“Books?”
“He read a lot. And I love books too.”
She smiled.
“I was a schoolteacher. He read all the books in the house. Sometimes, he would lend me his. Travel books, mostly. Not my favourites, but some of them were amusing. When we talked about books, you couldn’t keep him quiet!”
“When did he leave?”
“This summer, after the terrible drought. The smell wasn’t too bad out here. We’re far enough away from the Thames, and we have the fields. But still, it was difficult, especially for people like Mr Erik who worked in the factories on the riverbank. He told me one morning that he’d quit his job and he wouldn’t be renting the room anymore.”
Bowman peered between his fingers to the bottom of his empty cup.
“I’m sorry, Mr Bowman. There’s nothing else I can tell you.”
She poured him more tea. Bowman sipped it.
“Did he go into the city?”
“Quite often, yes. To visit bookshops, and he liked to walk, too. Almost every Sunday, he’d set off on foot and he wouldn’t get back until evening. Sometimes he’d tell me what he’d seen. Even during the drought, he would go off for his walks. He said he’d been through worse than that, but that he’d never seen an entire city transformed in that way. Like it was a prisoner to the smells. That’s how he described it, I remember it well. It made a big impression on me. The city as a prisoner.”
Bowman felt a shiver down the back of his neck, as if the air had suddenly grown colder.
“I’m not sure how to say this, but I wanted to know if Mr Erik was . . . Was he alright? Was he normal?”
The former schoolteacher gave him a surprised, almost angry look.
“I beg your pardon?”
“He stayed here a long time. Did you notice anything strange?”
“Strange? What are you talking about, Mr Bowman? Mr Penders was a perfect tenant.”
“That’s not what I mean, ma’am. It’s just . . . The colonies, it’s not always easy, and some of them who came back weren’t quite right. Because of what they saw over there.”
“Aren’t you actually talking about yourself, Mr Bowman?”
Bowman rolled his shoulders under his jacket and lowered his gaze.
“It’s not always easy.”
The old lady’s expression softened as she looked at Bowman’s hands crossed on the table and noticed his severed fingers.
“Mr Erik did sometimes have nightmares, it’s true. He never talked about it and I never asked. Well, you can’t, can you? Almost all of the time, he was fine. But sometimes he slept badly and left the house without eating breakfast. I’ve seen enough men come back from the war to know, Mr Bowman. I understood what happened to him. Mr Erik was a very good young man, but he had bad dreams.”
“When exactly did he leave?”
“My Lord! It was just after the rain. In July.”
“After the rain. And he left just like that, without warning?”
“Yes, he left quite suddenly. I asked him if there was something he didn’t like here. I even asked him if he’d met someone. He said it wasn’t that, he just needed to leave.”
“Met someone?”
The old lady blushed.
“A woman, Mr Bowman.”
Bowman thanked her, and the old schoolteacher accompanied him to the door.
“I’m sorry you haven’t been able to find your friend, Mr Bowman. I have the impression it was very important to you.”
Bowman put on his cap and half smiled. The old lady put her hand on his arm.
“I don’t know where Mr Erik is, but if you asked me what I thought, I would guess that he’s gone far away.”
“Far away?”
“Yes. He read so many books about . . . Oh, but wait! Please, just wait here for a moment.”
She walked quickly across the living room and returned with a package, tied together with a string of coloured cloth.
“It was a book I’d ordered for him, a present to celebrate the anniversary of him coming here. A story about a country he used to talk about a lot. Perhaps he’s over there now.”
She blushed again.
“The parcel arrived after his departure. I kept it, thinking perhaps he’d come by one day. But I don’t think he’ll be back. Please, accept it. You’re his friend – I’d like to give it to you. And if you ever need a place to live, Mr Bowman, don’t hesitate to come and find me. If . . . if you find Mr Erik, tell him I’m thinking of him.”
Bowman took the packet. He didn’t know how to respond. The old lady smiled at him from the doorway, waving her hand as she watched him walk away.
*
From out here in the fields, it was a three-hour walk to his hut, and his legs refused to carry him. He walked to Battersea Park and sat on a bench by the lake. The sun shone softly. His eyelids were heavy with fatigue. He drank a bit of gin and took the parcel from his pocket, undid the string and removed the wrapping paper. A Tour on the Prairies by Washington Irving. Bowman turned the book in his hands, put it on the bench and watched the swans and geese moving past on the lake, as if blown by the wind. The park was immense, but deserted. There was no-one on this side of the Thames, and on the other side, in Chelsea, the porcelain workers were not going to pay the toll for the new bridge just to come over here and watch ducks on a pond. The place was beautiful but useless. Bowman felt better amid this greenery, without another living soul in sight.
He picked up the book again. Apart from the Bible, it was the only one he had ever opened. And, tracing the letters with a finger, murmuring the words under his breath, Bowman began to read.
In the often-vaunted regions of the far West, several hundred miles beyond the Mississippi, extends a vast tract of uninhabited country, where there is neither to be seen the loghouse of the white man nor the wigwam of the Indian . . .
His eyes grew wide. He kept reading, bent close over the printed letters until dusk. When it was too dark, he lay down on the bench and rested his head on the book. His mind drifted far off, without alcohol or opium, towards the banks of the Arkansas and the Red River. He fell asleep thinking of Penders, whom he hadn’t found, and this gift he’d left behind him.
He was woken by the cold of dawn. On the way back, he stopped in a tavern to eat. Refreshed, he walked all the way to the hut, staying on the north bank, far from Docklands, before crossing the Thames on the Canary Wharf ferry. He wanted to get back to his stove and his blankets, to open the book again.
When he arrived, the first thing he saw was the list on the crate, next to the pen and the inkwell. He sat in front of it, looked at the names, dipped the pen in the ink, and his hand hung suspended above the paper. Black drops fell onto the page. He put one line through Penders’ name, then a second, and kept going until he had crossed it out completely.
Next to this blackened name, he drew a question mark, going over and over it until he tore a hole in the paper.
John Briggs lived in Bristol. This meant he had to take a train and leave the city. Another journey.
Bowman put the old lady’s gift next to the list, wrapped himself up in the blankets, and uncorked a bottle.
9
At Paddington Station, Bowman paid for a second-class ticket and then waited for an hour on the platform for the train to depart. The sun poured through the glass ceiling of the main concourse, illuminating the smoke of the locomotives. The platform was busy with porters and travellers, families and workers, shopkeepers and businessmen, aristocrats leaving to visit spa resorts on the West coast.
In a shop, Bowman bought some Virginia tobacco and a new pipe. He smoked while gazing absent-mindedly around at the immense steel and glass tunnel of the station, the pigeons nesting in the girders that curved above the travellers’ heads, flying down to nibble crumbs before taking off again, their wings skimming the tops of people’s hats. The ticket-seller for the Great Western Railway had assured him that he would arrive at 12:35 precisely. Bowman still couldn’
t believe that Bristol – which had seemed another world, far out of reach, in his childhood memories – was now only four and a half hours from London.
Aboard the carriage, and before anyone sat down on the seat next to him, Bowman took a large gulp of gin. His clothes were beginning to look dirty, but he was still presentable enough to sit in this second-class compartment. Rather than a gentleman of means, he now looked like someone possessing only one set of good clothes. When he sat down, the belt of his trousers felt tight around his waist. He had put on a bit of weight. There were whistles on the platform, the train began to shake, and very quickly the suburbs of London disappeared and the train sped through the countryside beyond.
Despite its incredible speed, the journey was monotonous. Bowman smoked during the entire trip and regretted not having taken the book with him. The sky was cloudy over Temple Meads Station. Bristol did not look very different to London. From the train, he had seen a river, ships, factory chimneys and docks: life here seemed to be organised in the same way, with identical rhythms, smells and sounds. The only notable difference between Bristol and London was in the air, which, here, carried a hint of the sea.
The sergeant whistled for a cab and unfolded the map on which he’d written the address for John Briggs – the man whose ear Bufford had eaten. The driver looked at him in surprise.
“Stapleton? The prison or the hospital?”
Bowman said he had no idea and hid himself inside the carriage, closing the curtain on the window. He did not see the rest of the city, but the journey seemed long to him. Stapleton had to be at the other end of Bristol. The driver finally came to a halt outside a wall a good fifteen feet high with a gate designed to keep people out – or in. Bowman contemplated this mass of brick and iron and felt oppressed by its size and austerity. On either side of the reinforced metal doors, two soldiers stood guard. Bowman explained to them that he was looking for someone.
“This is the prison. The hospital’s the other gate, a bit further on.”
Bowman walked fifty yards along the wall. A guard in a sentry box wrote down his name in a notebook and let him enter. In the middle of a park stood a sort of manor house or barracks with a belfry, built in dark stone. The trees were still young and the architecture modern. He had to pass through one reception area, then another office, occupied by secretaries too busy to direct him where he wanted to go. On the way there, he overheard words, and gradually realised which part of the institution he was being directed to.
“Isolation” . . . “Maximum security.”
Bowman passed male nurses with burly shoulders, guards with bunches of keys and truncheons hanging from their belts, and finally came to another office, in a corridor protected by thick iron bars, where he introduced himself to a guard in a white coat.
“What is the purpose of your visit, Mr Bowman?”
“I’ve come to see someone.”
The guard smiled.
“Well, I guessed that. No-one comes here alone to be locked up. The patient’s name?”
“Briggs. John Briggs.”
The man looked surprised.
“Are you family?”
“No. Actually, I just need to know how long he’s been here.”
The guard stood up.
“You don’t look too well. Is everything alright?”
“The journey. It was tiring.”
Big drops of sweat rolled down Bowman’s face. The odour rising from the cells behind the iron bars made him feel nauseous.
“Where have you come from?”
“London.”
The guard raised his eyebrows.
“To see Briggs? Or not to see him, in fact? That seems very strange.”
“Just need to know.”
The guard put his hands on his hips.
“You know Briggs, you come from London to see him, and when you get here, you don’t want to see him anymore?”
“Exactly.”
“You just want to know how long he’s been locked up?”
The man seemed very keen to make sure, in his lunatic asylum, that things were clear.
“You’re the first visitor Briggs has had since he was locked up here. I’m not going to let you leave until you’ve seen him.”
“What?”
Bowman blinked. He stared down the long, dark corridor, going cross-eyed as the iron bars blurred and doubled.
“There’s no need. Just tell me . . .”
“I’m not going to tell you anything until you’ve seen him!”
The guard’s voice echoed down the corridor, provoking a few reactions in the cells, like the yaps and howls of a doghouse.
“Where do you know Briggs from? Because we don’t know anything about him. And even though it probably wouldn’t really change much, it’d still be good to find out a bit more.”
Bowman wiped his hands on his jacket.
“How long has he been here?”
The guard did not reply. He turned the key in the lock.
“Follow me. And don’t worry – the bars are solid.”
Bowman hesitated before passing through the barred gate, and shivered when the guard closed it behind them. There were a few openings at the tops of the walls, but they did nothing to dissipate the heat and the stink. He walked in the middle of the corridor, staying as far as possible from the bars of the cells, which were no bigger than cages. Curled up in the corners, men in torn, filthy pyjamas drooled into their hands. Most of the patients did not seem to even see them as they walked past. They had the eyes of opium smokers – presumably because they were sedated with laudanum – lost in the labyrinths of their thoughts. The guard paid no attention to the madmen, going on in the same loud voice: “All we know is what he says when he’s babbling. Especially when we come to fetch him for the shower. He’s pretty aggressive, but the doctors say it’s fear, that we shouldn’t take it personally. All the same, we do have to defend ourselves quite often. We don’t wash him as often now. I’m telling you that so you won’t be surprised.”
Bowman lowered his head, following behind the man in the white coat.
“Apparently he thinks we’re soldiers who want to hurt him – Chinamen or something. He hurts himself sometimes too. All his scars, according to the doctors, are self-inflicted. No-one’s ever managed to speak with him. They’ve tried everything: hypnosis, drugs, cold baths . . . nothing works. One of our first clients. He’s been here almost since the hospital opened. Three years.”
The guard stopped and Bowman almost walked into him.
“You’ve come this far, so say hello to Briggs!”
Bowman took a breath, gathering all his strength just to prevent his legs collapsing beneath him, then looked inside.
It was Briggs. Exactly as he had been in the bamboo cage. Skeletal. Terrified. Shit-stained trousers, bare scar-covered chest, his ear torn off by Bufford’s teeth. His face was swollen and bruised.
The guard looked at Bowman.
“He tried to bite me yesterday.”
Bowman moved slowly over to the bars and clung to them.
“Careful. Don’t get too close.”
Bowman was not listening.
“Briggs?”
The man turned around, jumped when he saw the guard and held his head in his hands. Bowman called out his name again. Through his fingers, Briggs looked at him.
“It’s me. Sergeant Bowman. You recognise me, Briggs?”
The old soldier’s eyes opened wider and he stared at the sergeant.
“It’s me. Shit, Briggs, what’s happened to you?”
Briggs began to shake his head and mutter:
“No . . .”
That distress. That grimace of helplessness and supplication, when they came to fetch them. That terrible feeling that it was starting again, that nothing could be done to stop it, not fighting, not screaming, not begging for mercy. Briggs began to yell, swaying back and forth: “No!”
Bowman slid down the bars until he was on his knees.
“Stop, Briggs. It’s over. It’s over . . .”
The yells turned to screams:
“NO!”
Bowman clung to the bars.
“It’s just a nightmare. Stop. It’s over, for fuck’s sake. It’s just a dream, Briggs. You have to snap out of it now. Snap out of it!”
Briggs covered his head in his arms, blocking his ears, and continued to scream while Bowman begged him to stop.
“Briggs! Stop, for God’s sake! You have to stop that! It’s over! You’re not there anymore! We came back! You’re not in the forest anymore!”
The cries of Briggs and Bowman woke the patients in the other cells. The sound of a lunatic choir began to swell in the corridor, like a pack of hounds chasing a wounded animal. The guard started yelling too, telling them to shut their mouths. Then he took a whistle from his pocket and blew it with all his strength.
“Briggs, let’s go home. They’re not there anymore. There’s nothing to fear now, Briggs . . .”
Other guards ran towards them. Briggs stood up and, with all the momentum he could muster in the tiny cell, threw himself against the wall. His head rebounded and he collapsed. Sergeant Bowman rolled on the ground, his body stiff as a plank, and his heels started to drum on the floor. Slobbering, he swallowed his tongue, and his head bounced against the tiles, his eyes rolling back in their sockets.
*
“He’s waking up.”
“You feel better?”
Bowman opened his eyes.
“Where am I?”
“At the hospital in Beaufort. You had an epileptic fit.”
A man in a suit was leaning over him. Bowman saw the man’s fingers move towards his eyes, felt his eyelid lifted up.
“You look much better.”
Bowman could not move. He was lying on a bed. As well as the doctor, there was a male nurse in the corner of the room. Bowman thought he recognised him.
“You’re in the infirmary. Don’t try to sit up.”
“What am I doing here?”
“You came to visit one of our patients and you had a fit. Not a simple fit. Your condition is serious, sir . . .”
The doctor turned to the nurse.
Retribution Road Page 17