Peacetime

by Robert Edric

  ‘Meaning you and he have had this same conversation a thousand times already.’

  Jacob smiled. ‘Perhaps not a thousand.’

  ‘He was telling me—’ Mercer began.

  ‘He was explaining to you about the nature of my dependence upon him. This kindness of strangers in which I am steeped. You must not consider me ungrateful, but you must understand that there is an art – what would you call it, a grace – to receiving and accepting all these acts of kindness without becoming too dependent or too beholden. The act must in some way satisfy the giver just as it fulfils a need in the person to whom it is directed. Sometimes the former is considerably less straightforward and harder to either understand or to accept than the latter.’

  ‘You and Mathias,’ Mercer said.

  ‘Me and everyone,’ Jacob said. ‘But, yes, especially Mathias.’

  ‘I understand,’ Mercer said.

  ‘I wouldn’t expect that much of you. Nor, I imagine, would I want it. I sometimes think that it is only our imperfect understanding of most other people that makes them tolerable to us.’

  ‘Seeing only what we want to see in them, you mean?’

  Jacob held out his hand for Mercer to help him from the slope to the firmer shingle of the beach. They started walking. The blanket was now draped over Jacob’s shoulders and he held it with both hands at his chest.

  ‘Mathias is right about the hospital,’ Mercer said as they reached the open land of the site, and he looked around them to ensure they had not been seen.

  ‘Of course he is. But he knows only of his own imprisonment.’

  ‘Surely that’s not how it would seem to you – a prison.’

  Jacob shook his head. ‘Nothing so obvious or straightforward. But I prize above all else my solitude and what little true independence I am able to fool myself into believing I still possess.’

  ‘You needn’t stay there for long. Just until you were well again.’

  ‘And how long do you imagine that might be?’ Jacob paused, leaning forward slightly to ease his breathing and to clear his throat. He, too, looked around them. ‘I can’t imagine how I came this far out,’ he said.

  They arrived at the tower without being seen and without encountering anyone.

  A piece of paper lay beneath the door. Mercer picked this up. We came looking for you. Not in. Lynch.

  ‘From one of the foremen,’ he said. He waited at the foot of the stairs, helping Jacob as he climbed.

  Arriving in the room above, Jacob finally shed the blanket and sat down.

  Mercer prepared them tea and something to eat. After which Jacob asked him if he had anything stronger to drink. Mercer took out a bottle of whisky and gave it to him.

  ‘I must seem very abrupt and ungrateful to you,’ Jacob said. ‘I honestly believed I might have reeducated myself to the ways of civilized men by now.’ He filled a glass to the brim, mouthed a silent toast and drank it.

  ‘What did you say?’ Mercer asked him.

  ‘I was drinking to my sister. I do it every day because I have so few other ways of keeping her memory alive. I have a single photograph of when she was a girl, eight or nine years old. One solitary picture, that’s all. Everything else was lost.’

  ‘You have your memories,’ Mercer said, refilling the glass and pouring a drink for himself.

  ‘You would not want the memories I possess, Mr Mercer.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think.’

  ‘Memories of which I will never be rid or free. This is good drink. Usually, I am forced to toast her in something poor and raw, something which burns my mouth and throat and stomach, and which fills my head with its bitter and lingering fumes; it seems somehow more appropriate, more fitting.’

  ‘This is all I have,’ Mercer said.

  Jacob drained the second glass and held it out for more.

  ‘Will you tell me about her?’ Mercer said.

  ‘About Anna? What is there for me to tell that will make any sense to you. I loved her more than I ever loved anyone in my whole life, including my mother, and she was fourteen when she died. We were not separated, you see, and I was with her or close to her the whole time. You cannot imagine what she was to me, or the loss I suffered when she died.’

  ‘It’s painful for you,’ Mercer said, hoping to indicate that he regretted having asked so bluntly and that Jacob need not go on.

  ‘Of course. But it is not a pain I would happily or willingly lose. Anna. She was day and night to me, Mr Mercer. She gave me purpose. And, please, don’t misunderstand me – I am not one of your Romantic poets struggling for a metaphor or a symbol. Day and night. I was her older brother, see, her protector, her saviour; I was the one who would ensure she would survive; I was the one who would protect and save her; I was the one who told her everything she needed to hear; I – we—’ He stopped abruptly, unable to continue, and they sat together in this awkward, unbroken silence for several minutes longer.

  ‘May I have the blanket back?’ Jacob said eventually.

  ‘I feel the cold like an empty house feels it.’

  Mercer gave him the blanket and fetched him another. He brought this from a cupboard in the room below, and when he returned, Jacob was again sleeping.

  Mercer wrapped both blankets around him and took off his shoes. His feet beneath were bare and dirty. He lifted these and folded the blanket beneath them.

  It was not yet seven. He himself rarely slept until midnight.

  He worked at his charts for several hours, catching up with everything he had neglected during the day.

  He watched the lights appear in the houses. He watched Mary’s house in particular, but saw nothing of its occupants.

  Later, in the darkness, as he prepared for bed, he heard the raised voices of men who must have earlier gone into town. He heard Lynch among these.

  Jacob remained undisturbed by the noise. The stiff blanket lay around his face like a shroud.

  One of these returning men played a harmonica, and its plaintive, discordant sound came sharply through the darkness. The men kept their distance from the tower, and walked one by one to their homes until silence returned.

  25

  The following morning he woke to find Jacob gone. The blankets lay on the floor beside the chair, and the half-empty bottle of whisky stood close by. He wondered if Jacob had woken and returned home in the darkness, or if he had waited until dawn and gone then. Mercer himself had woken several times during the night, but had heard nothing.

  It was almost time to start work and he made his final preparations in advance of the others. In a few days’ time, work would start on the laying of a major culvert, diverting water from the site of the new Station. Preparations for this were already underway, and all the smaller feeder drains, some as far as two miles inland, were being cleared or sealed in readiness for the work. For the few days this would take, the men employed on it – the majority of the workforce – would be forced to work up to their waists in mud and water and silt until the new culvert was operational and the old drain finally abandoned.

  It was Mercer’s intention that day to walk the course of the old drain to assess where it might best be briefly blocked and diverted prior to its incorporation in the new scheme. There would be some localized flooding; feeder drains and dykes would overflow; land drainage and outflows would be temporarily affected. In ten days the afternoon tide would be at its lowest for a month, and the work was planned to coincide with this.

  It was the contemplation of this, and of that coming day’s work, that finally drove all thought of Jacob from his mind. He knew that if he had not reached his room at Bail’s Yard, then he would hear about it. In all likelihood, Bail himself would come out on one of his resurrected machines.

  He was distracted from his charts by the noise of the approaching lorries and he went outside to await them.

  The first arrivals disembarked at some distance from the tower, and they seemed to Mercer to be more subdued than usual. He
went to them. The remaining lorries passed him on the road driving towards the houses and the sea, and it was only as he saw the men gathered together that it occurred to him that they had perhaps come upon Jacob, still lying where he might have fallen in the night. Approaching them closer, he was relieved to hear laughter. Several of the men saw him and stood aside, and it was only then that he saw Mary and Lynch at their centre.

  The man was holding court, and it was immediately clear to Mercer that he already knew some of these others from their time together in the town. Mercer regretted that he would now be obliged to confront the man not only in the presence of Mary, but in the midst of the labourers, too. He saw what an added advantage their presence offered Lynch, and how they might be made to side with him against Mercer and the unwelcome demands he made on them. He saw what an appreciative audience Lynch now had, what he had so easily gained. He remembered the message beneath the tower door.

  The foreman saw him coming and he told the others to pick up their tools and start working. They were reluctant to do this and did nothing to hide their reluctance. The presence of Lynch, Mercer saw, made them brave.

  Lynch complained loudly that he hadn’t finished talking with ‘his mates’, and that he didn’t appreciate being interrupted. Mercer knew better than to respond to this calculated provocation.

  Mary, he saw, was barefoot, and wearing her mother’s short skirt and blouse. The blouse was armless and with a low neckline. She had again brushed back her hair and tied it off her face. She was clearly uncomfortable at the centre of the men. She avoided looking at Mercer.

  Lynch wore a vest and his Army trousers and boots, looking no different from any of the others. He had tattoos on each of his upper arms, and he was showing these to the men around him as Mercer arrived. One of the designs was of a near-naked woman and Lynch was performing a trick which involved flexing and relaxing the muscle upon which she was drawn. His arms were thin and dark, accentuated by the whiteness of his vest. The sides of his ribs showed. Mary stood close beside him.

  He uses her like bait, Mercer thought.

  The foreman shouted again for the men to start work, but again few responded to this.

  And then Lynch said, ‘Come on, lads, do as you’re told. Poor bloody infantry, jump to it,’ and he saluted the foreman, soliciting even more laughter. He said something to Mary and she moved even closer to him. She watched Mercer as he walked amid the reluctantly dispersing crowd, and then bowed her head as he finally entered the circle of the few remaining men.

  ‘Be fair,’ Lynch said loudly. ‘They’re officers. What can you expect? Never dirtied their hands in their lives. That’s what you’re here for.’

  There was a chorus of sour agreement at this. Lynch had turned himself into their unelected and unassailable spokesman: what they felt but were unable to say, he might now say but not necessarily feel; where they felt themselves shackled by the authority of Mercer and the work ahead, Lynch stood uncompromised by all authority.

  Mercer waited without speaking as the last of the men finally withdrew and started work.

  ‘Sorry for any delay, Major Mercer, sir. Just me and the lads having a bit of a chinwag. You know what us old soldiers are like. Have to stick together. Me and the girl were just having a look round, didn’t even know this lot were due.’ It was an obvious lie – the routines of the site were long since familiar to everyone who lived and worked there – but Lynch did nothing to disguise the fact. ‘Catch you later, lads,’ he called to the departing men. ‘Say goodbye,’ he said to Mary. ‘Where’s your manners?’

  Mary said goodbye to the men still close enough to hear.

  ‘Don’t worry – she’ll keep me straight,’ Lynch called after them.

  It surprised and concerned Mercer to see how readily the workers had accepted Lynch, and how easily he had ingratiated himself by pretending to be one of them. He wondered how many of them knew of the man’s past, but then realized that this would not necessarily count against him in their own assessment and acceptance of him.

  As he waited, Mercer saw one of the workers approach Lynch and then turn his back to Mercer as something secretive took place between them.

  The man said something to Mary and she left them.

  ‘Go and say hello to your friend,’ Lynch said loudly, and he pushed her away from him.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Mercer asked her when she came to him.

  ‘Selling tobacco,’ she said.

  ‘Is that what they were waiting for in the boats yesterday?’

  ‘It’s not just him,’ she said.

  The transaction completed, Lynch came to them.

  ‘My ears are burning,’ he said.

  Mercer saw the bulges in his pockets and down the front of his vest.

  ‘So?’ Lynch said. ‘You working for the coastguard now? Customs and Excise?’

  ‘No. But I do have an obligation to warn them’ – he indicated the departing men – ‘against doing anything illegal.’

  ‘Warn them all you like,’ Lynch said. ‘The stuff sells. The only advantage in selling it to them here as far as I’m concerned is that it saves me a long walk.’

  ‘The less you tell me, the better,’ Mercer said. ‘And it might be—’

  ‘Came looking for you yesterday,’ Lynch said.

  ‘I got your note.’

  Lynch pulled a face. ‘And?’

  ‘I was busy until late.’

  ‘You were entertaining the Jew-boy,’ Lynch said. ‘That’s not “busy”. First of all, you, him and the other one spend all afternoon spying on us from the dunes, and then you and him come back here for your tea together, all nice and cosy.’ He turned to Mary. ‘What did I tell you? You want to watch yourself around men like that. They might not be after what the rest of them are after, but—’

  ‘He was exhausted. He’s sick,’ Mercer said, unwilling to tolerate the man’s goading any longer. ‘Besides, she already knows him. And so, presumably, you know all about him, too.’ He looked hard at Mary as he said this, hoping she understood his criticism of her.

  ‘I saw that stupid bit of glass he fobbed off on her mother,’ Lynch said. ‘One born every minute, you ask me. Still, that’s what your average Jew-boy’s good at, I suppose. And you’re right – she does tell me everything. We’re like that, me and her.’ He held up his crossed fingers. ‘Always were, always will be. Nothing’s changed in that department. Anything I want to know, I just have to ask. I know, for instance, that you’re forever sniffing around her.’

  ‘He isn’t,’ Mary said. She looked anxiously from her father to Mercer. ‘I never said that.’

  ‘Didn’t need to,’ Lynch said, encouraged by her sudden alarm. ‘I’ve got eyes in my head. I hear things. And her next door has an opinion or two on most things. Well?’

  ‘Well what?’ Mercer said, feigning a composure he did not feel.

  ‘You been taking an interest in her?’

  ‘I only said—’ Mary said, but then stopped abruptly.

  ‘Only said what?’ Lynch said.

  ‘I only said you’d been considerate to us, to all of us,’ Mary said, speaking now directly to Mercer. The revelation embarrassed her.

  ‘“Considerate”,’ Lynch said. ‘That’s another big word. Kind of word that covers a multitude of sins.’

  ‘And probably not one that you hear too often in connection with yourself,’ Mercer said.

  Lynch considered him without speaking for a moment and then slowly applauded him. ‘Very clever. She said you were quick on your feet. Next you’ll be telling me that we’re trespassing. I was going to come by myself and wait for the lorries, but she insisted on coming with me. Wanted to dress herself up, come with her old dad and see him in action. Like a shadow, she is.’ He winked at his daughter and then repeated the gesture until she responded.

  ‘She always struck me as being very independent-minded,’ Mercer said, conscious that whatever he now said about Mary would later be twisted and used against
her. One way or another, he realized, everything he said would only fuel the man’s resentment and anger.

  ‘Her mother said I ought to see you about a job on the site. Said it’d look good for me. I told her it wasn’t really my speciality, digging holes in the dirt while somebody looked on and told me to dig deeper. Had enough of that sort of thing in Colchester.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Mercer said.

  ‘No you can’t. Not your sort. That’s what I was trying to get through to her’ – he motioned towards Mary – ‘what I was trying to get through to the pair of them. There’s “them” and there’s “us”. They think the war’s changed it all, but they don’t know bugger-all, not really.’

  ‘You could find work in the town if you were serious about it,’ Mercer said. ‘And, technically, yes, you are trespassing. But then you knew that already, so I won’t insist on you leaving. I’ve told her and the children often enough not to go too close to the workings, but they always do.’

  ‘Like I said,’ Lynch said. ‘Like father, like daughter.’

  Mary pulled up the neck of her blouse and held her hands on her shoulders.

  ‘What do you think of her new clothes?’ Lynch said. ‘I told her mother that she ought to start buying her something a bit more – what’s the word?’

  ‘Fashionable?’ Mercer said.

  ‘Something a bit more becoming for her age. Look at her, she’s not a kid any more. You’ve only got to look at the faces of some of this lot to see that.’

  Again, the remark embarrassed Mary, and it was difficult for her to hide how she felt.

  Seeing this, Lynch smiled and said, ‘See – now I’ve hurt her feelings. Typical woman. What you think?’

  ‘What I think is that I ought to be getting to work,’ Mercer said. ‘Go and stand over someone digging a hole.’

  ‘Course you should. You’re a busy man. Everybody can see that. Expecting him back, are you?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Jew-boy, that’s who.’

  ‘You don’t even know the man,’ Mercer said.