“I’m here, Da. I was the bush!”
“Were you really?” Rhys said, dropping his spade and catching the child up in his arms, “I would never have found you there, Dicky-boy. You outsmarted me.”
The rumble in the background increased in volume and the scene, as if on cue, faded. Rhys was stood at that same garden’s gate, dressed in his army uniform and looking much more familiar. There was a woman this time, holding a toddler, and three more children at her feet. The boy was around nine years old; two girls, who were perhaps two years younger, had to be twins. Rhys knelt down and pulled the girls into his arms; they clung to him, sobbing.
The rumble got louder.
Rhys seemed to notice it this time and stood quickly, his face carefully schooled to hide what Beaton felt as fear.
“You’re the man now, Dicky-lad,” Rhys said hurriedly, pulling his son towards him, “Look after them for me until I get back.”
The boy could only nod, and he alone seemed to notice the rumble, turning his head to look sharply at the sky.
Rhys had moved on to his wife, burying his face in her neck as she embraced him. He was trembling, Beaton could feel it himself, and she whispered to him.
“I love you, Rhys. I love you. I love you.”
Rhys made a choked noise and pulled himself away, looking fearfully to the sky as the rumble sounded again, directly overhead, and the sky turned black. His hands shaking, Beaton glanced at the family and cried out, because where they had been standing only a moment ago, now they were flat on their backs with bloody rosettes covering their clothes, even the little babe. Rhys looked back at them and fell to his knees, his breath coming in strangled sobs as the rumbling grew louder and louder until it was unbearable and Beaton clamped his hands over his ears and –
With a supreme effort, Beaton pulled himself out of Rhys’ mind and found himself on the floor, the back of his head painful where he must have landed. One of the first things he had been told was that it was remarkably dangerous for the researcher and the subject to end the process by force, but he didn’t know what else to do. The sweat was pouring down his face, the now familiar pounding of his blood in his ears and his hands bleeding from little crescent shapes on his palms. Rhys’ own hands were clamped into fists but Beaton couldn’t try and help him, not this time. He could only stare from his place on the floor and wonder exactly what was happening in the poor man’s head.
* * * *
It was a day or two before Beaton could bring himself to try the treatment again, and he decided to take a few days off that were owed to him, shaken as he was by what he had seen. He spent much of the time out walking in the fields that surrounded the hospital. The things he had seen in Rhys’ mind troubled him greatly, and he wondered if the man was suffering from shell-shock. That would explain the confused and dreamlike state that his mind was in; men with shell-shock had been known to try and strangle the nurses treating them, so sure were they in their addled minds that they were still in the war zone. It had happened too many times now, abroad and at home, for anyone to deny that there was a real problem but still the higher powers in the armed forces failed to recognise it as an actual ailment. Men were executed every day for the fear that was poisoning their minds. It was shameful.
Beaton began to think more specifically of returning Rhys to his family. He had a few contacts in the army, men who would have access to the lists of those missing in action. He telephoned one of them and asked to be sent the list of all the Welshmen named Rhys over the age of thirty, missing, presumed dead. The list arrived by telegram, a list that was depressingly long even when he eliminated all of those men from the cities and large towns. Besides sending a telegram to all those families, describing the children he had seen, he could think of no other solution than to administer the treatment again and see what could be gained. He wouldn’t lose anything, anyway.
Rhys had been calmer than usual in those quiet days, and Beaton felt no guilt in once more fitting the masks over their faces and breathing in that seemingly so innocuous gas.
They were in a trench this time, something concrete that Beaton finally recognised from the newsreels and the papers. Rhys was sat on the wet floor, staring at a spot on the wall opposite him, seemingly deep in thought. That ominous rumble that Beaton now recognised was a deafening, never ceasing crescendo of noise and to distract himself he looked carefully about the trench. Corpses were floating in the water, their faces unrecognisable as human, but the men walking up and down the trench seemed not to notice them at all. They spoke to each other in low whispers, every single voice sharing that same lilting accent that Rhys seemed to have. Beaton couldn’t hear what they were saying but it hardly seemed to matter. A pit pony, struggling for breath, came past hauling a cart full of coal. It stopped in front of Rhys, collapsing to the ground with a shuddering breath. Only then did Rhys move, putting out a hand slowly to stroke the pitiful creature’s mane. A tear ran down his cheek from fever bright eyes, and Beaton began to feel once more that growing dread in his chest. If it was possible, the rumble grew even louder and then a shout came down the line.
“Ladders!”
Ladders appeared from nowhere, propped against the side of the trench, and then a whistle blew and the corpses that scattered the floor stood up and joined their comrades in climbing out of the trench. Beaton didn’t climb, but he found himself at the top anyway once Rhys had made his way up. The ground before them was ablaze, red with so much blood that they were wading in it and the rumble was almost drowned out by a cacophony of dying screams.
Beaton’s chest ached, so tight that he felt dizzy, and only by the means of being connected to his charge did he think that he kept moving. He tried to pull himself away, to sever the connection once more, but he was too weak. Rhys stumbled onwards until they fell into a shell hole, to find his children were huddled there and Beaton screamed, because a blinding pain struck him behind his eyes. Rhys was crying out, his arms around his children, as a thick gas began to pour into the hole and the children began to choke, their twisted faces monstrous, and Beaton felt his chest tighten by just one more impossible degree and then darkness.
* * * *
TO MRS RHYS GREEN STOP
I AM DELIGHTED TO BE ABLE TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR HUSBAND, MISSING IN ACTION, HAS BEEN FOUND AT A HOSPITAL IN NORTHUMBERLAND STOP SERGEANT GREEN IS SUFFERING FROM HEAD INJURIES AND BLINDNESS BUT SEEMS TO REMEMBER CLEARLY STOP HE MAY SUFFER THE EFFECTS OF TRAUMA FOR SOME TIME BUT IS FIT TO TRAVEL TO CARDIFF STOP MORE DETAILS TO FOLLOW STOP
YOURS
MAJOR T.S WATSON
Lewis looked the telegram over before it was sent and nodded his approval. It was part of an elaborate deception he was being forced to invent, thanks to that damn idiot Jimmy Beaton. What he was thinking even taking the treatment, let alone trying it out on an unknown subject, was beyond Tennant. Thank Christ that the major who oversaw the hospital had heard of the experiment and called in the discovery of Beaton’s body before things could get out of hand. They’d found him slumped next to Sergeant Green’s bedside, looking as though his heart had just stopped in his sleep. Only the treatment masks told the truth of the matter. The nurses had needed to be bribed to keep quiet, of course, but that didn’t take a lot of effort – they had no idea what had really happened. The Sister, Maggie Martin, had asked more questions than were strictly necessary but the major sorted that one out. Lewis didn’t know what he had said to her, but she kept quiet and that was what really mattered.
When Green woke up two days later, it was as though nothing had happened. He didn’t remember a thing beyond the last time he was in a trench in France. The major arranged for his transfer to Cardiff, once Lewis had donned his white coat once more and pretended to be a doctor so that he could assess him for damage from the treatment. When Green had been shipped off, Lewis left the shocked hospital and went back to his facility, exhausted and angry beyond words. He telephoned the main facility in London to warn them of what had happened,
and mere hours later a new ban on experimenting on soldiers in comas was announced and Lewis was told to burn any papers that had been left behind. There weren’t any of them – the bloody fool hadn’t even been trying to do anything about the experiment legitimately.
A few days later, Lewis heard that Jimmy Beaton’s body was sent home to Lincoln to be buried. There was a photograph of him, taken the year before the war started. He looked happy, happier than Lewis had ever seen him look. The obituary that accompanied the photograph was the usual cock and bull story. Did anyone ever truly believe the things that people said about someone after they died? Jimmy died of a heart attack, they said, brought on by the stress of his job and from being away from home for so long. A great doctor, they said, a man who had always known he wanted to help people and took everything about saving lives seriously. A gentle giant, fiercely intelligent, a rock to his family and blah, blah, blah…
Good bloody riddance, Lewis thought darkly, flipping to the crossword, away from the obituaries. Wasn’t that damn clever in the end, was he? Ego the size of Ben Nevis and not a shred of common sense to keep it in check. Good bloody riddance. No room for bleeding hearts here.
***
Interlude 1
There are two types of rich men; one comes from nothing and dies broken but with a life of luxury for their children. And then there’s old money; the generations after the first tireless worker.
* * * *
John was not just old money, he was ancient money, wealth accumulated from generation to generation for hundreds of years. But what had it got him?
The war had taken its toll on the country and like most the gentry of England his estate had been heavily taxed. He was a middle aged gentleman when the call had come, too old to enlist but rich enough to be offered a commission as an officer. He had chosen the offer of General, not high enough to be too responsible but high enough to keep out of the trouble, keep out of the trenches and in the dining halls. The war had been a stinking meat grinder that killed an entire generation of able bodied men leaving entire towns and villages without sons and husbands. It was how he met his second wife; both of them were the ones left behind by death.
Like a man of his status, John had first married a good match, a woman of good standing and with wealth, and they had been pleasantly happy together, but when she and their child were killed in childbirth he was sad and showed the appropriate mourning period. When he came back and met the enchanting Rose he knew he had to marry her. They were both ready to move on and they wanted to do that together.
John looked down at his now withered hands and sighed. That was twenty years ago. It was amazing that had happened in what seemed like a blink of an eye.
* * * *
From that June with the death of the archduke the world became a blur of activity, countries signing treaties and declaring their enemies while the people of the world jostled around eagerly read newspapers; all waited with baited breath and troubled hearts until September when BOOM! The battle of the Marne and the trenches were dug.
By November, England had blockaded the North Sea from Germany and, in February 1915, England was declared a war zone around the great island and it wasn't safe for ships to leave port.
War raged on and John watched from his hotel room in France. Watching officers from the trenches coming in to report, they would slowly look more wide eyed and desperate, their health would be failing as they came in smelling of death and decay.
By April the first reports of poison gas was heard from the trenches and John saw his men decimated … no, decimated is the wrong word. It was more than one in ten, much, much more. Innocents brought to the slaughter. It was then that he stopped watching, turning his back the best he could. He just couldn't be the witness any more, he couldn't care for them all; it would have killed him.
* * * *
The battle of the Somme and the great mechanical tanks.
The Red Barren being shot down.
Every battle and pleading death washed over him till the news finally came. Germany signed the armistice in France and the war was finishing.
He returned home to his empty estate. The servants that had survived were returning young men, old before their time, some blinded or worse.
Nearly his entire liquid fortune had been taxed away from him. He invested what he could but it was his second wife who saved him. She was a wealthy widow who, after their marriage, brought her remaining staff and fortune to save his estate where she could not her own.
When WWI was finally over and with the start of a new decade begun, it brought prosperity. They invested in the new invention; the auto-mobile. Their wealth grew once again. Electricity came to their world and brought with it the telephone and motion pictures. For an anniversary gift he took his wife to see one called Don Juan. She was so excited she was shaking and that night she told him she was pregnant.
The 1920's brought the surrealism movement and Art Deco – nothing that he cared for mind you, but his wife enjoyed it.
But ten years after the war, disaster struck. The market crashed and many lost everything. John lost everything, including his wife this time from a wasting illness. She was so proud and refused to have them pour money into medical treatment for something she knew was an inevitable end and so he was down to three things:
His last million, the estate, and his beautiful daughter. So he knew what he had to do.
He saved the house from being sold but he couldn't keep it going forever. On his death the house and lands would be sold to pay his debts that he racked up without spending a penny, keeping everything on credit. The money wasn't for him; he kept it secret. It was for his daughter.
* * * *
In the five years since the crash of the stock market unemployment had risen to 18%. He would keep his daughter from struggling and suffering. An old man, in debt and widowed for the second time, all that mattered was his daughter, the beautiful woman she had become who now, even as a married woman, spent time with her ageing father.
"Dad?" she asked softly.
He looked up into the dark, beautiful face and smiled.
"Yes?"
"Are you ready to go to the theatre?"
For a long moment John watched his daughter’s eyes and nodded. Yes, he knew what to do.
"Yes. I'm ready," he said with a smile.
***
Golden Memories
E. A. Stokes
The first thing I saw was her broach. A light shone through my ceiling fan but momentarily the blades would block it before it would burst with blood red colour; it was hypnotising. But then, as I looked her up and down there wasn’t one thing about her I couldn’t take an hour over. Her jet black hair twisted up into a complicated style and was pinned under a hat traditionally worn by a man, but it looked right on her with the rim pulled over her left eye, like it should have been put on her from the start. Her clothes were hidden under a black three quarter length cashmere coat; the only part of her dress showing was two inches of bright red silk and the hint of the lace from her petticoat. This was the only colour. Just that skirt hem and that hypnotic broach.
“Do you stare at all your clients for this long?” she asked.
Her voice was soft and deep. It made me think of warm water pouring down my spine. Was it water or was it blood?
“Most my clients don’t have legs like those, and are usually looking for me to make sure Dames like you aren’t running around with some John.”
She smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. She was cold, calculating and I got the feeling if she didn’t have a use for me I would be considered prey or an acceptable loss.
“Well this situation is more…. complicated. I was told by a Mr Tennent that you could find anything that was considered lost.”
She had broken into my office early on a Monday morning. I had been coming up the street when I had seen my lights on. I figured my receptionist had come in early but it would seem this woman had found a way to simply walk i
nto my office. I didn’t know how but I was standing in front of her like she had made an appointment and we were talking over tea and biscuits instead of me calling the cops. No, I know why I didn’t do that, I was technically the cops and she was just a woman. Or so I thought.
The name she gave me rang a bell – a black, ominous bell. The man was a slimy man who I only associated with through work and it seemed he was touting for business again.
“So are you going to tell me how you got in here?” I demanded. Again that cold smile was back as she tapped the file on my desk before walking up to me. She had cold blue eyes that stared into my mind and a walk that was calculating, a sway that made me very aware of her. She reminded me of a cat not only because even a common little house cat has teeth and claws.
“No,” she said softly.
She dipped her head and when she looked back up she had a cigarette between those cherry red lips. Automatically I took a match box from my pocket and struck one. I raised it to the tip, a single flame dancing in her eye and she took in a lung full of smoke.
“You can find me at Rizzo’s. Read the file,” she said.
The smoke was acrid against her perfume as she let out a plume and gave a satisfying sigh. I nodded, not trusting myself to not start babbling with her so close.
“You promise to at least look it over?” she asked softly.
“I’ll give you that much,” I admitted.
She simply walked past and she was gone out of my life. I couldn’t help but stare at the desk as I listened to her heels clicking along the hardwood floor. Once the world fell silent again I was able to move. I walked to the window to see her walk out the door and out into the crowd.
This world was quiet. The war had left a scar on the world and on a lot of men and women. I was a lucky one; found my way into radio communications working a relay station between the front line and the rest of the army, patching through the generals with the people actually in danger. The worst I heard was their voices demanding help and even on a really quiet night I could hear them calling over the sounds of falling bombs and shouts of pain. But the world was quiet now, recovering in this, the year of our lord nineteen hundred and thirty five. And here, back safe in London with the thick, stinking fog surrounding us all, these were just fading memories.
Isle of Noise Page 3