by Rebecca Bryn
Nemesis, a daughter of Night, and Goddess of Justice and Retribution, fitted his view of morality: a price to pay for the gifts bestowed by her half-sister, Tykhe, Goddess of Fortune. He sighed; when Nemesis decided his debt was paid, and he could find peace in death, it would be her sisters, the Keres, the personification of plague, slaughter and violent death who decided the manner of his dying.
He locked the entry door behind him and tested the lock. The back door stood open, as welcoming as the smell of fresh bread and the singing of the kettle. He put his books on the table and pictured the contents of the biscuit barrel. ‘Have we got any custard creams to go with that cuppa, love?’
Jane tapped out a loaf onto a cooling rack. ‘I’ll nip and fetch some.’
The front door clicked shut. Mrs Mobbs would keep her talking. He thumbed through the phone book. Solicitors… a box-advert boasted Harris, Harris and Mason had been established before the war. Their offices were in Northampton and no-one knew him there. He dialled the number.
‘Harris, Harris and Mason.’ The voice sounded efficient.
‘I’d like to make an appointment, please.’
‘Mr Harris, senior, has half an hour tomorrow at ten?’
Jane was visiting her sister, Elisabeth, tomorrow. ‘Ten o’clock it is, then.’
‘What name is it?’
‘Alb…’ He swung round.
‘Jane, you there?’ It was Lil from next door, come in the back way.
He cupped his hand over the receiver. ‘She’s popped to the shop, Lil. I’ll send her round when she comes back.’
‘I brought a sponge cake for us to try.’
A voice enquired his name a second time. Why hadn’t he been more careful? ‘Blundell, William Blundell. Thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
***
Walt clicked on the workshop light and checked the blackout curtain for chinks before uncovering the five pieces. They were weird, alien almost, yet the truth they concealed individually was obvious when they stood together. He fixed the last piece into his vice and planed the final flat surface before sanding the last sweeping curve. He placed it centrally, between its neighbours. Perfect.
He dipped a brush into stained wax. The carved wolf sprang to life as he polished and buffed. He’d been stupid and cruel to drag Jane into his nightmare. An island of hope in a sea of despair, he’d clung to her love like a limpet to rock and once he’d got her pregnant… He dipped the brush into wax again. Then, marriage had been the only honourable course. He added carelessness to his list of sins.
All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
Christian beliefs, not his.
The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class.
Father Forgive.
Forgive… He weighed the small brass key in his hand and took the photographs from his wallet: dark eyes smiled out at him. He couldn’t fail Jane like he’d failed the girl in his sepia past. ‘Goodbye, dear one. Your story will be told. I promised, but it makes no difference, now, if it waits a little longer. You do understand? I couldn’t hurt Jane then, and now there’s Jennie and the twins… I can’t endanger them.’ Her smile exacted its own price, as always.
He could watch, listen and wait… Maybe, if the wolf didn’t wake, he could stay forever.
The door handle rattled: the taps on the door urgent. He covered his secrets and unlocked the door.
Jane smiled with obvious relief. ‘Have you forgotten the time, Walt? It’s almost midnight.’
‘Sorry, love. I’ll be there in a minute.’
Her brow furrowed. ‘You feeling all right?’
‘Bit tired, that’s all.’
‘That chair leg for Ester Todd can wait. You are retired.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘I’ll put the cocoa on.’
He put his arms around her and kissed her. ‘Did I did tell you how much I love you?’
She smiled. ‘Every day, you old reprobate.’ She planted soft lips on his. ‘I love you too.’
‘Then go and get that cocoa on, woman.’
She twisted away laughing. Torchlight bobbed down the path, highlighting the uneven bricks and throwing shadowy fingers into the gloom. He wrapped the key in a torn-off scrap of polishing cloth and placed it carefully in its new home, where it would be found when the time was right. He took a last look at his sepia girl. It was time to let her go.
***
Walt had been up since first light and still had one carving to pack. He wrapped it in newspaper, placed it in a cardboard box and added an envelope containing instructions for Harris, Harris and Mason. It needed extra packing. He found more newspaper, replaced the envelope and the wrapped carving, and tucked the newspaper securely around it.
Five identical packages: each one tied with string and neatly labelled, each one containing a letter of instruction and a piece of his soul. He melted sealing wax in a spoon, and dripped it bubbling and smoking onto the knots. A metal punch, used to mark his work, pressed his initials into the hot wax.
But for Lil, he’d have made the appointment as Albert Carr and avoided using the name Blundell: the risk to Charlotte and Lucy would have been virtually non-existent. Now, one final letter needed writing and his promise to Miriam must wait even longer.
He thought the letter through to the drumming of rain on the workshop roof. Albert Carr… How many years was it since they’d met in that snow-covered forest in Poland? Albert’s signature was on the original instruction, when the box had been hidden, but now that box must be gifted to him, William Blundell. It was his responsibility to make sure the truth was told, at a time of his choosing. All he needed was Albert’s signature, and Harris, Harris and Mason could do the rest. He consulted a notebook of copperplate writing, and reached in his jacket pocket for the paper and envelope he’d smuggled out of the house. He wrote The Manager, and the address, and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
The letter written, he checked his watch: the house would still be wrapped in dreams. He settled in the chair he should be mending and lit a cigarette. Rain streaked the window panes with the dust of summer. Through the window, clipped lawns and neat borders of delphiniums, snapdragons and roses framed the rear of the house, enclosing everyone he loved: safe, cocooned. The solid bricks wavered behind the rivering rain. The lush summer growth gave way to the bare earth of the camp.
He was almost glad of the rain that settled the grey dust as he set off for his barrack but, set amid mosquito-infested swamp, the camp would soon become a sea of stinking mud. The gates to the quarantine compound clanged shut behind him. It had been a long day, the quarantine camp full with suspected and confirmed typhus cases. Many doctors and nurses had been lost to the last epidemic.
‘Doctor!’
The soldier high on the guard post beckoned. It paid to keep on friendly terms with the guards, and he knew this one; he climbed the ladder to the look-out platform.
‘Cigarette, Doctor?’
‘Thank you.’ The cigarette smoke fought the sickening stench of burning flesh and chemicals.
The soldier pressed a hand to his stomach. ‘Gut cramps… Suppose it’s typhus…’
‘Fever, muscle pain, headache?’
‘Just keep running to the latrines.’
This wasn’t a guard who got closer to the inmates than the bullet in his rifle; it wasn’t likely he had typhus. ‘They’ll give you kaolin at the hospital camp. Nothing to worry about.’
‘It’ll be on my record. I’ve been promised promotion… an end to this bloody night duty.’
‘So?’
‘I’m stuck here all night…. If I leave my post, and that whore moves from that spot, Gustav will get my promotion.’
He shrugged, the soldier’s promotion of no importance to him. In front of the command centre, a short distance away, a young woman knelt facing the guard post. Her arms hung limply at her sides; her head was tilted back, mouth open to catch the life-giving drops of rain. She’d knelt there since the p
re-dawn Zählappell: he’d watched her, on and off, all day.
Her long dress had once graced an altogether grander woman. Now her only possession, it was ragged and faded a muddy green; it clung to her thin, boyish figure, the lace at the neck incongruous against the yellow star sewn to her left breast. Her shorn hair was pimpled with bright droplets of rain like dew on grass. Her face was as mute as her voice, though blisters on her nose, cheekbones and the corners of her mouth testified to long hours working in the sun and made her look as if she were smiling. Rain streaked from her open eyes for she was far beyond tears. She lived at the whim of the camp officials, or her own Blockälteste, or the guard on this tower.
Her crime was sabotage. Working too slowly was sabotage, or fainting during roll call or having a missing button; according to the guards her sin was vomiting outside her barrack and women had been kicked to death for less.
A chill wind lifted her wet rags and slapped them against her skin. She didn’t move apart from the constant trembling of her body: it was death to move.
The soldier drew on his cigarette, the butt glowing, his rifle loaded and ready, as he watched the girl. ‘If I have to go to the latrines I’ll shoot the whore.’
His fists curled and uncurled at his sides. ‘I don’t feel like sleep tonight. You mind if I keep you company? If you need to run to the latrines I can watch the girl.’
The guard’s finger moved to the trigger.
He hadn’t spent months building trust to lose it now. ‘She’s not going to run far in that state, is she? Anyway, there’s no escape. I give you my word as a doctor. I won’t take my eyes off her.’
‘And my medicine?’
Kaolin was precious: better souls than this guard needed it. He weighed the benefits. ‘I’ll bring you kaolin, tomorrow. No-one need know.’
The guard rubbed his stomach and waved his rifle at the girl. ‘I’m going for a shit.’
‘No-one will realise you’ve gone.’
The man climbed quickly down the ladder: avoiding the bright pools of light, he made for the latrines at a shambling run.
The lights on the perimeter guard-towers illuminated the slight figure, alone in the mud like a collapsed scarecrow. The lights in the barracks went out one by one and deep shadows fingered closer. He would wait with her, try to keep her safe. It was a small gesture of resistance. Her courage touched him: her still figure epitomised everything that was pure and indestructible amid this relentless evil. He wished he could tell her that in her trial she was not alone.
It was eerie, isolated above the rows of barracks that stretched, seemingly without end, like rows of neatly-spaced dominoes awaiting a game with no winners. Lives without a future huddled in misery beneath the smoking ruin of their past, everything they loved gone: if man could make hell on earth this was surely it. Footsteps on the rungs of the ladder broke his reverie: the guard’s leer was an obscenity.
The girl kept her silence, kneeling against her will at the altar of evil: the slow night broken by wails and screams and sobs. At midnight the rain stopped. Somewhere above were stars. Somewhere, God watched this girl, this abomination of a place. Why did He do nothing? Why did He not care? What sin had they committed?
At three in the morning the barracks’ windows once more lit with a yellow glow and the camp echoed with the calls of Aufstehen… Wstać… Felkel… Get up… Zählappell. The girl raised her head and her eyes met his: they held the blank look of a Muselmann, one of the walking dead… He nodded to her, as if his willpower alone could help her endure, but her expression didn’t change. Was she dreaming of the ration of black bread, or the jealously-counted swallows of thin soup that she’d foregone the previous evening, or did she dream of some other, more distant reality?
Guards approached and his night’s companion shouldered his rifle, ready to go off-watch. The man accompanied him to the transit camp for Hungarian women, where he was expected for this morning’s selection. ‘Don’t forget that kaolin.’
The camp was alive with the noise of prisoners tumbling from their bunks, and muffled curses as they trod on one another in their haste to drink their ration of coffee, and wash at the faucets. The slick-wet earth was churned by hundreds of pairs of ill-fitting shoes as the women in the compound lined up in rows of five, the night’s dead and sick laid out in front of them. Death was no excuse to avoid being counted.
Guards deposited the girl beside him. She knelt where they left her. She’d missed her ration of coffee. Two women attempted to make her stand.
‘You have to try, Miriam.’
‘You must be at Zählappell.’
Miriam? This was the girl he’d urged to leave her baby daughter with her grandmother? He hadn’t recognised her. Had she known his face on the guard tower? Did she curse him for saving her for this?
The older woman stroked the rain tenderly from Miriam’s face. ‘Miriam, please…’ She turned to the younger woman. ‘Ilse, help me.’ They lifted her, and carried her to the lines of waiting women, supporting her between them.
He looked anxiously along the lines of shivering women in their thin dresses, assessing their health. Another train had arrived in the night. This morning’s selection would make room for fresh labour. As if God or Satan hadn’t yet finished with them, it began to rain again.
Lips moved in silent prayer. Did they pray for death or to live through the selection and another day’s work… and another night’s exhausted sleep, only to hear the dreaded Aufstehen… Wstać… Felkel… Get up… Wake up…
‘Wake up… wake up, Grandpa.’
He dropped the burnt-out stub of cigarette and knuckled sleep from his eyes. Zählappell…
Chapter Three
Walt locked the workshop door automatically, noticing only the lack of the small brass key. By the time he reached the Post Office in Northampton, and anonymity, it was raining heavily. The assistant stuck on the stamps and dropped four of the parcels into a sack.
Carrying the last parcel, he pushed open the door of the offices of Harris, Harris and Mason. The woodpecker-like tap of a typewriter stopped abruptly.
He approached the desk. ‘I have an appointment with Mr Harris, Senior. I’m early.’
The receptionist smiled, showing too-perfect teeth. ‘Mr Blundell?’
He nodded.
‘I’ll tell him you’re here.’ She showed him into a room with high windows: wet light spilled through but lit nothing. The fluorescent strip above the desk blinked and buzzed.
Mr Harris greeted him with a reassuring grip. ‘What can I do for you, Mr Blundell?’
He put his package on the mahogany desk. ‘I need you to keep this safe for me.’
‘That’s easily done.’
He fiddled with the lone key on the chain. ‘Four other packages will be forwarded to you in due course.’’
‘A similar size to this one?’
‘Identical. How long are you able to keep them all?’
‘How long did you have in mind?’
‘Ninety-nine years. By then all five should be in your possession.’
Mr Harris arched an eyebrow. ‘I can make arrangements for their future here. I can’t guarantee they’ll arrive. The firm could change hands… move premises… close down.’
‘That needn’t concern you.’
‘May I ask what’s in the packages?’
‘You can ask, Mr Harris.’
Mr Harris smiled and nodded. ‘Is there provision in your will regarding their disposal?’
He handed the solicitor an envelope. ‘The instructions are clear. The packages are to be opened in 2077. Auribus teneo lupum, Mr Harris. Call it an old man’s folly.’ In ninety-nine years, long after Nemesis had brought him to account, all those he loved would be dead.
***
Jane answered the door with a lighter heart. She’d been concerned about Walt. She was used to disturbed nights, he rarely slept well and never confided his worries, but recently he’d taken to locking himself in his workshop. O
nly last week she’d had to send Charlotte to fetch him for breakfast and she hadn’t been able to get in. Thankfully, whatever had been troubling him seemed to have faded.
The postman handed her a package, resealed and stuck over with official labels. ‘It’s come back return to sender. The address must’ve been rained on... it’s illegible, look.’
All she could make out was ornament on the customs label and something-land. Ireland? Walt’s mother’s family had originated in Ireland.
‘Non-waterproof ink. Good job it had a sender’s address inside or it’d be rattling round in our dead-letter department.’
She thanked him and put the box on the hall table. Walt would know where to send it.
A wail rose to full volume. ‘Granny… Lucy’s broken it.’
‘I wanted it…’
Charlotte and Lucy catapulted into the hall, one each end of a one-legged doll.
‘Now then, shush, both of you. Whose poor doll is this?’
‘It’s mine. She’s broken it.’
‘I’m sure Lucy didn’t mean to, Charlotte. Lucy, where’s your doll?’
‘Charlotte hid it.’
‘Shall we find Lucy’s doll, Charlotte, and ask Grandpa if he can mend yours?’ She picked up the parcel, before the twins hid or broke that as well, and stood on tiptoes to push it on the shelf above the front door by the electricity meter. It would be safe there. ‘Now, where were we, you little minxes? You’ve got me all muxed up like a bowl of flustered custard.’
***
Walt hurried into the garden at the sound of crying, visions, never far from the edge of his mind, crowding centre stage.
‘Grandpa, Charlotte’s fallen over.’
He brushed soil from Charlotte’s knees. ‘You need some of Granny’s magic cream, little one.’ He held Charlotte close and carried her into the kitchen.
Blue eyes looked into his. ‘Will the cream make it better, Grandpa?’
‘It will stop it becoming infected.’