Peacetime

by Robert Edric

  ‘How could you tell her of things about which you yourself knew so little?’

  ‘I could have prepared her, made her stronger, made her ready for what was to come.’

  ‘She was only thirteen years old.’

  ‘What did that matter? How many other thirteen-year-olds, ten-year-olds, five-year-olds do you think were told those same lies? How many of them benefited from being kept from the truth, do you think? I lied to her and I made promises to her, and in the end the lies and the promises became the same thing, and each as worthless as the other.’

  ‘You were surrounded by people who would have denied what you told her if it was what they, too, didn’t wish her to hear.’

  ‘What they didn’t want to have to confront themselves, you mean.’

  ‘They were your parents.’

  ‘Who ignored all my pleas at least to begin to prepare her for what might lie ahead of her, of us all.’

  ‘So you believed they failed her, just as you failed her?’

  Jacob did not answer this, though it was clear to Mercer that it was what he believed. He looked down at his feet and jabbed the metal rod into the ground.

  Neither man spoke for several minutes.

  ‘You might imagine it helps me to make sense of all these things by talking about them,’ Jacob said eventually, turning away from Mercer as he spoke.

  ‘And doesn’t it?’

  ‘Why should the senseless ever make sense?’

  ‘You told Anna what you told her because, under the circumstances, there was nothing else you could tell her. You knew as much and as little as anyone.’

  Jacob shook his head at this. ‘“Under the circumstances”,’ he said, and then he rose and started walking to where Bail still passed back and forth on his tractor.

  It was clear to Mercer that he did not want to be followed.

  Jacob reached Bail, but said nothing to him above the noise of the tractor. Bail left the yard and drove along the road leading into town. Jacob stood for a moment and watched him go. In the silence which followed, he finally turned to look back at Mercer.

  Mercer rose and looked for his own path out of the yard onto the surrounding land, and it was only as he followed this, as he finally left the town behind him, that he understood why Jacob had chosen to make this place of dereliction and waste his home.

  He came out onto the open land and searched for the simple plank bridge over the first of the drains.

  22

  On the third day after his return, Mercer saw Lynch and Mary standing together at the edge of the workings. It was early evening and they had waited for the workers to leave before crossing the road to where they now stood. Mary was pointing things out to her father, though the man’s gaze wandered to places other than where she pointed.

  Mercer took this opportunity to introduce himself to the man. He went out to them, and the instant she saw him, Mary stopped talking.

  Lynch turned, and he too watched closely as Mercer approached them over the broken ground.

  ‘I’m Mercer,’ Mercer said, not knowing how else to begin.

  ‘She told me.’ The man held out his hand. ‘Lynch,’ he said. ‘Me and you sound as though we’ve got a lot in common.’

  Mercer had never visited a military prison, but tales of the places – though doubtless exaggerated – were common among the workers.

  ‘Best thing ever happened to this place, you ask me,’ Lynch said. He drew hard on the cigarette he smoked. ‘She’s been filling me in on all the necessary.’

  ‘I told him what you—’ Mary began.

  ‘I’ve just told him,’ her father said sharply. ‘It’s him and me talking now. Not you.’ He winked at Mercer. ‘Fifteen and she knows everything there is to know. Look at her. She was a kid when I went away. Look at her now. A kid.’ He threw down the last half-inch of his cigarette. His words embarrassed Mary, and though she moved no further away from the pair of them, she half-turned from them in a gesture of separation.

  ‘You must have a great deal of catching up to do,’ Mercer said to him.

  ‘Catching up? Me and her, you mean?’ He looked at his daughter. ‘I don’t know if that’s what I’d call it. There’s a few things I wouldn’t mind catching up on, but mostly it’s just more of the same. All this might have changed’ – he indicated the workings and the rising foundations – ‘but not much else. If I hadn’t been in Colchester, I doubt any of us would still be here.’ He spat heavily and rubbed the phlegm into the sand with his foot. ‘Parole requirements, see. Fixed abode, means of support, that sort of thing. A year. Though I doubt they’re going to be too keen to check up on me all the way out here.’

  ‘Do you need to report in the town, the police station?’ Mercer said, reminded of Mathias’s casual arrangements.

  Lynch became suddenly defensive. ‘You seem to know a lot about it. Been checking up, have you? Worried about all this valuable equipment lying around?’

  ‘All I meant was that the lorries come and go all the time – if ever you need a lift, just ask. I can’t guarantee it, but if they’re prepared to be flexible about your appearance …’

  ‘Flexible? It’s the Army, mate. Flexible?’ He turned again to Mary. ‘Hear that? Flexible. You were spot on about him and his fancy words.’ He turned back to Mercer. ‘No offence, mate. Just something she said. I was asking her about you. My fault, really; perhaps I shouldn’t have done.’ He looked pointedly at the cigarettes in Mercer’s breast pocket, and Mercer took these out and offered him one.

  ‘Years since I had a decent smoke,’ Lynch said. ‘You get your tobacco in there, but it’s piss-poor stuff. You wouldn’t wish it on a Kraut.’ He laughed.

  ‘Take them all,’ Mercer said, knowing that this was what the man was hoping for. He saw Mary flinch at the language her father used.

  ‘Mary’s been a great help to me,’ Mercer said.

  ‘Oh? Like how? Doing what?’

  Mercer wished he hadn’t spoken. Mary looked at him briefly and then turned away again.

  ‘She helped me get my room cleared out,’ he said.

  ‘She does sod-all in the house,’ Lynch said. ‘Watches the other one’ – he meant her brother – ‘but that’s about it.’

  Mercer knew how untrue and unfair this was, and he wanted Mary to turn back to him so that he might somehow signal this understanding to her without having to say anything more to the man on the subject.

  ‘What do you mean, she helped you clear your room? Have her in there working for you, do you?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Mercer said.

  ‘What then? Don’t think I’m criticizing. It’s just that I’m her father, and I won’t see her taken advantage of. Her mother lets them get away with murder. But not me.’

  ‘I told you, he paid me,’ Mary said to him. She, too, Mercer understood, wanted to say more, but was unwilling to prolong the twisted conversation. They were both being used by Lynch, and the man clearly relished the control he now so easily exerted over them.

  ‘When she says “pay” …’ Lynch said.

  ‘I gave her what I thought was fair,’ Mercer said. ‘The place was a dump when I moved in.’

  ‘No need to tell me what it was like. Used to be in and out of it all the time. Bit of peace and quiet away from prying eyes, if you know what I mean.’ He laughed again. ‘Perhaps I could come in and have a look round some time. For old time’s sake. Lived here since I was a boy. You don’t just chop a man off from all that and not expect him to want some of it back.’

  Mercer didn’t understand what he meant by this, but he said nothing to encourage the man any further in his insincere reminiscing.

  ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to get through to her and her mother, but she’s too young to know what I’m talking about, and the other one’s either too stupid or she doesn’t want to know. Her mother was born here, and to hear her talk you know for a fact that she’s going to die here and then be proud of it. I keep telling her, what did
we fight a war for if it meant that everything was going to be exactly the same as it was before? I lost a lot of good mates over there. I can see what you’re thinking, but they were still my mates and they still got killed or knocked about doing what they did. And they were proper soldiers, like I was, like I would have gone on being, given the chance, if my so-called elders and betters hadn’t stuck to the rule book like they did. If they’d been a bit more flexible.’ It pleased him to have been able to repeat the word, and he said it again so that there would be no misunderstanding his true meaning.

  It now seemed to Mercer that there was a measure of calculated malice in everything the man said.

  ‘You’re welcome to come to the tower any time I’m there,’ Mercer said. ‘My charts and plans are there and I need to keep the place secure.’ He wondered why Mary hadn’t attempted to leave them, but guessed that had she done so, her father would have called her back and humiliated her even further. At least while she stood within hearing, she knew what he might say about her.

  Lynch took out another cigarette and lit it without offering one to Mercer.

  ‘Will you find work?’ Mercer asked him.

  ‘Here? What do you think?’

  ‘I meant in the town.’

  The man shrugged. ‘There’s always something. The Light still pays for the house.’

  ‘The Light?’

  ‘Trinity bloody House. Charitable trust. Pays for the houses. No rent, see, even for ex-jail-birds like me. Charity cases, that’s us.’

  It had never occurred to Mercer to wonder how Elizabeth Lynch could afford to live in the place.

  ‘Proper charity cases,’ Lynch repeated. He called to Mary, though she stood only a few feet from him. ‘I was just telling him, proper charity cases, us.’

  Mary said nothing.

  ‘She’s ashamed,’ Lynch said. ‘Every time it’s mentioned. Probably still thinks money grows on trees.’

  In Mercer’s blueprints for the new Station, there was a precise timetable for the destruction of the houses. The Old Light, too, was to be reduced even further, to half its present height, and a succession of automatic beacons, some anchored offshore, installed in its place. There were no plans to improve or deepen the few inshore shipping channels, and these fixed lights were intended more as warnings, keeping vessels away from the shallows, than as markers guiding them to old and reliable anchorages.

  ‘Will your return change anything?’ he said to Lynch, uncertain of what he was asking. ‘Regarding your landlords, I mean.’

  ‘You tell me. They’re not happy. Probably hoped I’d be long gone by now. Which I would be if it wasn’t for those parole conditions. They can’t kick us out, see, not just like that. They wait until each house comes empty and then they board it up and let it fall to ruin.’

  ‘Mary told me you were a fisherman,’ Mercer said.

  ‘I told him you sometimes went out on the boats,’ Mary said, looking from Mercer to her father.

  ‘Fishing?’ the man said. ‘That’s right. I was a fisherman, though it wasn’t necessarily fish we were fishing for, me and all those other fishermen.’ He raised and tapped his cigarette. ‘Catch my drift?’

  ‘Contraband?’ Mercer said.

  ‘Bit of this, bit of that. No harm done, not considering Government taxes. Nothing too big, just enough to keep us all ticking nicely over.’

  ‘And presumably you were never caught.’

  ‘Not caught caught. They knew what was going on, but there was never anything they could prove. Worst comes to the worst, you just tip it over the side. You can always put a few fish in the bottom of the boat to make your story good. Too much draught, see, on the coastguard vessels. They could never follow you out of the deeper water. Never learned that particular lesson.’

  ‘Does it still happen?’ Mercer recalled the times he had seen the other men at their boats in the fading light.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Lynch said. ‘There’s others got their greedy hands on it now. It’s not a living. Plus, she goes on at me about it.’ He meant his wife. ‘Reckons we’re jeopardizing our chances of staying in the house if I get caught at it. Won’t look too good to the Prison Board, either.’

  ‘No.’

  But the man was no longer listening to him. ‘Look at her,’ he said, indicating Mary. ‘I’m talking to you,’ he called to her. ‘At least look at me.’

  Mary turned.

  ‘Showing her ignorance,’ Lynch said to Mercer. ‘You could take her for eighteen in this light,’ he said.

  Mercer considered this unlikely, especially in view of the shabby clothes she again wore.

  ‘What you think? Eighteen? Or have I just been out of circulation for too long? You should see some of the women in the town on Saturday night. And one or two of them here are no better.’

  ‘Who do you mean?’ Mercer said.

  ‘You don’t want no names. I’m talking about them forever giving the eye to your lot.’

  ‘My lot?’

  ‘Don’t come the idiot. Christ, you know who I mean. Your diggers and labourers. You’re not denying that some of them haven’t been a bit fast off the mark.’

  ‘There’s been a bit of’ – Mercer stopped himself from saying ‘fraternization’ – ‘flirting here and there, on both sides, but I doubt it’s been anything more than that.’

  Lynch laughed. ‘A bit of flirting? Shows how much you know. Bloody officers – see what they want to see and the rest gets hidden away.’

  ‘Are you suggesting—’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything, mate. Forget I ever said anything.’ He turned back to his daughter. ‘Mary, come here, come and tell your fancy friend what you and her were telling me the other night about what’s been going on here behind his back.’

  ‘There’s no need,’ Mercer said. ‘You’re probably right. I daresay it’s inevitable in a—’

  ‘Mary, I said come here. Now. You deaf, or what?’

  She came to them. ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘“What?” she says. You heard me. Tell him.’

  ‘It’s right what he says,’ Mary said.

  ‘I know,’ Mercer told her, hoping again that she would understand everything he intended to convey to her.

  But Lynch insisted. ‘Tell him,’ he said. He raised his hand to her and then lowered it. Mary made no attempt to defend herself, and Mercer saw then, in that simple gesture, how completely the man had reasserted himself after his long absence.

  ‘Some of the others, the women, have been carrying on with the men on the site,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’ It was the least she could say to him while fulfilling her father’s demands.

  ‘Satisfied now?’ Lynch said.

  Mercer wondered how he might have responded to this unprovoked and vindictive goading had Mary not been present.

  ‘Come to think of it,’ Lynch said, ‘she’s probably been up to a bit of it herself.’

  Mary reddened. Where she now stood between them, it was impossible for her to turn away and hide her face.

  ‘I’m sure she hasn’t,’ Mercer said. ‘Whatever it is you mean to imply.’

  ‘“Mean to imply,”’ Lynch mimicked. ‘You saying she’s not up to it, not old enough?’

  ‘I’m saying that if I’d seen anything of the sort, I’d have stopped it. She’s fifteen.’

  ‘And some of your lads are what, eighteen, nineteen? It’s not that much of a difference. Girls, see, they grow up fast.’

  He looked at his daughter, and for the first time since Mercer had come to them, there was something approaching affection in the man’s voice. He reached out and held her shoulder, and Mary put her hand on his.

  ‘Sorry, love,’ he said to her. ‘I know you wouldn’t have been up to any of that. Too busy looking forward to me getting back, eh?’

  She nodded and kept her head down.

  ‘She’d have told me, see,’ Lynch said. ‘Just like she told me all about you and what you and her get up to together.’ He nodded
to the tower. ‘Said the place was like a pigsty before she got to work on it.’

  ‘It was,’ Mercer said quickly. ‘And it still would be if she wasn’t able to keep it straight for me.’

  ‘Woman’s touch, see,’ Lynch said. ‘Only, in future when she comes, clear it with me first, OK? Don’t want any of the neighbours getting the wrong idea, do we? Don’t want them putting two and two together and coming up with—’ He motioned to Mary.

  ‘Five,’ she said.

  ‘Exactly. Taught her that when she was a little kid. Two and two, five.’

  Mercer wondered at the tenuous and unlikely connections the man was insistent on re-establishing.

  Lynch drew Mary closer to him and put his arm around her waist. ‘We’d better be getting back,’ he said to her. ‘She’ll be wondering where we are. She’s a worrier, see,’ he said to Mercer. ‘Makes herself sick with it. Only happy when she’s got something to worry about. Drives you crazy. Still, me and her can keep each other company now.’ He kissed Mary on the cheek.

  Mercer guessed him to be no older than thirty-three or four, and knew that Mary must have been born when her parents were little more than children themselves.

  She did nothing to extricate herself from her father’s grip.

  ‘Time I was getting back, too,’ Mercer said, and he turned and left them.

  ‘I’ll send her round tomorrow or the day after,’ Lynch called after him.

  ‘Fine,’ Mercer said, unwilling to tolerate the man’s remarks any longer.

  ‘She’ll see you right.’

  The man and girl remained standing at the edge of the site, and they were still there when Mercer reached the tower and finally looked back at them. He regretted how he had allowed Lynch to dominate everything that had happened, and how the man had taken advantage of his own uncertainty and Mary’s embarrassment to do this. It had surprised him to see how little Mary had been prepared to stand up for herself, how little of her usual confidence she possessed in her father’s presence.

  He went inside and climbed to the upper room, avoiding the window so he would not be seen by them.

  23