by David Mark
John got me some new slippers from the posh shop in Carlisle. I’d got him some aftershave and a new hat. Brian did me a sketch of a cowboy being trampled by a horse (he’d seen it in Bonanza) and James got me a necklace with an amber amulet. I didn’t ask him where he’d got it or how much he had paid but it was a lovely thing and he had smiled when I said I liked it.
I got started on the dinner while John was still washing up the breakfast dishes. We were having turkey. It was a big bugger and had arrived two days earlier in a hessian sack. It had taken an age to get the feathers off and even longer to scoop them all up. Feathers always made me sneeze. I was doing it with roast potatoes, mash, three types of veg and bread sauce. We were having half a grapefruit each for starters and there was enough brandy in the brandy butter to put a scorch mark on the roof when we lit the Christmas pudding.
I wanted them out of my hair and John was itching to go and see if there was enough snow out towards Talkin to get the sledge out so they all cleared off mid-morning and I had a bit of peace to work in. It was nice, standing there at the sink with my apron on and some carols from the posh choirboys dribbling out of the wireless. I was chopping and peeling and mashing like somebody with a dozen hands. Mam used to cook the meat the night before but that had always seemed a bit like cheating, and the kitchen was full of the smell of roasting meat and softening onions and my mouth was fairly watering by the time I stopped for a little rest not long after eleven. I sat myself down in John’s chair and switched on the telly. Bob Monkhouse was grinning in that way of his and I watched him laugh and wink and twinkle for a while as I sipped my tea and thought about what an odd year it had been. This would be the first time Fairfax hadn’t popped around just before lunch with some poor story about not wanting to intrude but needing to borrow something, and John would tell him to get himself sat to the table because there was enough for everybody. We’d been doing that every year since he’d been widowed. For some reason, the tradition had become so important that we all preferred the pretence of his turning up uninvited, rather than actually inviting him along. Don’t ask me why – that’s just families and friends for you.
I spotted two little feathers down by the plug behind the telly. Black-and-white with little pretty speckles on them. They were belters; downy but firm, with a little touch of shimmer to the pattern. They would make for perfect fishing flies. I’d forgotten to save any of the turkey feathers for Brian and though he hadn’t said anything I’d felt bad that they’d all gone in the bin. These two might be a nice surprise for him when he got back. I pulled myself out of the chair and got down on my hands and knees and reached behind the spindly legs of the set. They were a bit out of reach and I had to push forward, static making my face tingle, before I could close my fingers around them. Maybe I overbalanced. Maybe that was when my knees started playing me up. But I know a sharp pain went from my ankle to my hip bone and it made me lurch forward like somebody had kicked me up the backside. I gave a yelp and tried to stop myself but the telly was just too heavy and it went over backwards like one of those chimney stacks that they blow up with dynamite. The set hit the wall and as I wrapped my arms around I heard the sound of wood hitting wood.
It took me a moment to wrestle everything back into place. I was sweating and sore and Bob Monkhouse was still prattling on but there seemed no harm done. I heaved the telly back onto the stand and put the feathers in my pocket and stepped back to push my hair back from my red face. As I did so I looked down, half-remembering the unexpected noise of wood on wood. I peered down the back of the telly and saw the little patch of empty space in the skirting board and the wooden panel on the floor. I had a sudden memory of the false panel in the church; the recollection of the gun against my fingers and the burnt pages in my hand. I should have left them all where they were. No good had come of looking into the forbidden spaces. I hunched down, pain in my legs, and reached inside the hole.
I knew what I had found even before I looked at it. The cassette felt cool and plastic against my fingertips. I dragged it out of the wall and held it up. The words written in black ink upon the paper strip at its centre were simple and direct.
For Fairfax – and whoever else needs to know.
For a moment I just stood there, swaying slightly, hot and sore and sweaty with the sound of ‘Hark the Herald Angels’ warbling out of the radio to do battle with the sound of water boiling on the stove and hot fat sizzling in the oven.
I think I already knew. Looking back, it’s hard to say for sure. But as I bent down and checked the hole for its other secrets, I understood. It was chock-full of a boy’s private things. The magazines that I pulled out of the space in the wall weren’t as filthy as the sketchbook. The pages and pages of naked ladies weren’t enough to turn my stomach. They were pretty girls with their tops off. Stockings and suspenders. Big smiles and lots of make-up. The pictures that James had done in his secret jotter were the ones that turned my stomach. It was all just so ugly. Naked ladies made up to look like animals; made up to look like birds. Naked forms with feathers stuck into their skin or bull horns emerging from their foreheads. Women stripped of skin clutching flowers to their bloodied chests. Each one had been signed in my son’s neat hand.
My legs went a bit and I had to reach out for the counter. These were James’s sketches. I recognized the style. They all had the same kind of feeling to them and they all made my skin rise like turkey flesh as the room spun around me. This was his secret place; his hidey hole. He’d stolen the tape that I held in my hand from his brother’s own treasure trove inside the old tree. The one he’d stolen from the collections box inside the church. He’d taken it – and in doing so he’d ensured that the only story that the dead man wanted Fairfax to hear was the one he never did.
With my hands shaking and my bones seizing up, I went to the cold living room and found Fairfax’s tape recorder. I’d placed it in the bottom drawer of the dresser, hidden beneath some old papers.
I wish I’d had somebody to talk to as I placed the reel in the device. I wanted to mutter something to make it all seem less important. But I was alone, listening to Christmas carols and the sounds of my home.
I pressed the ‘play’ button like Cordelia had. Closed my eyes as the voice, slightly accented, emerged from the tape recorder. I remember every bloody word.
‘Fairfax, mon ami. I had to think very hard about whether or not to leave this recording … I may have imposed on you enough already. I may have loaded you up with a grief you can never be free of. But I need you to know something that you will never learn unless I say these words … forgive me, my voice must sound strange to you. I am bleeding. A sick man, hurt by one bigger and younger and stronger … I’m sorry, I must say this right … he said his name was Pike and that I had no business near his ‘stash’. Forgive me, I do not know what this word means.
‘This recording, yes … I noticed you admiring the Dictaphone as we spoke. I believe it will be my gift to you. That seems right, somehow. It will be very useful in your work. And useful work it is. You are a storyteller and your son would be very proud of the way you honour him. But you are a splendid listener, too. Is that the word? The English word? Splendid. That is how I would describe you, mon ami. A splendid fellow. We talked for only a short while but I found in you a man who understands what it is to be one thing on the outside and another within. When I knocked on your door I was in distress. Though I had come here to offer forgiveness, the sight of my abuser almost undid me. I wanted revenge. But that is not why I came here. I have carried such hatred inside me, Fairfax. That hatred has made me ill. I know you saw that illness in me. You remarked upon it – my cough, my pale skin, the sweat on my head. What a sight I must have made at your door. And yet you invited me into your home. You spoke with me of Gilsland and its history and you listened as I spoke to you. I was not certain I was right to do so and I was – how do you say it? – cryptic? Evasive? I told you much without telling you anything at all. I saw distrust in you,
even as you offered friendship.
‘So I tell you now, mon ami.
‘My name is Marcel Defouloy. During the war I was a member of the Resistance. I was a Maquis. A proud man, willing to die not so much for France but simply to stop a movement I knew to be against goodness. A movement I knew to be wrong and which had ripped a blade into the belly of my comfortable life.
‘Where to begin …? In the final weeks of the war I was in Corrèze. That is where I am from, Fairfax. A quiet, pretty place, not unlike your own little part of the world. Such horrors had been committed there, mon ami. The people were dying. The Nazis, Das Reich were sweeping through like disease. My unit was sent to liberate the town of Tulle. We blew up a bridge. We engaged the occupying SS and we defeated them. And then the Nazis came back. I was captured by the Milice. Do you know the Milice by reputation, Fairfax? These men were zealots. They were criminals and madmen who believed in Hitlerism as much as any German. They scared us more than the SS. How were we to know which among us was a traitor? They were our neighbours. Our brothers and sisters. Among them was a man called Favre. He had been a leather-worker before the war. He had been in prison when the Nazis invaded. The story was that he had been imprisoned for taking the skin from a young man’s back after a dispute over a girl. He was picked out by the Milice as a man with special skills. He became their interrogator.
‘Favre was set to work on me, Fairfax. He hurt me in ways I could not imagine. I was stretched across the bonnet of a German military vehicle and in the centre of Tulle, as the whole village watched, he heated a handful of coins in a brazier. These he placed upon my skin, one at a time, as he softly asked questions about Maquis movements. I smelled my skin cooking. The pattern of the coins ate into my skin. I heard women and children sobbing and men pleading for mercy. I told him I knew nothing and he did not seem to care. Eventually I gave him a name. A town I knew had no Maquis. A safe haven that the Germans would soon see as no threat. He seemed pleased with my choice. He told his commander. They left me there to watch what happened next. I still see them. See those ninety-nine men hanging from the lampposts in the square.
‘Fairfax, what happened next will never leave me. The things that happened in that town, that town which had no Maquis and which posed no threat … Das Reich wiped them out, Fairfax. The Nazis and the Milice – they destroyed an entire town. Hundreds of men, mown down with machineguns. Women and children, packed in the church and the church then set ablaze. The heat was so intense that the bell melted. It dripped upon the floor and onto their corpses. The treasures of the church became puddles of gold. One of my brothers in the Maquis was among the first men to see the devastation. He said he could never imagine such horrors. He did not believe men capable of such brutality. In the doorway of the church he found soft gold, still steaming, still half-fused to the ashes and dust that had once been a person. He took it, Fairfax. Not for its value but because of what it meant. It had been something real – an emblem of a life. It had seemed important.
‘Later, he gave the gold nugget to me. Whether he knew of my betrayal I do not know but one morning I found the gold on the doormat of my home. The note told me that it was to ensure I would never forget. Can you imagine it, Fairfax? To carry the weight of so many deaths? I had the gold fashioned into a tooth to replace the ones smashed out by the Nazis who passed by my bloodied, half-cooked body as they exited Tulle. That tooth was pushed deep into my gums – a memorial that I would taste and feel for every second of every day.
‘Last year the doctors told me I was dying. My thoughts turned at first to vengeance. I needed to find Favre – the evil man who had burned me to the bone and directed the Nazis to unleash bloody vengeance on innocents. I had succeeded after the war, Fairfax. I found a good job in a paper mill. A bookkeeper, far from the scene of my terrible betrayal. But I had never found love, nor had children, or allowed myself friends. For twenty-five years I lived a solitary life as those who had served in the Milice prospered or fled. Many were forgiven. They formed part of the new government after the war. But those who had committed atrocities fled France to new lives in new countries. Favre was among them. I asked questions, Fairfax. I dug and I bribed and I begged until I came across a man who told me a story I could hardly credit. After the war, the British had helped war criminals escape. Those with specialist skills or special knowledge were given a free pass. A new life. A new career. A new identity.
‘It pains me, Fairfax. You spoke so wisely about the importance of forgiveness and you spoke with such passion about your friend, the man whose wife had been telling you of his great deeds during the war. I came here to make peace with my torturer and when I saw him by that river, capturing that beautiful bird, I was filled with nothing but a need for blood. He ran from me, Fairfax. And then I came to you. But you spoke so beautifully. You listened and you counselled and in your eyes I saw what God wanted from me. He wanted forgiveness. Wanted me to forget the past and make peace before my death. I cannot shake my abuser’s hand, Fairfax. That would be too much. But I leave you the tooth that I have carried with me for so long. It seems right, somehow, that it be here, in this quiet, peaceful place – within sight of you and your wisdom.
‘I have never been a religious man but I have always felt there is something more – some battle to be fought between good and evil and that symbols could be made to serve any purpose that man invested them with. The tooth was just a hunk of gold but I turned it into something more. Now, as I sit in the cool doorway of your little church and taste my blood, I realize I have been wrong these many years. I needed no emblem. I needed no insignia of my guilt. It seems appropriate that your young friend be the one to see to its removal. He had the same bullying swagger as the men who took so many lives. When he struck me and I felt the gold wrenched free from my gums I thought my heart was being tugged out. But as I sat in the cold gloom of the archway and licked my wounds, I realized he had done me a favour. He had made up my mind for me. He had set me free.
‘I think you know what I am telling you, Fairfax. The stories you have been fed by your neighbours are the worst kind of lies. They are truths made deceitful by their theft. They are the stories of many men and women and they have been woven into one cruel charade that has been used to bind you to their cause.
‘Favre has been in your home many times, Fairfax. He has drunk your wine and eaten your food and made himself the cornerstone of your small community.
‘I saw something in your eyes as we spoke, mon ami. Some understanding of who I might be. And I realized that my fate was no longer in my own hands. You asked me to wait as you drove away. I think I understand where you are heading. Perhaps I should have shouted out and told you the truth but in the end, my life and my death have never been mine to dictate. You have gone to fetch him. Favre. Mr Parker, as you call him. And when he returns you will see who he truly is. You will see whether he is the man he pretends to be now, or the man he was.
‘I am leaving you this confession to help you deal with whatever comes next. Your young friend, Pike. He caught me hanging around the church. I don’t know who he thought I was but he believed me to be chasing his possessions. He hit me. Left me bloodied. My tooth fell onto the dirty stone. But as I sit here, I feel a peace I have not felt in a long time. My judgement is beyond my control. And there is a comfort to be found in that.
‘Thank you for your hospitality and friendship, Fairfax. This morning I did not know you but now I believe I have found a man who will be a safe place for what I know. Favre is Parker. He is a cruel and terrible man. Whatever you do with this knowledge, you have my blessing. And if our paths cross again, I hope you will embrace me as a brother and without regret. Thank you Fairfax. Au revoir.’
The recording clicked off after that. And I just stood there. Stood listening to the pans on the stove and the hissing of the fat and the drone of the bishop. His words had been drowned out by the confession of Marcel Defouloy – a good man who had been murdered by the same monster who had tortur
ed him all those years before. Tortured him until he made up a lie that would cost hundreds of innocents their lives.
Cordelia.
I think I said her name aloud. Suddenly, nothing mattered more than being by her side. The Parkers were her neighbours. She was all alone up there. Alone in the world.
I was running down the hill towards the village before I’d even made up my mind to go. I left the pans rattling on the stove. Left the turkey cooking and the sermon droning on. I left the Dictaphone on the counter. I wanted to fetch her and bring her home. Wanted her to be safe with me and mine as we made the call to the police and finally made sense of it all.
I ran like the bloody wind.
CORDELIA
It was the smell that brought me back to myself. That chemical, ammonia-rich reek. It worked like smelling salts and I opened my eyes to an explosion of pain above my ear and behind my eyes. I tried to move and discovered that I had no strength in my limbs. I was laid out on a cold, dank stone. I had a sudden image of da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man; my arms outstretched and my legs splayed against the perfect round circle of rock.
‘I thought this was enough,’ muttered Favre. ‘Truly. I stopped for so long. I lived right. Did well. Earned my right at a second chance …’
I tried to raise my head and fresh agony seared down my spine and into my hips. I felt as though my head was caved in all down one side. I don’t know what I felt. Confusion. Fear. Dread. I was in a place between sleep and wakefulness; between life and death, and my thoughts were a churning mess of fragments. I tried again to lift my head and he seemed to notice. A face appeared above me, repulsive and twisted: blobby, purple, wormlike lips and deep-set eyes. He looked at me with nothing readable in his expression. He saw me the way the slaughterman sees the next beast into whom he must drive the killing blow. This was almost work to him. This was what he was for.