It doesn’t matter. They will soon be gone. They will not form part of a story told to a couple in a restaurant on the shore of the Mediterranean.
“Zombie,” says the girl who is still holding the rope. “Mummy, she’s a zombie.”
“That’s right,” the boy says. “There’s blood.”
“Blood!” the girls squeal, then point. The adults stare. Caitlin stops walking. She looks at the Frenchwoman, who stares back at her, and only after a long moment, during which she meets Caitlin’s gaze without flinching, does the woman turn her head and make her earrings chime. “Ni-co-las,” she says to the boy, then smiles at him. “He’s at that age,” she says, without turning back to Caitlin. “He watches too much TV. He likes soldiers and monsters and guns.”
And time travel is real, it must be. Because the Caitlin of 2016 would pull her collar up, wind her scarf round her face, and flee with her head down. It can only be some her from the future who points at the girl and says, “Is it yours?”
“Her name’s Estelle. She’s not an it.”
“Well, a person wouldn’t say that.”
“She’s just a little girl.”
“She’s a little girl who doesn’t understand that people have feelings. You haven’t taught her that. Maybe you don’t understand that either. Maybe you’re not a person.”
“That’s enough,” says the husband.
“No, it’s not. Your children have said something horrible, and you don’t give a shit. Is that how you’re raising them? That they can treat people badly and there are never any consequences?”
“Listen, we’re sorry,” says the other woman, who sounds Scottish. “But they’re just kids. Can’t we just forget it?”
“You probably will. That’s why you’re all so smug and pleased and think that you’re good people.”
And as the faces shift, as anger replaces disapproval, Caitlin realises she has lost. So long as she focussed on their kids, she had a chance to shame them. But who can accept that their entire way of life might be deluded and wrong? Who will let themselves be casually destroyed?
“What’s your problem?” says Alan, and steps past his wife. “We’re not doing any harm. So what if they said something? What do you want us to do?”
Something definitely happened. Or is still happening. A school bully or a chronic condition. Something to make them scared.
Alan jabs his finger at her. “Leave us alone.” He pauses, and when he next speaks blurts, “Just fuck off.”
He swallows and looks somewhat pained, as if this has taken great effort. He keeps glancing at Sam, but Sam is looking away. He is pale and biting his lip.
“Go on,” says Alan, with more conviction. “Fuck off, both of you.”
She might as well. This is pointless. He will not back down.
“Why don’t you?” she says. “You’re in the way. You’re the selfish cunts.”
She is almost as surprised as Alan. She thanks people for donating clothes that smell of sweat and piss. She stares at the ground when schoolgirls laugh. If there were truth to the notion of biting one’s tongue, hers would be a stump.
But what does it profit a person not to speak their heart? The meek inherit nothing. If they are going to be crushed, put in their graves, they might as well cry out.
Alan’s face is red; spittle flecks his lips. “Cunt,” he says, then pushes her. Then pushes her again. The corners of his mouth twitch up, as if he is trying to smile. As if he is delighted by his honesty.
And so what if he hits her. As Caitlin is pushed, takes another step back, she thinks this would be impressive. Swearing and pushing, though unpleasant, are still acceptable. But although there is no question that women deserve equal pay and can do virtually any job as well as a man, few say it is no worse to punch a woman than a man. Even if the woman hits first, the man is not supposed to retaliate. No matter that women are the same as men in one crucial aspect: Some of them deserve it.
“How fucking dare you,” he says, and this time, after he has pushed her, his hand contracts into a fist. And no one is telling him to stop or trying to grab his arms. The others are standing and watching as if this were merely an interesting spectacle they have chanced upon. Even the children are rapt.
A hand takes her wrist, then pulls; the rest of her body follows. She steps closer to Alan, who quickly steps back, and she is pleased to glimpse fear.
Again, she has travelled through time. She must have, because she is walking hand in hand with Sam. To be precise, wrist in hand, because he is gripping hers. Only when they have turned the corner does he let go. He steps away a short distance, then puts his hand on his heart, as if he is about to propose. “Sorry,” he says, and turns. Then he bends and vomits.
“What’s wrong?”
He wipes his mouth. “Nothing. It’s fine.”
“Are you ill?”
“No, I just have an allergy.”
“To what?”
“Certain kinds of people.”
“Really? No.”
“OK, well, maybe not an allergy. But they make me feel ill.”
“No shit.”
He raises his eyebrows. Takes several deep breaths. Then he says, “Hygieia.”
“What?”
“Who.” He points at a statue of a woman on top of the domed building. She wears a loose fitting dress that acquires folds as it descends her body. In her right hand she holds the base of a cup; her left rests on a pillar being embraced by a snake.
“OK, who?”
“She’s the Greek goddess of health. Daughter of Asclepius. It’s where the word ‘hygiene’ comes from. And I think it’s actually open.” He goes towards a gap in the railings. “Yeah, it is. Amazing.”
She follows him and sees a metal door in the side of the round building. A sign above the lintel says St. Bernard’s Well.
“I’d forgotten. Today is the day of open doors. How lucky is that?”
“Very,” she says, but with no idea what he’s talking about. Her heart is beating fast, and she also feels sick. She is back in the awful present where she and Sam are not together. This walk will be no foundation. If they had not run into those people, if she had not said those things, they might have gone on. They would have reached that place where the river is broad and slow. There are benches there dedicated to people who sat beneath oaks and alders watching the river pass, the sway of the trees, and irrespective of the year, the age, whatever their troubles were—the factory had closed, their husband was in prison, their son had said he was gay—the sights and sounds made them feel better.
She follows Sam down the steps. An old man in a green blazer sits on a metal chair in the doorway. “Hello,” he says, and Sam says, “Hello,” and then there are more steps. As they descend, the air is cold, and they should not be here. They should be on a bench with a plaque that bears the name of a man who sat and stared at the river. They should be sitting as close to each other as they will be in that restaurant by the Mediterranean. Instead they are going down into a tomb. How appropriate, she thinks, and remembers what Sam said about autumn. Was this his bizarre way of telling her she should give up? If so, she cannot disagree. There is really no chance.
It is not this thought that stops her halfway down the stairs. It is, after all, not new. She thinks it almost as often as she imagines their future. What cuts her from the inside—the knife is dull and slowly twists—is that she now accepts it.
“Where are you?” he says.
“Here.”
The knife moves through her gut. It is awful, depressing, and to her surprise, a relief. There is something tiring about hope.
“Come here. It’s amazing,” he says.
“Coming,” she says, then descends. She ducks through a low doorway and is surrounded by cornflower blue sky. It is, however, a strange sky, because it is supported by pillars. And yet it is, without doubt, the sky—it contains the sun.
Sam stands beneath, gazing upwards, his head to one side. She ha
ngs back and does not speak. The moment seems private.
“We’re so lucky,” he says. “This is closed every other day of the year. There are probably people who’ve lived in the area all their lives and still never seen it. You know Mrs. Maclean, who volunteers on Thursday?”
She nods, although he cannot see. Mrs. Maclean is one of those old women who seems terrifyingly nice. They bake, they knit, they do volunteer work; they poison thirty-seven people at a summer fête.
“She was telling me about this a few weeks ago. She said she saw it in 1955, and I said, ‘What was it like?’ and she said, ‘Wonderful.’ But when I asked if she’d seen it since, she shook her head. Which seems pretty strange. If she liked it so much, why hasn’t she seen it since?”
“I don’t know,” Caitlin says. She stands next to him, under the sun, the sky all around. It is then that she understands she will have to leave. Not just her job, but also the street, probably the country. There needs to be an ocean between them. She’ll go to Australia, maybe India. It’s the only way.
Sam is still looking up. They are standing so close. Anyone else would lower their head and tell her, “Don’t stare.”
It is the start of the agonising process of taking her Last Looks. This will go on for weeks, months, but now that she has decided to leave, never to come back, she is entitled to be thorough. The skin on his neck and throat is stretched. It is like she can see every follicle, hair, and line. He is all detail, and she wants to focus on each one completely, but all at the same time. Why is that kind of looking impossible?
Yet even as she studies his cheek, his chin, she cannot properly focus. There is too much stone over their heads, underneath them, surrounding them on all sides. They are as enclosed as if they were in a mouth. And the decoration does not help. What gives the illusion of openness, space, is actually worse than blank stone. It is a blue weight that presses down. It reminds her of a documentary she saw about a coffin artist. He painted only on the insides of coffin lids, usually landscapes. His audiences had to get in and close the lid and then a light came on. He claimed that under such conditions, people paid attention.
The air is poor, lower in oxygen: She needs more of it. She sucks it in, takes quick, shallow breaths, and at first this helps. She feels happy, almost giddy, but then the ceiling drops an inch. As if the stone briefly forgot whatever is keeping it up.
She should just run. Take his hand and drag him out.
Like she hasn’t been crazy enough.
She will stand her ground, outstare the sun, say fuck you to the sky.
They will be crushed together.
He lowers his head, turns his face to hers.
“I really enjoyed today. We should hang out more often.”
And suddenly she can breathe.
The sky is not going to fall.
10. Found
ON DECEMBER 15, MR. CAMPBELL was stabbed seven times in the chest. He died on the way to hospital. He was sixty-five.
The first Sam knew of it was when he saw the trail of blood. It ran past his shop, finishing on the corner. It was early, he was still sleepy, and the blood was hard to believe. He stood in the doorway, drinking coffee, wondering who it had come from. When it began to rain, softly at first, then heavier, he thought it would quickly wash the blood away, but it took a long time.
Over the next few days, many people said how dreadful, shocking, awful, and terrible it was. Though they shook their heads and looked grave, none said, He was a fine man or He was a good man or that they would miss him. There was speculation about the will. Some said Mr. Campbell had relatives in France; others that his money would go towards a sanctuary for old horses. What everyone agreed on was that Stephanie would get nothing. Her divorce from Mr. Campbell had been protracted and bitter; it had taken the court three months to rule that there was clear evidence of mental cruelty on his part, more than enough to offset her single act of infidelity with Charming Robert. The settlement was generously in her favour, so much so that Mr. Campbell took out a full-page advert in the local paper that consisted of a jeremiad about the biases of the judicial system, in particular “its susceptibility to the pathetic lies of weak, attention-seeking people.”
The police had no suspects. They did not know that the last person who had seen him that night was Trudy (who told this only to Sam). She said Mr. Campbell seemed no different. As usual, he lay on the bed and closed his eyes tightly and made her slowly undress him. This was by far the most difficult part, because he made no effort to help her, did not even raise his arms. It took twice as long as the sex itself, which was over quickly. “Thank you, Stephanie,” he said, then put on his clothes and left. Within ten minutes he was dead.
When the will was read, only Trudy and Sam were not surprised. Barring a few small bequests, he left everything—the house, the antique shop, the contents of his bank accounts—to the ex-wife he had bullied and belittled for seventeen years. Almost equally surprising was how modest his estate turned out to be. Though he had aped the manners of the upper classes and often referred to his antique shop as “a hobby,” he was no wealthier than most of the storekeepers of Comely Bank. He was certainly not as successful as Mr. Asham.
In addition to the main bequest, the will stipulated that all his clothes should go to Caitlin’s charity shop, and all his books to Sam’s. Neither could remember him ever entering their shops. He also specified that his gas-powered barbecue should be given to Mr. Asham. The general tenor of the will was thus one of making amends. The question was why an otherwise healthy man should have put his affairs in so final an order. Of some relevance might have been the fact that he was not killed for his money. His moderately expensive watch stayed on his wrist. His wallet was untouched.
The only possible motive was found by Sam in Mr. Campbell’s desk. The executor of the will had asked Sam to help box up the deceased’s extensive library. After three hours, and thirty-two boxes, he had finished except for a set of Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The books were heavy, covered in dust, mostly on high shelves that could be reached only by ascending a metal stepladder broken in a number of places; not only was the ladder unstable, it also had sharp pieces of protruding metal. During the entire exhausting, dirty process, the executor made no attempt to help. He hovered on the edges of the room, speaking on his phone in a voice so horribly nasal his mouth seemed uninvolved. Only when Sam had run out of boxes did the executor interrupt himself to say he had more in his car.
As soon as he heard the front door close, Sam went to the mahogany desk. He didn’t know what he expected to find. He just had to look.
The top drawer was empty.
So was the middle.
The bottom one was locked.
He grabbed a letter opener from the desk then pushed it into the lock. He had no idea what he was doing; he was in a frenzy.
The lock must have been old, fragile, or poorly set in the wood, because Sam was able to push it in. Inside the drawer was a large tin box. Inside it was another box. Inside it was a third that contained a black ski mask and three photographs. One was of Stephanie sleeping in a patch of sunlight. On the back it read: St. Albans. 1998. In the second Trudy had her arms tied behind her back. The third picture was of a boy who was crying. He was eight or nine and wearing makeup, far too much. Behind him was a full-length mirror in which the photographer was reflected. It was not Mr. Campbell or any man that Sam recognised.
Sam put the mask in his pocket and the photos inside a book. A moment later the executor returned empty-handed. “I’m afraid you’ll need to come back tomorrow,” he said.
It took most of the next morning to transport the boxes to the shop. Sam spent the rest of that day, and most of that night, going through the books. He turned the pages slowly and with great care, anxious not to miss any ephemera. Most of the books were bound in leather and had had many previous owners. Their names were written in ink over a century old. He learnt that first Nathaniel Murray,
then Elizabeth Griffin had owned a booklet entitled Mastering Shyness Through Auto Suggestion. He found anti-Semitic remarks throughout the Old Testament of a family Bible belonging to the MacAllisters of Dundee. There were tram tickets and pressed flowers, banknotes from countries that had long since vanished. It was an embarrassment of riches, but Sam was disappointed. He had never seen so few traces of someone in their books.
In part, this was unsurprising. These were rare, valuable books that Mr. Campbell had probably never read. Even if he had, he would not have turned over the corners of their pages, or written notes in their margins.
By the time Sam got to the last box he had given up hope. At first glance, the books inside seemed no more promising than the rest. They were bound editions of an Edinburgh newspaper from the nineteenth century, not the sort of book to inspire a reaction from Mr. Campbell. On all but one the year of publication was stamped on the spine in gold letters, but there was a single volume whose binding was darker and whose year had rubbed off. It was only to ascertain whether it was from 1870 or 1879—the other volumes covered the years in between—that he opened it. The binding felt odd, much rougher than leather—if anything, more like scales. If the book was smaller and lighter than the other volumes, this was because it was not one of them. Instead of columns of newsprint and illustrations, there were brown boards on which photos were mounted. They were mostly family pictures from the 1920s and ’30s. There were photos of weddings.
There were photos of holidays:
And of people dancing in their gardens.
There were almost sixty photographs in the album. They were from a time that no one could remember, not even Mrs. Maclean. Which is not to say these scenes seemed strange to Sam (as they must do to us). When he looked at these people and places he saw many things that had changed, but also some that had not. Maybe it was not the same world as his, but they were related.
The Casualties Page 10