Peacetime (33 page)

‘There's no point me going after him,' he said, his voice lower.

‘I know – you said.'

‘Even
you
can't truly believe he'll do anything to Jacob.'

‘He said the Jew-boy was probably putting ideas into Bail's head, telling him that he could keep the new owners out, stuff about his rights.'

‘And as far as everyone else is concerned, the sooner Bail goes, the better?'

‘He said that all Bail needed now was someone to help him on his way.'

‘I have to get back,' Elizabeth Lynch called to them. ‘Peter.' She wanted her daughter to go with her, but Mary gave no indication of complying. The woman waited several minutes and then turned and walked away alone.

‘She wanted you to go with her,' Mercer said.

‘I know. You don't even believe he's gone, do you?'

‘Not much I can do about it either way.'

She looked over the site. ‘Where are the rest of them?'

‘Finished. Gone for good.'

They now stood closer to the airfield perimeter, and over her shoulder he saw the distant figures gathering in groups to eat and rest. Individuals wandered away from the others and stood alone.

She studied him for a moment. ‘He picked up Jacob's glass bowl and threatened to smash it,' she said. ‘But she told him that if he did then he'd never see her or his children again. He laughed at her and pretended to throw the bowl into the fire. She told him she was serious.'

‘And was she?'

She nodded. ‘All the time it was in his hand she never took her eyes off it. He told her it was worthless rubbish. He told her that if she wanted to keep it, then he didn't want it anywhere he could see it. He told her the little bubbles in it were probably full of the Jew's breath.'

‘What did he do?'

‘Just kept it held above his head. He'll wait until you expect him to do one thing, and then do the opposite just to spite you. She said his name.'

‘Jacob's?'

‘Jacob Haas. She just said it.'

He turned to look in the direction the woman had gone, but she was no longer in sight.

‘She said he was an artist and that the bowl was probably the most valuable thing in the house. He laughed at her and said that if that's what she thought, then she ought to take better care of it. He jerked his arm as though he was going to throw it to her, but she
didn't move an inch. She just stood there and went on looking at the bowl.'

‘What happened?'

‘Finally, he just put it back down where it had always been.'

‘Beside the photograph.'

‘Yes. I expected her to pick it up and take it away or something, but she didn't. She just left it where it was and went on doing whatever it was she'd been doing before he picked it up. He's smashed a thousand things in the past.'

‘She knows what Jacob's work means to him,' he said.

‘She said he'd seen things the rest of us couldn't even begin to imagine. She said she couldn't even imagine what
one
million men and women looked like. She said they killed children, even babies.'

‘Everyone,' Mercer said.

She looked all around them. ‘Will it happen again?'

He wanted to deny this. ‘Probably,' he said. ‘But not here. Somewhere else.'

‘It's men, isn't it,' she said.

She came to him and slid her arm through his and they walked to the dunes, where they stood together and looked out over the sea. A distant freighter left its smoky course in the sky and the terns still rose and fell in the calm shallows.

‘Will you tell him?' she said. ‘Jacob.'

‘About what happened, what your mother said about him?'

She nodded.

‘I doubt it. It might be too much for him to bear, to know that she understands him so well.'

‘It still doesn't make any sense,' she said, and he felt her hand tighten around his arm.

Later, he saw Mathias and told him what had happened. He expected him to express some concern about Jacob, but he did not, dismissing Lynch's threats as merely that. He told Mercer that Bail would take care of Jacob, or, failing that, that Jacob would have to look out for himself. Just as Mary's remark had surprised him earlier, so the harshness of this dismissal surprised him now, and he did not pursue the matter other than to ask Mathias when he had last seen Jacob. It was clear to him that Mathias remained preoccupied with his own rejected appeal and the possibility of his imminent repatriation.

Mathias had come to him from the airfield. There were now even fewer restraints placed upon him, he said, and he and the others were allowed – within reason and the demands of their work – to come and go between the airfield and the town as they chose. They were expected to report for work each day, and were still counted upon their arrival, but that was all. He repeated the words ‘within reason' as though
they were at once both unintelligible and hilarious.

Mercer imagined that there was someone somewhere keeping a watch on the prisoners, but neither Mathias nor the others were aware of anyone. They were all still waiting, Mathias said, and he wondered if this new degree of freedom was not some kind of test.

‘To see who runs?' Mercer said.

‘Perhaps.' He was unwilling to say more.

Then Mathias confessed that he had seen Jacob earlier that same day. It was true that Bail was finally being evicted, he said, and that the new owners of the yard were eager to clear it and begin their own building there.

They sat on the concrete platform of the new Station. Rusted mesh rose all around them.

From the moment of his arrival, Mercer had sensed that there was something else Mathias was avoiding telling him. He asked him where he thought Jacob might now go.

‘The same place we all go,' Mathias said. ‘You, him, me, Bail, Lynch – nowhere.'

‘You're—' Mercer began.

‘I'm what,' Mathias said sharply. ‘I'm overreacting? Is that what you want to say? I should just accept the inevitable, however unacceptable it might be?' He shook his head and then rubbed his face. He had been working, and dirt and cement dust still coated his back and arms. He ran a hand through his hair and the dust rose there, too.

‘Have you heard anything specific?' Mercer asked him.

Mathias shook his head. ‘Three days ago, Roland absconded.'

‘Absconded?'

‘He couldn't bear the thought of not going home for at least another six months and so he took matters into his own hands.'

‘Where will he have gone?'

‘He caught a train to London. He was found in the docks there asking about ships leaving soon for the continent. Someone reported him to the Authorities and he was arrested. He believed he had bought himself a berth on a ship to Bremerhaven. He was sitting in a dockside bar, drunk, toasting his good fortune while he waited, and no doubt showing everyone photographs of his children and grandchildren.'

‘And speaking in German.'

Mathias laughed. ‘What else?'

‘Has he been brought back here?'

‘Last night. He wept all night. I sat with him and found out everything that had happened. So, you see, we must all live with the dramas and tragedies of our small and pathetic endings. What did we imagine would happen – that the war would end and that the world would tilt back on to its proper axis and slow down sufficiently after all those years for us all to bury our dead, build again our homes and resume our old lives?'

‘What will happen to him now?' Mercer said. Mathias shrugged. ‘Contrary to all his own gloomy predictions, not much, I imagine. Who knows, he might even have made himself even
less
desirable by his escape attempt; perhaps they'll send him home sooner rather than later just to be rid of him. One of the Military Policemen who brought him back to us said he was lucky not to be put into prison for what he'd done. It was probably an empty threat, but it made us think. There were a dozen others among us who might have tried the same.'

‘But not now?'

Mathias shook his head. ‘No, not now.' Mercer studied the foundations around them.

‘Are you happy with the work?' Mathias asked him.

‘I would have appreciated more time. Everything's done that needs to be done. How about the airfield?'

‘Someone is coming soon for the remains of the aircraft.' Mathias shielded his eyes to look to where the last of the silver fuselages lay piled in the distance.

‘Will you go to see if Jacob is still there?' Mercer said.

‘Of course. But don't imagine that he himself is not fully aware of what is now about to happen. In all likelihood, he will have a far better grasp of the situation than Bail himself.'

‘You think he's known all along that it would come to this?'

‘I think he will have known everything. I imagine all this is just another well-planned part of his strategy of withdrawal.'

The remark surprised Mercer and he asked Mathias what he meant by it.

‘Don't you see it?' Mathias said. ‘Did you think he was going to live like this for ever, in a cold and comfortless room above a warehouse in a scrap-yard, pretending that his pathetic pieces of glass and the forge in which they were made was all he needed, all that fed and sustained him? You and I, I imagine, at least
we
see the dim light of the future glowing distantly ahead of us. All Jacob sees is that same dim light being slowly extinguished behind him. And when it is finally out—' He clapped his hands together.

‘What?' Mercer said, already knowing what Mathias would say.

‘Then the darkness around him will be complete and he will be invisible at its centre.'

‘But someone will know him, who he is, what he does, what he has endured.'

‘Who? You? Me? Bail? Who?'

‘There must be organizations that—'

Mathias smiled. ‘This new world is full of those organizations. It was an organization that took him away from the camp, another organization that brought him here; it was an organization that told him how many of his family had perished, another organization that pretended to know where the remains of his sister were buried, yet another that pretended to him that there was some individual humanity and understanding in the cold, stark details of her death. Everywhere you look, there is an organization. With Bail, at least, living that same isolated and scavenging life, Jacob was briefly beyond the reach of all those organizations.'

‘And now he is once again exposed?'

‘To their pity, their sympathy, their false hope, yes. All these confused and fading trails all over the Earth. Look around you, here, the airfield, the Levels, the town, everywhere you look. Like ghosts wandering through some half-known world. What difference is there between Jacob and Roland when neither of them has what lies ahead of him within his grasp – one man because he sees nothing ahead of him through that growing darkness, and the other because he sees it all too clearly, and sees, too, how rapidly it recedes ahead of his own exhausted stumbling?'

Mercer understood that he was talking about himself. He considered what he might now say to console the man, but nothing came.

It's men
, Mary had said, but he knew it was everyone.

‘How will you get back to town?' Mercer asked him.

‘Walk.'

‘You're welcome to stay.'

‘Roland will be expecting me. I am his only ally. The others think he has ruined things for the rest of us and many of them have turned against him.'

‘Do you think some of them were about to do what he did?' He was asking the question directly of Mathias, and Mathias understood this.

‘Perhaps. Almost certainly. But only in the belief they were doing nothing wrong, thinking only that it was their right so long after the war's end. Why should anyone care any longer? We were each of us beaten men on the day we stuck up our hands. What threat are we now to anyone?'

There was no honest or straightforward answer to any of these questions, and anything Mercer said would have been an evasion.

‘I ought to go,' Mathias said finally, and he rose from beside Mercer and held out his hand. ‘It has been a great pleasure knowing you,' he said, and Mercer knew then that he intended this as their final parting, that, despite his denials, he possessed a plan for his own disappearance.

There was nothing Mercer could say. He watched as Mathias walked back towards the airfield. It would be dark in an hour, more than enough darkness for them all.

He watched him cross to the bed of broken concrete, then leave this to follow the line of the recently ploughed land.

Mercer rose and walked the perimeter of the raised foundations, and it was as he completed this circuit that he heard someone calling to him, and he looked to where the distant Mathias, now alongside the few
remaining buildings, was shouting and waving to him with both hands.

A second figure now stood beside him, and Mercer's first impression was that this was either Roland, who had waited behind for Mathias upon the departure of the others, or that it was Lynch, returning from the town. Whoever it was, Mathias was still calling for him, and Mercer started running towards him.

Only as he reached the end of the runway did he pause to look again. It now appeared to him that the two men were fighting, locked together in a single figure, and he resumed his running.

He was slowed by the freshly ploughed earth, and so he returned to the edge of the broken runway to make better progress, feeling the slabs rock and shift beneath him, leaping from one to another and hearing them slide away behind him. It was only then, as he crossed this final distance to the buildings, that he saw that it was neither Roland nor Lynch with Mathias, but Jacob, and that, rather than fighting, Mathias was struggling to hold him upright.

Leaving the planes, Mercer finally joined them.

It was immediately clear to him that Jacob was barely conscious and that he possessed no strength. He took one of the man's arms over his own shoulders and helped Mathias drag him to a balk of timber, where they were able to lower him into a sitting position with his back propped against a standing post.