Afterwards

by Rachel Seiffert

  He told Joseph to get in the shower, get shaved and then he’d put him on a bus.

  – You got money on you?

  Joseph shrugged. Jarvis picked up his wallet and his car keys.

  – Doesn’t feel like it, I can see that, but you’re lucky.

  No one chasing you through the courts. I’ve got a mate up on civil charges. Didn’t even kill, got his man so he can’t walk now, can’t work. Family wants him convicted, wants compensation. That’s stress for you.

  Joseph wondered if he knew the bloke, but he didn’t ask: didn’t want to know.

  – No one’s saying you did wrong. Are they? The reports gave you the all clear, so it’s just you. You’re the only one. Useless thinking. Put it away. Get on with the rest.

  Jarvis was the one who picked Joseph up from the road, and he was with him again, a few weeks later: back in England, at their home barracks and in the pipe range together to zero their weapons, ready for a training exercise that afternoon. The Corporal started before him, but when it came to Joseph’s turn to shoot, he couldn’t.

  He’d carried the same rifle on every patrol in Armagh, cleaned it every day, did everything as normal, only he’d never fired it again. So maybe that was it. Or it could have been something about the sound the training rifle made when he lifted it. Smell of the oil, the cool rubber feel of the cheek piece up against his face. Different place, different country, different bloody weapon, but something he did was the same, some movement his body remembered. Back out in the rain and the cold. Dark and the shouting and the kids and the cars. Like it was happening now, not weeks ago.

  A few seconds. Not long, but it was hard to get himself straight again after. Sweating so much it got into his eyes. Shaking, so Jarvis had to come over and take his rifle. Not like shivering, much stronger, more like a fit and it was frightening. Started somewhere in his guts, pulling hard and tight under his ribs, backs of his legs like water, and he thought he was slipping, going over. Jarvis saw it all, made him sit down against the wall, pushed his head down hard, between his knees, and held it there. Joseph tried to get up again after a few minutes but his Corporal wouldn’t let him.

  – Puke-pale you are, Mason.

  Not going anywhere until his blood was running properly again. He sat down next to him.

  – No one to see you here anyway.

  Jarvis had stayed with him then, and he waited with him for the bus too, even though it was late, and their conversation was over. He stood on the forecourt, watching while the coach pulled out, the only person standing there on the concrete.

  Thirteen

  Alice’s legs ached under the table. Eight miles yesterday, another ten today. It was Monday evening, and Alan was up at the farm with them. He’d bought lamb for dinner: his speciality, with rosemary from the garden, and a good red, which Alice helped herself to more of. Her mum and Alan rarely drank more than a glass or two with a meal. They didn’t look at Alice when she filled her glass for a third time, or at each other, and that maddened her. It had been noted, and would probably be talked about later, after she’d gone to bed. She hasn’t said a word about Joseph since she arrived.

  Alice had tried to walk herself tired over the weekend, persuaded her mum to do the full curve of the ridgeway that afternoon instead of cutting back across the valley to the farm. They walked the last mile in the dark, the small, white shapes of the sheep disappearing into the grey of the hillside. The track was narrow and Alice walked ahead, thinking about her grandfather. Couldn’t get away from his loneliness. Couldn’t help but think about Joseph too, and what her grandad might have told him. Alice was sure now: that’s what had been happening, over the summer, after they came back from Scotland. She didn’t know if it hurt her. She knew it would her mother.

  Alice tried to picture them. Sitting in the living room together, or maybe at the dining room table, but she couldn’t get the idea to work, and it frustrated her. Couldn’t imagine them talking like that to each other.

  Too hard to think about Joseph. Alice sat in the kitchen, at the far end of the table by the stove, shared the last of the wine into their three glasses, wondering if there might be another bottle in one of the cupboards. London tomorrow. Alan and her mum were discussing the week ahead in low voices, and Alice thought about her grandparents, because that came without trying. She wondered how long her grandmother had waited. If it took months or years before Grandad said anything. How it felt, to have to wait like that, if it had been frightening. Whether there was more: things he’d never told her, and if she’d ever tried to guess at them.

  Alice and her mother set off early next morning, and shared the drive down to London. Her mum did the first leg, and then they swapped at a service station. Alice caught sight of herself in the mirror as she walked into the toilets: white face, tight shoulders. She’d been aware of lying for a long time last night, eyes open in the dark, but she did wake up, just before six, so although it didn’t feel that way, she must have got some sleep.

  When she came out, her mum was at the payphones: calling her grandad to let him know when to expect them. It was a brief exchange, and she hung up, frowning. Alice recognised the look, or the feeling behind it, had experienced it often enough during her own phone calls with her grandad.

  – Is he alright about us coming?

  Her mother shrugged, nodded. Alice had helped her dig the promised plants out of the garden after breakfast, spindly and leafless, they didn’t look like much, but her mum had been quietly excited, told her they just needed time to get established. Alice could see them in the rearview mirror as she drove back out to the motorway, in a box on the back seat, clods of earth and twig wrapped in plastic bags.

  – What I told you this weekend, about your Grandad. I’m not saying that’s why he’s the way he is. But it might explain why Kenya’s difficult for him at least.

  They were about half an hour out of London before they started talking. Alice could feel her mum looking at her and she nodded.

  – I haven’t asked him, don’t worry. I mean, I did start in the summer, but we only talked about Gran.

  – I’m not saying you shouldn’t, Alice.

  She could remember her mother telling her to be careful before.

  – Might be good for us all, if he could talk to you. I doubt he’d ever speak to me about it. Alan says that’s his fault, but I don’t know. I’ve always found it hard, Dad and Kenya, and I’m sure he knows that.

  Grandad used to buy them all red poppies for Remembrance Day, and Alice could remember her mum wearing a white poppy alongside. She’d given one to Alice once too, when she was small, and explained that it was right to help people hurt in wars, but there shouldn’t be another. Alice had inspected her reflection in the hallway mirror, waiting for everyone else to put on their scarves and hats, and she’d liked the way the two flowers looked on her collar. She wondered now, if the idea had come from Papa Young, her great-grandfather: the pacifist whose sons-in-law were both in the military. Alice’s grandparents certainly didn’t wear both, because she could also remember the hissed argument between her mum and Gran, that same November day, out on the path after they’d left the house. When they got to the gate, first the white and then the red flower had been removed from Alice’s coat: until you’re old enough to decide for yourself. Her mum had stopped wearing poppies too, at some stage, Alice couldn’t say when, and she turned to ask her why, but her mother started talking first.

  – There were huge police raids in Nairobi, the African quarter. This was before Dad was posted there. Anyone and everyone suspected of dealings with the Mau Mau got arrested. A lot of innocent people.

  She shook her head.

  – Mum remembered all the rumours afterwards, about servants not turning up for work. She had friends with Kikuyu housemaids and she said it chilled her, thinking they’d had Mau Mau in their homes. No good kuke like a dead kuke, that’s what people said. Even some who wouldn’t have dreamt of it before the Emergency. Mum told
me meeting Dad was like gaining a bit of perspective. He didn’t get caught up in the hysteria, and not all the security forces were like that. He was meant to carry a revolver, whenever he came off the airfield into town. Others would make a bit of a show of their webbing holsters, but Dad said a gun was just a cumber- some nuisance where it wasn’t needed. Mum couldn’t believe how casual he was, but there was never any real danger to them in Nairobi. Just too much talk of oathing ceremonies and witchcraft. Mau Mau drinking each other’s blood, that sort of nonsense. Hardly any Europeans were killed during the Emergency. Most of the time the Mau Mau targeted Africans, mostly other Kikuyu.

  Her mother was quiet for a while, and then she turned to face Alice, twisting against the seatbelt.

  – Alan found a picture once, in an article about Kenya, and he photocopied it for me. It was of a pilot, from the police reserve I think, a white Kenyan. He’d painted little brown figures on the side of his plane, with spears and shields. Recorded his kills. Mum always said I shouldn’t confuse Dad with the authorities, or the white settlers. But he bombed the forests. The people in them. I still don’t find that easy.

  She sat back again.

  – He’s been through all the entries in Hansard, every debate they had about Kenya in the Commons. Objections were raised to British forces being sent in, the way the Emergency was handled. Mum told me about that. About all the books he’s read on the subject too. He can’t really be accused of burying his head in the sand. Or Mum for that matter, I know she read them as well.

  Alice thought about her grandmother, sitting on her piano stool, her favoured reading chair. Lid down on the keys, book propped open in front of her, elbows resting on either side. Grandad would often read with her, but in the easy chair next to the piano, and he’d tease her sometimes, for sitting like that, in the mild way people do who’ve teased each other for years about habits they know will never change. I can concentrate better up here. Alice wondered if that’s where she’d read Grandad’s books too, to give them her best attention, and then she thought how quiet her grandmother had been during that argument with Alan, all those years ago. Alice could see them all, sitting at the dining room table, her mum and Alan frowning, asking, insisting, her grandfather overtaken, stubbornly asserting his position. Her gran had been there too, but silent, her eyes on her husband. Alice searched her face in her mind’s-eye picture, looking for a sign of what she’d thought of the argument, where she stood. Gran had often taken his part in debates with Alice’s mum, but not that time. Gran had been upset for him, Alice could picture the slight frown, the rapid blinking, but she hadn’t intervened. Alice thought her gran had read the same books, and she’d lived in Kenya too, for almost six years: of course she would have come to her own conclusions. Alice couldn’t imagine her grandparents arguing, but they must have discussed what they’d read and experienced, and it would have been strange had they always agreed. That would make sense of her grandmother’s expression: concerned, but holding something in reserve.

  – I don’t think Dad regrets the empire.

  Alice glanced over at her mother.

  – I doubt if he thinks about what he did in Kenya in those terms at all. I mean, if you asked him, he’d probably say British rule had had its day. Something along those lines. That’s why the situation in Kenya arose. India had already gone, just a matter of time for all the others. He might even concede that the system was unjust, aspects of it at least, but I don’t think it troubles his conscience.

  She looked straight ahead while she was talking, her expression difficult to read.

  – I don’t know what that makes him. Blinkered, maybe. A product of his times. He’s not going to feel responsible, in any case. However much I might wish it.

  She shook her head a little, and Alice thought she was impatient, but with herself as much as with her father.

  He was at the window when they pulled up at the house. Started a little, when he saw them: caught waiting. He waved to them and Alice thought he’d probably laid the table already, and filled the kettle. Her mother went in first, with the plants, and Alice followed on after she’d taken her things out of the boot. They were in the kitchen when Alice got to the porch. They’d left the front door open for her, and she could see them standing together at the window, both looking out at the garden, discussing the best position for the plants.

  – Sheltered in any case.

  – Yes, and shade is fine, they like that.

  Alice stood her rucksack and boots in the porch and listened to the familiar voices at the other end of the hall. Debating, agreeing. No trace of awkwardness between them. It smelled of paint in the porch and Alice was confused: that was all finished weeks ago, surely?

  She must have stood there a while, because her mum came back out into the hallway to see where she’d got to.

  – It’s brewed, love. Aren’t you coming in?

  Alice waited for her mother to notice. The new glass in the top of the door. The wallpaper, so carefully chosen and now painted over. The skirting boards had been done too, which meant Joseph had almost certainly been here. But it didn’t explain the other changes, or why her grandfather wasn’t drawing their attention to them. He’d been so proud of all the new work before.

  He was in the hallway too now, at the far end, dishcloth in hand. Late morning, but the day still hadn’t got light and she couldn’t see him properly. He was watching her, though, Alice was sure. Standing behind her mother and waiting.

  The man in the snooker club, the disappearing, sitting in Clare’s kitchen, listening to things she didn’t want to know about Joseph. Shattered glass and everything that went with it: Alice didn’t want to believe he’d done that here.

  She moved past her mother down the hall and when she got to her grandad, she took his arm. Stiff at first, but he let her, and Alice found herself scanning his face and hands for signs of harm. Saw fine broken veins, soft folds of skin beneath his eyes, and their milky blue, blinking at her, uncertain, as though he were asking her not to say anything. Alice couldn’t understand what that look meant, didn’t know what had gone on here between him and Joseph, but there must have been something. She was still holding on to him, too hard, and when she let go, he caught her hand: a clumsy, dry palm folded briefly around her own.

  When was the last time she’d cried in front of him?

  Must have been a little girl.

  Fourteen

  No phone calls, no visits from Alice. Not even to shout at him, and Joseph thought she might just leave it like that: no way to get things back now, he didn’t need her to explain.

  Her grandad returned the cheque he’d sent. Joseph knew what it was, soon as he saw the envelope. It had been a pathetic thing to do really. Pathetic gesture. But if David thought so, he was too kind to say it. There was a letter with the cheque: street and date written top right, kind regards at the bottom, a few polite lines between. Not necessary. The repairs were carried out quickly. In any case not substantial. Everything was downplayed: nothing owed or due now, everything over. The old man said Alice had given him the address, but there was no word from her with the letter.

  Can’t be set right: Joseph thought that was understood. It shamed him, that David had to put his house back in order, and he didn’t like to think what Alice had seen or heard when she went round there. What she’d thought of him.

  He couldn’t get rid of that day in the hallway, it just stayed in his head all the time. Like he’d been twenty-two again and raw, a year out of the army. Hadn’t thought it could happen again like that, not after so long. The old man had just sat there watching him, waiting for him to explain, and that’s all it had taken to tip him: just those eyes on him.

  David had had his wife, an ear to pour himself into, someone who knew, that was how he must have done it. But Joseph had been alright too, for years: from before he went to Portugal, up until now. Just this past few months. Too many questions on their way from Alice, and all the things the old man told hi
m. Joseph thought he didn’t need reminding like that: he knew what he’d done. Jarvis said it was the right thing, but that didn’t make any difference. It was just the fact of it: the man on the road was always there, didn’t matter how you looked at it, and Joseph was still the one who killed him. He didn’t need to go over it, not the way David wanted to. Never knew him while his wife was alive, but from what Alice said about her grandad, having her there and listening didn’t stop him being an awkward bastard. Maybe you can’t stop that, not completely: Joseph didn’t want to judge him for it, God knows he didn’t have a leg to stand on there. But he still couldn’t understand the old man going over the same, hard ground all the time. Why did he want to do that to himself?

  He didn’t get Alice either. Why did she have to keep on at it, make it the one thing that counts? If I’m going to know you, there’s this one thing I have to know. Joseph didn’t think it had to work that way.

  The closest he’d ever come to telling was with a girlfriend once, and he thought about her again, in the days after he got the old man’s letter and there was nothing from Alice. He didn’t like it at first: it felt disloyal to be thinking about someone else. She was called Julie, but then Joseph didn’t think he was remembering her so much: it was more about the way it had happened, and why he’d come nearer that time than he had with Alice.

  She was his ex by then, a year it had lasted with her, give or take. He’d moved into her flat over the winter: a few clothes left there first, a toothbrush, CDs, and then his friends started phoning him at her place. They never really talked about what was going on between them, but Joseph started paying half the rent in March. He told her he loved her, because he did. His mum was pleased and he thought Julie was as well.

  In the summer she told him she didn’t like it. That he was so quiet sometimes. She said it bothered her that he went days, weeks it felt like, without talking. Breakfasts together, dinners eaten, whole evenings spent on the sofa and no how are you love, what’s been happening, did you see, no nothing.