by Perrin Briar
“We were at sea for a long time. I can’t remember every conversation we ever had.”
Anne took a seat opposite Jordan. “I remember a conversation with her about horses.”
“Well then,” Jordan said, taking another curl.
“She was thrown from one.”
Jordan froze.
“The doctor said she was lucky not to have broken her back. Ever since then she’s been afraid of them.” Anne placed her hand reassuringly on Jordan’s forearm. It was tense and hard.
“Then why am I doing it?”
Anne looked at him and drew a deep breath. “Do you know the story of the Trojan Horse?”
“Of course. Troy. Greeks. Giant horse. So what?”
“The Greeks built a giant wooden horse to sneak their men inside. I think this is your Trojan Horse.” Anne tapped the half-whittled object. “I don’t think it’s just a toy. Your subconscious is trying to tell you something. A message. Do you have any idea what it might be?”
Jordan shook his head. “No.” His hands shook.
Anne narrowed her eyes. “Why a horse, Jordan?”
“It just came to mind.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s always a reason.”
“Then I don’t know it,” Jordan snapped.
Anne took a deep breath. “What kind of horse is this?”
“I don’t know horse breeds.”
“Forget the breed. What did you imagine? What colour?”
“I don’t know.”
“What colour?”
“Purple.”
“Why purple?”
Jordan shrugged.
“What else did you imagine? Shut your eyes and imagine it.”
He did. “A white mane and… its legs are connected somehow. It can’t move properly.” He opened his eyes, disappointment evident. “Trust me to choose a lame horse.” He threw the horse across the room. It smacked into the wall, creating a hole.
“You know what you just described, don’t you? A rocking horse. It’s a rocking horse, Jordan. Why Jordan? Why a rocking horse?”
Jordan looked shaken. “I… I don’t know.” He stood up and moved for the door. “I need to… to get some air.” He moved into the corridor.
Anne followed him. “Why a rocking horse, Jordan?”
“I don’t know.”
“When did you see it?”
“I don’t know.” He moved into the front room. “Just leave me alone for a minute-”
“You said it was purple. Who was it for if it was purple?”
“I don’t know. Let me think-”
Anne crowded him, up in his face, forcing him to the wall. “Don’t think. Answer. Why a rocking horse?”
Jordan ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t remember.”
“You do remember. Tell me.”
“I don’t-”
“Tell me!” Anne said, her voice a barked command.
“Because Mia liked it!”
There was silence save for Jordan’s shortness of breath. Anne eased back, giving him some space.
“Mia,” he said. “The little girl in my dream… Her name is Mia.” He looked at Anne, mouth tight. “She was my daughter.”
He threw up over the floor. Half-digested chocolate bars and ever-present carrot chunks.
Anne went to the kitchen, returning with tissues and a glass of water. Jordan sat on the floor. He rinsed out his mouth and began mopping up the vomit.
“Leave that,” Anne said. “I’ll clean it up later.”
They were silent a moment.
“Something happened here, didn’t it? Something important. Can you tell me what it is?”
He didn’t respond.
“There’s a rocking horse upstairs. It is purple, with a white mane.” Jordan didn’t look at her. “Shall we go look at it together?”
Jordan blinked, frozen, peering at the door communicating with the corridor. He’d turned white as a ghost.
“What is it, Jordan?” she asked. “What do you see?”
Jordan rose, stepped out into the doorway and looked up and down the corridor. He turned to Anne. “Was that Jessie?”
“Jessie’s outside.”
Jordan shook his head. “I’m going mad.”
“You’re remembering. Don’t fight it. Let it come.”
He double-took something in the direction of the stairs. “Jess?” he called out.
Anne rested a hand on his back. “She’s still outside, Jordan.”
His body quivered.
Anne took him by the hand and led him down the corridor to the stairs. Balusters hung loose like bad teeth. A good number of the steps had been pried up, nails protruding. When Anne made to climb the stairs, Jordan pulled back. His face was pale and drawn.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m with you.”
He took a moment, staring up the crumbling steps, at the empty shadowed landing. He nodded. His grip grew tighter in Anne’s hand. They made their way up the staircase toward the semi-circle window.
147.
With each step the dirt melted away, revealing slices of moonlight. The whole house became brighter and warmer, like turning up the brightness settings on a TV.
Halfway up the stairs, and the house was no longer battered and beaten by nature and time. The wooden floor shone with a polished sheen. The wallpaper no longer peeled, but was firm and smelled of newly applied paste. The floorboards creaked with steadfast confidence, not the former splintered crack of damp fibres.
A little girl with beautiful blonde ringlets giggled as she ran up the stairs on all fours ahead of him. It was the same girl Jordan had seen earlier in the corridor – the girl from his dream. The girl with the name Mia. She kept looking back at him over her shoulder, checking to make sure he was still following, bursting into fits of giggles, face lost in a curtain of curls.
Memory Jordan’s chest swelled with an intense cocktail of emotions. Jordan supped on them: pride, happiness, joy, and the faintest flicker of sadness that this moment could not last forever. Mia disappeared up the stairs and Jordan called out for her to come back, but no one heard him. He realised he still hadn’t seen her face.
148.
Jordan’s expression turned to that of wonder, then grim and bleak as he peered at the large half-moon bay window that would have looked out on the beach down below if it hadn’t been blinded by dirt and scum.
Jordan’s movements were slow, drawn-out and dream-like. He reached a finger up to the window and drew two small dots, then a curved line beneath, making a smiley face in the crud. A piercing wind blew through head-sized holes in the derelict wall, freezing Anne to the bone.
149.
Through the glass he saw the yellow band of sand, pressed on either side by land and sea. Jordan willed Memory Jordan to look down, but the eyes would not move. The memory had already happened, and he hadn’t looked down.
Jordan went up on tiptoe, peering through Memory Jordan’s peripheral vision. He saw the windowpane but there was no mark on it. No tiny Mia handprint. His insides twisted. Jordan turned, reaching for his body in the house with Anne. He sensed it, and as he tugged on it, he felt himself drift toward it.
He felt something on his back – something soft and comforting. It was Anne, he knew, reassuring him. He felt a similar caress on his hand. He gritted his teeth and returned back to Memory Jordan, who was busy drawing a smiley face on the window, giving the impression the moon was smiling. Jordan didn’t know why he did that.
A dribble of rainbow wormed its way before Jordan. It wriggled and squirmed past him and onward into the dark distance. It widened and grew into an amorphous river of spectra. Nuggets of flotsam flowed down it, carried away to who knew where. Images of the smiling face flitted across their surfaces. Jordan reached out and grabbed a chunk of the glittering rock. It was hard and smooth, like glass. He looked into it.
And he remembered.
150.
It was ra
ining. Damp and dreary. He was in a partially demolished courtyard of Middle Eastern design. His back was to another soldier – a smiling soldier. Patrick. Patrick Flaherty. He had a bush of red hair that had never seen a comb. He beamed – a smile that used every muscle in his face.
“Here we are in the armpit of the universe and you’re smiling. Why do you always smile at everything?” Jordan asked.
“Because if I didn’t, I’d cry.” Patrick beamed again. He looked up at the moon and said, “Me mum used to tell me a tale. A Roman tale, it was. A man named Endymion had fallen in love with the moon, and had been granted eternal life so long as he woke only at night, able to gaze upon his love, but forsaking all other things. Each time I look up at that moon, I think of me own loved ones. The moon is always there, and so are they.” He turned to look at Jordan. “What makes you happy?”
“Jordy?” a high voice called, snapping Memory Jordan out of the military memory and back to the beach house. “Is that you, Jordy?”
The memory river abruptly surged, thick and full and terrifying.
“Jordy?”
It came from the bedroom at the end of the hall. Memory Jordan moved toward it, poking his head into the room.
The woman stood with her back to him, facing a full-length mirror. “There you are!” she said. “I thought I heard you.”
Jordan scrambled at the memory flotsam flying past him but it slipped through his fingers like it were mist. He realised the memories had different properties. Some were thin as air, slipping through his fingers as if they weren’t even there, others were solid like glass. Growing agitated, he focused and grasped for one. He caught it and brought it up to his face. Before he could look into it, the woman turned, and he lost the memory. Big bright blue eyes shone from a slender face, blonde hair spilling past her shoulder blades. A smile played across her full lips.
“You’re beautiful,” Memory Jordan said. It was a view Jordan echoed.
She smiled. “I’m not sure about beautiful. Passable, maybe. Took me three hours to get ready.”
“Worth every second.”
The woman… What was her name? His fingers dipped into the river, something bumped into them. He picked the memory up and looked into it.
151.
The green paint was peeling, scuff marks on the bottom of the door where people had used their feet instead of their hands to open it. The handle was scratched and bent out of shape where it had been thrown open and bashed on the brick wall.
Memory Jordan pushed the door open and a boisterous melee of sound assaulted him. Men and women’s voices fighting to be heard over metal trays slapping hard on plastic tables. A hand raised from amongst the crowd of diners. Patrick waved Jordan over. “Jordan! Over here!”
As Memory Jordan got close, Jordan noticed someone sat beside Patrick, dressed in standard issue army gear. Jordan’s palms felt sweaty.
“Jordan,” Patrick said, easy smile affixed to his face. “Let me introduce the very lovely Rachel Beaumont.”
152.
Jordan was back in the bedroom with Rachel.
Rachel smiled, and the room grew brighter. “You’re in a good mood tonight,” she said.
“No reason to be otherwise,” Memory Jordan said.
“That doesn’t usually stop you.” Rachel turned around. “Can you zip me up?”
Memory Jordan stepped forward, allowing himself to feel the smoothness of her skin as he zipped her up. She turned back, posing for him.
“What do you think?”
“Gorgeous. I’m sorry I’ve been… distant lately.”
Rachel smiled again. She did it a lot and Jordan liked it. “I know you’ve had a lot on your plate lately.”
Memory Jordan ran his finger over her face. “That’s no excuse.”
Each time the subject changed, the river of memories flowed differently. Sometimes the current was weak, other times strong, like now. Jordan tentatively reached into the water, interest piqued about the ‘a lot on your plate lately’ comment, and immediately snatched up another memory.
153.
“How are you feeling now, Jordan?” Major Harris asked, not looking up from the report lying on the desk before him. He was powerfully-built, grey as a mule despite his relatively young age of forty-three. His head was huge, reminiscent of a nodding bubblehead – not that anyone ever dared call him that to his face. His was a fearsome reputation.
“Fine, sir,” Memory Jordan said, standing to attention before the large desk.
“The doctor seems pleased with your progress.”
“Yes, sir.”
Major Harris took a moment. He put down the report. “This Patrick Flaghery-”
“Flaherty.”
Major Harris didn’t correct himself. “He was important to you?”
“He was one of our team, sir.”
“I mean, he was important to you.”
“The whole team’s welfare is important to me, sir.” Memory Jordan’s voice was tight.
Major Harris fixed Memory Jordan with his squinting eyes. “More than the others?”
Jordan could feel the conflict inside Memory Jordan.
“He… was my friend, sir. A good friend.”
The major nodded as if it confirmed his suspicions. “What state was he in when you found him?”
“The report says-”
“Refresh my memory.”
“We had orders to break into the compound and find evidence of WMDs. We were to also rescue Flaherty if the opportunity presented itself, but not to risk the primary objective.”
“Did the opportunity present itself?”
Jordan nodded. “It did.”
“And in what state was Flaherty when you found him?”
Memory Jordan’s eyes broke from the Major’s. “Not good. Since his abduction he’d been subjected to… experiments.”
“He was dead when you found him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And then the Iranian soldiers came and used Flaherty as a human shield. You were forced to fire upon Flaherty’s corpse in order to escape – which is why his body was riddled with bullets from your gun. Isn’t that right?”
“That is correct, sir.”
“Are you sure there’s nothing else you’d like to add?”
“No, sir.”
“You’re positive?” Major Harris took a moment. “Then perhaps you could be kind enough to help me understand something. There was one door in and out of the room, correct?”
“Yes, sir.” Jordan sensed Memory Jordan’s apprehension.
“You checked the body and found him dead.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then the Iranians came in.”
“Yes, sir.”
Major Harris fixed Memory Jordan in place with his eyes. “Then how exactly did they manage to get hold of the body of the man you care so much about from behind you, and use it as a shield?”
Memory Jordan was silent.
Major Harris didn’t stop glaring at him.
“I must have, uh…”
The major held up his hand, silencing him. “Bring me the medal in my cabinet, please.”
Memory Jordan blinked. “Sir?”
Major Harris nodded to the case behind him. “The medal.”
Memory Jordan went to the small glass-fronted cabinet. It was empty save for one plain campaign medal. He took it out. It was nothing special. All soldiers received one after completing a tour.
“Read the inscription, if you would,” Major Harris said.
“For outstanding bravery.”
The major took the medal and held it delicately between thumb and forefinger – an act almost comical given the size of the man.
“Do you know why of all the medals I have this is the one I chose to display? Because it’s the only one I believe I justly earned. The personal cost I paid for this one medal is more than all the others combined. My team was on a recon mission in South America. We were ambushed and our team was captured.
Our extraction was imminent and we had been trained – as you have – to sacrifice all things for the mission objective. But training and reality are not often compatible. I found I had to make the decision when it should have already been made by my training. But I ignored that training and made a decision with my heart, not my head.
“They called it bravery to go in, guns blazing, to rescue the man behind, but really I was a coward. We were all lucky to get out alive. If I made the decision today, would I make the same decision? I don’t know. It taught me that in war, we must all of us be monsters.”
He took a moment, shaking his head to dispel the memories. He put a hand on Jordan’s shoulder.
“If Flaherty had been alive, and he’d been successfully extracted, you’d have gotten one of these,” he held up the medal, “instead of a P45. I know there’s something you’re not telling me, soldier. Furthermore, it makes no difference to my decision. I’m going to have to let you go, Jordan. I’m sorry to lose you. You’re a good man. A damn fine soldier. But I can’t reinstate you.”
Major Harris sank his ample frame into his chair. “But I’m not going to dishonourably discharge you either. I know you’ve only got a few months of this tour left, and I don’t intend for you to lose any pension you’re owed. You also have a whole lot of holiday. I suggest you use it.”
“Thank you, sir.” Jordan stopped at the door. “Where will I be posted?”
“RAF Burgh Castle in Norfolk. Do you know it?”
“Yes, sir. My father was posted there when I was young. Did my own training there too. In what capacity will I be operating?”
“There are a variety of options. How are you at cooking?”
154.
Jordan was back in the room with Rachel.
Rachel asked, “Where’s Mia? Can you make sure she’s ready- Ahhh!” Rachel screamed, and in the same moment, leapt onto a chair.
“What is it?”
“There,” Rachel said, pointing a shaky finger, “under the bed!”
