by John Boyne
I glanced at my watch, wondering whether or not I should abandon the whole thing as a bad lot and take the next bus back to my quiet flat in Highgate for a final, solitary dinner and a good night’s sleep before the next day’s train took me to my new life as a soldier, and had all but determined to do so, had even stood up and turned around on the street to head back towards Kew, when I collided with a person walking towards me who dropped a basket of shopping on the ground in surprise.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, reaching down and gathering the apples, bottle of milk and carton of eggs that had fallen but remained mercifully intact. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.” I glanced up then, aware that the person I was talking to had not responded, and was taken aback to see who was standing there. “Sylvia,” I said.
“Tristan?” she replied, staring at me. “It’s never you.”
I shrugged my shoulders, indicating that yes, it was, and she looked away for a moment, placing the basket on the bench beside us, and biting her lip. Her cheeks flushed a little, perhaps in embarrassment, perhaps in confusion. I felt no embarrassment at all, despite what she knew about me. “It’s good to see you,” I said finally.
“And you,” she said, extending an awkward hand now, which I shook. “You’ve hardly changed at all.”
“I hope that’s not true,” I said. “It’s been a year and a half.”
“Has it really?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, examining her now, noticing differences. She was still a beauty, of course, even more beautiful now at seventeen than she had been at fifteen, but that was to be expected. Her hair, a bright shade of sunshine blonde, lay loose around her shoulders. She was slim and dressed to compliment her figure. A slash of red lipstick gave her an exotic air and I wondered where she had found it; the fellows I worked with at the construction firm were forever on the search for lipstick or stockings for their sweethearts; luxuries like this were hard to come by.
“Well, this is awkward, isn’t it?” she said after a pause, and I rather admired her for her refusal to pretend otherwise.
“Yes,” I said. “It is a bit.”
“Don’t you ever want the ground to open up and swallow you whole?”
“Sometimes,” I admitted. “Not as often as I once did.”
She considered this, perhaps wondering exactly what I meant by it; I wasn’t sure myself. “How are you, anyway?” she asked. “You look well.”
“I’m all right,” I said. “And you?”
“I work in a factory, if you can believe it,” she told me, pulling a face. “Did you ever expect me to end up as a factory girl?”
“You haven’t ended up as anything yet. We’re only seventeen.”
“It’s hateful but I feel I must do something.”
“Yes,” I said, nodding.
“And you?” she asked carefully. “You’re not yet—?”
“Tomorrow morning,” I told her. “First thing. Aldershot.”
“Oh, I know a few chaps who went there. They said it was all right, really.”
“I shall find out soon enough,” I said, wondering how long this would go on for. It felt false and uneasy and I suspected that both of us would have quite liked to lower our guard and speak to each other without artifice.
“You’re back to see your family, I presume?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I thought it would be good to see them before I went off. It might be the last time, after all.”
“Don’t say that, Tristan,” she said, reaching a hand out and touching my arm. “It’s bad luck. You don’t want to jinx yourself.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I only meant that it felt right to come back. It’s been … well, I’ve already said how long it’s been.”
She looked embarrassed. “Shall we sit for a moment?” she asked, glancing towards the bench, and I shrugged as we sat down together. “I wanted to write to you,” she said. “Well, not at first, of course. But later. When I realized what we had done to you.”
“It was hardly your fault,” I said.
“No, but I had a hand in it. Do you remember that time we kissed? Under the chestnut tree?”
“As if it was yesterday,” I replied, smiling a little, almost laughing. “We were just children.”
“Maybe,” she said, smiling back. “But I fancied you something rotten.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes. You were all I could think about for the longest time.”
I thought about it. It seemed so strange to hear her say this to me. “It always surprised me that it wasn’t Peter you liked the best,” I said.
“I don’t know why,” she said. “I mean, he was lovely, I was very fond of him, but I only went with him because you rejected me. It all seems so silly now, doesn’t it? So trivial. The way we behaved. But it felt so important back then. That’s what growing up is like, I suppose.”
“Yes,” I said, still astonished that she could possibly have liked me more than Peter, astonished that anyone could. “And Peter?” I asked tentatively. “Is he still—?”
“Oh no,” she said. “He left about eight months ago, I think. He’s training for the navy, didn’t you hear? I see his mother sometimes, though, and she tells me he’s doing well. No, there are only girls around here now, Tristan. It’s frightful. You’d have your pick of us if you stuck around.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth I could see that she regretted them, for she went scarlet and looked away, uncertain how to recover the moment. I felt embarrassed, too, and couldn’t look at her.
“I have to ask,” she said eventually. “All that business. With you and Peter, I mean. It wasn’t what they said, was it?”
“Well, that depends,” I replied. “What did they say?”
“Peter … well, he told me something. Something that you did. I said he must have got it wrong, that it couldn’t be, but he insisted that—”
“He was telling the truth,” I said quietly.
“Oh,” she said. “I see.”
I was unsure how to explain it to her, not even sure that I wanted to or needed to, but I had not spoken of this for so long that I felt a sudden urge to and turned to her. “He had nothing to do with it, you see,” I explained. “He never would have felt the same. But it had always been there. In my mind, that is. There’s always been something wrong with me on that score.”
“Something wrong with you?” she asked. “Is that how you see it?”
“Of course,” I replied, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure it matters so much. I fell in love myself recently with someone entirely unsuitable. He threw me over the minute he got what he wanted. Said I wasn’t potential wife material, whatever that might be.”
I laughed a little. “Sorry,” I said. “So you and Peter …?”
“Oh no,” she said, shaking her head. “No, that barely outlasted you. He was a poor substitute, that’s the truth of it. And once you were gone I couldn’t see the point of keeping up with him. I was only doing it to drive you insane with jealousy, for all the good it did me.”
“That’s astonishing to me, Sylvia,” I said in disbelief. “To hear you say that.”
“Only because you can’t understand someone not thinking that Peter was the bee’s knees. He was rather selfish, really, when you think of it. And mean. You were such close friends and the moment he realized how you … how you really felt, he dropped you like a hot potato. And after all those years, too. Vile.”
I shrugged. My feelings for Peter hadn’t entirely evaporated, although I could at least now recognize them for what they really were, an adolescent crush. Nevertheless I hated thinking of him in this context. I liked to think that he was still my friend, somewhere in the world, and that if we met again, which I hoped we would some day, all past enmities would be forgotten. Of course we never did.
“Anyway,” she said, “he took it badly. Chased me aroun
d for months until my father had to put a stop to it. Then he wouldn’t speak to me again. I saw him just before he went, though, and we had a decent chat but it wasn’t the same. The problem was that for the three of us, nothing ever settled right, did it? He loved me but I didn’t feel the same. I loved you and you weren’t interested. And you …”
“Yes, me,” I said, turning my face away from her.
“Is there anyone now?” she asked, and I looked back, surprised by how daring she was. I couldn’t imagine anyone else asking such a scandalous question.
“No,” I said quickly. “No, of course not.”
“Why ‘of course not’?”
“Sylvia, please,” I said irritably. “How could there be? I shall stay alone.”
“But you don’t know that, Tristan,” she said. “And you must never say it. Someone could come along and—”
I jumped up and blew warm air into my clenched fists, which had grown cold as we sat there. I was weary of this conversation. I didn’t want to be patronized by her.
“I should be getting along,” I said.
“Yes, of course,” she replied, standing up now, too. “I hope I haven’t upset you.”
“No. Only I have to get to the shop and then back home again later. I still have a lot to do before I leave tomorrow.”
“All right,” she said, leaning forward and kissing me lightly on the cheek. “Take care of yourself, Tristan,” she added. “And survive, do you hear me?”
I smiled and nodded. I liked the way that she had phrased it. I turned my head and glanced down the street towards my father’s shop, seeing an old, familiar customer emerging with a bag of meat under his arm.
“Right,” I said. “Here goes nothing. I hope at least one of the three of them will be happy to see me.” I noticed a cloud fall across her face as I said this, her expression growing confused again for a moment and then full of understanding, even horror, and I stared at her, the smile fading from my face.
“What?” I asked. “What’s the matter?”
“ ‘The three of them’?” she said, echoing my phrase. “Oh, Tristan,” she said as she pulled me most unexpectedly towards her once again, triggering a memory of that afternoon under the chestnut tree when she had kissed me and I had pretended to love her.
There were no customers in the shop and no one behind the counter. By rights, my stomach should have been turning somersaults by now but instead I felt nothing. A sense of release, perhaps, if that even. I recognized the smells immediately, the sour mix of meat and blood and disinfectant, which took me right back to my childhood. Closing my eyes for a moment, I could see myself as a boy running down the back stairs into the cold-room on Monday mornings, when Mr. Gardner would arrive with the carcasses that my father would butcher through the week and sell to his customers, never wasting a cut, never mean with the weights. It was from that same cold-room that he emerged while I was remembering this, carrying a tray of pork chops, closing the door behind him with his shoulder.
On a countertop, far away from the reach of customers, I could see his fine range of boning knives and slicers, but I turned away from them in case they should give me ideas.
“With you in a minute, sir,” he said, barely glancing in my direction as he pulled the glass cover off the display case before him and settled the tray in an empty spot. He hesitated for the briefest of moments, the tray hovering in the air, and then he closed the cover once again, looked up and steadied himself, swallowing, and to his credit appeared to be at a loss for words.
We looked at each other. I examined his face for signs of remorse, for anything that might indicate shame, and for a second I thought I could see it there. But just as quickly it vanished, and was replaced by a cold stare, a look of disgust, and an attitude of repugnance that a creature like me could have been spawned from his body.
“I leave tomorrow,” I told him. “I have nine weeks of training at Aldershot. And then I go. I thought you’d want to know.”
“I assumed you were already over there,” he replied, picking up a bloodstained cloth from the counter and rubbing his hands in it. “Or did you not want to go?”
“I wasn’t eligible for a long time on account of my age,” I said, recognizing the slight.
“How old are you now, then?”
“Seventeen,” I said. “I lied. Told them I was eighteen and they let me in.”
He considered this and nodded. “Well, I’m not sure why you thought I’d be interested but I suppose it’s worth knowing,” he said. “So unless you’re after a bit of mince or—”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked him, trying hard to keep my voice steady.
“Tell you?” he said, frowning. “Tell you what?”
“She was my sister, for pity’s sake.”
He had the decency to look away, to stare down at the joints of meat that were spread out before him and not answer me immediately. I saw him swallow again, consider an answer, turn to look at me with just a hint of regret on his face and then, perhaps sensing it himself, run a bloodied hand across his eyes and cheeks and shake his head.
“It had nothing to do with you,” he said. “It was family business.”
“She was my sister,” I repeated, feeling the tears start to form now.
“It was family business.”
We said nothing for a few moments. A woman slowed down as she approached the front window, examined some of the meat on display, then looked up, appeared to change her mind and carried on walking.
“How did you hear, anyway?” he asked me finally.
“I met Sylvia,” I said. “Just today. After I got off the bus. It was a coincidence that we should run into each other. She told me.”
“Sylvia,” he said, snorting in disgust. “That one’s no better than she ought to be. She was fast back then and she’s fast now.”
“You could have written to me,” I said, refusing to speak about anyone but Laura. “You could have found me and told me. How long was she ill?”
“A few months.”
“Was she in pain?”
“Yes. A great deal.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said, bending over slightly, an aching pain at the pit of my stomach.
“For God’s sake, Tristan,” he said, coming around from behind the counter now and standing before me; it was all that I could do not to take a step back from him in disgust. “You couldn’t have done anything to help her. It was just one of those things. It spread through her body like wildfire.”
“I would have wanted to see her,” I said. “I’m her brother.”
“Not really,” he said in a casual tone. “You were once, I suppose. I’ll give you that. But that was all a long time ago. I think she’d pretty much forgotten you by the end.”
To my surprise, he put an arm around my shoulder then and I thought he was going to embrace me, but instead he turned me around and walked with me slowly towards the door.
“The truth is, Tristan,” he said as he guided me back out on to the street, “you weren’t her brother any more than you are my son. This isn’t your family. You have no business here, not any more. It would be best for all of us if the Germans shoot you dead on sight.”
He closed the door in my face then and turned away. I watched him as he hesitated for a moment in front of the display case, examining the various cuts of meat, counting them off in his head, before disappearing back into the cold room and out of my life forever.
“Perhaps I was wrong,” said Marian as we made our way back through the city, walking in the direction of the railway station. “I rather ambushed you, didn’t I? Bringing you in to meet my parents like that.”
“It’s all right,” I said, lighting a much-needed cigarette and letting the smoke fill my lungs and calm my nerves. The only thing that might have matched it for pure pleasure was a pint of cold ale. “They’re decent people.”
“Yes, I suppose they are. We drive each other mad on a daily basis but I suppose that’s par for th
e course. Given the choice, I’d like a home of my own. Then they could visit and we could be friends and there wouldn’t be any more of these daily confrontations.”
“I’m sure you’ll marry some day,” I said.
“A home of my own,” she insisted. “Not someone else’s. Like you have.”
“Mine is just a small flat,” I told her. “It’s comfortable but, believe me, it’s nothing like you have here.”
“Still, it’s all yours, isn’t it? You answer to no one.”
“Look, you really don’t have to walk with me all the way back,” I told her. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful but I’m sure I can find my way.”
“It’s all right,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t mind. We’ve come this far together, after all.”
I nodded. The evening was starting to close in, the sky was growing darker and the air colder. I buttoned my overcoat and took another drag of my cigarette.
“What will you do now?” she asked me after a few minutes, and I turned to her, frowning.
“I’ll go back to London, of course,” I said.
“No, I don’t mean that. I mean tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. What are your plans for the future, now that the war is behind us?”
I thought about it. “Tomorrow morning I shall be back at my desk at the Whisby Press,” I said. “There will be manuscripts to read, rejection letters to send out, books to edit. We’re doing a presentation of future titles to some booksellers next week so I have to prepare a few notes on each one.”
“You enjoy working there, do you?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said enthusiastically. “I like being around books.”
“So you think you’ll stay where you are? Seek promotion? Become a publisher yourself?”
I hesitated. “I might like to try my hand at writing,” I told her; it was the first time I had admitted this aloud to anyone. “It’s something I’ve dabbled in a little over the last few years. I feel I might like to take it more seriously now.”
