The Brave (9 page)

"They can say what they like."

Auntie Vera sighed and flicked her cigarette end into the hydrangeas.

"Well, it's your life, dear. If you want to ruin it, I suppose it's up to you."

"Is that why you never had children? In case it ruined your life?"

It was the last conversation of any length they would ever have. But the issue of adoption remained unresolved for at least another three months. Diane did not, of course, return to Elmshurst. Instead, the school was informed that during the summer, she had developed a pulmonary condition that required specialist medical attention and prolonged convalescence in a healthier climate. In late October when the pregnancy became difficult to conceal, accompanied by her mother, she was dispatched, by ferry and overnight train, to a little town in the Swiss Alps. Everything had been arranged through a discreet chain of Masonic contacts. For the remaining months of her pregnancy, Diane would be confined, along with two other young Englishwomen in a similar predicament, to the home of a rotund and rosy-cheeked widow called Frau Muller.

Her mother stayed long enough to satisfy herself that the medical and educational conditions were satisfactory and the scope for mischief strictly limited. She needn't have worried. Behind the benign smiles, Frau Muller, in her high-necked black gown and tightly coiled tresses, was a stern custodian. And the town, which nestled hygienic and wholesome beside a lake, was as boring as it was beautiful.

A suitably lugubrious doctor from the local hospital came to visit the girls once a week. They were tutored by an arthritic retired schoolmaster called Herr Schneider in English, French and German and by Frau Muller herself in the more vital arts of needlework and etiquette. Diane soon knew the correct way to leave a room of mixed company (head for door, turn only upon opening it, smile, exit) as well as how to get in and out of a motor vehicle without revealing inappropriate amounts of leg (in: knees together, lower backside on to seat, swing legs; out: knees together, swing legs, gracefully raise backside).

In the two weeks she stayed, her mother seemed to soften. The weather was still and sunny and unseasonably warm, the lake a mirror to the pine trees and the snowy peaks beyond. They took afternoon walks together along the shore and, in a little timber-walled cafe in the town square, feasted on apple strudel and glasses of hot chocolate topped with swirls of whipped cream.

On one such afternoon, her mother asked her what she might have wanted to do with her life, had she not fallen pregnant. And Diane heard herself admitting for the first time that all she'd ever wanted to do was act. The only things she had enjoyed about school were the plays they staged. She was nearly always given one of the major roles and everyone, even the teachers, used to say how good she was. Her mother smiled wistfully and nodded.

"You could have gone to one of those wonderful drama schools," she said and took a sip of chocolate. "In London. Ah, well."

She didn't rub it in, simply left the thought floating there so that Diane could fill in the subtext for herself. The implication was obviously that if she would agree to adoption, this dream might yet come true. It was a different and far shrewder tack from those initial hostile challenges about how would she and the baby survive the ignominy, where would they live and who did she think was going to pay the bills. A new, more subtle seed had been planted. And after her mother left and the snow began to fall and the weeks drifted by, so it slowly took root.

Her two fellow inmates, both Catholics—Angela, from Bristol, who never stopped crying, and Pam, a much more worldly girl from North London—were both giving up their babies for adoption. It was apparently all part of the package provided by Frau Muller in association with the local Sisters of Mercy, whose convent perched piously upon a little hill outside the town.

In the evenings, after supper, the girls generally retired to their own parlour to read. It was a cosy room with a woodstove and blighted only by an infuriatingly raucous cuckoo clock. On this particular evening, with the smell of boiled ham and cabbage still hanging in the air, Diane and Pam were sitting either side of the stove, trying to learn a passage of Goethe's Egmont, which they were expected to recite the following day to Herr Schneider. Angela had already retired and was no doubt already drenching her pillow. Pam, whose pregnancy was a month more advanced than Diane's, suddenly gave a startled little cry and laid both hands on her belly. Diane asked what was wrong.

"It kicked! Oooh. And again."

Diane got up from her armchair and knelt beside her.

"Can I feel?"

Pam took her hands and guided them to the right place and they waited.

"There! Did you feel it?"

"Golly! What does it feel like?"

"Like, a sort of... fluttering, I suppose."

"Does it hurt?"

"No. It's quite nice, actually."

When the gymnastics were over, Diane went back to her chair.

"Did you ever think of keeping it?"

"The baby? Good gracious, no! I'd have had an abortion but my parents are strict Catholics and think it's a mortal sin."

"What's a mortal sin?"

"I don't know. One that's more fun, I suppose."

Diane laughed.

"Don't you want to have children?" she asked.

"Of course I do. But not now. I want to have a life first. Get a job, do something. And then have children properly with someone I'm married to and love."

"You didn't love the father then?"

"Lord, no. He's an absolute bounder."

There was a long silence during which they both went back to Egmont. But Diane couldn't concentrate.

"Do they let you see the baby? I mean, when it's born?"

"I don't think so. They just whisk it off. You know, so you don't get all mumsy about it."

The prospect didn't seem to bother Pam at all. But Diane couldn't imagine allowing such a thing to happen to her baby. The cuckoo erupted from its little door to tell them it was nine o'clock.

"So help me," Pam said. "I'll strangle that bloody thing one day."

Diane hardly slept that night. And the following day, even after a stern reprimand from Herr Schneider for her slaughtering of Goethe, all she could think of was that there had to be some way of achieving both the things she wanted. The baby and, as Pam so succinctly put it, a life.

It was, perhaps fittingly, at Christmas that the plan was broached. And all these years later, Diane still didn't know what was the more astonishing: that she had come up with the idea or that her parents had gone along with it.

They had come out to Switzerland to spend Christmas with her and see in the new year. Diane had prepared the ground well. She had found lodging for them in a pretty little Gasthof just along the street from Frau Muller's and had spent a long time (and too much of her modest allowance) finding the right presents for them. She gave her father a finely carved meerschaum pipe and a green felt trilby with a sprig of feathers on the side. For her mother she had found a black velvet waistcoat, prettily embroidered with alpine flowers. And from the moment she met them at the railway station, she had been sweetness and light.

Her mother, she could see, smelled a rat. But Diane's resolute good spirits, her enthusiastic efforts to show them around and introduce them to those in the town with whom she had made friends, seemed to work. Her father, particularly, was unusually affectionate and solicitous, sometimes even putting his arm around her on their walks.

The town had an ancient tradition on New Year's Eve, in which men and boys, all dressed in black, their hands and faces blackened too, and each carrying an appropriately sized cow bell, did a tour of the town. They processed along the streets in single file, clanging their bells, snaking in and out of the hotels and restaurants and the grander houses. The sight was macabre and the sound both thrilling and disturbing, like the gates of hell banging in the wind. When the procession arrived at the Gasthof where Diane's parents were staying, dinner was still being served, and everyone sat at their tables and watched, some—including her mother—covering their ears. When it had passed through, they all cheered and laughed and raised their glasses to toast the coming year.

Diane had been waiting for the right moment to make her radical proposal and this seemed about as right as it might get. Quietly and calmly she told them that she had been giving a lot of thought to what would happen after the baby was born. She saw her mother stiffen. Diane told them that she still couldn't bear the idea of giving the baby away. She was his mother, she said (there was no doubt in her mind about the child's gender) and nothing could change that. The idea of losing him forever was too terrible to bear. But... and here her mother's chin and eyebrows lifted a little. Diane had never seen her on such tenterhooks. But, she continued, she understood the shame they would feel at having an illegitimate child in the family. Loving them as she did, she could not bring that shame upon them.

She let that settle in for a moment. The nervousness that she had feared might wreck her performance had curiously evaporated. In fact, the sight of them in such suspense, waiting for her next words, made her feel empowered. Smiling sweetly, with just the right tinge of sadness, she went on.

"I know how much you wanted to have another child. And you know how I'd have loved a little brother or sister. So..." This was the moment. She swallowed. "Why don't we all treat him as if that's... who he is."

She smiled again. They were both staring at her. Her father cleared his throat.

"I'm not sure I quite—"

"You mean, pretend we're the baby's parents?" her mother cut in.

Diane nodded.

"I've never heard anything so ridiculous in all my life."

"Why? What's ridiculous about it? You've always wanted another baby."

Her mother frowned and looked around, clearly concerned about being overheard. Diane leaned forward and went on more quietly.

"Who'll know? You haven't got any friends—I'm sorry, that sounds awful, but it's true, isn't it? Only Auntie Vera and she knows already. You could tell everyone else that you've been to see some wonderful doctor here in Switzerland and he helped you have a baby."

"Good Lord, you really have given this a lot of thought."

"Yes, of course I have, Mother. I've done this dreadful thing to you and I feel so ashamed and... I've been racking my brains trying to think of a way to make it all work."

Up until now it had felt like a performance but suddenly it was real—although she would later discover, on stage, that these two things were often hard to distinguish. She began to cry. And her father reached out across the table and held her hand. Her mother glanced around again to see if anyone was watching.

"Please, Diane, don't make a scene," she whispered.

Her father dug into his pocket and gave her his handkerchief.

"It's all right, dear," he said. "Don't cry. It's all right."

"I'm sorry. I just thought..."

And that was where they left it. At least, for the time being. Back in her bed at Frau Muller's, she realized that she hadn't even mentioned the bit about wanting to have a life as well as the baby. Perhaps it was just as well. If she'd gone on to talk about going to drama school, her mother would probably have erupted and denounced it all as another typically selfish ploy.

The following morning the three of them took a horse-drawn sleigh to the station through the softly falling snow. They stood in awkward silence on the platform amid the steam and bustle while the luggage was loaded into the couchette. Her father was wearing his new hat and her mother a look of nervous distraction. When the guard's whistle finally blew, Diane asked if they had thought any further about her proposal. Her father gave his unlit meerschaum a thoughtful suck then removed it and cleared his throat.

"Well," he said. "We'll obviously have to move. You know, make a new start somewhere. Don't worry, old girl. We'll make a go of it."

TOM'S STUDY WAS at the rear of the house, his desk shunted up against the window that overlooked the creek. Sometimes when he glanced up from his computer he would see deer foraging in the dappled shade of the cottonwoods. In spring a few years ago he had sat for half an hour watching a black bear and her two cubs splashing and chasing one another through the shallows. There was an old joke about why writers never stared out the window in the morning (answer: because then they'd have nothing to do all afternoon) and Tom knew he would be more productive if he denied himself the view and put the desk against one of the walls. But they were all lined with bookshelves, so overloaded that they seemed in constant danger of collapse and though the idea of a writer dying in an avalanche of books had a certain appeal, he preferred to leave things as they were.

He had long ago run out of shelf space and so the bare cedar floor, scattered with Indian rugs, had been colonized in every possible place with precarious towers of books and box files, papers and magazines. There was a hide-covered couch draped with an old buffalo wool blanket where Makwi sprawled asleep for most of the day, her paws twitching as she chased squirrels in her dreams. Behind the couch stood a large chest of drawers, painted the same duck egg blue as the walls and shelves, its top cluttered with framed photographs. Only two were of Tom: one of him posing formally with some important Blackfeet elders and the other of him receiving an award for his TV series at a film festival in Canada. The others were all of Danny and Gina, pictures taken on various vacations—hiking in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, skiing at Big Sky, a summer canoe trip along the Missouri, where they'd camped in constant fear of rattlesnakes.

All the photographs that, for several different reasons, didn't qualify for framing, Tom kept in large manila envelopes, each carefully marked and dated, in the chest's bottom drawer. He hadn't dared look at them in a long time. It was something he used to do on those blurred, maudlin evenings after Gina left, when his drinking was at its most epic.

He would sit on the floor with a quart of Jack Daniel's and sift through them, trying to make sense of what had happened and in the process managing only to make himself more unhappy and confused and thirsty for oblivion. In a moment of clarity one night it had occurred to him how rarely he figured in any of the pictures that lay scattered around him on the floor. He was always the invisible one behind the camera. It was as though, in documenting their marriage and the first eight years of Danny's life, he had rendered himself invisible, edited himself out. Occasionally Gina used to admonish him, telling him to put the damned camera down and just be with them. At an AA meeting a few years later someone had pointed out that it was much the same way with liquor. It helped you edit yourself out of your own life.

The process of editing was, of course, second nature to Tom. He'd learned how to do it from the age of thirteen after Diane died. That shaming year he'd spent in junior high in LA when she was on death row had taught him the cost of other people knowing the truth: that his mother had gone to the gas chamber, a convicted murderer. The edited version of his life, in which the illusion was restored of Diane being his sister and Joan and Arthur his parents, made things a lot easier. In this edited version—the version believed by those closest to him, even by Gina and Danny—Diane had died in a car accident in England.

It was strange how a lie much told could acquire a kind of solidity. In the telling it became, in one's own mind, as strong and comforting as the truth. Tom had sometimes wondered, after Gina left, whether things might have been different had he told her the truth about Diane. Perhaps it would have helped her understand his failings as husband and father. Or perhaps it would only have made her pity him. And pity, for Tom, was something worse than shame.

It was after Gina's phone call last night, telling him that Danny was back from Iraq, that he had decided to brace himself and have another look at some of his old photographs. He'd risen, as he always did these days, at around six and gone for a run with Makwi up along the creek. His knees weren't so good anymore, so in truth it was more of an ambling jog and no more than a brisk walk for Makwi. But it always cleared his head and got his blood moving, helped him plan the day ahead.

It was a clear May morning and the meadow and the banks of the creek were greening up fast. He lost Makwi for about ten minutes when she took off into the forest after some creature he didn't even get a glimpse of and all he could do was call and whistle and hope that it was only a squirrel or at worst a deer and not a bear or a mountain lion. The dog was notoriously accident prone and at least once every couple of months came back bleeding from some new wound that would have to be stitched up. He'd gotten her for free from the pound but paid for her a thousand times over in vets' bills. As he waited for her to reappear, he thought about Danny and whether there would be any response to the message he'd asked Gina to give him when she saw him today.

The boy still hadn't called him or replied to the e-mails Tom had sent him. Gina said he shouldn't make too much of this. Danny was getting about a hundred e-mails a day, she said, from strangers who wished him well and others who had already condemned him and wished him dead. She and Dutch had flown down to San Diego yesterday and were seeing Danny at Camp Pendleton later this morning.

"Maybe I should fly down too," Tom had suggested, though he knew what she'd say.

"I don't think that's such a good idea. Leave it awhile."

"He is my son too, you know."

"Tom, please. Don't start."

"I just feel so, I don't know, so helpless."

"I know."

"Will you send him my love? Ask him to call?"

"Of course I will."

"Or tell me when I can call him. Does he have a new cell phone number?"

"Yes."

There was a pause.

"Did he tell you not to give me the number?"

"Tom, you've got to remember, there's a lot of history here. I mean, between you and Danny."

"Did he?"

"Yes."

The history was right there in front of him now, on his desk, inside the manila envelope he'd laid there last night after Gina's call. It was marked Danny '93 thru... He hadn't felt strong enough to look at the pictures last night but now, with the resolve of the new day, he was ready. He'd showered after his run, fed Makwi (still panting and wired but otherwise unscathed) and had some breakfast himself, while he skimmed the Missoulian. Then he'd carried his coffee into the study and sat down at his desk. He stared at the envelope for a while then gently shook the photos from it. The ones that charted the rest of the boy's childhood, his teens and transition into manhood.

Some of these Tom had taken himself on those increasingly awkward weekends when Danny used to come to stay. The smiles more and more forced, the eyes less and less readable. His own son slowly becoming a stranger. There were others, from later, after Danny had said he didn't want to come to stay anymore, photos Gina had sent in an effort to retain at least some strand of a link between the two of them. Danny in the football squad, with girlfriends Tom had never met, his high school graduation picture, the head freshly shaven. It had been taken only a few months after their argument.

Even now, five years later, Tom could remember almost every word, every moment of it. Danny had called to say he was coming over to Missoula and asked if he could drop by around lunchtime. It was the first time they had been in touch since Christmas and from the tone of his son's voice Tom sensed that this was going to be more than just a casual visit. There was something important the boy wanted—or, more likely, had been cajoled by his mother—to discuss.

Danny arrived at midday, driving a big black pickup with a lot of chrome and lamps up front and flames painted along the sides. He said it belonged to Dutch, which didn't surprise Tom in the least. Makwi made a big fuss of the boy, which helped break the ice a little. While Tom cooked them a cheese-and-tomato omelet and put together a salad, Danny slouched against the divider, looking awkward and asking polite questions about Tom's work in which he'd never before expressed the slightest interest. His head was still shaved, except for a little buzz-cut patch on the top. It made Tom, with his thinning, grizzled mane curling over his collar, feel like an old hippie. He nearly made a joke about it but decided not to.

"So, what's up?" he said at last when they'd sat down to eat.

"I'm going to enlist."

Danny said it without looking up from his food.

"I just wanted, you know, to let you know."

"In the Marines."

"Yeah."

"Of course. You mean, after college."

"No. I'm not going to college. Not now, anyhow."

"I thought that was the plan. Montana State, then decide after you graduate."

"I already decided."

"But, without a degree, that means you go in as a... what is it?"

Danny gave a derisive little laugh, as if only a moron would have to ask what enlisting meant.

"A private."

"I thought you wanted to be an officer."

"I still can be. Later though."

"But—"

"Dad, the country's at war! I've waited long enough already."

"Well, it's a war that some of us—"

"I know what you feel about the war. And I don't care, I just—"

"How? How do you know what I feel about the war? I don't recall our ever having discussed it."

"I just know, okay?"

Tom took a deep breath and for a few moments the only sound was the clack of their cutlery. The omelet suddenly tasted like glue. He silently cursed himself for not having seen this coming. Thanks to Dutch, joining the military had always been in the cards. But as an officer, with a college degree under his belt. And four years of college, Tom had naively hoped, might well change the boy's mind, make him want to do something else with his life.

"So, did you come here today to tell me or to ask my opinion?"

Danny still didn't look up.

"Mom said I should come tell you."

"Well, thank you. So she's all for this, then, I take it."

"Of course she is."

"Why of course? It's not every mother who'd be happy to see her only son go off to war. Especially a war that a lot of people think we shouldn't be fighting in the first place."

Tom regretted saying this before it was even out of his mouth. Danny looked away, gave a small, disdainful shake of his head.

"That may be what people like you think, but—"

"Sorry, hold on a moment. What does that mean? People like me."

"People who are prepared to stand by and watch our country be attacked and do nothing to fight back."

The boy's eyes were on him now and the contempt in them was so shocking that Tom had to swallow before he could speak again.

"Attacked? You mean nine-eleven?"

"Of course I mean nine-eleven, for godsake."

"They weren't from Iraq, Danny. They had no connection with Iraq. Everybody knows that now."

Danny pushed his plate away and stood up, his chair grating on the floor.

"Danny, please..."

"Forget it."

"Listen, I'm sorry. Please, sit down."

"Why the hell do you liberals always want to make excuses for those who want to kill us?"

"Danny—"

"Don't you get it? You don't, do you? You just don't get it."

He was at the door now. Tom stood up and opened his arms.

"Please, Danny. Don't just walk out."

But he was out of the house, Makwi running after him, barking, clearly thinking this was some new kind of game. Danny got into the truck and slammed the door with its painted flames. And by the time Tom got there, the boy had fired the engine and rammed it into reverse, the wheels ripping furrows in the gravel, while Makwi went on barking. Tom reached for the door handle.

"Danny, please!"

But it was too late. The truck lurched out of the driveway and roared off down the road.

Tom had revisited these moments a thousand times, plotting the points at which he might have reacted differently instead of letting his ego do yet more damage to their fragile relationship. Rather than listening, he had immediately challenged. Rather than offering respect and support, he had chosen to undermine the boy's beliefs. Even a moment's reflection would have told him that the only possible outcome would be anger and resentment. In that brief exchange they had both lived up to the caricatures each had fashioned of the other.

What made it so idiotic was that Tom, truly, had no aversion to the military or to those who served in it. On the contrary, he had only respect and sympathy for the young men and women who had been sent to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was little different from how he had felt about those who had risked and lost their lives in Vietnam three decades before. The aversion was only to the men in suits, safely ensconced in Washington and London, who for suspect reasons had sent them there.

He realized too that the argument with Danny had nothing to do with the military or with politics. It was personal. About Tom's self-pity and jealousy at having been ousted by another man, replaced as a father. And now that he could view the world more clearly, instead of through the wobbling haze of liquor, he knew he should be grateful that the boy had found a father figure with values he could admire.