by Robert Edric
‘How soon were you able to go in search—’
‘In search of Anna?’
The remark made Mercer cautious. ‘I was going to say in search of anyone who had been with her when she died.’
‘No – it was Anna I went in search of. Anna. Of course, she no longer existed. I knew that. I knew she had died. I was kept isolated for a further twelve days until my own recovery was secured. I weighed almost three stones less then than I do now.’
Mercer deliberately did not lower his gaze over Jacob’s wasted body and limbs.
‘Imagine that. A walk of fifty yards and I needed to sit down and rest for an hour. I went in search of Anna’s ghost. I went in search of all the places she had ever been in the camp. I sought out the planks upon which she had slept, the chairs upon which she might have sat. I sought out the door handles her hands might have turned, the panes of glass through which she might have once looked. I searched for the plates from which she might have eaten, the cloths that might have bandaged her feet. I sought out all those others who had known her and who had been unable to keep their promise to me. I filled all the empty spaces she had left behind her. I walked upon her ground, I breathed her air.’ He fell silent.
‘And was there much of her left to find?’ Mercer said.
‘Plenty,’ Jacob said proudly. ‘I found everything. Everything I searched for, I found. Only she was missing.’
Mercer remained wary of what Jacob was telling him, uncertain where these breathless revelations might lead.
But Jacob had finished talking, and he leaned back where he sat, his eyes closed, a look of contentment on his face. He wiped a hand across his wet mouth.
‘I’m pleased there was so much left for you to find,’ Mercer said, expecting Jacob merely to nod his acknowledgement and for them both to know that this difficult conversation was at last over. But instead, Jacob sat forward until his head was close to his knees, where he held it in his hands, and began gently to convulse.
Mercer rose. ‘I’ll leave you,’ he said.
‘“Oh, my poor bloody boys”,’ Jacob repeated, this time perfectly mimicking the man’s accent, his fingers tightening and growing pale where they gripped his head.
36
Two days later a strong wind blew in from the sea and work on the site became impossible. Clouds of dust and sand enveloped the men and the machinery. Sand covered the road in a perfectly corrugated pattern – the pattern left behind by an ebbing tide; it collected in scalloped mounds against everything in its path. And as the wind rose, it started to rain, lightly at first, but then with a sudden ferocity that had the workers running for cover, and which quickly turned the whole site into a quagmire. A shallow skim of water lay over everything, through which only the mounds of rubble and the supply stacks now rose. This heavy rain lasted several hours, and by the time it slackened and the wind finally dropped, it was too late to resume work.
Waiting until the men had gone – and unwilling to reveal to them his frustration at another day lost – Mercer made a tour of inspection to assess the extent of the flooding.
He was dismayed to see how quickly and completely the rain had filled all the shallow excavations, and how even the deeper ones now held at least a foot of water. He knew how slowly these might empty if left to drain naturally, and how much worse the problem might suddenly become were a high tide to fill those channels surrounding the site. He saw again what a precarious balance was struck there between the water rising from below, the rain and the comings and goings of the sea. In the wider scheme of things, the land was little more than a thin pad of absorbent tissue, never completely dry except in its uppermost inches or where it had been raised, and then only during the height of summer, which was now long past.
He calculated that an additional two days would be needed to pump clear the most vital of the excavations and to allow the ground to dry out around those wallbases already laid. He saw how considerably less appealing a wall rising from water would look to the men about to build them higher.
Reaching the road and turning back to the tower, he came upon Daniels and another man.
He told them what he was doing, what he had found.
Neither man shared his concern at the flooding.
‘Happens every year,’ Daniels said. ‘You soon learn which drains and dykes fill and which don’t. We know, by and large, which ones to keep clear.’ He raised the narrow spade he held, its blade balled with tan-coloured clay.
Both men agreed that the first of the early autumn storms did not usually arrive for another month, at the start of October.
‘Soon,’ the man beside Daniels said, ‘the mists will start, and then you’ll know that the good days have gone for good. When winter comes here it only knocks once.’ He was deadly serious in making this announcement, and Mercer and Daniels exchanged a glance.
‘What happens at the houses?’ Mercer said.
‘Happens?’ Daniels said. ‘They stand it as best they can. Like rocks having another layer stripped from them. Look at them, they’ve been neglected for so long now by the Light men, and with the war and everything, another few years of this and they’ll fall down of their own accord.’ He knew as well as Mercer did that the houses would not survive even that short time and spoke only for the benefit of the other man, whom he introduced to Mercer as Riley.
Mercer wondered if any of these vague and pessimistic predictions had been incorporated into the Trinity House calculations; it would certainly appear to make more sense to demolish buildings already weakened and considered unfit for habitation.
‘We could have told you which smaller gutters to keep clear,’ Daniels said, indicating the shallow flooding beside which they stood. ‘An hour’s work and you could have avoided all this.’
‘They won’t work in the rain,’ Mercer said.
‘How else are you going to know what’s running and what’s blocked?’ Riley said. Both he and Daniels were saturated from head to foot. Water dripped from their fingers and cuffs, though neither man seemed to notice this.
‘I don’t think common sense plays much part in their reasoning,’ Mercer said.
Daniels told him where the nearby drains had filled and then backed up into the excavations. If they were cleared now, he suggested, then the water would drain away during the night, leaving only that in the deeper holes to be pumped out in the morning.
Mercer wondered if he was offering to do the work. The sun had set by then, but there was still sufficient light to see by. Then Riley said that if all three of them did the work, it would only take an hour. He left them and started hacking at a mound of brambles which had grown over the closest channel.
Mercer and Daniels joined him and began work on clearing the drain.
This was finished in a matter of minutes and they watched as the risen water started to flow swiftly away. Then Daniels kicked down the pipe at the end of a second, shallower channel and the water flowed even faster. He pointed out where several of the flooded excavations were joined to a single drain. They worked together on other courses, and within an hour water flowed from them all. Mercer calculated that half the following day’s work had been done.
They stood for a short while longer watching the water flow.
When Riley suggested fetching lanterns and unblocking more of the culverts, Mercer said they had done enough. But it was a natural thing for the men of the place to want to do after a storm, and only when Mercer compromised and told them to show him on his charts which drains to clear the following day, did they finally accede to his entreaties to stop working.
Now all three of them were soaked and caked in mud. Mercer insisted on them accompanying him to the tower, where he could lay out his charts for them, and where he might find something with which to reward their efforts. Neither man had asked for any payment.
The quickest way back was along the road, taking the three of them close to the houses, where some of the others, including Lynch, Mary and her mother, now
stood and looked out over the sodden surroundings.
‘He’ll want to know what we’ve been doing,’ Daniels said in a low voice to Mercer.
As the three of them approached, Lynch left his wife and daughter and came to the road, splashing through the water rather than skirting it.
‘We’ve been unblocking drains,’ Daniels said to him. He neither slowed in his step nor turned to acknowledge any of the watching others.
‘None of my business what you’ve been up to,’ Lynch said, feigning surprise. He walked alongside them in a half-march, his arm brushing Mercer’s.
‘We’re going to show him the outflow channels on his maps,’ Riley said, his voice betraying his concern at this sudden appearance of Lynch.
‘So, if you don’t mind …’ Mercer said, his own conviction strengthened by Daniels’s presence.
‘So if I don’t mind what?’
‘Leaving us to get on with it.’
‘“Us” is it?’ Lynch said. ‘You working for him now, are you?’
‘Leave it, Lynch,’ Daniels said loudly. He stopped suddenly and turned to face Lynch, who stopped a step later, his face inches from Daniels’s.
Lynch held up his hands. ‘Free country,’ he said, smiling. ‘Been cooped up all day in the rain. Stuck in that poky little box with her and the kids. You telling me now that I can’t walk on the road?’
‘Please yourself,’ Daniels told him. ‘Just stop trying to stick your nose in where it’s not wanted.’ He stood six inches taller than Lynch.
‘What, so just the three of you are going back for a spot of supper, are you, all pals together? Going to be washing each other down and drying each other off?’ By then Lynch was playing to the onlookers, his wife and daughter included. Several of the men in the small crowd laughed.
Mary and her mother stood close to their door, unwilling to come out on to the wet ground.
Encouraged by the laughter and the calls of these others, Lynch said, ‘Next thing you know, you’ll all be sitting round sharing old Army stories, getting all tearful over—’
Unable to restrain himself any longer, Daniels grabbed Lynch by his collar and drew back his fist ready to hit him in the face. Lynch locked his own hands around Daniels’s forearm, struggling for breath.
‘No,’ Mercer shouted.
Beside him, Riley took several paces away.
Daniels stood for several seconds longer before releasing his grip and lowering his fist. He stepped back from Lynch.
Lynch coughed and spat on the ground, leaning forward, his hands on his knees as he regained his breath.
It was clear to both Mercer and Daniels that each of these gestures was exaggerated, and that they were again for the benefit of the watching crowd. But despite one of the women calling out to ask Lynch if he was hurt, no one came to his assistance.
Eventually, Lynch stood upright, sucked in and blew out several times. Seeing that no one had come forward, he called for everyone to stay where they were. His eyes never left Daniels.
‘Save your breath,’ Daniels said. ‘No one’s coming.’ He leaned forward slightly so that no one else might hear him.
Then Mercer said to Lynch, ‘I regret that happening. Not for your sake, but for theirs.’ He indicated Elizabeth Lynch and Mary.
‘They’ll get over it,’ Lynch said immediately, his voice a snarl. ‘In fact, seeing as how you’re so concerned about them, I’ll do all I can to help them get over it. You’d think they might at least have come to see if I was all right. Three against one – not very fair that, is it?’ He spat again, and this time the phlegm hit Mercer’s boot. ‘Sorry about that.’ He rubbed his throat where Daniels’s hand had been.
‘You had it coming,’ Daniels told him.
‘Not from you, I didn’t.’ He turned to Riley. ‘You think that, too, do you?’
Riley lowered his head.
‘I’m talking to you. Answer me,’ Lynch shouted.
‘No,’ Riley said, his head still down.
‘Then you want to be careful who your friends are. You and me are going to be here for a long time yet. Not like some. Besides which’ – Lynch paused and turned to those watching – ‘you never know what kind of company you might be keeping.’
But few understood the remark, and no one laughed.
‘Jerries and Jew-boys he’s had in there,’ Lynch said. ‘Never has none of us in for afternoon tea, but they can come and go at all hours as they please. Makes you wonder what this war was all about.’
Some of the onlookers finally warmed to this and there were a few shouted remarks in support of what Lynch said.
‘If you’ve got something to say to me, then say it,’ Mercer told him.
‘He wants to know if I’ve got something to say to him,’ Lynch shouted.
Mercer saw the impossibility of conducting any discussion under those circumstances: everything that might now be said or done would have considerably more impact on the watching woman and girl than on Lynch himself. It was another of his pointless yet deliberate confrontations, and one from which he, Lynch, had again gained the greatest advantage.
Daniels took a step back towards him.
‘Leave him,’ Mercer said.
Daniels looked hard at Lynch for a moment and then turned and walked away.
‘You’ll turn your back on me one time too many,’ Lynch said, his voice now little more than a hiss.
‘I know,’ Daniels said, but without turning. ‘And it’s the only way you’ll be brave enough to do anything about it.’ He and Mercer continued walking to the tower.
Riley remained standing at the side of the road.
‘Better get running after them,’ Lynch said to him. Mercer turned at this. It was clear by then that Riley had no intention of returning to the tower, and so Mercer said to him, ‘There’s no need to come. Go home and get cleaned up. Thank you for everything, for your help and advice.’
‘See,’ Lynch said to the man. ‘You’re not wanted any more. Surplus to requirements. You’ve got your hands dirty for him and now he’s telling you to bugger off. I hope he paid you enough.’
There was no way Mercer could say anything more to the man without Lynch seizing on it to prolong Riley’s anxiety at being so suddenly exposed between the two of them.
Seeing this, Lynch shouted to Mercer, ‘What – lost for one of your long, clever words?’
Daniels went back to his companion and spoke to him. They shook hands briefly, and then Riley crossed the road back to his home while Daniels and Mercer stood and watched him go, ensuring that Lynch neither said nor did anything as Riley passed by him.
And then, as suddenly and as unexpectedly as they had started, the night’s events were over and the others began to walk back to their homes. Some, Mercer hoped, might now regret their own small and passive part in the proceedings. He watched them return indoors, until only Mary and Elizabeth Lynch stood framed by the light of their doorway. He turned away from them and went back to where Daniels waited for him.
They reached the tower and Mercer unlocked the door.
Inside, they cleaned off the mud and the clay as best they could and sat together.
‘I know Mathias and Jacob,’ Daniels said. ‘Mathias, especially. I’ve never spoken to Jacob, but I used to see him often enough with Mathias before you came and started work here.’
Mercer poured them both whisky.
‘Do you think all this – me being here, all this tearing apart – has anything to do with Lynch’s behaviour?’
‘I try not to pay too much attention to what he thinks or says. Never did.’ It was too obvious a lie, and he drained his glass to wash it from his mouth.
‘Hard to ignore him, though, I imagine, especially in a place like this.’
‘Show me your charts,’ Daniels said, unwilling to speculate any further.
Mercer spread the first of these on the table.
‘There have been people living here for four hundred years,’ Daniels said. His
hand lay over the outline of the houses, as though by this means alone he might deny the harsh reality of the months ahead.
‘Does he hit Mary, do you think?’ Mercer said, making pencil marks where Daniels indicated on the chart.
‘Her mother gets the worst of it. I told her once—’ He stopped abruptly.
‘Told her what?’
‘That she ought to be gone before he got back. He tells everybody that he volunteered for active service once he’d been sentenced, but that they wouldn’t have him. Truth is, he knew what they’d say before he asked.’
‘And once he knew, he went on asking?’
‘So nobody could say he hadn’t tried. There isn’t a man here – or woman or child, come to that – who hasn’t suffered in some way, who hasn’t lost something or someone they could ill afford to lose, but to hear him talk, you’d think he was the only one.’
‘It’s perhaps because he wasn’t involved that he feels the need to keep bringing the thing up now,’ Mercer suggested.
‘While the rest of us are just sick of it all and want to move on.’ He paused. ‘Except we returned to this backwater and moving on was no longer a serious option.’ He held out his glass for Mercer to fill it. ‘No, I doubt he hits the girl much. Him and her were always tight.’
‘So everyone says. But I wonder what that means with a man like him.’
‘It means he thinks first of himself, and of others only insofar as they might be of some use to him.’