The Other Lives

by Adrian J. Walker

  ‘No!’ shouted Billy. ‘They’ll see!’

  He ran to the fire and stamped it out, kicking bracken over it until it was nothing but a smouldering wet mess. In the panic, Poppy barked and darted away through the bush.

  ‘Poppy!’ shouted James. ‘Stupid dog, wait here.’

  James ran after the dog, leaving Billy jumping madly around on the dead fire. When Billy was sure it was out, he turned to Schmidt, breathing hard.

  ‘It is cold,’ said Schmidt.

  ‘I know, but you can’t light a fire. They’ll see it.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Mr Sutton.’

  Schmidt leaned back against the tree.

  ‘Sutton. And what will Mr Sutton do if he sees, Billy?’

  Billy stood, unsure of what to say. He heard his brother’s calls outside the bush.

  ‘You’re German,’ he said at last. ‘James says you’re the enemy. You’re not like us.’

  Schmidt laughed, a sound which took them both by surprise.

  ‘Not like you?’ he said, coughing. His face hardened, and he fixed Billy with a strange look. He put his hand inside his jacket. Billy froze. A gun, he thought. He has a gun and he’s going to shoot me. He really is the enemy.’

  He opened his mouth to scream for his brother, but when Schmidt pulled out his hand it was carrying a long tin fastened with a small padlock. He held it in both hands and gazed at it, as if it held something secret and precious that he did not want to let go of. Then he held it up to Billy and shook it. It rustled with something papery inside.

  Poppy’s barks were getting nearer. They heard James’ voice echoing.

  ‘Poppy! Come here, you silly mutt!’

  ‘Do you really think I am your enemy, Billy?’ said Schmidt.

  Billy took a step back.

  ‘You’re German. You’re with Hitler.’

  ‘So Hitler is your enemy?’

  ‘He’s a bad man. He says bad things. He does bad things.’

  Schmidt lay his head against the tree.

  ‘You might be right,’ he said. ‘But I wonder why?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Billy, frowning.

  ‘Why does he say these things, do these things?’

  ‘Because he’s evil.’

  Schmidt blinked.

  ‘Maybe. Or maybe he’s just afraid, like everyone else. Can he help that? Does he have a choice?’

  ‘Poppy! Poppy, where are you?’

  Billy stared back at the pale-faced man who seemed to be becoming ever more a part of the tree. It was as if, slowly, bit by bit, the forest was eating him whole.

  ‘Everyone has a choice,’ said Billy. ‘Just because you’re afraid, it doesn’t give you the right to make bad choices, or have bad ideas, or do bad things.’

  A smile grew on Schmidt’s face, calm as a spring pond. He took a deep breath and looked away.

  ‘As you grow older the world seems to change. So does how you feel about it, and how you feel about people.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean you can either feel more and more what it is like to be someone else, or you can feel it less and less. Advance out or retreat within; that is the choice life offers you. That is the only choice we make, Billy. Do you understand?’

  Billy felt a sudden weightlessness in his thoughts, as if the question had stirred them like sand in water.

  ‘I think I do know what it is like to be someone else.’

  ‘Poppy!’

  Billy instinctively turned to the sound of his brother’s voice, and he felt foolish and weak for doing so. James would have scolded him for saying what he had just said, and yet this stranger — this enemy — accepted it as lightly as the time of day. He turned back.

  ‘I know things,’ he said, finding a spirit in his voice he did not know he had. ‘I’m sure I do. Things I shouldn’t be able to know, like cards and people and places and…’

  He stopped, heady with conviction.

  ‘What is it?’ said Schmidt.

  ‘You.’

  Even in the low light, Billy was certain that Schmidt’s eyes flashed.

  ‘Do you know why I crashed?’ said Schmidt.

  ‘Yes. We shot you down.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘The navy then.’

  ‘It’s true, they did, but only because I wasn’t concentrating.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Schmidt pushed himself up a little.

  ‘I was banking east, preparing to engage, when suddenly I caught sight of the coastline, and your farm.’

  ‘It’s not my farm.’ Billy frowned. ‘Wait a minute, how did you...?’

  ‘I recognised it instantly. And I remembered.’

  ‘Remembered what?’

  ‘What if I told you something?’

  ‘Told me what?’

  ‘What if I told you I hadn’t lived just this life, but others as well?’

  Billy said nothing. Schmidt’s face darkened. The cold of the morning seemed to be gathering around him.

  ‘And what if I told you I could remember these lives almost as clearly as I can remember my own? Would you think I was mad?’

  Billy shook his head slowly.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t.’

  ‘I did not think so, Billy.’

  ‘What do you remember?’

  Schmidt lowered his head and locked eyes with Billy; they were talking as confidants now—Billy could feel it—not as strangers or enemies.

  ‘The last one I remember was a man.’

  ‘When did he live?’

  ‘He has not lived yet.’

  Billy frowned.

  ‘That makes no sense. How can you remember being someone that has not yet lived?’

  ‘Because the world of life and death does not work the way we think it does.’

  With those words his face suddenly blossomed orange. His eyes travelled above Billy’s head, widening as they went.

  ‘Look, Billy. Turn around and look.’

  Billy turned and, with a gasp, looked up at the tree canopy behind. The sun had broken through the branches and scattered into streams of light that dotted the tree trunk and the ground where Billy stood. He opened his arms to them, as if to a spring shower, and felt them on his face and hands — countless needles of thin winter warmth.

  ‘You see how it splinters?’ said Schmidt, his voice strangled with wonder. ‘The sun is broken, but the light all comes from the same source. That is how it is with us, Billy. We are all just broken beams of light. Broken across time and space.’

  The light faded as the sun passed behind a cloud, and Billy turned back.

  ‘The man you remember. What was he like?’

  ‘He was not kind. I believe he did a terrible thing.’

  ‘What kind of thing?’

  Schmidt shook his head.

  ‘I am not sure.’

  ‘What was it like when he lived? I mean, when he will live.’

  ‘Not so different to how it is now, although…’

  Schmidt looked down, thinking.

  ‘The world felt as though they had drifted apart, even though it was closer. I could see someone on the other side of the planet as clearly as if they were in the room.’

  ‘Like television?’

  ‘Yes, but I could talk to them as well. I could find out what was happening anywhere in the world, right this second. And yet everywhere was this feeling of being a million miles from everybody else.’

  He turned back at Billy, who was looking at his shoes.

  ‘I wish I could talk to someone on the other side of the world,’ said the boy.

  ‘Your father.’

  Still looking down, Billy nodded and heaved a deep, broken sigh.

  ‘I have a son,’ said Schmidt, ‘and two daughters. Sometimes I worry that they will forget me.’

  ‘They won’t,’ said Billy, looking up. ‘I know they won’t.’

  ‘How do you remember your father?’

 
; ‘He gave me a letter before he left. I read it every night.’

  ‘Does your brother read it too?’

  Billy went to speak, but closed his mouth. Schmidt blinked in understanding.’

  ‘You keep it for yourself.’

  ‘It’s not like that. He gave it to me, not James.’

  ‘But your brother misses him too.’

  The same surge of conviction gripped Billy once again, and anger this time.

  ‘And what would you know about my brother’s feelings?’

  ‘The same way you know about mine.’

  They were quiet for a while. James’ voice still echoed in the distance.

  ‘Poppy? Oh, there you are, you silly thing, come here.’

  ‘Shall I tell you something else?’ said Schmidt. Billy didn’t answer. ‘This will be hard to believe.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Rupert and Lucy. They’re alive in this future too, with this man I remember, as different people.’

  Billy frowned.

  ‘That’s nonsense. Don’t lie to me.’

  Schmidt shifted his weight, wincing.

  ‘I’m dying, Billy. I have no reason to lie to you.’

  ‘But I don’t understand how that could happen.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘Then tell me what they look like.’

  Schmidt smiled.

  ‘I can do better than that.’

  He opened the battered tin in his hands and fished about inside until he pulled out three small squares of paper, which he held out to Billy.

  ‘Take them,’ he said. ‘Go on, look.’

  With a glance behind him, Billy took three hesitant steps and took the paper from his hand. He looked at them each in turn.

  ‘Sketches,’ he said.

  ‘I drew them from memory. The third one is the man. Me.’

  It was of a man with dark hair, glinting eyes and a dangerous grin, wearing a suit that looked like the ones you sometimes saw in the films — the detectives, the businessmen, the gangsters. He was sitting down with legs crossed, and a clipboard resting on his knee. Billy held the others up to the light.

  ‘But they don’t look anything like Rupert or Lucy.’

  ‘Nor I you.’

  Billy felt a sudden chill grip him, quite separate from the winter air.

  ‘Broken light, Billy,’ said Schmidt. ‘Broken light.’

  The sound of James’ footsteps in frozen bracken approached.

  ‘Here,’ said Schmidt, stretching out his arm. ‘This is for you.’

  Billy stared at the battered and rusted tin in his hand.

  ‘Take it,’ said Schmidt. ‘Please.’

  Billy took the tin.

  ‘What is it?’ he said.

  ‘More memories, Billy. Pictures and words. You will understand one day. The days will seem strange when you do, but you will, and you must not be afraid.’ Schmidt smiled. ‘You must never be afraid. Because we are not different. None of us. Not enemies. I am like you. Just like you.’

  James reappeared with Poppy, but Billy had already pocketed the tin.

  ‘Found her,’ said James. ‘Now we have to go. Come on.’

  Schmidt rolled closer to the crushed embers. As he did, the parachute slipped down and they saw the underside of it caked in deep red. His left leg was wrapped tightly in one of the blankets, dark with blood. Billy met his eyes. They were wet with fear.

  ‘Medicine,’ he whispered, looking at James. ‘Doctor. Medicine.’

  James shook his head and backed away. He grabbed Billy’s arm and pulled him through the bracken, back through Potter’s Copse.

  James told Rupert about the fire and about Schmidt’s wound, and none of them went back to Potter’s Copse for the rest of the day. James kept his head down at school, eating lunch alone and waiting for Billy at the gate when it was time to go home. Rupert had already left to collect his sister from the primary school at the other end of the village, and they walked separate routes back to the farm. As James waited, he let the other boys pass. They seemed to lurch and leap and struggle together like some single entity, careless and full of stories about Germans and sinking boats. Through the pack he saw Billy, walking behind, trying to be invisible. It wasn’t hard; he was very small, with a coat that was too big for him and his hair sticking out at odd angles.

  ‘Do you think they saw him?’ said Billy, as he had done earlier that morning. James wondered if he had thought of anything at all since.

  ‘I told you, Billy, I don’t know. Let’s get home.’

  They took the footpath along the coast and up the headland, braving the blasts of frigid Atlantic wind. The sea was dark and full of terrifying distances and depths. James walked ahead with his head down, thinking of the slow arc of a crashing fighter plane, the roar of the straining engines and the oily mass of water growing nearer and nearer, and of what it would feel like to burst out of the cockpit and into thin air, not knowing which way was up, or whether your parachute would open, or which way it would take you if it did.

  As they reached the farm, James felt a nervous pressure, half expecting to see a crowd of men in the yard, or arguing in silhouettes inside against the yellow windows of the farmhouse. They would be surrounding a chair, with Schmidt sitting in it, bound and gagged and bleeding.

  But they opened the door to see Mrs Sutton cooking eggs and a fire crackling. Rupert sat at the table, helping Lucy with her reading.

  ‘Boots off,’ said Mrs Sutton, without looking round from the stove. The two boys did as they were told and slunk in beside Rupert. James noticed that one of his cheeks was swollen and red.

  ‘What happened?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing,’ mumbled Rupert. He didn’t look up.

  Lucy frowned down at the book she was holding.

  ‘It don’t make sense,’ she said.

  ‘Was it…?’

  ‘I told you, it’s nothing. What don’t make sense, Lucy?’

  ‘It’s spelled all wrong,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Well?’ said James, under his breath.

  ‘What?’ said Rupert.

  ‘Have you heard anything? Did your father see the smoke?’

  ‘No. And if he did, he didn’t tell me.’ Rupert turned to his sister. ‘What’s spelled wrong?’

  ‘Slide. S-L-I-D-E. That spells ‘sliddee’.’

  ‘How do you know?’ said James. Rupert turned again.

  ‘’Cos Mum says he’s been in the village all day. That’s just how it’s spelled, Lucy. There’s an e on the end.’

  Billy’s shoulders sagged with relief.

  ‘That’s stupid,’ said Lucy, slamming down the book. ‘It’s all stupid.’

  ‘Lucy Sutton, do your reading or you don’t get your dinner,’ said Mrs Sutton in monotone from the stove.

  Lucy turned the book over again and sighed, with her chin on one hand.

  ‘Good,’ said Billy. ‘Then we should get some food to him tonight. It’s cold and the wind’s picking up. He needs medicine too. Do you have —’

  ‘No,’ said James. ‘No more. It’s too dangerous. We’ve done enough already. If Mr Sutton finds out…’

  He looked between Rupert and Billy.

  ‘But he’s injured,’ said Billy. ‘He’s really badly injured. He needs our help.’

  ‘He’s had enough help,’ snapped James. ‘And if he’s sitting there in that wood making fires for himself, then he doesn’t need us anymore. We’ve done all we can. Now it’s up to him.’

  ‘What are you four gossiping about?’ said Mrs Sutton. She turned from the stove and wiped her hands on her apron.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Rupert, sitting to attention.

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Sutton,’ said James.

  She gave them a crowish look, then turned back to her cooking.

  ‘Supper’s almost ready. Wash your hands.’

  NOTHING MAN

  Marshfields, Present Day

  ACCORDING TO ZOE AND Morag, I should be drowning in memories by
now. Those other lives they claimed to have been swamped by should be swamping me too. But they are not. Only one is: the life of a dead man named Stanley Mordant.

  Since witnessing the view from that bench of his, I have been able to remember almost all of him. The smell of his world, the sounds of his newborn daughter’s cries, the dense thud of shells hitting sand and the gargling screams of a young man, the way the light played on his young wife’s hair one afternoon in bed. What he liked, what he feared, how he felt, how he thought. All of him. Almost.

  I still cannot fully remember his childhood, or the picture, or what he is pointing at. Morag believes this may be preventing me from remembering further, so here we are at Stanley Mordant’s old prefab house — which I find without trouble because I remember the fucking street — talking to his daughter, Gladys, in search of more clues.

  Clues.

  I have to remind myself why I am doing this, following these clues like some deluded quixotic sleuth: I want to go home. I want to return to normality.

  Only everything I do seems to lead me farther away from it.

  ‘Fig rolls,’ says Gladys, coming in from the kitchen with a plate.

  Her front room is largely beige, with a two-bar fire, globe and television set. Cheap African tribal ornaments line the mantelpiece, and her window rattles with each volley of wind from the growing storm outside. Zoe and I sit on the lime-and-mustard sofa, trying not to be drawn together into the sagging middle. We’ve left Heathcliff in the van with Morag, double locked this time.

  Gladys is a robust woman in her seventies with fierce, bright eyes and a deep-lined brow. She wears no jewellery, her cardigan is hand-knitted, and her shoes are flat and practical. She drops the plate of fig rolls unceremoniously on the coffee table and takes her seat in a well-used armchair, eyeing me with suspicion. I don’t blame her. In my grimy getup, I wouldn’t want me sitting on my sofa either.

  ‘Help yourself,’ she says, gesturing to the plate of sagging, pillow-shaped biscuits. ‘I have some posher ones in a tin, but I’m afraid they’re for the bridge ladies. They’re coming round quite soon, so…’

  She eyes her watch.

  ‘Thank you,’ says Zoe.

  ‘You wanted to know about my father?’

  ‘Yes, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘No. No, I suppose I don’t.’ Gladys reaches for a fig roll. ‘Only you’ll excuse me if I find it a little odd. Nobody’s asked about him since he died, and that was over twenty years ago. Which paper did you say you were from?’