by Alan Cumyn
In silence he made notes and read through parts of my file again.
“Could you give me more detail, Mr. Crome, about the circumstances of the fight that led to your being placed in solitary confinement? I need to ascertain whether the guards’ actions were justified. You’ve stated that you were gambling. What was it, poker or pontoon or some other —”
“It was a local . . . contest, sir.”
“Of what nature was the contest?” he pressed. When I failed to answer right away he said, “I take into account the frankness of your replies, Mr. Crome, and your willingness to be open and truthful with this commission.”
“We bet about almost anything,” I said at last. “What was the name of the man with whom you quarrelled, Mr. Crome?”
“I can’t remember, sir.”
“It might help me immeasurably to cross-reference cases before this commission and find corroboration.”
“I’m afraid I can’t remember, sir,” I repeated, and stared him down. He looked away.
“Are there any other injuries or disabilities resulting from your time as a prisoner of war, Mr. Crome?” He looked at his watch discretely, a flick of the eyes downward as his fingers pulled the timepiece out of his vest.
“No, sir.”
“As to the malnourishment and degraded living circumstances of your confinement, Mr. Crome, I have heard ample testimony from over two hundred former prisoners now and am quite familiar with the extent and nature of the situation. I am finding that all the prisoners suffered similar difficulties and treatment, at least those not from the officer ranks. As you know, Germany itself was desperately short of food, especially in the waning years of the war, and it would be too much to expect a nation to feed its prisoners of war better than, or even, perhaps, equal to its own general population. In my findings, then, I’m afraid I must focus on the question of extraordinary maltreatment beyond the issue of nourishment. I can tell you now that your case would be more compelling to this commission if you had supplied a statement of medical health from your doctor. I note that upon leaving service the military physician who examined you found you ‘completely fit and sound.’ That’s your signature below, is it not?” He leaned forward to show me the damned form I had signed in a rush to free myself from military clutches years ago.
Then he began writing intensely, barely pausing to look at me. “As in all cases, I am reserving my recommendations at this time. I will be reporting later in the year, I hope, or next year at the latest, and you can wait to hear our final judgement from the commission. But I can tell you, Mr. Crome, that in the absence of medical proof of disability and maltreatment beyond that which was generalized for nearly all prisoners of war in Germany, it will be difficult to find in your favour. But thank you for your candour and for bringing your case forward to my attention.”
“Thank you, sir,” I managed to say before leaving.
Eleven
“Drei Tage,” the German duty officer says: three days. He seems to take it personally, this trouble we have caused, although it is my elbow that has been smashed, and Witherspoon and I will have to serve the time in solitary, not him.
Perhaps the Germans have their own method of accounting and punish their officers whenever prisoners fall out of line.
One last time the duty officer eyes us like criminally insane children. Then he stamps out, and the guard shouts us down the hall and outside into winter’s darkness.
“Three days isn’t bad,” I mutter to Witherspoon. “A little peace and quiet, eh?”
But we don’t take the usual route to the holding cells. We go right, then left again, and the spotlights of three watch-towers blind us as we walk. Why didn’t I find a way to bring my greatcoat against the cold?
“Where the fuck are we going?” Witherspoon asks.
To a different compound beyond a bleak stretch of barbed wire fencing. I get turned around in my fatigue and the disorienting lights. And our guard detachment grows — from one scared guard to perhaps five, now surrounding us, their boots kicking up clouds of dusty snow.
We enter an open courtyard. Beyond the bright lights the darkness is impenetrable — anything might be out there.
Two of the guards pull up from the ground an iron grate lightly covered in snow.
“Oh, Jesus,” Witherspoon says weakly.
Suddenly a guard butts him across the shoulders with the stock of his rifle. Witherspoon stumbles to his knees. As he is rising they hit him again and he disappears down the hole.
They shove me in a different direction and someone buckles my knees from behind. My legs fold. I reach out and hold on until they kick my fingers off the frozen edge. My injured elbow smashes something on the way down — everything spins and thrashes in pain.
The earth grabs me and I collapse onto the wet mud that stops my descent. I shriek like a half-slaughtered animal. When the panic subsides I look up at the tiny square of blackness with four pinholes of light — unimaginably distant stars.
Then I shake until it seems my limbs are intent on battering themselves against the rock and frozen muck that surrounds me.
Feet and hands, blowing breath, this hard cramp in my leg, my shoulders knotting, elbow still ablaze with pain. One step and, glancing into the wall, one step and turn, this tired little space.
The square above me turns from black to cold grey to colder light, and snow begins to fall, a few flakes making it all the way down to my cracked lips. Sometime in the day a pair of hands pulls off the grate and a little pot of slightly warmed liquid is lowered down. I reach out with a freezing urgency, nearly upend it with the tremors in my hands, but manage to unhook the handle and then glory just to stand and warm myself, however meagrely, against the pot.
There is no spoon. I have to tilt the pot to my hard lips, somehow steady it despite my shivering, and drink without spilling the greasy bitterness. I stand waiting for the bread but there is none, though the soup has mushy parts near the bottom that I slobber down — peelings, perhaps — and then a sharp bone that cuts the roof of my mouth so that I spit in the darkness and yell up to no one.
I count the seconds leaning against the cold wall, then force myself erect, perform my little drunken shuffle-dance, anything for movement, for something to keep the blood from congealing in my veins.
Just for a moment I close my eyes in a clever way, so I can sleep on my feet and not freeze to the wall or floor. Sleep while shuffling, the empty soup pot now at my boots, tripping me up at every step.
I could sit on it, it occurs to me. I could turn it over with my foot and slowly, slowly squat down like this, make myself smaller and smaller . . .
“Ramsay?”
I open my eyes and look around for the owner of the voice. My shoulder is strangely numb. I hit it and feel nothing.Everything is dark again; even the little square in the sky above has been erased.
“Ramsay, get up now!”
I can barely move my head. But it’s better this way, I think. Warmer, somehow. All that foolish stumbling about was only mixing up the air currents, making me colder and colder.
“I’m going to lift you from behind, but you’ll have to push with your legs. Do you understand me?”
I nod my head although she couldn’t possibly see me — it’s too damn dark.
Her hands are surprisingly strong under my armpits, and I try to push, but most of my left side has gone dead. I thank her sincerely for all her efforts but tell her it’s no use.
“This won’t do, Ramsay. You’re going to have to wake up!”
“But if I do you won’t be here then, will you?” I say cleverly. It’s Margaret, of course, come to help me die.
“Yes, I will.”
“How can you? Did they capture you as well?”
She has me again under the armpits and braces herself better this time. I feel it in the strength of her frame.
“None of your backchat,” she says sternly and heaves up again, but it’s no use, I’ve already told her. My limbs fo
ld under, and she stands holding me awkwardly against the wall.
“Ramsay — try please!”
“Let me go.”
“I won’t!”
She leans me into the soil face and rubs her warm hands up and down my back and sides, my shoulders, legs, my damaged arm, even my ice-cold feet. “Don’t you fall on me while I’m down here,” she snaps. “Stay awake. Concentrate!”
It’s a terrible thing to have life burning back into your limbs. They crackle with fire, will roast any moment and smoulder black with smoke.
“You’re a stupid man, sometimes.”
“I know.”
“I can’t think of a more foolish way to die.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Keep your feet moving, unless you want to be buried here.”
I try, though it seems useless. The meat in my limbs is half frozen already. But for her I try.
Miracles begin falling through the grate. Crusts of cheese, bits of biscuit and then an entire greatcoat whumping down. It covers my head, and I stagger, uncertain what is happening. But within moments I’ve wrapped myself with it, and for a time I feel as if I’ve fallen frozen into a fireplace and am happily thawing.
I rub the mud off the crust of cheese and biscuit, gorge myself, then stare up at the square of light. No drunken snowflakes are dancing through the grate now. But I see feet sometimes, passing directly overhead, and I glimpse a black bird. For endless long, gnawing stretches my heart wheezes in a yearning ache to catch sight of the soup pot, which does not come however much I stare.
“You said you wouldn’t go. Not if I stayed awake!” I turn in case my voice could somehow spiral out and get to her.
No reply.
I close my eyes to summon her, stamp my feet like an angry child.
“Margaret! Where the hell have you gone?” I strike out at where she might be hiding. But she is safely behind the wall and hits back at me with the force of stubborn earth.
“Ramsay,” she says finally behind me. I turn and try to make her out. “Look what I’ve brought!”
Bread, for God’s sake — familiar, black, rock-hard German bread that she has to break for me and guide the pieces with her warm fingers between my lips, I am shivering so badly. I turn my cheek to lean against her hand, the way a dog will.
“That’s all right, Ramsay.” She holds my head with both her hands. They feel heavenly, like a scarf that has been left drying by the stove.
“Remember I said —”
“Shh.”
“I said that after the war I would come back as a —”
“This is not yet after the war, Ramsay.”
Her voice is very calm, tucked with humour, as if she will begin to openly poke fun at me any moment.
I suck slowly on the black bread pieces while she holds my head. “Where did you get these bits of food?”
“Some of the men have agreed to throw down a few things when they can. But you weren’t looking, were you? You just wanted to go to sleep.”
We do a little shuffling dance together, one step and then turn, and one step and turn. As long as I can keep some strength in my arms to hold her, she will warm things.
“If you want to sleep now, Ramsay, I’ll hold you up.”
“I can’t sleep and dance.”
“Of course you can, dear.”
“But I’ll pull you over. We’ll both —”
“Everyone is doing their bit except for me,” she says. “But feel those legs, Ramsay. Feel them!”
I reach down, grip through the fabric of her dress.
“Aren’t they strong, for a woman? So you sleep and I’ll dance for us both.”
It is like that, a long, slow, somnolent dance. For ages we are silent, Margaret and I, as if we’ve been married for decades, have known each other’s thoughts so long we do not need to speak. And then, as if to break the gloom, she rattles on with funny stories and tidbits of news — Chu Chin Chow and her father and the redcap guards pulling him over to check his papers.
“If the King would only call,” I mumble.
“Yes, darling, that’s exactly what he said. But sleep now, would you?” and I feel her grip tightening, my feet dragging upon the floor.
I wait, wait for the soup pot to be lowered. It comes down in a dream, hazy, like a dark bit of boulder, wobbling as it descends. When it reaches me I can hardly lift my arms, so Margaret has to receive it. She remembers to hook on the old pot, and I stand stupidly watching as it floats back up the shaft of dimming light.
“Ramsay, dear, stay still please, or I’ll spill it on you.”
I try to keep from shaking.
“I can’t hold and feed you at the same time. Rest against the wall, dear. It will be all right. This will warm you, I promise, it will.”
She pours the soup in a slow trickle between my quivering lips. The warmth dribbles down my cheek and chin.
“There you are. Slowly. We have no shortage of time.”
I manage to hold the bowl in my own hands.
“Look, a bit of onion! This is something of a picnic!” And I finish it, chew slowly on the mushy bits — even some meat in the end. It must be a mistake, I mean to say to her. To be jocular in the right way.
“I’m going to die here,” I say instead.
“Nonsense. You may sleep for a while, but I’ll hold you. Doesn’t it feel better with a bit of soup inside you?”
I concentrate all my will to straighten up, to look at the darkening square above. “I’m going to die here,” I say.
“Did I tell you about the price of bread, dear?” she says. I am leaning back against her, which she allows, though only as a rest, because she hasn’t had enough of my dancing.
“Don’t talk about bread,” I whisper.
“It’s been going through the roof! You were right to get out of London when you did, I’ll tell you. All the households have been restricted as to where they can shop. You register with a butcher, for instance, and must go there with your ration book, and if the shipment did not come that particular day or you missed out in line, well, fortunes of war, m’lady, it’s quite simply too bad. Are you listening to me?”
I try to look at her in the dizzy murk of the hole.
“Because I don’t think I can marry a man who isn’t able to listen to me. It would be an awful sort of existence, wouldn’t it? To be married to some taciturn, withdrawn sort of man who didn’t care about the daily joys. You would bring me flowers, wouldn’t you? Any man who brings me flowers has halfway won my heart. There’s a hint, Ramsay. A clue!”
“Boulton brings you flowers.”
“Let’s not talk about Henry,” she says quickly. “But he does, you’re right, he can’t cross Covent Garden without picking out something for me. I would hate to be married to a man who was so self-absorbed or so wilfully neglectful of the beauties of — Ramsay, wake up! You’ve slept all day, and you’re getting heavy.”
“Sorry.” I try to shift my weight.
“I’m giving you clues, darling. You really must pay attention.”
“Yes.”
“It would break my heart if you didn’t.”
I lose track of the square up above, can’t say anymore how often it has been dark or light. It seems to change whenever I look or be something else, somehow, an ugly eye peering down at us, blinking sometimes and staring others.
The shivering worsens, settles in for good, and even Margaret with the warm blood catches it. “It’s no good,” I say, holding her, trying to get her to lie down with me against the wall.
“But we’re not married!” she says, only half joking. Her voice has grown faint and her face seems dangerously pale.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I whisper.
“I can’t lie down with you if we aren’t married,” she says again.
So I say, “Margaret Crome, marry me.”
“But we’re cousins, dear Ramsay.” She kisses my face — so coldly. I feel the weight of enormous s
adness, knowing what I’ve done in bringing her here.
“Marry me anyway.”
“It wouldn’t be right,” she replies, but in a teasing, falsely argumentative way. She is already leaning towards the wall, is almost slumping beneath me. “Your father would be furious.”
“My father —” I start to say.
“He’d blow his top — his son marrying a cousin.”
“My father,” I say slowly, trying hard to form the words, “would approve. If he knew all the facts . . . and circumstances.”
I am pressing, trying to get her to bend, but she is stronger than me.
“Would we have children, do you think?” she asks.
“Let’s not get lost . . . in the details.”
“I would want to have children. I would think that a life without children —”
And then she straightens me, despite my waning strength, and in a moment has me shuffle-dancing again. “You see,” she says, “whenever you believe you can’t possibly take another step — if you stop to think about it at all, you’ve taken it already.”
“Margaret Crome!” I say suddenly. “Marry me, and I will carry you out of this pit on my shoulders and all the way back to England!”
“There,” she says, and I catch a silvery glint in her eye.
“Now you’re sounding like someone I might want to consider.”
“Ramsay. Ramsay, wake up,” she says. It is so warm down in the mud I am certain for a moment that we’ve been lying together. The shivering has stopped. She picks up my greatcoat, rearranges it around my shoulders. “You’ll get cold.”
“I’m not at all,” I reply. Even the buttons of my shirt have been ripped off. I am strangely steaming with heat.
“Wake up. Dance with me, Ramsay. Come on!”
“That’s all you want to do,” I slur. My legs feel stumbly, I have a hard time working my arms to keep the coat away.
“Yes, dear, I’m a dancing idiot.”
“You never want to —”
But she has me, and the pain of it is awful.
“I didn’t tell you,” she says.
“What?”
