The Walking Dead

by The Walking Dead (epub)

  Faria looked after her invalid mother and never went further from home than the Khans' corner shop.

  Khalid drove a mini-cab in west London, Syed worked in the family's fast-food take-away, and Jamal had started the second year of his business-studies course.

  None of them would again be sleepers, or willing to be woken.

  Two elderly men, one a retired power-company engineer, the other a retired quantity surveyor studied the stands on which the Horticultural Society's show entries were displayed, and eyed where the judges had laid the prize-winning rosettes.

  The engineer said, 'That man, Anne's husband, he's never been seen here before–never put anything in before–and first time up he's taken the gold with his tomatoes .

  'I've the impression that he's lived with them since they were two-inch plants, cosseted them and fussed over them, probably slept with them each night. It takes an utter obsession to produce tomatoes of that quality totally life-consuming.'

  'What did he do before taking his pension?'

  'She's never said, Anne hasn't. Some dreary job in Whitehall, I suppose–and exchanged it for a greenhouse. He's so damned aloof…has the manner of someone who used to think himself important, but it was probably only pushing paper…Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it was life-and-death stuff, but the knife came down and it's exchanged for tomatoes.'

  'And that's your Englishman?'

  'That's him.'

  'Your stranger?'

  'Less of a stranger now. He came to us in the spring, now it's the autumn.'

  It was only once a year that the bishop visited the village and its priest. It was near the end of the day and a cool wind came from the north, chilled by the high points of the Pyrenees. Leaves fluttered down around them. After the heat of summer, a cruel winter was usual at this lonely, unlovely cluster of homes and its church, which lay between the larger communities of Calacete and Maella.

  'And he spends his days here?'

  'And his evenings writing letters–which is why you are visiting and can see him for yourself.'

  The bishop's body threw a long shadow and the chill wind blustered the cloak he wore. He stared across a slight ravine over bare, fallen rocks and past a long cattle barn that was now broken into disrepair. Beyond it there was a flat space of dull sun-scorched earth where weeds grew high. There the man sat, his back to them. If their voices carried to him he showed no sign of caring that they intruded on the privacy of his space.

  'The hospital was in that barn?'

  'It was.'

  'And the dead were buried where the weeds grow?'

  'They were…but it is difficult to be exact about where the graves lie. There are no witnesses in the village. Everyone had been evacuated before the battle for the Ebro began. They were forcibly removed or fled. The village was a shell. When people came back, they had too many bitter memories and they did not believe it correct to relive those dark days…They had chosen the wrong side, they had supported the losers. It is natural that the dead of the defeated should not be honoured.'

  'They were difficult times.'

  The bishop saw a man, lit by the last of the day's sun, sitting motionless on the hard ground. The man, he thought, was well built in an athletic way and had none of the flab of middle age. His hair was tousled in the wind. Too young a man to be so captured by the dead: a man of an age at which life still stretched ahead and where ambition for the future should not be denied. In the files at his office, the bishop had seven translated letters from this man, all signed 'Respectfully, David Banks', and all written in a clear, strong hand.

  'And he has been to other battlefields before coming and staying in your village?'

  'He went to the old barracks at Albacete, then to Madrid. He has walked in the Jarama valley and at Brunete, and he has been down to the Ebro river…He did all of that before he came to us and took a lodging in the village. He has lived here very simply. He does not take alcohol and he is polite in all his dealings with us. Each day he leaves the village and walks up–past where we are now–to the barn where the wounded were treated, and where some died, and then he goes to the place where it is said the graves were dug. He has been there when the sun was fierce on him, without shade, and when the rain has tipped on him, without shelter…and he has written those letters to you.'

  'And I, alone, have the power to free him?'

  'I believe so.'

  'Then it has to be done…'

  The bishop grimaced, then hitched up the hem of his robe and strode away. The priest hurried after him. Helping each other, they scrambled down the loose stones and the dried dirt of the ravine. In its pit were old and rusted tins that might have held rations issued to combatants. There were three aged shell cases with lichen surviving on them. On their hands and knees they scaled the far edge of the ravine. They came to the barn where the walls of stone -still bore the pockmarks of bullets. The bishop paused there, at a doorway that had no door, gazed inside, and his eyes peeled away the interior's darkness. He imagined he looked into the hell of an abattoir, and he murmured a prayer for those who had died there close to seven decades before. He seemed to hear the moaning of the wounded and the cries of those who were past saving. On the flat ground, the priest hung back, but the bishop tramped on, crushing weeds under his feet. He came to the man, walked round him, then lowered himself, placed his weight on a rock and was in front of him.

  'You are David Banks?'

  'I am.' He was answered in halting Spanish.

  'You have written many letters to me.'

  'I have.'

  'And you carry a diary of old times.'

  'I do.'

  He saw a youthfulness but it had no peace. He sensed the restlessness of a troubled mind, perhaps tortured. The letters had been blunt, to the point, and the bishop had no stomach for excuses, or procrastination. He thought it time to free a spirit.

  'There is little appetite in our modern society to relive the harsh scars of days gone by. The lessons of history, as I have learned them, are that ancient wounds can be healed by time…Atrocities and savagery are passing things, and quickly forgotten. My grandfather was bayoneted to death by the Communists, but I have forgiven them and their heirs…I cannot enter the minds of those who did it, the hatred they harboured. I seek now only the passing of black days. You have asked that a stone be put here, that a name should be carved on it, that a prayer–a psalm–should be said here. That recognition should be given to those who died for a cause they believed in, for which they volunteered their lives, that they should have dignity in death. I promise, it will be done.'

  'Thank you.'

  He believed he took a burden from the shoulders, gave them back their strength. A wad of banknotes from David Banks's hip pocket was given him. He was told it was to pay for the stone and it was requested that a mason should carve on it the silhouette outline of a bird, a swan, with the name of Cecil Darke and the dates of his life. He put the notes into his wallet. And he was also asked if some several items could be buried in the earth under the stone when it was laid down: an old book, with a frayed leather cover was handed to him–almost with reluctance–and then from a pocket two small pebbles, each with seams of quartz running through them, and last a few coins of a currency he did not recognize, but they had weight.

  'As you have asked it, so it will happen. Will it help you? Does that free you?'

  'I will stay here for the night, and in the morning I will be gone.'

  'Where to?'

  'I don't know, it doesn't matter…'

  The bishop backed away. He walked fast, the priest at his side, and the barn and the ravine were behind him. He was anxious to be on the road for Barcelona before the darkness came. He looked once over his shoulder and saw faintly, a last time, the man who was squatted low among the weeds, bathed in the brilliance of late sunshine, and believed he had brought peace to a troubled soul. He held the old notebook tightly, and the pebbles rattled with the coins in his pocket…He did not understand what
was asked of him, or why, and thought few would have.

  The bishop shook the hand of his priest and drove hurriedly away from a place where, he thought, old scars had lain open and untreated wounds had festered, but he trusted his promise would have healed the scars and cleaned the wounds. On his journey, ghosts danced in his mind. They were those of the dead in their lost graves, and of the living man who had watched over them and who–he hoped–was now freed, and at liberty.