by Robert Edric
‘It must be hard for her,’ he said eventually, hoping to distract her from these new thoughts.
‘She won’t talk about it. Even before the telegram, she said nothing. All she wants to do is remember everything good about him. On the one hand, she thinks everything’s going to have changed for the better, and on the other, she goes on and on about the way things were as though it was anything worth having in the first place.’ She checked herself at this sudden outburst, and he saw again the divides she repeatedly crossed, the opposing directions in which she was constantly being made to face.
‘I meant it’s going to be hard for her to adjust to having him around,’ he said.
‘She’ll cope,’ she said. ‘That’s what she does – she copes. Copes, and then tells you over and over how well she’s coping.’ It was the harshest thing yet he had heard her say about the woman, and he regretted even more having raised the subject.
After that, perhaps because she was conscious of having said too much to him, or of having revealed feelings she herself did not yet properly understand, she lay on the bank without speaking. She closed her eyes, and after several minutes of her silence, he wondered if she was sleeping.
He rose to leave her.
‘I wasn’t asleep,’ she said.
‘I have things to do.’ He gestured towards the site.
‘When shall I come and clean for you again?’ she said.
He moved so that his shadow ran over her face and the high sun no longer blinded her.
15
‘Is there a valid – an acceptable – distinction to be made, Captain Mercer, between, on the one hand, actually killing a man, and on the other, allowing a man to die when you remain convinced that some action on your part might have saved his life, or at the very least have improved his chances of survival until someone better able to save his life was able to reach him?’ Mathias kicked at a mound of clay-encrusted bottles turned up by one of the airfield diggers.
Beside him, both Mercer and Jacob paused at the remark.
Mercer let the lost rank pass. It occurred to him that Mathias had been so long among military men of one sort or another that he felt more comfortable using it; ‘Mister’ always sounded too formal in his hard English, derogatory almost.
Jacob shook his head in disbelief at the question.
It was clear to Mercer that Mathias was talking about himself, and that he had long considered asking the question. Until then, in the hour the three of them had been together, he had remained largely silent.
‘I suppose it would depend on the men and the circumstances,’ Mercer said, knowing how inadequate an answer this was, hoping to prompt Mathias’s own further explanation.
He had encountered the pair of them at the end of the runway and they had beckoned him to them. A group of Mathias’s fellow prisoners congregated at some distance, kicking a ball against one of the abandoned outer buildings of the airfield.
‘Just tell us,’ Jacob said, surprising Mercer by this bluntness, knowing that Mathias had hoped for a further degree of understanding and acceptance before being made to explain himself.
‘It was during our retreat from Vimont,’ he said. ‘One of my men, a boy really, was struck by several shell splinters in his face and chest. I put pressure pads on the worst of the wounds. His own field-dressing case was empty, filled with cigarettes. Several others stopped beside me. He’d only been with us a month, since the middle of May.’
‘What was his name?’ Jacob said. ‘Use his name.’
‘Kretschmer, his surname was Kretschmer. We all called him “Adolf”. For obvious reasons.’ He turned to Mercer. ‘He was very enthusiastic, you see. Keen to push you back into the Channel and then to chase you home over it. Having been hurriedly sent there, we did nothing but scramble away from the coast for a fortnight. Sleep and run, sleep and run. Through Falaise to the east. You were at our heels all the way. It became a joke to us – waiting for the order to regroup and counter-attack. We all knew it was never going to happen.’
‘It wasn’t him,’ Jacob said.
‘Wasn’t who?’
Jacob pointed to Mercer. ‘It wasn’t Captain Mercer coming at you across the waves.’
Now the word sounded sour in his mouth, and Mercer wondered why he had bothered with this pointless correction.
‘No, of course,’ Mathias said.
‘Go on,’ Mercer told him.
‘The wound in the boy’s neck—’
‘In “Adolf’s” neck,’ Jacob said.
‘The wound in his neck wouldn’t stop bleeding. Perhaps something vital had been severed, I don’t know. I stayed with him while others ran and rode past us. Someone threw me more bandages, but nothing else. I stupidly tried to give him water to drink, but he couldn’t swallow it and was forced to spit it out with the blood he was already choking on. He begged me not to leave him. Not to not let him die, just not to leave him. Shells were already falling far ahead of us.’
‘Your shells,’ Jacob said to Mercer.
‘Shut up,’ Mercer said, causing Jacob to smile.
‘And against his own pleas there were others from the men – men I knew far better – running past us. I shouted to ask if there was anyone else prepared to stop and help him, but few did little more than pause, regain their breath and run on. A shell landed on the road directly ahead of me. I was showered with dirt and stones. Four or five men lay dead. He was yelling by then, insofar as he could form the words through his screams and the splashing of his blood. I tried to stop an empty half-track, but the driver veered off the road to avoid me and carried on going. I remember there was a solitary woman in the back of it looking out at me. Then one of my own sergeants – a man I trusted – knelt beside me and asked to look at the boy’s wounds. I showed him. I believed that here, at last, was someone prepared to help me. But instead he said that the boy was already as good as dead, and that I would be too if I didn’t run. He pulled me to my feet. I remember I dropped the boy’s head and that it hit the surface of the road with a knock. I started running, barely resisting the sergeant, who was pulling my arm.’
‘What else could you reasonably do?’ Mercer said.
‘I could have stayed with him. I could have kept the pads pressed to his bleeding neck. I could have gathered more bandages. Like I said, I could perhaps have kept him alive long enough for someone else to help him.’
Jacob made a dismissive noise at hearing this.
‘It’s what I believed,’ Mathias said to him.
‘You still ran. You still saved your own skin. That sergeant wasn’t pulling you away. You were doing your own running. If you believe otherwise, then you’re fooling nobody but yourself.’
Mathias conceded this in silence.
‘And did he die?’ Mercer asked him.
Mathias shrugged.
‘So, for all you know, he might have been found and cared for and saved.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Jacob said disbelievingly. ‘First he tries to deceive himself, but cannot, and now you try to do the job for him and make an even bigger mess of it.’
‘You did what you could,’ Mercer told Mathias.
‘No,’ Jacob insisted. ‘He did as little as his conscience would allow.’
Mercer could still not understand the man’s hostility. ‘He could have run past without stopping in the first place,’ he said.
‘I agree,’ Jacob said. ‘And that would have been the more honest course of action. It is what you or I might have done under similar circumstances.’
‘I doubt it,’ Mercer said.
‘All this was when?’ Jacob asked Mathias.
‘The end of June, two years ago.’
‘Then it is what I would have done,’ Jacob said.
‘Did you ever try to find out what happened to the boy?’ Mercer said, his words intended only to maintain a distance between the two men. Jacob showed no other signs of hostility; nor did Mathias signal his defensiveness by anything other than wha
t he said.
‘Impossible. I was taken prisoner two days later. The sergeant, too. He told me to stop worrying about the boy.’
‘The soldier,’ Jacob said.
‘Few others had liked him,’ Mathias said. ‘He was too earnest, too keen.’
‘Because they all knew the invasion was coming and that it would prove unstoppable.’
‘Perhaps. But they stayed and fought until the time came to withdraw.’
Mercer waited for Jacob to say perhaps ‘to run’, but he said nothing. Instead, he watched Mathias closely, and seeing this, Mercer better understood the nature and purpose of his testing hostility.
Jacob put a hand on Mathias’s arm. ‘You were no more responsible for his death than Captain Mercer here, sitting in the Italian sun under a lemon tree.’
‘Only for not having tried harder to save him,’ Mathias said.
‘And do you blame yourself more than all those others who ran straight past you, or does their indifference absolve them of all responsibility? How many other corpses did you run past during those days that might have still been living men? Perhaps they were all alive. Perhaps you might have saved them all.’ His hand remained on Mathias’s arm.
‘He’s right,’ Mathias said to Mercer, wanting to ensure that no ill-will now existed between Mercer and Jacob, and to suggest to Mercer that he would not have raised the subject in Jacob’s company if he had not been prepared for his companion’s honest, if scathing, remarks.
A cry went up from the distant footballers, and all three men turned to look. It was unclear, at that distance, what had happened.
‘Goal,’ Jacob said.
There was no apparent order to the distant game – every man chased the ball in whatever direction it was kicked. A solitary figure stood against the building awaiting their assault on him.
‘That’s Roland,’ Mathias said. ‘Conserving his energy.’
‘For what?’ Jacob said. ‘More digging?’
‘For his great plan of escape.’ He stared at the man.
‘Seriously?’ Mercer asked him.
‘No, not seriously,’ Mathias said, but too quickly to sound convincing.
The mob of men raced towards the building and the single figure was lost to view.
‘Perhaps when you return home, perhaps then you’ll be able to find out what happened to the boy,’ Mercer suggested.
‘I doubt learning that he survived, that he lived, would make him feel any better about what he did,’ Jacob said. He leaned back on his elbows and looked up into the sky.
‘Whatever happened, he gave the boy some comfort,’ Mercer said.
This thought seemed not to have occurred to Mathias.
‘Saint Mathias,’ Jacob said, and hearing this, Mercer’s first instinct was to shout at him to stop being so deliberately and pointlessly provocative, but before he could speak, Mathias himself said:
‘The apostle chosen to replace Judas Iscariot.’
‘Saint Mathias the Remorseful,’ Jacob added.
‘That’s me,’ Mathias said, and the two men burst into laughter, leaving Mercer feeling excluded by the sudden intimacy of this exchange.
‘Was there a Saint Mathias?’ he asked.
‘Apparently,’ Jacob said. ‘Though some doubt exists in our half-remembered schooling as to the exact circumstances of his beatification.’
‘Only that Judas Iscariot was in some way involved,’ Mathias said. ‘I knew none of this until our mournful friend here pointed it out to me. I doubt my parents had the faintest idea. My uncle Mathias was killed at Verdun. We held his memory sacred, but only at a local monument; his body was never recovered.’
‘Remorse is not necessarily the self-indulgent commodity Jacob here would have us believe,’ Mercer said.
Jacob lowered himself backwards off his elbows and slowly applauded the remark.
‘Ignore him,’ Mathias said.
‘Impossible,’ Mercer said, loud enough for Jacob to hear.
‘Bravo,’ Jacob said.
In the distance, a further cry went up from the foot-ballers, and immediately afterwards, a siren sounded, calling them back to their work.
‘Full-time,’ Jacob said.
Mathias rose and brushed the earth and grass from his legs. ‘Go home,’ he said to Jacob, who shielded his eyes to look up at him. ‘Walk slowly and rest often.’
‘Yes, mother,’ Jacob said.
‘Tell him,’ Mathias said to Mercer, but Mercer knew as well as any of them that it was beyond him to tell the man to do anything. He repeated Mathias’s words and Jacob rose from where he lay.
The siren sounded again and Mathias started running back to the others. He paused to call to Jacob that he would see him soon. Jacob raised his hand, but said nothing. Mathias resumed running.
‘How will I cope when he is finally made to return home?’ Jacob said, jokingly, but with genuine concern in his voice – as much, Mercer imagined, for Mathias as for himself.
‘I ought to be getting back, too,’ Mercer said.
‘No man who dies in battle dies well,’ Jacob said. ‘Henry V.’
‘I know,’ Mercer told him. ‘And any man who imagines war to be anything but a bloody, dirty business is a fool.’
‘The boy probably died in his arms. The sergeant will have seen it, even if Mathias chose not to.’
Mercer doubted this, but said, ‘Probably.’
On the runway, Mathias finally reached the others, and he drew them to him as though an invisible cord had been pulled through them.
16
Two days before the anticipated return of Elizabeth Lynch’s husband, and as he again awaited the arrival of the lorries, a man arrived on a motorcycle and stood in front of the tower calling up for Mercer.
Mercer went out as the rider was unfastening his helmet and removing his heavy gauntlets. The man saluted him, and Mercer returned the gesture.
‘I’ve been sent from Transport to let you know they won’t be coming,’ he said. He would clearly have preferred a written message to hand over than to have found the unwelcome words himself.
‘Who won’t be coming? The workers?’
‘Transport wants a full inspection and service of the lorries. Turned up late last night. Got to be done, apparently. No arguments.’
‘How long will it take?’
‘Day at the most,’ the man said. ‘Two at the outside.’
Mercer imagined the celebrations as the gathered workers were informed. ‘And in the meanwhile?’
‘In the meanwhile what?’ The rider looked around him at the workings. The site still looked more like one in the process of being demolished than one undergoing reconstruction.
‘What am I supposed to do here?’
‘Carry on as normal, I suppose, but without them,’ the man said, shrugging.
Mercer guessed then that this messenger knew the workers and that he had already seen them prior to his journey from the town.
‘Tell Transport that I want them back tomorrow.’
‘Not very likely,’ the man said. ‘Friday.’ Mercer shook his head.
‘Look on the bright side,’ the man said. ‘Anything found wrong with the lorries, it’s bound to be fixed by Monday.’
Assuming the mechanics were prepared to work over the weekend, Mercer thought, which was unlikely. ‘Are there any instructions for me?’ he said. ‘For what I might do without a workforce?’
‘Nobody said anything to me,’ the man said. He lit a cigarette and unfastened the top of his jacket. ‘What you building here, anyway?’
Mercer started to explain to him about the new Coastguard Station.
‘That the sea, then?’ the man said, interrupting him.
‘That’s the sea,’ Mercer said.
And the man, detecting this hostile note, said, ‘I was only asking, mate. Only trying to show some interest,’ and he flicked away what remained of his cigarette, pulled on his helmet and fastened it, then pushed his hands into the gaunt
lets, doubling their size. He sat on his bike revving the engine for several minutes, and those few women who had not emerged from the houses at his appearance came out now and stood watching him. He left Mercer and rode zigzagging over the uneven ground towards them.
Mercer watched as the younger women gathered around him. One of these climbed onto the seat behind him and he rode her in a jolting circle. He offered the same to the others, but no one accepted. He sat with them for several minutes longer before finally returning to Mercer and pulling up close in front of him. A cloud of dust settled around the two men.
The rider said something which Mercer did not hear over the noise of the engine – something which, apparently, required no answer, for the instant the man had finished speaking, he turned and left again, raising his hand to the women as he went.
Mercer searched the small group beside the houses. Neither Elizabeth Lynch nor Mary was among them. And only then, as the noise of the bike faded in the distance, did it occur to him that they might have heard the rider upon his arrival and imagined him to come in connection with the returning man. He wished he could have gone to them and explained the messenger’s mission without this lingering audience.
17
At midday, he left the deserted site and walked to the airfield. Here, too, it seemed as though little was happening.
He was walking along the centre of the half-demolished runway when someone called to him. A man rose from behind a roofless bunker and called again. He recognized Mathias and went to him.
Upon reaching him, Mercer found Mathias in the company of six others, all of them sitting in the shade of the bunker wall out of the sun, their picks and hammers scattered beside them.
Mathias made a brief introduction. The men were all prisoners of war, some awaiting their repatriation, and some, like Mathias, who had applied for permission to stay, and whose futures had not yet been decided. All of them spoke some English; all of them knew who he was.