Inch Levels

by Neil Hegarty

They left Well Walk behind and entered the Heath: the heat at first seeming greater under the splay-leaved chestnuts and sycamores; but as they walked further, first downhill under the trees and through clearings where great logs lay along the edges of the bare clays, and then uphill through beeches, through brighter and greener light, so the oppressiveness of the evening seemed a little less and the breeze a little more evident. And now they broke through the trees entirely and walked through the upland and there was the summit of Parliament Hill itself: there were the dog walkers and the kite flyers, yes, they were all there; and the Post Office Tower and the dome of St Paul’s, and the thin, indistinct line of the southern hills running on the hazy, pollution-clouded skyline.

  They sat.

  They sat, the three of them in a row, on one of the benches scattered along the crest of the hill; and Patrick felt – like a fool, like a knave. He felt – vicious. No: there was no feels about it: he had been vicious with Margaret, for no other reason than spiteful jealousy. Robert was – not up to much, that was a certainty – but Robert was hardly his priority here.

  *

  A year or so later, Margaret made the move back to Derry. London was now out of her system, after eighteen months or so. She retrained as a teacher – nobody could say that they were alive and fizzing with imagination, the Jackson kids, in their choice of careers – and that seemed to be that. Everyone would live happily after all.

  Everyone including – Robert. Yes, Robert came too. They married: a very traditional wedding, big and splashy and the reception in a hotel in Donegal. There was no convenient brother to act as best man, and Patrick found himself wondering if he would be asked: of course he would have declined, but instead Robert sidestepped the question and dredged up some old North Belfast school pal (as unprepossessing as Robert himself) instead. And that was that. Yes: everyone would live happily.

  Patrick had spent the previous months praying to a – he now assumed – non-existent God for this awful man to fade away out of his sister’s life. To be knifed one day by a prisoner escaped from Pentonville, to fall under a train or be run over by a London bus or have his throat cut by someone, anyone. Then, when they returned to Ireland, to fall under a local bus. Or simply to walk away from Margaret and go and live a life of his own – though this would be less lurid a fate and certainly less satisfying.

  Of course, Patrick thought, of course we sometimes read history backwards. Inevitably we do: I do it myself all the time, he thought – and this in spite of the fact that I am a history teacher and so have even fewer excuses than most. I spice my memories of the next few years with little bits and grains of knowledge that in fact came later: later, when it was evident to all of us what sort of man he was. We all understood how unsavoury he was: that he liked, from time to time, to have other women; that he barely made the effort to hide these inclinations. That he had a temper and that Margaret was, from time to time, made into his punching bag. We came to realise this – though we never dreamed what this temper would eventually bring, what he was ultimately capable of doing to other people.

  At the beginning, however, Patrick was aware only of a fixed dislike that had its roots in pure prejudice. He disliked Robert: his coarseness, his accent, his – yes, his class, his origins. He didn’t want to like Robert – he would have disliked Robert had he been a hero, a Titan, the toast of the town – so the situation was all very straightforward.

  And of course he wasn’t a hero, a Titan or the toast of the town. He was the opposite of each of these, which made the situation more straightforward still.

  What the rest of the family thought: of course little was said aloud, but it was easy enough to read the smoke signals, to listen to the tom-toms beating quietly in the hills.

  *

  ‘The breed and the seed of him,’ said Sarah. It was the taint of him; she caught the smoke and the reek and the shattered glass of Bombay Street; she caught the people who lived there. She wanted nothing to do with it. Martin stirred in his seat. ‘Sarah, not that kind of language.’ She kept her language to herself, after that.

  *

  The door to the sitting room was open: as Robert hesitated, on the threshold of entering, Sarah spoke. ‘The breed and the seed of him,’ she said. Her voice carried: could it be heard? – she didn’t care; she hoped so; that much was clear. She was sitting in upholstered, centrally-heated comfort; outside, the grass had been cut in neat, geometric lines; the pampas grass tossed in the wind. He heard Martin move uncomfortably; the leather creaked and squeaked. ‘Sarah, not that kind of language,’ and then the soft tap of rubber on wood, as he and his cane made their way across the floor. Robert slipped back into the kitchen. The breed and the seed of him: he’d heard enough. A flame of anger rose and was choked down.

  *

  ‘Have you seen my cane, son?’

  Patrick shook his head. ‘Which one?’ His father had over the years amassed a small collection of canes: solid, heavy oak; an elegant blackthorn switch; even one in glossy, fine-grained hornbeam, imported from England.

  His father rubbed a jaw. ‘Well, at this point, any of them. How can a man lose, what, three, four canes?’ A pause. ‘What do you think of the handiwork, son?’

  At Robert’s handiwork – and they stood, the two of them, and looked up at the new wooden shelves: rubbed with fragrant linseed oil, smoothly finished and handsome.

  ‘Impressive, it really is. And there’s us,’ said his father, ‘not knowing one end of a screwdriver from the other.’

  ‘Badge of honour, surely,’ said Patrick. And his father turned, frowned, displeased at these grudging words, these ugly tones.

  ‘Give the fella a chance,’ he said – and turned. ‘You owe it to your sister. Left it in the living room, surely,’ he said, and turned, and left the room. The door closed with a firm, a too-firm, snap.

  *

  ‘Married!’ said Sarah, as if the news was a surprise. She sat down heavily on a kitchen chair. Cassie moved to put the kettle on. ‘Married,’ Sarah said again, and she shook her head. A few minutes passed: with tea inside her, she spoke again. ‘Well, that’s Margaret for you,’ she said. ‘She’ll not be satisfied until she has the whole town laughing at her.’

  *

  ‘No more tea for me.’

  Cassie’s hips ached, now. She moved slowly along the hall. My hips ache, she thought: the days are too long for me, now. Poor Margaret, she thought, settling for that one. She reached her room, closed the door behind her, opened the window wide. The garden was dusky – but there was still birdsong. She closed her eyes, listened. Poor Sarah, and poor Margaret, she thought: it will hardly end well.

  *

  Just give him a chance.

  Margaret moved through her day: walking, teaching, cleaning, cooking.

  Just give him a chance, she said to herself. They can do that, can’t they? She thought: me, I’m giving him a chance. Can’t they give us a chance?

  *

  I often wonder, he thought, how differently events might have played out, had Robert been given more of a chance. There was danger here: in taking responsibility away from him, in taking it on oneself. He knew this. But he wondered just the same: the thought moved and nosed through his brain, like a living thing, like a worm.

  10

  Sarah tied her scarf – one the colour of buttermilk, today, and heavily, smoothly luxurious – more firmly around her neck. Patrick’s room was held at its usual careful temperature, neither hot nor cold. Just the same, though, she was feeling the cold, feeling her age. She was feeling the horror of this situation – though damned if she was going to show anyone, by word or movement or expression.

  Her son was fading.

  ‘Fading, fading away,’ the ruddy-faced hospital chaplain had told her, with odd lilting gaiety, as though about to break into a child’s verse. The medical people said the same, of course with more gravity. The clock was ticking, was the message being delivered in various ways: she should prepare herself; the fami
ly, the whole circle of her son’s acquaintance, everyone should make the necessary preparations.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘How long?’

  At this, a thoughtful purse of the lips. ‘Still difficult to say: but, a fortnight perhaps?’

  ‘A fortnight,’ Sarah repeated. And, ‘A fortnight,’ she told Margaret and Robert. First with the information: and now they nodded too and Margaret blinked. A fortnight. Maybe less? A week. Imagine.

  Now, sitting at the end of the bed, Sarah felt a thin, whispering draught issuing from – somewhere, she could not say from where, in this sealed, controlled world; and she gathered her buttermilk scarf around her neck more snugly still. Here was Patrick’s beaky profile, his emaciated skull; here were drips and tubes and bright lights, metal and hard, impervious plastic to be wiped and sterilised, as necessary. She could hardly bear to look – at Patrick, at the inhuman paraphernalia that surrounded him now. She could hardly maintain her composure – and yet she would. She must. I must, she thought. It was an article of pride. No other way would suffice. Pride and a rhino’s hide had kept her alive all these years: it must see her out, now.

  Her father had beaten her again one frosty autumn evening. Again: and with his leather belt. She had left the door to the barn open: the cows had wandered out into the wintry fields. Brendan discovered them – and came pounding across the frosty grass at her.

  His belt was already in his hand as he burst through the kitchen door.

  The cows he left out in the field as darkness fell. Beating her took priority, it seemed, over getting them safely back inside.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ she screamed – she was cowering beside the dresser by now, her arms and hands protecting her head – and he was screaming too as he laid into her with leather and metal. Behind the door, Cassie was crying.

  ‘Stop making that noise!’ he bawled, ‘Stop it, or you’ll be sorry.’ But she was already sorry.

  There would be no scholarship for her. That had been made clear – obliquely; the priest had put out the word.

  She flung out her arms again as Brendan’s belt hissed through the air and found its mark: and her hand caught a glass on the dresser; and it fell and shattered on the flags.

  Her skin was bruised and reddened that night – and she took to her heels, leaving home, her father, Cassie: leaving it all behind her, replacing it all with a Derry in the throes of war. At least, she’d thought as she ran down the dark lane and away from the farmhouse, at least I’ll find a job, do something for myself – and she did too, though not without some trouble along the way. Jobs were abundant in the militarised wartime Derry of the day: they were handing them out like sweeties.

  And Cassie – Cassie she left behind. But she knew, somehow, that Brendan would never hand out such a punishment to Cassie. Cassie kept the household running, Cassie wasn’t a child of his, Cassie was altogether too fragile. It would be like picking up a piece of thin china or porcelain, and throwing it against a wall and expecting it not to break. Cassie would break. It would be unthinkable.

  Sarah, on the other hand, seemed to be made of stronger stuff. She could be beaten at will. She went out into the world, and into a war, and found herself a job.

  *

  The doors of the mess hut faced south and east: and the sun, rising over a low shoulder of hills on the far side of the river, shone red into Sarah’s eyes. The hut was freezing, as cold as the morning outside: soon, the other women would arrive and begin complaining about their nipped fingers, noses, toes. But Sarah preferred the cold. She never had minded the cold rooms of her youth – just as well; she had had no choice in the matter – and she didn’t mind it now: took pleasure, in fact, in her chilly surroundings, in the cold air in the nostrils, in her breath rising in clouds into the air. Better this than being wrapped in false heat that dried her skin, fogged her brain and soured her temper. She was alone, and she liked this too: liked to be in first and have a few minutes to herself, before the clattering and banging of the day began. So she stood behind the long counter and enjoyed the cold air and the low, red sun shining into her eyes.

  And it was a beautiful morning – clear and frosted and perfectly silent. Earlier she walked over the crisped grass, walked through the very earliest light and watched the thin threads of mist drawing up from the city below. Up here at Creevagh, high on the hill, the whole of Derry was spread out for inspection. The river was stiff with shipping; grey corvettes and destroyers clustered along the wharfs; barrage balloons hanging high in the air. To the north, the river widened into Lough Foyle; and there was Benevenagh in the furthest distance, its black cliffs misty and indistinct at this hour. All around her were more of these curved huts: half-sunk into the churned-and-frozen ground, rank upon rank, mirroring the rows of shipping below; piles of earth to left and right. This hospital base was still new, raw: cheerless in the tail end of the Derry autumn just past, when little streams of muddy earth ran and gurgled along the new paths, and sometimes straight into the huts themselves.

  There were Canadians here, and Americans: recuperating from this ailment or that one. Some had barely escaped with their lives from a crash, from an accident; some had survived a torpedoed ship. They complained bitterly about the weather, the Canadians: you’d think they had never felt a cold day, the amount they grumbled about the Irish climate. They described sweltering summers at home; then, in the next breath, they described iced-over lakes and bays, the Rideau Canal at Ottawa, said one with a sigh, iced over and turned into a stage for skimming sledges and skis and all the rest of it; the colour, the racket, the hot chocolate stalls on the ice.

  ‘What are you complaining about then?’ Sarah asked them at these times, over the clatter of the mess hut. ‘It’s never too hot here, is it? That’s a good thing, if you ask me.’ They laughed, she went on. ‘And it’s cold there, it’s cold here. What’s better about the cold at home?’

  But it was different there, apparently, it was a different kind of cold. ‘The cold is dry,’ they told her with heart-breaking earnestness. ‘You can’t feel it in your feet.’

  You’re supposed to be fighting a war, she told them, not sitting around comparing different kinds of cold. The Americans went on about home too, on and on: the damp and the cold here is killing us, they told her; it’s breaking our lungs and our hearts.

  She measured out oats, set them to steep. The hut was warming now, warming nicely. The first men along in – what, twenty minutes? – time to get a move on. She gave the still-cold porridge mix a stir and then walked to the door of the long hut. Many people had been up and about for hours, of course, many never went to bed at all: guards and nightwatchmen and all ravenous by the time the first meals appeared; vehicles on the move, men going to and fro, the sun still low and red, the sky a pale, washed blue, the mist drawing off. Too often the day dawned fresh and blue; and then – she knew the rule – the rain was bouncing off the roof by eleven o’clock. Today, though, was going to be a beautiful day.

  It was hardly difficult, this work: she knew this: the usual, the same old pattern of a bit of cleaning and a bit of cooking; not much variation from one day to the next. Plenty of men around: more and more men flooding in each week, more and more ships coming and going from America on the convoys; and these men needed cooks, they needed cleaners. They needed female company. Not my company, she sometimes thought: she was perfectly aware of her few words, her lack of small talk and amusing chatter, her sharp edges. Surely they were perfectly aware too – though nobody seemed to mind. She took pains over the morning porridge, which was hot enough, which was free of lumps: and perhaps this helped.

  And she revelled in the routine. The cooking and the cleaning, the occasional trips into what was suddenly now a modestly glamorous and colourful Derry, all this became wonderful to her. She sat in the Golden Teapot on afternoons off, drinking tea with other girls, and laughing her head off. It was – it was normal, all of this; she had made it normal.

  She had made herself n
ormal, for the first time.

  And here was Anthony now. She liked him. He was delighted to be here, he expressed his delight with wide smiles that showed amazingly white teeth. How long might he be stationed here? – well, with the war, Anthony shrugged, you never could tell. That was the thing. He might be sent away, to Europe when the time came, or maybe North Africa – there wasn’t exactly a shortage of places, after all, to which he might be sent – or over to England. He was young and able-bodied and, to her eyes, so very tall; he could hardly avoid some move, somewhere.

  In the meantime, though, his medical training was coming in very useful: truth to tell, he said, he was delighted to be avoiding the convoys; really, he thought he was stuck with them. When he came in with the Nerissa, he thought that this was it, for him; over and back to Newfoundland, over and back with the convoys: ‘Those damn convoys,’ he said, stretching his arms behind his head luxuriously, ‘and anything’s a bonus after that.’ He didn’t even mind the climate too much: he was from Winnipeg, ‘too hot and then too cold and always too windy. A change of climate,’ he said, ‘this is just fine.’ The door of the mess hut was closed now, shutting out the sun, and the place warming up very nicely indeed. Though, the porridge needed stirring.

  And in the meantime, her companions had arrived – Derry women who needed to make a few extra shillings a week – and the hut was filling; more men and more: some bleary-eyed after yet another raucous night on the tiles, some fresh and upright. They were given porridge and tea (a little stewed, but no help for that) and more arrived and more. Anthony inclined his head to her with mock courtesy as he queued to be served. She felt like a co-conspirator. She was. And now she had promised to go to the regular Friday dance at the Guildhall. That’s how a part of this place she had become. She had promised Anthony she would go: as a friend, of course. Only as a friend.

  They had met – no, he had saved her – only a month, six weeks before. He had saved her from something. She could not say from what: her imagination flinched. It might have been lice, it might have been bed bugs. But it might have been the something else that the nuns had liked to hint at: he might have saved her from specifically that.