Stillicide

by Cynan Jones

  We find out in the morning.

  No, I say, when my husband says he must go after him, fearing that he will have gone towards the train.

  He’s weak, I think. He’s weak.

  He had nothing but potato water.

  Look after your garden.

  I imagine a trail. A dog, a boy, another boy, a man. My man going missing. Then me, I follow after him. My daughter finds me gone. Her partner looks for her. So on. And so on. One by one. A fairy tale. Until we all walk, all of us, one by one away.

  LETTER

  John,

  Where to start?

  –Are you sure you’re happy to do this?

  I could just record something, I know. But then I’d just ramble. You know me. And I want to get it right.

  I’ve asked Ruth to write things down as I speak. Strange, talking into the air. Hearing her voice in my earpiece.

  –It’s Ruth, right? Thank you, Ruth. Sorry. I knew that. Let’s start again.

  I’ve tried to memorise what I want to tell you, but I was never very good at that. The words seem very solid until I go to say them, then they disappear. Like trying to remember my dreams, when I wake up.

  Yours always hang with you through the day, you say. I think mine move to make way for daydreams.

  –No. Sorry. There’s no need for any of that, is there? Try again.

  You said, I don’t want there to be time, to think of you in pain. Well, I feel the same.

  So I’ve asked them not to tell you. When it’s time.

  If they told you to come, then you would know.

  You would know from the moment they called. And you would know as you were on your way here. And when you got here you would sit here watching. And I would have to think of you going through that.

  By the time you got here, I would be asleep. They’ve said I would be asleep. By then.

  So.

  –That’s right, isn’t it? I’ll be. By that time.

  And I would be asleep, they’ve said, by then. So.

  You would watch. That’s all. I would not be able to help.

  But this will help, I hope. I want to say some things.

  I want to say that I knew in the first few minutes I was going to love you, and would love you, and would fight through things for that.

  There are people together all their lives, and they don’t have that. But we do. Even through the fights and niggles, and the things that come. We do.

  We were so young. And I had never been so sure and determined about anything before, that I couldn’t properly understand.

  –I was twenty. You know I was a nurse, too, Ruth. One year older than him, almost to the week. It’s funny. Within moments of us meeting, total strangers, such professionals, our faces were closer together than they came for quite a while after that.

  –He was soaking wet. Sodden. Covered in wet earth. And everybody else so clean and bright.

  They’d bombed the city water pipe, and he was out there. He smelled of mud. Even through the stinky antiseptic. I probably even said, you smell of mud.

  –He only looked at me properly once, very quickly, very fully. And I knew.

  –Have you had that, Ruth? Have you felt that, ever? Well. Hold out for it . . . I shouldn’t say that to you. But. If it ever comes to something like this, for you, it will matter. That you’re with the right one.

  –Sorry. I said. I chatter. Okay. Say,

  You told me once that you’d rather I die first.

  I was angry when you said it. But.

  I understand it now. I understand.

  It wasn’t so I didn’t have to go through losing you. But so you didn’t have to watch me being brave. And know about the awful thing of me carrying on bravely.

  –We see it, don’t we? Us nurses. The carrying on.

  –She told him, didn’t she? Doctor Sandhu.

  –Thank you. I know you’re not meant to say.

  –I could see. When they spoke this morning. They looked so strange, watery, through this pod. Just dim shapes. But I know. He would have held his eyes open too wide; he would have stroked the scar on his jaw.

  –That’s funny, isn’t it? That thing. That the first time I touched him was to pull that scar together. That it could have been another nurse. But it was me.

  –I stitched a thread to him, he says. And him there, I could tell, just thinking. Over what had happened, the men they hadn’t managed to save. They’d gone back and forth, pulling them out of the water that was spilling out of the pipe. It was sort of still going on in his eyes.

  –We joke I sewed in some sort of secret communication device. Not just the thread he jokes about. He says, when I feel the smooth skin there, run my finger on the scar, I can hear you tell me things.

  –You must have silly things like that. With. Are you with someone?

  –Colin. You must have silly things with Colin.

  –Sorry. I didn’t mean to say you didn’t have the right thing with him. Earlier. I’m a bit. Sorry. Chattering. Could you read out what I’ve said.

  –Yes,

  So you didn’t have to watch me being brave.

  –Write,

  I understand that now.

  I know you hate the idea of me being in pain, but I am not. They’ve seen to that.

  Actually, I’ve had fun. Daydreamer, me. And you have too.

  I’ve turned my bed, the bubble of the pod, into all sorts.

  Been places with you, these last few weeks, you wouldn’t quite believe.

  We’ve dived together in a submarine. We saw extraordinary fish.

  We went through space. We landed on a star. A bright, bright rock.

  You sat beside me on a sled that magic animals pulled across the city sky.

  It’s a four-poster bed in a castle room. You stacked your armour in the corner.

  It’s a raft on a wide, open river.

  An expedition tent. Us dressed intrepidly, Victorians.

  It’s easy to imagine.

  All the paper flowers you’ve brought. On the windowsill, the extra bedside cabinet. At a certain time of evening, as the light slants in, they throw shadows on the walls, like giant jungle plants.

  I hope that makes you smile.

  And that’s the thing I suppose I want to say the most.

  Smile.

  I’m torn up between the joy of knowing you will keep on living, and the fear my dying will ruin it all for you. The world.

  But you’re going to have to love it for us both. That’s an order.

  The smell of stone in the air when it rains after days of sun. There’s a word for that. Petrichor.

  Seeing a broken umbrella in a bin. Knowing someone has given up and let themselves embrace the downpour.

  Smile at them.

  There will be a time when you find yourself laughing, and feel guilty. Do not.

  That you will suddenly realise you have not thought of me for hours, and feel angry with yourself. Do not.

  You know I’ve always needed time to myself. So sometimes I’ll be off somewhere. But not gone.

  I know . . .

  –Sorry. Ruth. Are you? You look a little.

  –You’re sure?

  –Okay. Then,

  I know, when I die, it will be another ordinary day.

  There will be no great war. No great global disaster. No buildings will collapse. No bombs will fall. No forests will burn.

  I’ll just be gone.

  When I do. When I am. I know that what you’ll miss the most is talking.

  Don’t let it stop.

  You know me, and you know what I’d say.

  And there’s the scar, of course, in case. No beard. Promise me that. Don’t hide it.

  Once I can’t be there to stop you.

  You are out there now, as I write this. Say this.

  –Put. No, put as Ruth writes this down for me. Would you mind?

  And that you’ll be hearing my voice.

  You’ll be having conversations wit
h me in your head. You’ve told me that you do. That you hear my voice.

  Well. I’m not really there, am I, right now?

  So, there shouldn’t be a difference. When the arms and legs and nose bits of me’s gone.

  I know you. You will keep everything all bunched inside your head fighting one another and it will all go roaring around.

  But do not let that drown me out.

  The smell of me will fade.

  The feel of me will fade.

  That’s okay.

  But do not let my voice go, John.

  Make that your duty, now.

  Keep my voice alive, and hear me.

  That way I will live.

  I need to know this is not it for me, and that we can still talk.

  People do not talk. And they get themselves in awful trouble.

  Don’t let this be the end of.

  –Sorry, Ruth. I’m. This is. Ruth? I didn’t mean to . . . You’re upset. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be asking you to do this.

  –I know. But. Even so. We can’t help it, can we? We’re born to care. How would we be able to do the job we do, did, unless we were unable not to? I bet you collected snails, when you were little, and looked after them in a little box. You did. I knew. I did too. Banded snails. They were quite unusual. I used to collect them when we visited the beach, from the sharp grass of the sand dunes. I’d look after them all day. Not interested in sandcastles. Good. I’ve made you smile at least, as well as cry.

  –Some people, a lot of people, are just born to be a certain thing. John was born to duty. That’s his compass point.

  –I knew when I asked him, when we first met, ‘please don’t be a soldier’, there was no point asking him to be a gardener instead.

  –What does he do? Your. Colin. Journalist. He should write this. It’s terrible, isn’t it? I wish I could write. When it comes to it how we can’t really say what we mean. A hug would be much easier.

  –It must be nice, to be with someone who can use their words properly.

  –We didn’t hug enough. I think we would have hugged more as we got old together.

  –Sorry. My mouth is so dry.

  –Are you happy with Colin? Sorry. I shouldn’t ask. But you don’t . . .

  –Don’t wait, Ruth. Don’t wait to find out.

  –Doctor? Oh. Yes. Of course.

  –Now?

  –Of course. Do I have a moment?

  –Okay.

  –Just. Yes, of course. Could I have just a moment, please.

  –Get rid of everything I’ve said. I guess.

  –Just. Thank you, Ruth.

  –Could you write.

  John,

  I know what you’ll miss the most is talking.

  But here I am.

  You can hear my voice, right?

  Kiss.

  PATROL

  The pocked footings of the old pipeline stood along the route of the track, damaged some, and split, thundered by the defence guns of the train.

  Rust bled about the bleak white concrete from the reinforcing steel.

  The rain thudded. Made a cave for Branner’s mind.

  The dream he’d had, night after night now, played across the inside of Branner’s vision. Sat like a sheet of picture glass he had to peer through at the world.

  The doctor’s words thumped against it over and over.

  The dawn intensified, a brightness in the heavy rain.

  I do not want there to be time, to think of you in pain.

  He’d arrived last night, from the city, for the first light shift.

  ‘Go,’ she’d said. ‘I understand.’

  Branner saw the red dot flash on the grid scanner in his hand; at the same time heard his earpiece hiss. It brought him round.

  ‘I’ve seen it,’ Branner said into his mic.

  The sergeant’s voice came through the earpiece, through the snap of rain on Branner’s hood. The red dot shifting on the scanner. A slight condensation come to the edges of the screen.

  ‘Can you get there?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘I can get there,’ Branner answered. He was pushed in against the willow fifty metres from the track. Whatever had set the scanner off was close.

  ‘Let the train guns take it,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘No. I’ll go,’ said Branner. He felt the old scar catch against the nap inside his hood.

  ‘I made it look like a train track,’ his wife would joke. Appropriate, now, somehow.

  It will be an animal, Branner thought.

  The rain drummed. Drummed against the doctor’s words, the dream. Gathered and fell heavy from the long leaves of willow.

  Why let the automatic train guns fire pointlessly?

  Branner checked his rifle and walked towards the track.

  ~

  ‘Are you sure about this, John?’ the superintendent had asked. ‘You know you can take leave.’

  ‘I’d rather work,’ Branner assured him.

  ‘Yesterday, on the rooftop . . .’ Concerns about Branner had been raised. The way he had shown doubt.

  ‘I’m fine, sir,’ Branner said.

  The superintendent had to make a judgement.

  ‘Do you know? Have they?’ the superintendent faltered.

  ‘No, sir. They can’t be sure how long.’

  Branner had sensed the superintendent wanted to ask, ‘Would it not be more difficult to be so far from her? Would staying in the city not be better?’ But the superintendent did not ask this.

  ‘You were on the line as a young lad in the army, is that right? When it was the pipe,’ is what he’d asked. ‘Before you joined the police. The youngest ever to be decorated.’

  Branner simply nodded.

  Perhaps that was why he wanted to be out here. To go back to the beginning, so he did not see the end.

  ~

  Steam still came from the damp earth.

  There were six of them, he the youngest, barely old enough to leave the base, sitting on logs around the covered pit.

  The timber squad had not been through here yet, and they had to work around the downed trunks as they cut and burned the brash, their job to make a barren margin along the line so anyone who attempted to approach the pipe could more easily be seen.

  It was midsummer. Bright light bounced off the pipeline’s flank. The thick rain had passed an hour ago. They took a break for lunch.

  The spade went sharply into the soil with the sound of a hatchet into green wood.

  As they dug a little deeper the soil got drier, and didn’t give that sound, and seemed, in drying out, to lose its earthy smell.

  He was setting up a place to cut the muntjac up but turned at the noise the others made when they got to the charred grasses they’d packed around the meat.

  Moments later the smell of the cooked deer reached him, and the feeling was so intense and primitive he wanted it to persist. Wished bizarrely that he had to wait a little longer.

  The corporal picked the deer up with the spade because it was cooked so well it simply fell apart.

  He put it on the makeshift table and they ate it with their fingers. A chunk of ration bread in one hand, and the other hand alternately lifting their canteens of clearwater and picking at the meat.

  Look, said one of the men, fishing a partially flattened bullet from the muntjac’s flesh. I would have thought it would have gone straight through.

  It was then the first device went off.

  The first they knew of it was a ripple in the ground. He saw the bones they’d cast about – that they’d slid cleanly from the meat – bounce somehow, as if they had suddenly decided to reanimate. Then there was the sound of the explosion.

  ~

  There were four teams in the area at the time, all within a click. The device had sundered the pipe exactly at the point where one of the teams were resting.

  When they got there, the bodies of the team already looked long dead because the water that sluiced about them cleaned them of blood and
bloated their skin. They knew some were alive only because of the noise they made, swallowed in the deafening crash of still-coming water.

  The great wings of steel that had been blasted into the ground around the pipe hissed with heat. Brought steam up from the wet soil. Spat in the gathering water.

  The earth rippled again, and he saw circles form on the surface of a shallow pool. Instinctively hit the ground.

  Then the second bomb went off. Like a building crashing down.

  Those that were not dead but badly injured began drowning in the water. Three of them still stood. Amongst them, him.

  He was confused as to why his chest was slick with blood until he realised it was his own and felt sick as he acknowledged the flap of skin hanging at his jaw. But it was superficial.

  His head spun. He looked up at a lifted patch of bank beyond the pipe that seemed almost liquid itself in the sun and his only thought was to go to it and sit. Then his corporal’s shout reset him.

  The water came endlessly as they dragged the bodies from the pools. They were barely able to hear themselves. The corporal screamed into the comms to cut the flow. But even if they had, the bombs were timed to detonate as far as possible from the stop-gate.