If Then (24 page)

20

T
he general’s
motorcade approached from the east, along dusk lanes flanked by high corn. The shout went up around Saddlescombe, and the soldiers cleared out of the estaminet to prepare for inspection. In the barn, Alex Drown finished her shift, washed her hands, and pushed the cap from her head. In the back yard, Tom Bowles knelt at one end of a planed beam and inspected the grain with the good side of his slanted face. Ruth and the children broke from the cover of the copse, running hand-in-hand across a darkening field and in through the back gate of the estaminet; they passed Tom, who did not look up from his work even when his son said his name. Out front, Jane gathered dirty plates and stoked the stove. She put her index finger on a black key of the old piano. She was sure she could play but could not imagine what came after the first note.

Ruth ushered the children upstairs and into a dark bedroom. Agnes stood at the window. The lane below was thronged with silent soldiers. They came from the barn, and from further afield; from the barracks at Plumpton College and the semi-detached suburb of Hassocks, from a grain silo in a hollow below Ditching Beacon, from the field hospitals of Poynings and Pyecombe Golf Club.

“These soldiers have swords,” said Agnes. “And they’re different from the other soldiers.”

“In what way?”

“They are people we used to know.”

The girl was right. The ranks of these soldiers were made up of the evicted. Their uniforms were also different: the tunics were tan or pale green and, instead of pith helmets, these soldiers wore helmets wrapped in cloth. The dark grey greatcoats were familiar enough, but the variation in the height of the line indicated men and women in the ranks. A narrow curved sword hung from their belts.

Ruth found some blankets and set the children down to rest. She did not have to wait long for Alex Drown to return. The door scraped back against the floorboard. Alex’s face showed no recognition that she had company in her bedroom. She kicked off her left shoe, then her right, undressed and got into bed.

Ruth waited for Alex to fall asleep. Then, Alex’s eyelid slid slowly back, the lashes gummy with blood. Her hands shot out, as if they had been bound all day and suddenly freed. “Help me!”

Alex grabbed Ruth’s shoulders.

Ruth said, “We will help each other.”

Alex sat up, cradling the sore side of her head, then levered herself to her feet. In the dark window, her one good eye saw the ruin of her other.

“I’m hemorrhaging again.”

She dabbed at her eye with the corner of her long white nightie.

“There are gaps in my memory. I remember giving the wounded soldiers malted milk. Filling a steel bowl with hot water. Standing dutifully beside the doctor as he operated.”

For safety, Euan held onto Ruth’s thigh. Alex stared at the boy as if he were an enormous rodent.

She said, “These are the children you were looking for?”

“Yes.”

“The ones you hope to save.”

“I will save them.”

Alex calculated.

“They can come with us to the Institute.”

“Will we be safe there?”

“It’s shielded from the Process. The hemorrhaging should stop. And then I’ll be able to help you.”

While Alex dressed, Ruth explained to the children that they were going on a long night walk, following the footpath back to Lewes and around the edge of the
douanier
’s blockade to Mount Caburn, and then down to Glynde. About fifteen miles by her reckoning. The boy would not make it all the way. He was already tired. She would carry him.

From downstairs came the sound of boots upon the boards, of stools scraping and a shout for beer. The children looked at her nervously. She stroked Euan’s hair.

“The soldiers haven’t bothered us yet.”

A singalong began. A high boyish voice led a chorus of men.

“Omega John’s here,” said Alex. “I’ll have to speak to him.”

“No,” said Ruth. “We will slip out the back.”

But the kitchen was thronged with soldiers in all their gear, helping themselves to the stores. In the centre of the kitchen, Tom stood between his wife and the coarse remarks of enlisted men. It would be too upsetting for the children to leave that way.

They turned around. Alex led them through the fug of the lounge; there were two dozen or more soldiers crammed into the low room, smoking and drinking. The general was Omega John. He was sat at the piano in a pristine uniform, a peaked cap atop his bulbous skull. His lips were thin, the lower half of his face withered and malnourished, his front teeth extruding slightly. His moustache was wispy and immature, yet white with age. His voice was as pure as a choirboy’s, but his forehead was virulently liver-spotted.

“Alex!” He seemed pleased to see her. “Join us. We’re having a good old singsong.”

Omega John ordered the soldiers to clear the table next to the piano, and they brought stools for Ruth and the children. The change that came over the soldiers when Omega John spoke to them was pronounced: they became silently compliant.

Omega John offered his hand to Ruth. It too was liver-spotted, the skin loose, yet the grip retained its strength.

“They call me Omega John,” he said. He raised his bare brows at Alex in expectation of introduction.

“Her name is Ruth, she is married to the bailiff.”

“The seamstress!” said Omega John. “I know your husband. He is very brave. He is taking part in the landing. Can’t tell you when exactly. Classified. But I can tell you, it’s the Dardanelles. We’re having another crack at it. I have a song for you, seamstress. Do you know Little Redwing?” he played a few bars on the piano and the men, recognizing the tune, stood up to sing.

“
T
he moon shines
down

On Charlie Chaplin

He’s going barmy

To join the army

But his little baggy trousers

They need a-mending

Before they send him

To the Dardanelles.”

S
ome parts
of Omega John had responded to longevity treatment while others had not; consequently, his ageing was unequally distributed. His choirboy’s voice was in marked contrast to his wispy white hair. One knee was heavily bandaged, so he did not use that leg to work the piano pedals. His smile was indistinguishable from a grimace.

“Another verse for the seamstress!” he announced. “In honour of her husband!”

“
T
he moon shines
bright

On Charlie Chaplin

But his shoes are cracking

For want of blacking

And his baggy khaki trousers

Still need mending

Before they send him

To the Dardanelles.”

H
e stood to take a bow
. He was seven foot tall. He stooped under the plaster ceiling to accept the applause of the men and their call for another song. His uniform was tailored to fit his elongated form, and gathered sharply around the middle with a Sam Browne belt that glistened under the lamplight. The men struck up a ditty in response:

“
T
hat was a very
fine song

Sing us another one

Just like the other one

Sing us another one do.”

H
e played
up and down the keys, making a show of considering which song he would perform next. He leant over to Alex, nodded at her bloodshot eye, and whispered, “You should get your eye looked at.” And he squinted with mock concern at her bloody orbit. Then he attacked the piano keys, playing random notes that gradually were rearranged into a simple order from the lowest to the highest.

“I call that piece ‘Insert sort’. It is derived from a simple algorithm. The order emerges in the higher registers first. Whereas with ‘Bubble sort’–” he jabbed furiously around the keys, the children put their hands over their ears “–the order begins in the bass notes.” Agnes burst into tears, all of a sudden and unconstrained. Taking pity on her, Omega John switched from the jabbing instrumental of the algorithm to the simple melody of another soldier’s song:

“
W
hy does she weep
?

Why does she sigh?

Her love’s asleep so far away

He played his part that August day

And left her heart on Suvla Bay.”

I
n the estaminet
, this brief verse moved the soldiers to silence. Some bowed their heads, and prayed to loves of their own.

“Now I’ve done it,” whispered Omega John. “I’ve given it all away.”

Ruth held Agnes’ head against her breast, calming the child.

“Can you stop this?” she asked.

“This?” Omega John gestured at the piano.

“The war.”

“Why would I stop the war when I have gone to such pains to start it?”

He sang a sad song about a long trail winding into the land of his dreams, of nightingales and moonbeams, and a long night waiting for his dream to come true. He played the keys with such delicacy, pressing and releasing each one in turn with deliberate care, as if they were the valves of a lover’s heart. When he finished, he sighed and said to Ruth, “I’m dying, seamstress. I’m very old and it cannot be put off any longer. They say that no one is indispensable but that is not true of me: I am one of a kind. My colleagues have tried to recruit a suitable replacement but to no avail. So this–” his gesture encompassed the estaminet “–is the solution.”

“Let my husband go,” said Ruth, in a low fierce voice.

Omega John laughed.

“You’re here to rescue the bailiff? I thought you were here because my men need a whore.”

He turned to Alex. “You’ve been remiss in not explaining the situation to our guest. Or did you find it impossible to put it in terms she could comprehend? Her understanding of her situation is so meagre I suppose any revelation would constitute brutality.”

Ruth was indignant. She would not let men bully her.

“The situation is actually very easy for me to understand. You are a boy playing at war.”

“I’m not playing at war, seamstress. I am remembering it.” His eyes were green-rimmed, like those of a falcon. “I hold within me a perfect memory of the war. If you like, I could share it with you.”

Alex put her arm between them, her fierce small face defiant.

“Leave her alone.”

“Don’t put yourself between us, Alex. I’m dying. I’m bored of pretending to care about you.”

He turned to Ruth, and offered her his liver-spotted hand.

“Take my hand again, and this time you will know exactly what the war was like. You will know what it is to die slowly of your wounds in no-man’s-land. You will look down and be able to touch where the machine gun eviscerated you. More than the pain, you will know the boredom and the terror of months under fire, the sensory agony of it, smells, sights and sounds of horror; and when you feel that you can endure no more, and that every idea that you were made of has been proven to be nonsense, and that every thought you ever had was wrong, and everything you ever did was pointless, then you will understand the war itself.”

“The war was over a long time ago.”

“It never ended for me. I was wounded at Suvla Bay, you see, shot in the head. The surgeon operated. Something happened under the knife. I was cursed. After a hundred years, we’re still only beginning to understand that curse. The feelings, sensations and experience of the war survive intact within me. And I can pass them on at will, from mind to mind.”

His palm was firm-fleshed and youthful, the back of his hand decrepit.

“They’ve kept me alive for so long trying to recreate my curse. A hundred years in which I’ve had to watch humanity degenerate to the point where it can barely wipe its own backside.”

His smile was a skull’s grimace, everything below the eyes was already in the grave.

“I am the last human,” said Omega John. “You’re just animals. I could show you how reduced you have become. But giving a sheep an understanding of its sheepness is crueller than slaughtering it: if I laid my hand upon its brow–” he reached again for Ruth, by way of demonstration “–I could show it how it is defined solely by its usefulness to a superior species, how it is bred for flesh and wool, nothing more, no meaning, no legacy, its loved young kept alive solely for their succulence.” He smiled at the children, and said to both of them, “My friends went over the top, with the guns of the army police at their backs, and as they were cut to pieces by the machine guns, into itty-bitty little pieces, they baa’d like lambs.”

He leant forward and put his hand upon Alex Drown’s cheek. The air tightened, Ruth felt it in her stripe. Slowly, Alex’s legs stiffened and she reared up out of her seat, his caress still upon her cheek; blood flowed freely from her eyes and over the back of his knuckles; the back of his hand was a map of high ridges, gullies and shell-torn land, the liver-spots were the discolouration of overturned earth, her blood a river coursing across an otherwise arid terrain. Alex convulsed and paled; he withdrew his touch, and she slid off the stool and onto the floor. Around her, the soldiers swayed and staggered from table to table, oblivious to her.

Omega John sighed and turned back to the piano.

“There. Oh Alex, you made me cross. And I hate being cross. Life is so intense. I wish I could play you music that communicated the correct spiritual aspect with which to face life. I wish I could touch you and share the beauty of life as I see it. But I was made in war, and war is all I have to give.”

Alex lost all physical dignity, contorted upon the floor of the estaminet. Ruth knelt next to her, but was afraid to comfort her. In the shock and pain, she was gasping for breath. Ruth took a risk. She slapped Alex so hard across the face that her head rapped against the board. It released her. Alex took a deep gulp of air. Her chest heaved. Ruth used her shirt to mop the blood welling in Alex’s eyes. She was temporarily blind, and her nurse’s uniform was wet with sweat and urine.