The Wall

by William Sutcliffe

  I don’t pause for long enough to feel even a moment of relief as I reach the bottom of the rock face, but turn and run through the grey half-light, skidding downwards over the dusty soil, swerving through the boulders and weeds. As my legs begin to weaken, my thigh muscles take on an alarming jellyish looseness. When I’m beginning to wonder how much further I can run, the olive grove comes into view ahead, visible against the grey-pink sky as a silhouette whose shape I recognise instantly.

  Climbing up the hill in bare feet was painful enough, but going down is worse, particularly at speed. Every footstep is heavier, and it’s almost impossible now to guide my feet on to smooth or soft soil. With every footfall a spark of pain shoots up my leg, as stones jar against my lacerated skin. For each deliberate step, two or three after it are wild staggers to recover my balance. I know I’m taking it too fast, but the lower I get, the darker the air becomes. In the distance I hear a high canine wail. Or maybe it isn’t so distant. I can’t tell. On and on I run, stumbling over the loose soil, until the thicket near the entrance to the grove slows me to a walk. I drag myself as quickly as I can through the thorns, ignoring the needles scraping against my flesh, and stop at the olive grove wall.

  I can make out a pattern of dim light interrupted by the vertical black lines of the tree trunks. I can’t see what damage has been done, and don’t have time to go and check, but I know the grove well enough to tell from one glimpse that nothing has been chopped down.

  I remember exactly where I left my shoes, and kneel to retrieve them. They aren’t there.

  I fumble around on all fours, searching both sides of the wall, but there’s nothing. My shoes have gone. Liev, I realise, has taken them. I stand again, feeling a bubble of loathing rise up and burst inside me, spreading a hot, poisonous glow across my chest.

  My throat is still gulping down air in thin, wheezy gasps. I tap the olive grove wall with my hand, hoping it might transmit me good luck, and walk on, my scratched feet reluctantly placing themselves one in front of the other as I hurry down the path through the soupy darkness. I don’t dare slow down, but at this speed I end up veering and dodging in sudden, panicked lurches, as bushes and rocks loom up out of the black air barely an arm’s length in front of me. Not far ahead, invisible, directly in my path, is a coil of razor wire. Rushing blindly towards it feels like one of those nightmares where your legs carry you towards a cliff edge.

  A sliver of moon is hanging in the sky somewhere above Amarias, too thin to give off any useful light. Sensing I’m close to the wire, imagining what the coil of blades will do to my flesh if I fall into it, I force myself to slow down.

  A sudden softness underfoot alerts me to the mound blocking the path. I stop dead. Inches from my nose I can just make out, like some evil version of a bird’s nest, the tangle of sharpened steel.

  Navigating more from memory than by the glimmer of moonlight, I pick out a route around the wire and on to the road. Turning my body to the right, I know I’m pointing towards home. I can make out the shape of the town, a cluster of orange spots flickering through the gloom like embers, but around me I can’t see as far as my own feet.

  The jackals are calling louder now, more than one of them, closer than before. Perhaps they can smell me, and sense that I’m afraid. Maybe they’re watching me already, waiting for a moment of weakness, drooling into the thirsty soil.

  I pick up a handful of stones to use as ammunition in case I hear any suspicious noises. I toss one ahead of me, just because it’s almost impossible to hold a stone and not throw it. There’s an eerie moment of silence, as if the stone has simply vanished, then I hear it land with a distant skitter. In this darkness, throwing a stone feels more like dropping one down a well.

  The shimmer of Amarias street lamps tells me which direction to walk, but though the road is more or less straight, there’s nothing I can see to help keep me on it. There are ditches and gullies on either side I could fall into, and occasional signposts which, if I veer off course, would announce themselves to me with a smack in the face.

  The feel of the tarmac under my stinging feet is the only sensory information I can rely on. I shuffle to the edge of the road and feel with my toes for the drop at the side where the tarmac ends. Having felt this marker I can visualise my position, and I begin to walk slowly forwards.

  I soon come up with a system. Ten steps, then a shuffle sideways to feel for the edge of the road, then one sidestep back on to the tarmac followed by ten more forwards steps.

  As the lights from the town approach, the way in front of me gradually becomes clearer, and I allow myself more steps before each check, until a faint orange glow seeps into the air around me, revealing the tarmac under my feet. I break into a run, sprinting in desperate staggers towards home.

  With my feet cut and my clothes torn, haunted by the fear of being lost in a wilderness where I could be attacked by wild animals, the suddenness of the transition into Amarias is stranger than ever. As soon as I reach the first streetlight, the cars and buildings and gardens all seem to behave as if I am instantly back in the heart of safety and cosiness. With a single step, I appear to have hauled myself from extreme danger to absolute security.

  Looking outwards towards the grove I can see nothing whatsoever, only purest blackness. I turn and run through the town.

  As soon as I’m through the door, my mother leaps at me. ‘Oh, my God! Joshua! What happened to you? Where have you been? What’s happened?’

  She shrieks a volley of questions, staring in horror, while I stand in the hallway with my back against the door, catching my breath, both feet bleeding silently into the rug.

  When she notices the blood, she takes my arm, leads me to the bathroom, and sits me down. As she strips me to my underwear, her panic seems to subside. She stops shouting questions, raises my feet on to a towel on her lap, and concentrates on cleaning my cuts with disinfectant and cotton wool. She does this in silence, with immense care, while I sit limply on the edge of the bath, feeling dazed and spent. I only realise she’s finished when she appears in the doorway with my pyjamas.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ I say.

  ‘Put these on and come to the kitchen.’

  I have two sandwiches and a whole carton of orange juice inside me before she asks again what happened.

  ‘Where’s Liev?’ I say.

  Her shoulders slump, as if my question is somehow predictably disappointing.

  ‘He’s here,’ she answers. ‘In the living room.’

  ‘Well, hasn’t he told you what happened?’

  ‘He told me you had an argument. He said you’ve been doing stupid things, associating with dangerous people and sneaking out to fields that don’t belong to us and doing God knows what with God knows who.’

  ‘There you go, then,’ I say sarcastically. ‘There’s your answer.’

  ‘That’s not an answer!’

  ‘What, you don’t believe him?’

  ‘Yes, I believe him, but I need to know more. I need to know what you’ve been up to. And where you went tonight. And why you’re cut to pieces.’

  ‘It was Liev.’

  ‘Liev? He didn’t do this to you.’

  ‘Oh, so you believe him, but you don’t believe me.’

  ‘Not when you’re lying.’

  ‘I’m not lying!’

  ‘Liev sent you out all evening? Liev cut you?’

  ‘Yes. Effectively.’

  Liev’s voice booms out from the doorway. ‘You see what he’s like? A born liar! I don’t know what else we can do with him!’

  ‘He pulled a gun on me!’

  ‘Ach!’ Liev swats the air in front of him.

  ‘He threatened me, and he threatened a man I’ve been helping. I’ve been learning about trees – how to grow lemons and olives – I haven’t done anything wrong, but Liev came out with a gun and he nearly killed us.’

  ‘He’s crazy!’ says Liev. ‘Your son is crazy!’

  ‘Why are you saying these things?�
�� says my mother, her words strangled and desperate, as if she’s pleading with me.

  ‘I had to run up into the hills to escape him. To stop him shooting. Then it got dark and the bushes cut me on the way down. He stole my shoes so I had to walk all the way back barefoot.’

  My mother kneels on the floor beside me and takes my hand. Her eyes are filled with tears. I can see that she’s trying to speak, but can’t get the words out. Eventually, in a trembling voice, she says, ‘Why are you doing this? I’m trying my best for you. Why are you determined to make things so hard?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Why do you have to be like this?’

  ‘Like what?’

  Her voice drops to a whisper. ‘Why do you hate him so much?’

  I snatch my hand away. ‘I’ve just told you!’

  ‘What has he ever done to you?’

  ‘I TOLD YOU. I’VE JUST TOLD YOU!’

  ‘Do you know where we’d be without him? Do you know what he’s done for us? Who do you think pays for our food? How do you think we’ve got a roof over our heads?’

  ‘WHY WON’T YOU LISTEN TO ME?’

  ‘He’s your father now, and he loves you, and there’s no way back to the life we had before. That’s over. You have to accept what we have. Trying to destroy it and make everything impossible for me is just selfish and stupid and it has to stop. I’ve had enough.’

  ‘You’re blind! You’re totally blind!’

  ‘STOP IT!’ she snaps. ‘I said I’ve had enough. It’s time for you to grow up, and begin to think about other people. Do you understand? I’ve reached my limit.’

  ‘Which other people?’

  ‘Your family! The people who are trying to look after you!’

  ‘And no one else?’

  ‘Stop arguing! Go to your room and think about what I’ve said. This behaviour can’t go on.’

  ‘You’re such a hypocrite.’

  I stand up from the table, the back of my knees sending my chair clattering to the floor. As I walk away, Liev steps into the room and pulls Mum into an embrace.

  My bedroom door slams behind me, and I slump to the floor.

  Part Four

  For the first half of August we always go on holiday, to the same boring resort as every year, where Liev lolls by the pool in his knicker-trunks, and Mum flops out next to him reading and snoozing, as if her do-nothing, stay-at-home life has somehow exhausted her. I’m farmed out on daily watersport sessions, which I usually love – just being away from Amarias and out on the water all day is enough to make it the highlight of my year – but this time I can’t relax. It’s the hottest, driest month of the summer. The grove needs me more than ever, and I can’t be there.

  After we get back, Mum and Liev are all over me like prison warders. This time they work together, watching everything I do, making me account for every minute out of the house. If I try to go anywhere alone, one of them comes with me. Their final attempt to fix me – to make me grow up – seems to be to treat me as if I’m three years old. When I point this out to them, they don’t see the joke.

  I don’t get a chance to visit the olive grove until the first Friday of term. As I hurry out of Amarias, straight from school, my head spins with visions of what I might see when I get there. Liev and I haven’t talked about it, but I know he might have contacted the army and told them about the illegal use of a closed access route. The evidence was right there, in the watered trees and weeded ground. At any point since my last visit, the bulldozers could have been sent.

  Beside the junction with the checkpoint road, I spot my tennis racket lying abandoned on the ground. I’d forgotten all about it until I see the familiar shape, covered in a skin of dust, unmoved for a whole month. I make a mental note to reclaim it on the way home.

  The first thing I do after rounding the razor wire is to look at the ground, examining it for bulldozer tracks. The soil is unharmed. I sprint up the path, my heart pounding with hope and dread.

  The grove is still there, undamaged apart from the two bullet-scarred trunks.

  The soles of my feet are still too sore for me to remove my shoes, but it feels strange to walk into the grove without the sensation of soil against skin. In that place, having my feet encased in leather and rubber seems somehow unnatural and cumbersome, like a heavy coat on a hot day.

  The ground is parched and cracked, covered in a scattering of dry leaves. In July, when I went regularly, hardly any leaves fell, but now the trees are shedding heavily. I don’t know if this is normal or is some kind of thirst-induced crisis management. I water as best I can, carefully sharing out the precious liquid, and rake up the leaves. Only then do I climb to the top terrace.

  My seedling is dead.

  It stands there in the cracked soil, nothing more than a short-branched twig with four small leaves at its base, a laughably tiny catastrophe. All my effort and excitement and hope has produced only this. Could any failure possibly be more ludicrous, more insignificant?

  I know I can’t allow myself any sorrow or regret. What will it make me, standing in this semi-confiscated olive grove, living among thousands of people who suffered like Leila’s family suffered, if I give way to even a moment’s grief over this trivial little death? To shed one tear for what was no more than a twig would be an outrage of self-indulgence. I cannot allow myself to feel anything.

  I pick up one of the tiny dry leaves. It is crisp and brittle, snapping as I fold it in two. Without knowing why, I step forwards and grind my heel into the stem, squashing the shoot flat, twisting my ankle until the flimsy white roots pop out from underground.

  Feeling a numb regret settle into my belly, I trudge down to the lowest terrace and examine the two trees that were shot. Each bullet has taken out a chunk as big as an orange. The splintered wood inside the trunk is pale and jagged, a fresh-looking wound, as if the shots were fired a minute rather than a month ago. There is an eerie nakedness to these trees now. They both seem to be surviving – there’s no sign above of any dying branches – but it’s as if their solidity has been undermined. They now look vulnerable, mortal, somehow temporary.

  I sit, leaning against my favourite tree, and wait. It is the first Friday of September. Where before I might have fallen asleep, today I feel wide awake, uncomfortable and tense. Something has changed in the atmosphere of the grove. The air seems to thrum with an unsettling electricity I’ve never before felt out in these fields, so far from The Wall. Part of my reason for coming here, again and again throughout the summer, was to escape this exact buzz of tension, which I now sense has crept outwards to this patch of land and poisoned its air.

  Today the grove doesn’t feel like a haven, away from the soldiers and guns and watchtowers and checkpoints, it feels like the front line of a secret war. Sitting here, exactly where I’ve sat calm and undisturbed so many times before, I imagine a set of crosshairs lining up over my body, watching me, taking aim. Liev was right. This spot was not just an olive grove. It was a slumbering battlefield.

  I stand, I pace, I weed. I stare out at the road, straining my ears for the sound of footsteps, but the sun begins to sink, the air cools, and nothing happens and no one comes.

  Eventually, I wash all traces of soil from my hands in the thin trickle of the spring, pick my fingernails clean with a twig, and walk back to Amarias, straight to David’s house. My plan was to phone home from his place and ask if I could stay longer, in the hope this would convince Liev and Mum I’d been there all along, but looking at David’s front door, I falter. I can’t do it. I don’t want to see him. I have nothing to say to him, and I don’t have the strength to pretend.

  I turn away and walk home, my feet dragging against the concrete. I’ll say nothing about where I’ve been. If they want to punish me, they can punish me. I hardly care any more.

  Liev is waiting for me as I walk in. He’s sitting in his favourite armchair with a leather-bound book on his lap, but by the time I’ve got through the door, his ey
es are already on me.

  ‘Where were you?’ he says.

  I shrug, and walk towards my room. ‘Out,’ I mumble.

  ‘DON’T WALK AWAY FROM ME! Where were you?’

  I stop, almost out of sight through the doorway. ‘At David’s,’ I say, in a tone of voice that even to me sounds barely convincing.

  ‘Are you lying?’

  I shrug.

  ‘I really hope you’re not lying,’ he says, raising a hand in the air with one finger pointing at the ceiling and the others curled inwards. He has a whole range of gestures like this, which he thinks make him look precise and clever.

  I shrug again.

  ‘So if I call David’s mother, she’ll tell me you left five minutes ago?’

  ‘Call who you like, I don’t care.’

  While I’m walking away, Mum says, ‘You stay put, I’ll call her.’

  As I lie on my bed, staring up at the ceiling, I can hear the muffled rise and fall of her voice through the wall as she speaks to David’s mother on the phone. I listen as carefully as I can, but I can’t make out what she’s saying. They seem to talk on and on for ages, far longer than it should take for her to find out what she wants to know, and as I strain my ears to pull some kind of meaning from the soft rise and fall of her speech, it occurs to me that these would have been the first sounds I ever heard, in the womb. Even now, it’s almost a comforting sound, despite knowing my mother is talking to someone who’s exposing me as a liar, revealing a lie for which Liev will have to invent a whole new level of punishment.

  Moments after I hear her hang up the phone, the door of my room opens a crack and my mother’s face appears in a shaft of light. She looks at me, I look at her, and for a long while neither of us moves or speaks. The sound of Liev coughing breaks the silence. She purses her lips regretfully and gives a slight shake of the head.

  I feel my eyes prick with tears, which I try to blink away. Mum slips into the room, sits beside me on the bed, and kisses my forehead.