House of Doors

by Chaz Brenchley

  ‘It’s hard,’ he said, and she was astonished that he might find anything hard, except the need to admit it that he did. ‘Heroism isn’t meant to happen this way. It’s supposed to be spontaneous and, and individual, that lone impulse to courage. Not calculated, worked for, trained in.’

  ‘And is that what the major’s doing, training you to be heroes?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. He is.’

  We thought you were already, you young pilots. How much more is he asking of you, how much more do you have to give?

  She did have to say that in the end, as it happened, just to get him moving again when he seemed to have stalled. ‘To us, you know, you are heroes. You saved the country. Churchill himself said so.’

  He shook his head. ‘It . . . doesn’t seem enough, you know? To us. A few weeks, a few months maybe for the lucky ones if that’s what you call luck. Watching our friends die, not quite dying ourselves but coming close, near as damn it, leaving ourselves like this –’ a gesture of his good hand at everything that was not good, his other hand, his face – ‘and what now, we just sit back and wear our courage on our faces – that’s a quotation, I think, I can’t remember who but it’s all too horribly apt – and let others go off to fight the rest of the war?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, vainly, hopelessly. ‘Yes.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not that. We can’t. We don’t . . . we don’t know how to live with ourselves.’

  And if not now – she thought, and he knew – they never would. If not in this world, then where? What would they do, when the war was taken from them?

  Apparently they didn’t want to think about that. Or else they had thought about it, and had turned convulsively away from the prospect.

  Had turned back to the war. To Major Black.

  Which meant running around doing exercises in the dark, apparently. Airmen who couldn’t fly, they’d need a new objective. But if they couldn’t fly, neither could they fight. Surely? One-handed or claw-handed, twisted all out of shape, they couldn’t fit the military machine any more, they weren’t apt parts.

  There was something they could do, and he didn’t want to say it. She didn’t want to hear it. She was trembling already on the brink of understanding, one step short.

  There were German uniforms upstairs. Luftwaffe uniforms, she realized suddenly, a dawning light that only added to the fog of mystery. They were training like soldiers and dressing up like the airmen they could no longer be, the enemy airmen they never were, and . . .

  And whether this was confession or interrogation or neither quite of those, it was interrupted. Not by the cook, who was busy weighing his dough-mountain into slabs, working those one in each hand into perfect coherent ovoids, tossing them into loaf tins and lining them up along the back of the range. She wanted to watch him at work, such useful work; there was something infinitely restful about it, seeing raw stuff made into meals.

  Better that than watch Tolchard writhe on the hook of his great secret.

  Far better that than hear footsteps on the stairs behind her, lift her head and turn around and see another figure dressed as the boy was beside her, only that this was a man in every way that mattered: brisk and neat and confident, quietly compelling.

  Compelling Tolchard to his feet just with a glance.

  Extending that to take in her too, the two of them together.

  Cocking an eyebrow and smiling without humour and saying, ‘Excuse me, Sister, I rather need my man back. And you, lad, silent exercise, for the rest of the day. You know you need the practice.’

  Tolchard opened his mouth, perhaps just to acknowledge the order, yes sir – and swallowed it like a good soldier, saluted without a word, glanced sideways at her with no more than the hint of a rueful shrug.

  Well, but Ruth was not subject to this discipline. She had her own place here, and she meant to assert it. She wasn’t to be cowed by military manners.

  She said, ‘Excuse me, but – Major Black, is it?’

  ‘It is.’

  I do not like thee, Major Black. She had known that already. It was almost inherent. Whatever there was that she didn’t understand yet, this much was clear, that he took broken boys – her patients, barely mended – and flung them back into the hurly of war, and no, she would never be inclined to like that in a man. Even where she might acknowledge its necessity. Which was, she thought, not here.

  She seemed to be standing up, though she hadn’t quite meant to do that. No matter.

  She said, ‘Is that . . . meant for a punishment, your putting him under silence? A punishment for speaking to me?’

  ‘No, Sister, not at all. Not even a discouragement. I train men to kill, not to exhibit nice manners. Except where nice manners will bring them closer to their targets, that is. No, but men like Tolchard, with a voice that works and a habit of using it? They need to learn not to do that, or they’ll give themselves away. So: they all have silent days, you’ll find. And it’s nothing to do with you. Cook, he seems to have forgotten it, but I sent Tolchard down for more milk and half a stone of sugar . . .’

  A minute later he was leaving, with his jug and his sugar and his errant boy in tow. Ruth found herself still on her feet, almost put under silence herself by the sheer impact of the man. She subsided slowly into her chair, chased breadcrumbs around her plate with a mute forefinger, felt her head reeling with ideas that she really didn’t want to consider.

  She had it all now, she thought, more or less. German uniforms, and wounded men – visibly, extravagantly wounded men, badged with their honour – and learning to kill in their new conformations, hand to hand, the ways they never had. Exercising in the dark, acquiring what new skills they could in what time they were allowed. Learning not to speak, not to give themselves away.

  There must be as many ruined airmen in Germany as there were here. There too they would be heroes, giving their youth and health and beauty to the Reich. A brutally scarred face and a Luftwaffe uniform would almost be a pass in themselves; no official would look too closely or ask too many questions. A scarred voice-box would be excuse enough for a lack of fluency in the language, or indeed the absence of any language at all.

  There was a deliberate little noise at her elbow: the cook, bringing her another cup of tea. She nodded her thanks, then frowned, remembered that she was not herself under a burden of silence, and said, ‘What does he want all that sugar for?’ Half a stone was too much, a nonsense too far. And sugar was rationed, precious, not to be used lightly even here, where there were real eggs and butter for the asking.

  ‘Improvised hand grenades,’ the cook said softly. ‘He takes all the bottles in the house and fills them with petrol and sugar and soap flakes, stuffs their mouths with rags for a wick and sends the men out into the woods to see how far they can lob one. The colonel won’t have them in the courtyard.’

  ‘The colonel lets them shoot off rifles in the house.’

  ‘Yes. It’s one of the compromises they came to.’

  It probably didn’t seem so much, she thought, a little wildly, after that first great compromise. I’ll patch these boys together and do what I can to make them presentable, give them new faces and hands that almost work; then you can send them off to Germany as saboteurs, assassins, what you will. After that, what did it matter if there were a few bullet holes in the plasterwork?

  ‘Doesn’t the owner mind?’

  ‘Mind? No, he says he doesn’t mind. So long as they can find a use for the place. I . . . don’t believe he loves D’Espérance, but he would like to see it useful.’

  She didn’t see how anyone could love it. Too big, too ugly, all manner of wrong. But still: a house, and a history. A story to be told. This latest chapter she thought another kind of wrong. Done to the house, not by it.

  Still. A house ill made, ill treated; it made a fit breeding ground for something more wrong yet, or she thought so.

  ‘It’s a suicide mission,’ she said bluntly. Heroism isn’t meant to happen thi
s way, but of course Tolchard would snatch at it, he and all his kind. Nature or nurture, young men will be snatching. Offer them a glimpse of glory, they will always want a handful.

  ‘Many suicide missions,’ the cook said, topping up his own great tin mug of tea. ‘But yes, largely. Without the name, perhaps, but very few of them expect to make it home again when once they’re sent away. They’ve all lived with that same expectation, of course. For months now, for years some of them. Every time they took off, they felt the hand of death on their shoulder.’

  ‘They didn’t seek it out. Shake hands with death, make a friend of him.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but can you blame them? Now?’

  Of course not. Young and strong and healthy, in love with life, they had nevertheless hurled themselves into the air day after day in machines of wood and wire, in the frenzy of war, in the teeth of terror. Hurt and broken, marked for life and all their beauties ruined, why on earth would they hesitate now?

  It was like asking what do they have to live for? And there ought to be many answers to that, and she could list them all and believe none of them, just as the boys most likely could and did themselves, on their own accounts.

  She was afraid that they would have understood Peter better than she did herself.

  And still, still it was a wrongness, just one more, and she was here to perpetuate it. To make them better soldiers, fitter sooner.

  Perhaps that was just war, in its inevitable wrongness. But the tea tasted foul suddenly, all mud on her tongue. A soldier’s brew, not for her. She said, ‘Were you in the last lot?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I was just too young.’ She heard just too late, and a world of regret. Perhaps that was her imagination. But he was a man, he had been young, no doubt he would have been snatching.

  Tired of them all, she stood and carried her plate and cup to join a pile of crockery by the sink. ‘Thank you, Cook. I’ll take myself out from under your feet now.’

  It was an opportunity, the opening to a game of platitudes and manners, and he let it by. Just a smile and a nod, and he had turned away already.

  Too young for the last lot, she thought, he must still be young enough for this lot. Barely forty yet. And yet, not in uniform beneath his proper whites; no kind of soldier, with his hair that long on his neck. Probably that would be another question better left unasked.

  With time on her hands and the sun just rising, another dawn reluctantly seen in, Ruth swapped her shoes and went walking in the grounds. Not far and not fast, purposeless, adrift: only cherishing the little things, immediacy. The crunch of gravel beneath her heels and the bite of chill against her skin, these last minutes of solitude before the house woke and her day began again. One day and then one more, and more in brisk succession. Terminable days, endurable, with an end in sight. She could do this.

  She must do this. She had no choices now, or none that she was prepared to countenance.

  Six months.

  Horse noises, horse smells from the stable block couldn’t distract her yet. She was saving that for a time of greater need. It was sure to come, some day when she was desperate to lose herself; when she would relish nothing more than the chance to overlay recent cruel history with older memories, old pleasures resurgent. An earlier edition, Ruth Elverson.

  Ruthie Elverson. They used to call her Ruthie. No one did that any more. When did that stop, when did it change?

  When she married, of course. When everything stopped and started again, all new; before . . .

  Before. Yes. When I had a life, a husband that I loved. Before I lost him.

  She shook her head, she raised her head and stepped out determinedly, suddenly weary of this self-reproach. She had had a life, a good life, and had lost it; it was not her fault. These things happen, especially in wartime. There were many in her situation. Most of them blamed Hitler. Some would bring it closer to home, to the generals and politicians of their own side, the men who made the bad choices that saw other men get killed. Not many brought it closer yet, to their own men, that idiot, standing right in the way of a bullet, when his mates on either side of him were fine . . .

  Ruth could blame Peter, very easily, if she weren’t so entirely busy blaming herself. Perhaps that was why she did it, not to allow herself the room to blame him instead. It was better to be guilty than accusing. She could live with it; he didn’t have to.

  Still. Accusing herself was morbid, dwelling in the accusation was worse. Unhealthy, self-defeating, inutile. Making herself useful was her last resort; making herself ill would be a last betrayal. This place was tailor-made for Sister Taylor, in her extremity: good food, country air, all the work she could wish for. Someone else to accuse. I do not like thee, Major Black.

  So. Head up, step out. Step away from misery. Not to leave it behind, but not to wrap herself in it either. Not to allow herself so much indulgence. Brisk and brutal sister, as impatient with herself as with her patients. She could do that. Yes.

  A paved terrace ran all the length of the house, behind a low stone balustrade. Steps led down into the layered gardens, all the way down to the lake. She might go that far, she had the time. There was an unappealing mist above the water, but the sun would see to that soon enough, and her other choice was to patrol the rows of vegetables on the terraces between, where lawns and flower beds had been virtuously dug under. She could pass the cabbages in review, practise her strictness on the radishes, inspect the leeks for grubbiness . . .

  She could, apparently, make an idiot of herself, but only in her head. Blessedly she hadn’t paraded any of that nonsense aloud. There was nothing for a rising stranger to catch hold of as he loomed up from the soil at her side.

  Just for a moment, she believed that literally, absolutely. She thought he was a spirit of earth, compounded of root and rock and tilth together.

  Then she saw the mud in the creases of his face, or rather his face beneath its mud. Dark curling hair, too long, and brown fatigues without insignia. Mud on his hands, mud on his boots.

  ‘In this light,’ he said, ‘it’s easier to hoe with my fingers. The little lettuces have a better chance.’ And then, ‘Good morning.’ He said that too, belatedly. ‘I hope I did not startle you too badly?’

  ‘No, no,’ she said, lying absolutely. Recovering herself, finding just how much there was to recover, how far she’d startled, how clearly he must have seen. No matter. Brisk and brutal. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier yet to wait for better light?’

  ‘It would, but I have other duties all the day. I give German lessons to the gentlemen.’

  His English was almost perfect, but strongly marked. Could he be a prisoner of war? Luftwaffe, perhaps, shot down and lucky, parachute and capture. There had been small opportunity else for prisoners on this side of the Channel, this side of the war. But it would be a breach of the conventions, she was almost certain, to make a prisoner work this way. And why would he aid the enemy?

  Besides, this man’s face was all too classically Jewish. He might have modelled for a cartoon, or for Disraeli. He must be a refugee, a civilian, a volunteer.

  ‘My name is Lothar Braun,’ he said. ‘I apologize, I am too dirty to shake your hand; but perhaps you would not like that anyway.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense. Why in the world should I dislike it? Good manners are not the exclusive preserve of the English.’

  ‘Perhaps. But I am German, and you are at war with my people.’

  ‘Not with yours, I think, Mr Braun.’

  ‘Well. I am Jewish, true, and some people dislike that also. But I am still a German, and that makes trouble enough over here. I am an intern, obliged to this place. For my own protection, they said; and for my safety, I am forbidden the town. My accent makes too much discomfort, they said. They mean that people will attack me, they think. For being smart, perhaps, for running away in time. So, I must plant cabbages for you, and teach your young mute men the German they will never speak. Two jobs, so I must start this early. And you?’

&n
bsp; ‘Oh, I’m just new here. Not sleeping well, my first day. I’m so sorry, I didn’t introduce myself. Ruth Elverson – I’m sorry, I mean Sister Taylor. But not all our young men are mute. Some of them must be learning to speak German, not just to understand it?’

  ‘Some, yes. Have you met Flying Officer Tolchard? That one never stops speaking, in any language he can achieve. Unhappily, his achievement is marked by more enthusiasm than aptitude. His accent is atrocious, and his grasp of grammar is slapdash. Slapdash at the best. I might say harum-scarum,’ and he frowned, all stern teacher despite the dirt he stood up in.

  ‘Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.’ They were both smiling somewhere, she thought, internally. She might be the more transparent. Relief bubbled up inside her like spring water through grass, all unexpected. ‘So may I take it that young Tolchard is not a prime candidate to be sent away on secret missions?’

  A shrug was the best of her answer, the most that he could apparently give her. ‘If it were up to me, he would not be a candidate at all. I would keep him here, for the greater morale of all. From the colonel to the cook. But –’ another shrug, another kind of shrug – ‘up to me it is not. I have no voice in this. I am the opposite of voice; I am a prisoner here.’

  ‘Oh, not a prisoner, surely?’

  ‘In all but name. I stay because they say I must. What else would you call this? In fact I would stay of my own will, but they make sure of it. There are guards on every road. Volunteers can walk away; I am too useful to be allowed to do so. And I may be an exile, a refugee, but I am still a German. Not trusted, and not safe.’

  Ruth didn’t want either part of that to be true, but of course they both were. She wanted to apologize for her country, for its people, but couldn’t quite find the words. ‘My enemy’s enemy may indeed be my friend,’ she said instead, ‘but it’s hard sometimes to be certain.’

  Even her voice sounded uncertain, even to herself.

  For herself, she abruptly wanted Tolchard to fail and fail, every test they gave him. She wanted to salvage, to preserve. To keep. Something of what she valued in men, in mankind, in England, she wanted to see it kept, not all flung into the furnace of war, and Tolchard seemed suddenly to have become a symbol of it all.