Touching the Wire

by Rebecca Bryn

  Her soft tread padded on the stairs. ‘That’s great, love. You’ll need to wear your thermals, and take your overcoat and waterproof. What about fishing equipment?’

  ‘They hire it out on the boat.’

  Jane came into the bedroom, her smile deepening her dimples. ‘Just as long as you have a good time and come back safe.’

  He held her close and kissed the hairs that shone silver among the brown. A lone tear sparkled on the silver. ‘I love you more than life itself. I want you to remember that.’

  ‘I love you too, Walt.’

  ***

  Walt tossed on a storm sea as the huge cargo ship wallowed westwards. The boilers needed constant stoking to make headway. Sweat stung his eyes, and flames burned his face. He was there at every turn, taunting, controlling, ordering… Miriam died with a bullet in her stomach… a noose around her neck… of starvation… His arms cradled her, spittle dribbled from the corner of her mouth, and the light went from her eyes. Miriam was screaming, but she was dead, wasn’t she? She ran to save Mary, and he ran too. He was too late; always he was too late. They lay among a tumble of skeletal bodies decomposed beyond recognition. Even as he wept, he heard Jennie singing. She was playing a game, On the Way to the Chimney. She was dancing and the orchestra was playing: a steam train chuffed to a halt, steam hissing.

  Jane… No, please, not Jane… Her pretty face was smashed to a pulp, a mass of bloody, insensate pulp. Dear God… Horror stopped his heart, tears burned his soul. The scene changed and terror gripped him; blonde hair swirled across a marble slab. Charlotte and Lucy, his beautiful twins, dressed all in white, lay side by side, fastened down by their wrists and ankles. He beckoned him forward.

  He stood, as if apart from the action, and watched himself move to stand over them, scalpel in hand. Lucy was crying; Charlotte was pleading, Me, cut me. Their expressions changed; their fingernails grew into talons, their teeth into fangs. The Keres, those most vengeful daughters of Night, were at his mercy. Their demise would end all the plague and violent death in the world.

  He turned to Lucy and saw a slow smile spread across his own face. He nodded approvingly. He nicked the thin fabric and lifted it away to reveal pale flesh. The scalpel drew a thin, red line down Lucy’s chest and stomach. Charlotte’s scream was drowned by her twin’s cries of agony. Charlotte’s time would come: the Keres would be no more. He parted the flesh and cut deeper; blood flowed, pooling at his feet on a floor of washed sand, raked smooth. Screams echoed round the bare room, pounding at his skull and joining his own soundless cry. His hands delved inside Lucy’s body: blood covered them to his wrists and fountained across his white coverall. Her guts slithered across the marble slab. He was going to be sick.

  ‘Grandpa? Grandpa…’

  What? He stood at the foot of Lucy’s bed. She was asleep. He stared at her in confusion.

  Charlotte sat up. ‘Grandpa… What’s the matter?’

  How had he got here? His fingers gripped a kitchen knife. Nerveless fingers opened and dropped the knife to the floor. He could have… Sweet Jesus, he could have killed them both. He sank onto the bed and hugged Charlotte to him, never wanting to let her go. ‘Just sleep-walking, sweetheart. A bad dream.’

  ‘Grandpa?’ Charlotte’s blue eyes held his. ‘What’s wrong?’

  He longed to share his pain and fear. She was so grown-up he almost forget she wasn’t yet twelve. ‘I wish I could tell you, Charlotte.’

  ‘You can. If it’s a secret, I won’t tell anyone.’

  ‘I know, sweetheart. There’s something I have to do and I can’t explain. It’s something I should have done a long while ago. I…’ He shook his head.

  ‘Grandpa?’

  ‘Go to sleep.’ He kissed her goodnight, knowing it was goodbye, and staggered downstairs to put away the knife. Any lingering doubt had gone. He made a cup of strong coffee and sat in his chair, not daring to sleep. He had to be up in a couple of hours to meet the minibus and this way he wouldn’t wake Jane getting back into bed. He took paper and pen from a drawer, and began to write.

  He crept up the stairs and into his and Jane’s bedroom. He eased open his sock drawer and left his letter with the precious diary. He moved across to the window and lifted the drape. The houses opposite were blind, their windows curtained, their occupants sleeping. The street lamps bathed the bricks and tarmac in pools of yellow: light after light punctuated the night sky as far as he could see, leaving no place of secret shadow, no place to hide.

  A group of peacocking youths with skimpily-dressed girls on their arms rabbled down the street laughing and shouting. How little they understood their good fortune: youth, health, freedom. They would throw away what his generation had fought and died for: nothing given unearned was truly valued. Jane stirred, turned over and went back to sleep. The light from the window picked out the silver in her hair, caressed her cheekbone and fled across the hollow of her neck to make a slumbering shape at the foot of the wall. What would she think of him if she knew the truth?

  He turned back to the window. The joyful, carefree progress of the revellers faded into the distance. He shouldn’t begrudge them their fun. He took a lingering look at the women he loved and let the curtain fall back into place.

  Six o’ clock saw him standing at the top of the street. Faint stars in a cloudless night faded towards dawn; frost sparkled in the glow from streetlights and his breath curled upwards in the cold air. He shivered, pulled the scarf Jane had knitted him tighter around his neck and raised the collar of his heavy overcoat. He’d never deserved Tykhe’s gift of Jane, any more than he’d deserved her gift of Miriam.

  Headlights drew closer: the minibus stopped. He took a last look at the street he’d made home for almost forty years: he’d said his goodbyes, though they hadn’t realised it would be forever. He’d promised them fish for supper.

  He climbed on board, cocooned in the camaraderie of his mates from the allotment. It reminded him of past comradeship and places he hoped never to revisit, places he would never escape. He closed his eyes to stop tears falling: everyone he loved, his very reason for living was now part of a past he could never recapture. He had no future but what future did he want without them? He turned his face to the night, looking beyond his reflection to where the daughters of Night waited. At least, this way, Jane, Jennie and the twins could keep their memories.

  He rested his head against the back of the seat and closed his eyes listening to the creaks and rattles of the minibus as it negotiated potholes on its journey east. Memories were all he had now. The creaks and rattles faded.

  The door of the barn creaked on its hinges: he threw loose straw over his body and hunched into shadows.

  ‘Chuck… it’s me.’ Albert handed him a tin can, and took a paper bag from beneath his coat. ‘Tea… real tea with milk… and no swamp water. Drink.’

  The hot liquid burned down his gullet. He passed the can to Albert.

  ‘No, it’s yours. Drink it.’ Albert passed him a paper bag. ‘Here, a real boiled egg… bread. Eat.’

  ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘Yes. I saved this for you. They said I could sleep here. They don’t have much. I promised I’d be gone in the morning.’

  He savoured the egg in small bites, and tore chunks from the crust of fresh, buttered bread. It was a world from the hard, grey bread and scrape of margarine of the camp. ‘You’re a lifesaver, Albert.’

  Breakfast was warm milk, straight from the cow, and cock-crow saw them once again forcing tired legs through snow. Each mile nearer to Miriam was paid for with frozen limbs and aching muscles. He couldn’t feel his feet or hands; he hadn’t felt his feet properly for days. Albert’s cough was worse, and frostbite and gangrene loomed large in his mind: scarlet fever and starvation loomed larger. He had to reach her today. How long had she been without medicines? Seven, eight, nine days? He’d lost count. One foot followed the other with desperate effort. Part of him longed to reach camp: part of him hoped never to get there.


  The sun was already in the west when they stumbled through the unguarded main gate of the camp. Smoke blew across the ruins of Crematoria V. The Germans had been back to destroy more evidence? If so, there was no sign of them now. A barrack in the men’s camp had smoke rising from a chimney: someone had the strength to find wood to burn. In Miriam’s camp not a soul stirred, not a light shone. Already the buildings had an air of neglect and decay; windows were broken, and doors banged in the icy wind.

  He pushed open the door to the infirmary and was met by the stench of death. Bodies… everywhere lay frozen skeletal bodies, huddled together as if to draw the last vestige of warmth from each other.

  ‘Dear God…’ Albert put a hand over his mouth and nose. ‘Miriam?’

  He shook his head. ‘This way.’ In her bunk two still shapes lay under a huddle of blankets. He knelt on the floor and lifted the blankets. A pale face, eyes staring at eternity. ‘She’s dead. It’s Ilse, Miriam’s friend.’ He steeled himself to lift the blankets from the other body. Her eyes were closed, her face peaceful. ‘Miriam?’ Her hand was cold. He leaned forward trying to feel the warmth of a breath or the faintest pulse. ‘Miriam…’

  A movement in the seat beside him woke him; a hand on his shoulder roused him. ‘We’re here, Walt. You’ve been asleep the whole damn way.’

  He opened his eyes and met the cold light of his last dawn. The time had come. His bag held a flask, and sandwiches made with love. He pushed the thought away: he must not falter now.

  Across the harbour a bloody sun rose, lighting fishing boats that bobbed at their moorings. Seagulls wheeled and screamed into a stiff breeze; white-capped waves broke, sun-kissed beneath a wide sky, and banks of cumulus cloud, gold-rimmed with sunlight, towered above the horizon.

  The beauty stopped his breath. A cloud partly obscured the sun and a shaft of sunlight lit a patch of sea, far, far out. Okeanus, God of the Sea, father of Tykhe, beckoned and he obeyed. He moved forward onto the boat that bobbed at the side of the jetty, its diesel engine puttering and sending clouds of exhaust into the morning air. The white breakers cavorted with the Keres in their surf-white gowns, sun-stained with blood. The daughters of Night were assembled, ready to claim him and he would give himself willingly into their hands to protect his family. Nemesis would finally decide if he’d earned the right to die.

  He shivered, despite his overcoat and life jacket, as the boat chugged toward the fishing ground: the last time he’d been tossed on the North Sea had been in February too. At least he’d been warm, stoking the boilers on a cargo ship Newcastle-bound from Copenhagen, but the heat and flames, and the cramped hammocks below decks, had stirred unbearable memories.

  He raised his rod and cast his line. The sea took the bait and the reel whirred. He felt the tug of a bite like a tug at his heart. Jane and the twins would be waiting for their fish. Eric leaned over the side and vomited, and Ted passed round rum to settle their stomachs.

  By early afternoon the wind had picked up, blowing the clouds shoreward and whipping up the surf. The fishing boat rose and fell with the troughs and peaks, now iron-grey and tinged with red. The sun, never high, was sinking in the west and as the afternoon wore on the temperature plummeted. They turned towards land and he shaded his eyes.

  The cliffs danced at bizarre angles and his stomach plunged, hung suspended in mid-air, and then plunged again. Behind him, spray or fog wreathed a horizon that appeared less sharp with every passing minute, and seagulls stitched erratic patterns across the sky. The skipper made for harbour, gripping the wheel and moving with the rolling of the deck.

  He clutched the rail. The unexpected bad weather played into his hands: the gods favoured his decision. His palms were sticky with sweat, his heart hammered in his ribcage and his head whirled. He muttered a litany beneath his breath. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. He didn’t believe in God. Ted offered him his hip flask: he grabbed it, took a swig and handed it back.

  ‘This bugger wasn’t forecast.’ Eric took the metal flask and hung onto the bow rail.

  The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class. He had to sound normal. ‘Good job we had some fine fishing earlier.’

  ‘It’s been a great day.’ Eric took another swig. ‘Pity the weather’s changed.’

  ‘Not a bad catch for a bevy of gardeners.’ Ted took the rum Eric passed him. ‘We’ll be eating fish for a month. Banana, anyone?’

  ‘Jane put one in my lunchbox, thanks, but I think I’d be sick if I ate it.’

  Eric pulled a pale face. ‘Edie put apples in for us. She knows as well as your Jane that you and me ain’t got a tooth between us.’

  Ted threw his banana skin over the side and the waves swept it away. ‘I’ve got a knife if you want to cut one up.’

  Eric shook his head. ‘On this sea? I’d cut my bloody throat.’

  He looked down into roiling water. Storm clouds melded with the fog; fine rain lashed across his face and blotted out the last of the crimson sun. The light was failing fast and other fishing boats were returning to harbour, their navigation lights reflecting brokenly in the waves.

  He’d be hard to spot in the gathering dusk. He didn’t want to be rescued and most of all he didn’t want anyone to endanger their lives in the attempt.

  A sail ghosted across their bow and disappeared into thickening murk. ‘Look at that bloody idiot.’ Ted clung to the rail with one hand and pointed. ‘Out alone in this weather. If this fog gets any thicker some bugger will run him down.’

  The wind gusted, blowing holes of clarity into the fog. The boat bucked and yawed, and he grabbed for a handhold. No-one was watching him. He looked down into the waves that would swallow him. Now…

  ‘Man overboard.’ Eric’s voice, laced with panic. ‘Ted’s gone over the side!’

  The skipper swung the boat in a wide arc. Men lined the rail, pointing.

  He moved forward, hand over hand to join them. ‘Where?’

  Eric climbed recklessly over the rail.

  He grabbed Eric’s sleeve. ‘Eric, don’t be daft.’

  ‘Can’t let the old bugger drown.’ Eric shrugged off his hand and launched himself into the cauldron of water.

  ‘Skipper!’ He pointed into the water. Someone shouted and waved. Searchlights strobed across the waves as other boats responded to the S.O.S. The yellow of a lifejacket bobbed like the banana skin behind them, caught for a brief second in the searchlight before it disappeared into the gloom. He couldn’t leave his friends to die. He jumped. Icy water closed over his head making him gasp. Breathe, breathe, breathe… His heart raced. Cold shock… hypothermia. His mind whirled; he had what, four minutes before his brain was too numb to function and the cold killed him? He could have told him: he’d done the experiments.

  He struck out for the place where he’d glimpsed the lifejacket, the wind and waves carrying him shoreward. A searchlight picked up something and the boat came around as a lifebuoy was hurled towards it. He struggled towards the patch of yellow and grabbed hold of it. It was Ted and he appeared to be unconscious. He pulled the floating man towards the lifebuoy and struggled to fasten the line around the limp body. He was shivering uncontrollably. Three minutes… Ted had even less.

  A voice, barely heard, yelled from the blinding glare of the searchlight. ‘Hang on!’

  The line went taut and Ted was pulled towards the boat.

  His arms were lead weights. He was cold beyond feeling. ‘Eric. Eric…’ His thick overcoat dragged him down. His lifejacket wouldn’t hold him. It was a sin to take one’s own life. Miriam had fought for life with every breath. Jane and Jennie loved him… the twins… He ripped the lifejacket off, went under and wrestled the buttons on his overcoat. He freed one arm, and then the other, and clawed back to the surface. He must control his breathing before his heart burst. Two minutes…

  His lifejacket bobbed beyond his reach. Eric was gone. He took a desperate gasp of salt-laden air and sank, exhaus
ted.

  Lights flashed as he surfaced again, appearing and disappearing with the swell. Candles to burn… Memories washed through his numbed mind, comforting, caressing. He’d only ever tried to protect those he loved: Jane, Jennie, the twins, Miriam, the children. He should have saved the children. Okeanus upheld him, Nemesis considered.

  The clouds parted and the sun sank over the cliffs; the daughters of Night waited with an almost tangible presence. He turned to the God who’d forsaken him all those years before, the God in whom he’d lost all faith, and who knew his innermost secrets. Miriam had believed. Jane believed. He offered up a silent, hopeless prayer as the waves closed over him. Father Forgive…

  Chapter Thirteen

  A breeze lifted Jane’s hair from her forehead. The leaden sky reflected in a leaden sea, mirroring her leaden heart: no thin, bright line of hope broke the horizon. It was three days since Walt had gone missing.

  She stared across the waves, welcoming the painful sting of icy rain on the side of her face, the mind-numbing cold: for her the world stood still.

  Beneath her feet, insensate pebbles lay immune to grief and pain; above her head, storm gulls wheeled and screamed in a seemingly continuous loop. She ached to join them, to scream her pain and loss into the wind, have it carried away until she could feel no more. Jennie stood on her far left, tears whipping across her cheeks. Between them, Charlotte and Lucy stared ahead each clutching the other’s hand. In their free hands they held bouquets of white hellebores, narcissi and snowdrops from the garden, bound together with the ivy that grew on Walt’s workshop: the first flowers of the year, they’d been among his favourites. A sob at her side made her look down. Jennie put her arm round Charlotte’s shoulder and hugged her, holding out her other arm for Lucy. She moved closer to embrace the huddled group that stared out to sea with sightless eyes.

  Along the beach, at a respectful distance, another small group held silent vigil. Eric’s wife, Edie, and her family also huddled together in the cold paying their last respects to the man who’d held their family together with his indomitable good humour and boundless energy. The light had suddenly and inexplicably gone from all their lives.