White Ravens

by Owen Sheers

  We were in a little alley behind one of those famous hotels, with the lorry reversed in so there was just a wall behind me. They’d used it before and knew the CCTV camera on the corner was knackered. The chef had seen to that months ago. Dewi popped his head out further and I saw a big smear of blood across his cheek where he must have wiped his face with his hand. He did a quick scope, just in case, then gave a jerk of his head. ‘Yeah, alright,’ he said, eyeing the fat envelope in my hand. Swinging the door wider he sat down on the tailgate and took it from me. Which is when I saw the full state of him, head to toe in blood, and of the lorry behind him too, lit by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling.

  ‘Jesus,’ I heard Dewi say as he thumbed through the notes. ‘Bloody hell, look at that will you?’ Which is exactly what I was thinking, but in a very different way. Dewi was spellbound, as he was more and more those days, by the sight of that money; of all that potential for things and happening held in his hand. But me? Well, I was just knocked for six by the sight of that lorry. Christ, bloody hell indeed. Now I understood why Sion hosed it down for hours after. Growing up on the farm it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen my fair share of slaughtering. But this was different. There was blood everywhere. On the ceiling, up the sides, in big puddles on the floor. The stink of it hit me in a slow wave; a rich, iron smell wafting out into the alley like a rotten memory of tougher times in the city. Over Dewi’s shoulder I could make out a large bin. It was overflowing with hooves and heads. There were a couple of bags beside it, full of entrails. Sion lay next to them, knackered out, slumped against the bloody wall like the last survivor of some ancient massacre. And then, as if all this wasn’t bad enough, after he’d handed the first thousand back to me, each note imprinted with a fainter and fainter bloody thumbprint, Dewi swivelled on his haunches and wagged a wad of cash at Sion. And Sion, my little brother who’d once cried when Dad said he couldn’t have a pony, lit up with a big old grin, bright as those holiday-brochure smiles, in the middle of his blood-washed face.

  I walked away. Just like that. Didn’t think about it, didn’t even know I was doing it. But I did, just walked away from it all, from the lorry, the smell, the wad of cash and from my bloody brothers, unbelieving that all our family had come to was this. That all our generations of farmers, of men and women who’d reared animals on that high hill had trickled down to the sorry sight of the three of us counting out bad money in a blood-soaked lorry in a back alley in London before dawn.

  I didn’t know where I was going. I just walked and walked. Dewi must have thought I was going back to the cab, because I never heard him call for me. In walking away like that I’d completely screwed them of course. Neither of them was in any state to drive, up all night killing and butchering, and neither were any sight for a passing policeman either. So yes, I’d screwed them over good and proper, leaving like that. But I didn’t care. I never wanted to see them again. I never wanted to see them because of what they’d done, because of the turn they’d chosen all those months ago and because of how they’d gone and dragged me along with them. Not just that night either, but always. Because okay, that might have been the first time I’d seen inside the back of the lorry after a night’s job, but hadn’t I always taken the money that came from it? Hadn’t I always stashed it in that drawer and used it to buy the food I ate, to fuel my dreams of the future? Of course I had and I reckon that’s why I didn’t stop walking for a good two hours. Because I wasn’t just trying to get away from my brothers was I? Oh no, I was trying to get away from myself too, and I knew, when I finally sat down on that bench by the Tower, crying my bloody eyes out, that there wasn’t much chance of me doing that now was there?

  ‘I don’t know... I don’t know.’

  This was the best I could manage. When the old man looked me in the eye and asked me what had brought me to the Tower, that’s all I could say. I mean, I couldn’t exactly tell him what I just told you could I? But it was true as well. I didn’t know. Like he’d said, you’ve got to understand your past before you can tell your future, and right then on that bench, that morning, I sure as hell didn’t understand a thing about mine.

  When I told him I didn’t know he turned away from me, real slow like, and I thought I’d somehow disappointed him. Suddenly, though I’d only just met him, I wanted him to turn back, to look at me again with those milky eyes and tell me it was alright, that it was alright to not have a bloody clue where you’re going or where you’ve been. But he didn’t; he just rested both his hands on his walking stick and his chin on his hands and looked out over the river to the city, hazy on the other side. Eventually he let out a sigh and, dipping a hand into his waistcoat, pulled out a silver pocket watch on a chain. He looked down at its face, not so much as to tell the time, but more as if he was looking through it, not at it, like it was a porthole not a watch, showing him a view of elsewhere, somewhere far away. He was still looking at it when he spoke to me again.

  ‘Would you like to hear a story?’ he said, still speaking soft and low.

  I sniffed back my tears. Maybe he was a nutter after all, I thought. But I wanted to hear him speak again, so I answered him. ‘What’s it about?’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, still looking at the watch. ‘Those ravens down there.’

  I looked down at the birds around the Tower, strutting and preening on the fence posts and railings. ‘Those ravens?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, putting the watch away and turning to me with a smile. ‘Not those ravens exactly, no. But their ancestors, yes.’

  ‘Their ancestors?’

  ‘Yes.’ He was enjoying this now, the smile putting a shine in his eye.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I haven’t really got time for a story.’

  It was true. I’d just left my brothers covered in blood, in the back of a lorry in a back alley behind a hotel. Not really the time for stories.

  ‘Oh, come now,’ he said, looking at me from under a mock frown. ‘There’s always time for a story.’

  I sighed, good and heavy, and when I did it felt like a lump of lead melting inside me. Maybe he was right. Maybe I could stay for a bit. The sun was warming up now, I was tired and whatever had happened to my brothers would have already happened. They’d either have started for home, or been caught by the police. Whatever, there wasn’t much I could do, not right then.

  ‘Is it a good story?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, nodding his head, like my question had reminded him what it was about. ‘It’s a good story alright. A very good story.’

  The Old Man’s Story

  He held the girl’s eyes for a moment longer. They were the bluest he’d seen for many years, the cobalt of her irises exaggerated by the red whites, bloodshot with suppressed tears. Eventually he let them go and looked back down at the river. How much that river must have seen, he thought. How much knowledge it must have carried to the sea, how much wisdom and tragedy it must have diffused into the wide oceans of the world. He’d considered jumping into it once, balanced on the edge of London Bridge one night, the winter wind cutting into his skin. The policeman who’d talked him down had done so with one simple fact. ‘You know,’ he’d said, edging his way towards him, ‘seven out of ten never surface. Those currents are strong. They keep them down there. We never see them again.’ It had been a risk. For all the policeman had known, this was exactly what he’d wanted. But it wasn’t. Although he’d come to terms with the idea of ending his life, somehow that had always involved a body, his body, being fished from the water and pulled out onto the bank. Then his remains would have finally gone home and gone into the ground there, deep into the ground. So, after the policeman told him that the river could just swallow him and leave no trace, he didn’t jump after all. He’d backed away from the edge, stepped down onto the pavement, assured the young officer he would be alright and gone home. Not back home, just home.

  The girl was watching him, waiting. She wanted to hear his story. That was good. He closed his ey
es and tilted his face to the sun for a moment, feeling its warmth spread through his cheeks like a blush. Then, opening his eyes on the Tower again, and on the ravens strutting across its lawns, he began.

  So, as I was saying, this story is about those ravens down there. Not so much the birds themselves though; more the idea of them. I suppose you know why they’re there don’t you? You’ve heard the myth about them? No, not the fortune-telling, the other one. About what happens if they ever leave the Tower? No? Oh, well, if the ravens leave then apparently, if that ever happens, the kingdom falls. Britain will fall. Now, there’s no need to look like that. I’m serious. I know that other stuff, the fortune-telling, is pretty silly, but plenty of people have credited this one with something. It’s why Charles II issued a royal decree to keep six ravens at the Tower. And Winston Churchill, he certainly thought there was something in it too. Yes, Churchill. This story begins with him in a way. With Prime Minister Churchill sitting in his bunker in the war rooms, or strolling through the gardens at Chequers perhaps, thinking about those birds down there.

  What I’m about to tell you happened during the Second World War. London was a frightening place back then. Especially in those early years when the Blitz was blowing up the city around us. You’d walk to work past a house one day, nod hello to the mother packing her kids off to school, gas masks bouncing round their necks – then, the very next day, you’d walk past the same house and it would be gone. You’d look for the mother and her children and you’d hope to God they’d got to the shelter in time. And then you’d walk on. Terrible. Buses blown on their sides, churches gutted, teams of men searching through piles of rubble all day long. See down there? Down the river towards the west? Well, imagine sitting here in 1940 and seeing a squadron of German bombers droning their way up the Thames like a flock of giant geese, the flak bursting all around them. That was when they were still doing daylight raids, using the river to guide them east to flatten the factories in Canning Town and Bethnal Green. Horrible, seeing them coming like that. But it was even worse when the night raids began. Then you’d only hear them, rumbling above the clouds. The searchlights made huge golden crosses over the city, then they’d swing apart again, looking for the planes up there coming to kill us. The sirens would start, then the whine of the falling ordnance; the crumple of the far explosions, the thuds and roars of the close ones. Yes, London was a frightening place to be alright back then. Very frightening.

  The raids petered out after the Battle of Britain, though never completely. Russia joined the war and the whole thing went elsewhere for a while – Egypt, Italy, Greece. But towards the end, when things weren’t looking too bright for the Nazis, well those raids began again. Same as before, night raids, sirens, the searchlights, but also different. They had these new rocket bombs by then you see. The V1, then the V2. You’d hear the V1 above you, day or night, a high-pitched hum above the clouds. But unlike the planes, hearing them was good. You wanted to hear them because that meant they were still going somewhere, still heading for somewhere else and wouldn’t be dropping on you. But if you heard that humming stop, well, then you’d better run for your life. Or say goodbye to it.

  This was in 1944, a few months after a friend of mine, Matthew, came to London to take up a position at the War Ministry. Now, the thing about Matthew was that he was Irish, so this wasn’t even his war, let alone his ministry. Matthew O’Connell was his name. Lovely tall fellow from a small farming and fishing village on the coast south of Dublin. So what, you may ask, was he doing in London working for the British war effort? Well, you’d be surprised. Ireland was neutral in that war, but not all the Irish were. Many of their boys chose to join up and fight for the British. Brave thing to do, when you think about it, considering their fathers and grandfathers had, just a few years before, been fighting against the British. Ever since the Easter Rising the British had been the enemy of the Irish. So imagine looking your father in the face and telling him you were off to put on a British uniform and pick up a British gun. I happen to know that Matthew’s own aunt, his father’s sister, was raped by the Black and Tans, that bastard army of thugs and criminals the British brought in to keep the Irish down. Oh, I’m sorry. Forgive my language. But you understand my point, not an easy thing to do for an Irish lad, volunteer for the British army. It certainly wasn’t too popular in Matthew’s village, or with his family. But he went nevertheless. Why? Well, Matthew had seen what was going to happen, that’s why. He’d seen the future, and not with the help of any ravens either.

  He’d taken a cycle tour through Germany you see, in 1938, with his cousin who’d been teaching English there. They went all over the country that summer. They saw Germany, and they saw the Third Reich right at her heart, sucking the decency out of her like a malignant cancer. They saw it all; the marches, the parades, the uniforms, the speeches and it was as clear as day to them that war was coming, and what kind of a world it would be if the Nazis won. When a farmer in Fischbachau showed them the way to a pass through the mountains to Austria he waved them farewell with ‘See you in the trenches!’ shouted after them, his hands cupped around his mouth, perfectly cheerfully.

  So, when the war did finally come, it only took a year or so of stalling before Matthew could no longer ignore what he had to do. Along with over a hundred thousand other Irish boys and women during the course of that war he caught a ferry to Wales, boarded a train for London and arrived here a day later, ready to volunteer for the British army.

  When Matthew finished his training there was a good deal of moving between camps, more training, then retraining before he was finally posted to the new 38th Irish Infantry, part of the 78th ‘Battleaxe’ Division at the tail end of their campaign in Tunisia. That was where Matthew saw his first combat, in Africa. That was where he saw his first enemy prisoners and his first enemy corpse; an Afrikakorps gunner, draped over his destroyed anti-tank gun like a puppet with his strings cut. So when the 38th took part in the invasion of Sicily the next year, in July 1943, Matthew wasn’t as green as he might have been. He had some idea, at least, of what lay in store for them as they waited, cramped and bobbing, in their landing crafts off the shore of Cape Passero. Not like those poor Yanks. Only action they’d ever seen was in pub brawls or whatever they’d been able to get in exchange for a couple of pairs of nylons when they’d been posted here in London.

  They all did alright though, both the Irish and the Yanks. Took Messina, then went on to invade Italy too. But it was tough, very tough: 190,000 Italian soldiers on Sicily and 40,000 Germans as well. Whatever the news reports said, none of them gave up easily. Matthew was in the thick of it, and in the invasion of Italy too, but not for much of it. Piece of shrapnel the size of my fist entered his leg, here, just below the hip, and came out here, above the inside of his knee. Pretty much took out everything in between too. And that could have been it. Some serious arteries in the thigh you know? He lost a lot of blood, a lot of blood. But, thanks to one little stretcher bearer who did away with the stretcher and hauled him over his shoulder, well, Matthew made it to a medic in time. Two weeks on a hospital ship later and he was in a big country house in Kent, wheeling himself around the gardens through the falling autumn leaves, along with all the other patched, stitched, bandaged and amputated young men coming home from overseas back then.

  Within a few months he was walking again, just about, but he knew he’d never be going back to the 38th, or anywhere else near the frontline. No, his war was over, in that way anyway. The army offered him honourable discharge with the full works; pension, couple of medals to show his grandchildren and a new suit to wear back home on civvy street. But Matthew didn’t want to go back to civvy street and he didn’t want to go back home either. Like I said, no one in his village had taken too kindly to his volunteering. It was a small place which had seen plenty of hard times. Their view was, well, close. Half of them ploughed the fields rolling down to the sea, and the other half ploughed the sea itself, hauling up bulging nets of fish fro
m under her waves. Their physical horizons were broad – on a clear day Matthew’s father reckoned he could see Wales from the top of the Wicklow hills. But their personal horizons were narrow. Matthew was pretty sure he’d be getting no hero’s welcome when he returned. And he wouldn’t be much use on his father’s farm either, with his mangled leg. He saw himself sitting in the dark farmhouse, a drag and an embarrassment to everyone, his medals hidden in a drawer and the scar on his leg a constant reminder of what he’d done and given for the British. Doesn’t sound like much fun does it? No, I’d say not. So you can understand, really, why the lad chose to stay in England instead and come here, to London.

  It was Matthew’s Colonel in the 38th who told him about the position at the Political Warfare Executive, and who put him up for the interview too. It was all highly irregular, what with Matthew being Irish and everything, and him having no background in the kind of thing the PWE specialised in. But his Colonel had gone to school with the interviewing officer and that, combined with Matthew’s service record and an Englishman’s idea of the Irish as being good liars and storytellers, ended up with Matthew being offered the position.

  That was what the Political Warfare Executive did, you see. It didn’t fight with conventional weapons. No, it fought with something much more powerful; an arsenal of propaganda, lies, myths and stories. The British dabbled in this kind of thing during the First World War, but now, with the Second, well they took it to a whole new level. Nothing like a good story to get your boys fighting and their boys worried, that’s what they realised. We’ve been living with the consequences ever since.

  The PWE was established in ’41, a bunch of university intellectuals and journalists. Left alone by the politicians they did a surprisingly good job. They’d plant little stories in occupied Europe and, with a bit of watering by Special Operations Executive agents, radio broadcasts, newspaper articles, with any luck those stories would grow and spread. At first, when we feared a German invasion, that’s where the stories were focused, filtering tales of fearsome defences through to the ranks of the Wehrmacht. The British could set the whole Channel on fire; sharks imported from Australia to patrol the southern coast; failed invasion attempts, the bodies of horribly disfigured Germans washed up on the shores of France. That kind of thing.