothman caught her arm. ‘Don’t worry. Colonel Brockhurst survived, thankfully, as did,’ he swallowed, ‘as did Captain Kilcoyne. Somehow. Now please come along.’
‘No, no,’ Marion pulled back, gulping for air, ‘I have to see John, I have to see him immediately-’
‘I’ve got orders to collect you, Miss Hahn, and I would find it extremely distasteful to have to compel you.’
Marion glanced at the revolver in Rothman’s holster. She bent her head and let him bundle her into the backseat. Rothman shut the door, seated himself in front and signalled at the driver, who set the car in motion and hurtled down the road, scattering pedestrians and cyclists.
Chapter Twenty Four
The hours had passed by too quickly, a blur of wailing, stretchers, an army medic vomiting behind the smoking hull of the blasted truck, then the hospital, the smell of lye and carbolic soap and blood and bowels, screams for mothers and mercy, sweating nurses and metal pans sloshing with sawed-off limbs, and John had watched it all, numb, as if he stood behind a pane of dirty glass.
He grasped the smooth-worn banister on the stairs to the Salon, gripping for dear life, something solid, something old, something made in distant days of peace.
The ringing in his ears hadn’t stopped, but he could hear his boots clacking on the steps. Gauze pinned his broken left arm to his chest, bandages tight as a vice. The morphine made his pulse feel sluggish and thick. He gritted his teeth. It would be wearing off soon.
‘John,’ came Charlie’s voice, ringing in the stairwell, ‘John, is that you? You must come quickly, something terrible has happened!’
Charlie came pounding down the stairs, followed by George.
John looked up at them, breathing slowly and steadily, one step at a time, one step at a time, left, left, left-right-left…
‘Oh Jesus Christ,’ whined George, ‘oh Jesus! What’s happened!’
‘Fucking hell,’ Charlie gasped, wide-eyed, fingers splayed over his slack mouth. ‘Was it the gunmen, John?’
John shoved past them, wincing as he bumped his left shoulder against the door frame.
Coals glowed and grumbled in the fireplace, hissing sparks into the dark parlour. John limped to the drinks cabinet, snatched a bottle of brandy and gulped until his eyes watered.
Charlie and George were whispering desperately behind him.
He shook his head angrily, trying to dislodge the high-pitched whine in his ears.
‘Here, come sit,’ Charlie took his right arm and tugged gently.
‘Don’t touch me,’ John roared, ‘do not fucking touch me!’ He flung the half-empty bottle at the fireplace, shattering it.
Charlie sprang back, stunned.
‘No, no,’ George pressed his hands to his plumb cheeks, tears spilling over in his wide-rolling eyes, ‘everything’s going to shit, everything’s coming apart at the seams, I can’t take any more of it, I don’t want to anymore-’
Charlie spun around and slapped him. ‘Pull yourself together you twat, John’s been in an assassination attempt and you’re…’
Their voices sounded like they were talking underwater. Distant, warped. John dragged himself to the sofa in the corner and laid back, wincing. He quickly pulled himself up again when the room began spinning. It was too much like lying on the wet road staring into the smoky sky.
‘Tell me what happened,’ he said, wondering indifferently if his words slurred.
Charlie approached, clasping his hands over his narrow chest. ‘It’s Brigid Doran,’ he said. ‘She died-’
Georgie had plopped himself in an armchair and was sobbing in little jerks into his handkerchief.
‘…died last night. She was having a seance, in the innermost room. There were these horrendous noises, so we ran to investigate…’
John stared at the pattern on the wallpaper. He’d never noticed it before. Gilt peonies and peacock feathers, gleaming in the light of the fireplace. They must have put that up in the good years, the years before the wars.
‘… found her lying, face all contorted in this frightful grimace…’
John fumbled under his torn coat for his cigarette case. His hand felt heavy as lead. He tugged out the case. It had been flattened, crushed. He tried to open it, but the clasp was twisted off. A stab of anger twisted his gut. All he wanted was a fucking cigarette, a fucking god-damned cunting cigarette. Was that so much to ask?
‘… but Doctor Grey pronounced her dead at the scene, said she’d died of nervous shock, heart failure due to nervous…’
The cigarette case fell from John’s hand and clattered to the floor. He turned his face towards the firelight and closed his eyes tightly. He felt so tired, like blood was draining from him slowly, like when you get out of a scalding hot bath and feel so heavy, so tired.
Georgie came shuffling towards him, wiping his eyes. ‘Don’t be telling John about that,’ he sniffled, glowering moistly at Charlie, ‘here, do you not want my coat, John? Or a blanket? Do you not want a blanket? Here, I got you a drink, have a little drink, eh?’ He pushed a whole bottle of whiskey into John’s hand.
John lifted it to his lips and drank deeply. He heard Georgie and Charlie arguing, somewhere behind the ringing in his ear. He realised that he had a pounding headache. He wondered if this was what Marion had felt when she’d channelled that dead gunman, the one whose face had been shot off. The image of blood trickling over his boots flashed before his inner eye, of that other gunman’s skull splattered across the cobblestones under the shadow of Trinity College.
‘… needs to hear this,’ Charlie shouted.
John looked up and saw him waving his arms angrily at George. They were shouting over each other now, their voices angry and garbled.
‘So here it is, John,’ Charlie snapped, kneeling in front of the couch, ‘Sid’s been in contact with his associates on the Continent, he’s found out everything, he says you have to come home, and we can all see now that this is the cause of Brigid Doran’s death, this is the cause of all this darkness, it’s that bloody Marion, I warned you, we all did!’
‘Hush,’ George cried, flapping his hands, ‘you’ll break his heart.’
‘No, he needs to hear this before she harms him even more! First of all, John, she’s a German, we all know she’s a fucking German, we’ve all known that all along, we just never said anything, to spare your feelings, we knew you didn’t want to talk about it, but she’s not just some medium, she’s some sort of twisted Hun-’