Peacetime

by Robert Edric

  Bail withdrew the glowing bar from the forge and started to shape it on his anvil. The bar curled and lost its colour, and he measured it against the piece it was intended to replace. It seemed a simple enough task, dependent more on the man’s strength in shaping the metal than any precise measurement or craftsmanship. Jacob, too, watched Bail at work, his eyes rising and falling with Bail’s arm and hammer.

  After a minute of this, Bail returned the rod to the fire and stood back from the forge.

  ‘Not ready yet?’ he asked Jacob, indicating the kiln, the inner bricks of which now glowed white-hot.

  Jacob shook his head.

  ‘He’s a perfectionist,’ Bail said to Mercer. There was respect and envy in his voice. He took a half-smoked cigar from his pocket and lit it with a glowing coal lifted from the forge with his pliers.

  ‘Churchill,’ Jacob said.

  Bail pretended to make a speech, but stopped abruptly as the dogs outside resumed their barking, and he went to investigate.

  ‘He worries that the bailiffs are coming,’ Jacob said as Bail passed him.

  ‘Let them try,’ Bail said. He picked up another of his hammers as he went.

  ‘Are you feeling well?’ Mercer asked Jacob when they were alone.

  ‘I’m never truly well. You have surely grasped that much by now. But, yes, relatively speaking, I am well. Well enough to do what I have to do.’ He motioned to the kiln. ‘It gives me some small purpose.’

  It gives you all your purpose, Mercer thought. He took a handful of broken glass from the cold crucible and rolled it in his palms. Its edges had been ground and it did not cut him. The powder settled into the creases of his hand.

  ‘Alchemy,’ Jacob said unexpectedly.

  ‘“Alchemy”?’

  ‘Turning that into this.’ He held up the broken bowl. ‘True alchemy. To insist that this concerns only the conversion of base metals into gold is to miss the point.’

  ‘I know nothing of it,’ Mercer said, alerted and encouraged by Jacob’s sudden enthusiasm.

  ‘No? The alchemical tradition tended towards the heretical rather than towards the established church. It was a way of exploring the connections between the terrestrial and the celestial, between the four lower elements of earth, wind, fire and water, and the fifth element.’

  ‘Which was what?’

  ‘The quintessence, Mr Mercer. Pure spirituality.’

  ‘I always imagined it to be something more prosaic, something to do with—’

  ‘Greed?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ It was not what Mercer had been about to say.

  ‘I imagine that is what most people think. After all, we live in an age that only recently thought nothing of plundering gold from the mouths of men, women and children.’

  The remark shocked Mercer, and there was nothing he could say in reply to it.

  Jacob saw this. ‘I’ve offended you,’ he said. ‘It was not my intention. According to the few true alchemists, every object, every substance in the natural world signifies – has as its counterpart – something metaphysical, something beyond understanding on the basis of natural or scientific laws alone. According to those men, the world is not simply the naturalistic thing the vast majority of mankind considers it to be, but is filled with spirits, with soul and with intelligence – an anima mundi – where every object has its own unique and special properties. Do you understand?’

  ‘I think so. And all this is represented for you in your glass-making?’

  ‘Something of it, yes. I do not deceive myself that it is a perfect or all-encompassing explanation, or that it even provides the justification for what I do, but I see in it, in my understanding of it, something untouched by others, by those greedy enough to want only that gold, by those men who possess no wonder, no awe, and who are impressed only by their own worldly achievements and power.’

  Mercer understood then how much more he was being told, and how well this imperfect explanation suited Jacob’s purpose.

  ‘And is it what your father also believed?’ he said.

  ‘It is. And he had the sense to instil the belief in me. Everything else might be stripped away and lost or destroyed, but belief, true belief, belief founded solely on understanding can never – never – be taken away from a man.’

  ‘And is that belief sufficient and potent enough to keep a man alive?’

  ‘Of course. More than enough.’

  ‘And your bowls are some kind of justification – a manifestation, almost – of your belief.’

  ‘You surprise me, Mr Mercer. That is precisely my point, though, again, I concede that it is not a perfect understanding, and certainly not one that I would wish to have to explain in any greater detail.’

  And is it all that remains to you, this belief? Like a tightrope, and one now so high above the ground that you can no longer see that ground beneath you. And one so long that you cannot see for certain how far into that same black distance it stretches ahead of you.

  Jacob held out the crucible so that Mercer might brush the last of the powder from his palms back into it.

  ‘Is the kiln ready?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Jacob said.

  ‘Do you have no way of testing it?’

  ‘Like I said, it is not a precise science. I daresay if it were to become one, then it would lose its appeal for me.’

  They were joined by Bail, who said that the dogs had been barking at nothing, but whose poorly disguised concern was evident to them both.

  ‘Ready?’ Bail said to Jacob, who nodded.

  Bail took the crucible in a pair of tongs and slid it into the kiln, closely watched by Jacob, who told him to push it further into the small structure. Bail did this and then returned to the bellows.

  Jacob indicated for Mercer to follow him outside.

  ‘What will you do with it – the bowl?’ Mercer said.

  ‘Who knows? If it breaks again, I shall destroy it completely, just as I have destroyed its imperfect predecessors; but if by some miracle it emerges intact and perfect, then I shall either keep it and look upon it as some sort of justification for all my belief and hard work, or I may sell it. My existence here is not so spiritual as I might sometimes wish to believe.’

  ‘Or as you would want others to believe.’

  Jacob smiled at this. ‘Precisely.’

  ‘You sold a bowl to Elizabeth Lynch,’ Mercer said.

  ‘Before the others chased me away, yes.’

  They walked between the mounds of useless and abandoned machinery towards the drain.

  ‘Can I return with you and watch you shape the bowl?’ Mercer said.

  Jacob shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. For that, I prefer to be completely alone.’

  ‘For what reason?’

  ‘For no reason other than that I have spent the past few years of my life surrounded by tens of thousands of others without a single moment of true privacy.’

  ‘I understand,’ Mercer said.

  ‘I doubt that, but then I would doubt anyone who said the same. Whatever else has happened, you still live in a world where you can choose to believe or not to believe in a great deal. For me, that choice no longer exists. I’m not saying this because I expect your sympathy, or even that I expect you to believe me, but merely to make clear to you the distance between us, you and me. And I say it, too, because I know you will not be offended by the remark, and because I appreciate being able to say it without also having to frame my apology for it. As you might have guessed, I am through with all those old niceties and platitudes.’

  They reached the drain and stood looking over it.

  ‘Did you lose everything?’ Mercer asked him.

  ‘Everything and everyone. You may believe you can imagine how that feels, but you cannot.’

  ‘My brother was killed at Anzio,’ Mercer said. ‘He was wounded and died six days later.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Were you close?’

  Mercer nodded.

  ‘And your pare
nts?’

  ‘My father died when I was a boy. My mother died ten months after my brother was killed.’

  ‘Then it was no coincidence,’ Jacob said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Look,’ Jacob said, and he pointed to where a solitary swan drifted seaward on the drain.

  ‘How long will your glass stay in the kiln?’

  ‘Not too much longer. The temperature rises and falls, unfortunately, but no real harm will come to it once it has become molten. In Utrecht, Anna and I used to take turns at sitting up through the night with our father while he waited for the fire and the heat to build. Even for him, a master craftsman with thirty years’ experience, there was still a great deal of uncertainty involved. And perhaps that was what appealed to him, too. He possessed industrial thermometers, of course, but he insisted he could tell more simply by spitting on different parts of the kiln wall than by what they told him. He taught Anna and myself how to do it.’

  ‘Perhaps he just liked spitting,’ Mercer said.

  ‘Perhaps. We cooked our meals against those kilns. He owned four, one for each kind of work. In the largest, he could produce sufficient ordinary, clear glass to glaze a hundred windows. And in the smallest, he would make bowls like mine. Anna, too, was taught everything I was taught. It was expected of me that I would follow him in the trade, but she also expressed the same desire. Our mother was angry at hearing this, and she berated him for having put the idea into his daughter’s head. She insisted that he dissuade her. He promised her he would try, but then when he was alone with the two of us, he told Anna to do whatever she pleased. She was only nine when the war started, thirteen when we were forced to leave our home and the glassworks.’ He paused to watch the swan pass them by.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We were driven from our home, and what we left behind, others simply took for themselves. I imagine the kilns were not yet cold from their last firing before their new owner stood before them, rubbing his hands at the thought of all those new and lucrative Army contracts about to arrive.’

  ‘Which Army?’

  ‘I doubt it mattered to him.’

  ‘Were you able to retrieve nothing?’

  ‘We gave and sent what we could to relatives and to our true friends, but we did not know then that the same thing was shortly to happen to them and that they too were to be driven from their own homes and businesses. Jews live with other Jews, Mr Mercer. Our whole society was Jewish. It was what, in the end, made everything so easy, so complete, so containable.’

  Mercer did not fully understand this last remark, but he said nothing.

  The swan drifted further from them, swivelling its head to watch them as it went. There had been rain earlier in the day, and the drain was dark and heavy with silt.

  ‘How is your own work progressing?’ Jacob asked.

  ‘Days, weeks pass when nothing seems to be accomplished, and then one morning I look out and the job’s done. I doubt if there’s a single man working there who cares enough even to wonder what it is they’re achieving there, what the finished thing will look like.’

  ‘They disappoint you.’

  ‘Only because I’m stupid enough to expect so much more of them.’

  ‘My father used to say that a genius might make a pane of glass, but only a fool would see nothing but his own reflection in it.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to mean anything. He was as full of such empty profundities as I am. Perhaps I inherited them from him.’ He slid back his sleeve an inch to look at his watch.

  ‘Show me,’ Mercer said.

  Jacob turned his arm so that Mercer might see his inner arm and then drew back his sleeve to his elbow.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mercer said. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’

  ‘Your curiosity would have got the better of you sooner or later.’

  ‘It was still unthinking of me.’

  ‘It was one of the first things Bail asked me. Mathias, too. Did you not believe it happened?’

  Mercer half-shook, half-nodded his head.

  ‘Then now you need have no doubt,’ Jacob said. ‘For what that’s worth.’

  ‘It was still wrong of me to ask,’ Mercer said.

  ‘As unthinking as the men who held my arm while another put it there?’

  ‘Can it not be removed?’

  ‘Of course. As easily as one of my bowls might be smashed. Women held my sister’s arm, and those same women stripped her naked for the pleasure of looking at her and fondling her while they did it to her. You cause me no offence, Mr Mercer.’ He drew down his sleeve. ‘I have to return to my glass,’ he said. ‘And to Bail.’

  Mercer wished him luck.

  They parted, and Mercer followed the drain in the direction taken by the swan.

  19

  On the eve of the return of Elizabeth Lynch’s husband, he watched Mary and her mother walking on the shore. He lay in the dunes where he had first seen Mary, and he watched the two of them, anxious not to be seen by them, not to intrude on this final evening they shared together.

  Elizabeth Lynch walked slowly, occasionally looking around her and gesturing to Mary as though she wanted her daughter to walk closer to her. But Mary kept her distance and walked back and forth across the sand ahead of her mother. They were too far from him for Mercer to hear what they were saying, but even at that distance he could discern that the woman was agitated; whereas Mary, he saw, affected the same uncaring nonchalance she frequently adopted in his own company. She paused occasionally to allow her mother to catch up with her, but then when the woman came close, she resumed her walking. Elizabeth Lynch seemed not to notice this game her daughter played and remained enmeshed within her own anxious thoughts.

  It was clear to Mercer that there could have been nothing except the return of the man on both their minds, and that this was why they had come away from the houses and the others. The woman, he imagined, would have suggested the walk, and Mary would have reluctantly agreed to accompany her. Elizabeth Lynch would be listing her concerns for the future, and her daughter would regret being forced to listen to them, probably believing that the woman was making a fool of herself with everything she now insisted on sharing with her.

  Mercer watched them until they reached the point where the road came closest to the sea, and where they stood together for a few minutes before turning back. He saw Elizabeth Lynch finally reach out to Mary as though expecting her daughter to go to her and be held by her, but instead Mary continued to keep her distance. After that, the woman stopped gesturing, and she too fell silent, coming more slowly back along the beach behind her daughter. He saw the two sets of footprints they left behind them, the woman’s in a near-straight line out and back, and the girl’s forever crossing back and forth over this path, as though she were a dog, restless and searching and ceaselessly running around its owner.

  Mercer sank lower in the grass as they approached, convinced they had not seen him, and even when they were directly beneath him, neither the woman nor the girl paused or looked up to where he lay.

  He waited until they were long past him and out of sight before rising and returning to the tower.

  He worked for several hours on the quartermaster’s reports he had been asked to submit, but the work involved little true calculation, merely a great deal of guesswork, and it did not satisfy him.

  He fell asleep where he sat, and was woken after only an hour of restless sleep by a noise which he believed to have come from close by, either from the room below or somewhere immediately outside. He imagined at first that someone from the houses had come in search of him and had called up to him.

  It was dark by then, and he waited in the poor light for whoever had called to call again. After several minutes of silence he went to the hatchway and looked down. He called out to ascertain if there was anyone there, but received no reply. He descended the stairs, unlocked the door and went outside.

 
With the exception of the waning moon and the few stars around it, the world lay in almost total darkness. He called again to ask if there was anyone there, but this time in a much lower voice, unwilling to reveal himself to anyone who might be watching. It was impossible to see further than twenty or thirty yards in any direction. Across the road, the houses lay in complete darkness. His breath formed in the night air.

  He was just about to concede that the voice or noise had been part of a forgotten dream from which he had woken, when he heard the sound of someone walking on the loose rubble close behind the tower. He moved quickly and silently around the building, his eyes growing accustomed to the darkness as he went, and he stood against the corner of the wall to look in the direction of the noise. He heard a further sound a short distance ahead of him and, peering towards this, he saw a shape pass low against the ground from one mound of rubble to another. A dog, perhaps, though he had seen no animals among the people all the time he had been there. Whatever the creature was, it then paused, as though suddenly aware of him. It turned towards where he stood, raised its head for a moment, and then resumed its slow, loping walk across the open ground. He realized then that he was watching a fox – one come out of the fields into the dunes in search of a roosting bird, or perhaps a fish left stranded by the tide. Several of the workers had told him of the tracks they had found in the sand, but these had been ill-defined and easily lost. The animal was briefly out of sight behind the rubble before reappearing on the level ground bordering the road.

  Mercer left the corner of the tower the better to follow its progress. The creature seemed convinced that it was in no danger and continued moving at the same even pace. It crossed the road and was again lost to him in the rising sand.

  He ran to where it had disappeared, climbed the first low mound, but saw nothing. His own footprints, he realized, had destroyed whatever prints the animal had already left, and the light was too poor to see anything ahead of him.

  He stayed in the dunes for several minutes longer, until he heard the strained, coarse bark of the fox, now at some distance from him. It was this which had woken him, and though disappointed not to have observed the animal any more closely, he was pleased to have identified the noise.