by Robert Edric
‘Do you know what’s wrong with him?’ she asked Mercer, looking hard at Jacob, at the ridges and hollows of his exposed chest.
‘No.’
She wrung out the cloth and wiped Jacob’s face. He choked at her touch and retched again. ‘Sit him up,’ she told Mercer, and he held Jacob propped upright as the last of the bile fell from his mouth into the cloth.
Afterwards, his throat clear, his breathing became easier and they laid him back down and left him.
‘Is he dying?’ she said.
It was beyond him to answer her.
She went back alone to Jacob. She held his hand and whispered close to his ear.
Mercer watched her, surprised and yet inexplicably reassured by what she did. There had been fear in her voice when she had asked him if Jacob was dying.
She remained beside him for several minutes, his hand in hers, her face close to his own. After which, she laid his hand across his chest, rose and came back to Mercer.
‘What did you say to him?’ he asked her.
‘Nothing. I just told him that someone was here, looking after him. It would be awful if he was too sick to know where he was. He might even wake up and think he was back in that place.’ She washed her hands, sniffed them and washed them again.
Her grasp of the situation surprised Mercer, and in the absence of Mathias he was grateful for her presence.
‘Daniels told him that all the houses were going to be knocked down anyway,’ she said. ‘And then he told her that you could have told us all this the minute you arrived. He said you’d known all along, so what did we think of you now?’
‘It’s true,’ he said, wondering what else he might now reveal to her.
‘Good,’ she said.
‘You won’t necessarily be re-housed.’
‘Meaning we definitely won’t be.’
‘Where will Daniels go?’ he asked her.
‘He won’t say. What does it matter? Once he reaches the end of the coast road they’ll forget he was ever here.’
‘Does everyone know about the houses?’
‘What do you think?’
Across the room, Jacob resumed gasping for air. Bubbles of saliva formed on his lips, burst and shone on his chin. Mary returned to him with the cloth.
‘It’ll pass,’ Mercer told her, remaining at the table.
Again, she knelt beside Jacob and wiped his face, this time holding her hand to his brow as his gasping eased and he grew calm again. She spoke to reassure him, more noise than words, and again Mercer could hear nothing of what she said.
He took the whisky from the cupboard and poured himself a drink. The sun was close to the horizon and the evening chill could be felt. The mist already blurred the distant boundary between the land and the sea. It would be dark in less than an hour.
She came back to the table and pretended to drink from his glass.
‘Perhaps you should be a nurse,’ he told her.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said.
‘I doubt he even knows we’re here.’ He drained the glass.
‘I felt his hand tighten,’ she said. ‘Each time.’
‘It’s something,’ he said, uncertain whether he believed her, and she smiled, as though he had paid her a well-earned compliment. ‘He knows you were there, in the dunes with him,’ he said. ‘He was only pretending to be asleep.’
‘I know,’ she said.
‘You knew?’
‘I made plenty of noise to let him know I was coming. I saw him moving. When I got to him he was pretending to be asleep.’
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing. I pretended I believed he was asleep. I told him I was sorry for everything that had happened to him. I told him I wished his sister was still alive and that the two of them were still together. I thought he might suddenly open his eyes and tell me to clear off and leave him alone. But he didn’t. He just went on pretending to be asleep.’
‘Were you with him for long?’
‘Just a few minutes. I couldn’t think of anything else to say to him. He knew I knew he wasn’t really asleep.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘I just knew.’
‘Perhaps he was scared of what attention you might attract to the pair of you.’ The waiting boats had still been out on the water.
‘It wasn’t that. He just wanted to lie there and listen to me talking.’
‘Talking about his sister.’
She nodded.
‘And so you both pretended.’
Neither of them spoke for several minutes.
He told her eventually that he was waiting for Mathias to return. Every few seconds she looked at Jacob, making it clear to Mercer that she would rather be back beside him doing something she considered to be useful instead of sitting at the table and talking.
He was about to suggest that they sorted through the medicines he had bought, when he heard shouting outside, and he immediately recognized Lynch’s voice. Mary rose in her seat and he pushed her back down so that she would not be seen by the man below.
‘He’ll know I’m here,’ she said.
Earlier, he had lit one of his lamps, and the light from this would be visible from outside.
Lynch continued shouting, closer now. He called for Mercer to go out to him. And then he shouted up that he knew Mary was there, too. He wanted to know what Mercer was doing with her, why he’d made her go up to him. He wanted to know how long they’d been alone together. His drunkenness was evident in everything he said.
Mercer went to the window and looked down.
Lynch stood on the road. He held a piece of timber and swung this from side to side, then beat upon one of the generators with it. In his other hand he held a bottle, which he threw into the air, swung at and struck, shattering the glass all around him. He laughed at what he had done and then resumed his shouting.
‘Ignore him,’ Mary said. ‘He’ll go away.’
‘Stay where you are,’ Mercer told her. ‘He doesn’t know you’re here – not for certain.’
‘Where else would I be?’ she said.
‘Go and sit with Jacob,’ he told her. He watched Lynch as he spoke. The man moved back and forth on the road, but did not come onto the rougher ground of the site. It occurred to him that Daniels might go out and confront him, but there was no light from Daniels’s home, only the dying glow of the nearby fire. The door to the house stood open, revealing the impenetrable darkness of inside. Pieces of clothing lay scattered on the ground.
Mercer returned to the table, and his disappearance from the window caused Lynch to resume his shouting. This time, his repeated accusations were laced with obscenity. There can have been no one in the houses who did not hear everything he said.
The noise disturbed Jacob, penetrating whatever delirium he endured, and he mumbled to himself and turned his head from side to side as though in search of the shouting man. His hand clawed the air, and Mary went to him and again took it in both her own.
‘I’ll have to go down,’ Mercer told her. ‘He mustn’t find out he’s here.’ He stood above her and saw how Jacob’s fingers agitated inside the loose restraint of her own soft palms.
43
By the time he reached the road, the others had come out of their homes to investigate. But whereas previously they might have gathered together in a group to discuss what was happening, now they stood scattered, separately or in pairs, and all of them careful to keep their distance from Lynch, who continued to stagger back and forth, swinging his club and shouting.
Mercer knew that he would achieve more in the eyes of these others by confronting Lynch and his accusations directly than by any denials he might have shouted down from the safety of the tower.
‘Come to start knocking them down, have you? Now, in the middle of the night when there’s no one to see?’ Lynch called to him, suddenly much more sober than he had seemed only a few minutes earlier, and Mercer saw how he had again been deceived by the man.
‘No one is going to demolish the houses for some considerable time, and certainly not without first consulting everyone who lives here,’ he shouted. He knew immediately how evasive and patronizing the remark sounded.
Lynch mimicked his words, gratified by the laughter and the calls of his scattered audience. He kept his eyes on Mercer as he came. A second bottle stood on the ground beside him. ‘Thought I was too drunk to do anything about it, did you?’ he said, but this time so that only Mercer heard.
Mercer wanted to turn and see if Mary was watching, but the gesture would only have confirmed her presence to Lynch. He could still not be certain that the others were not about to side with Lynch in goading him. Some of them, having heard his remark about their homes, might be prepared to believe anything Lynch now suggested.
And almost as though the man were reading these thoughts, Lynch said, ‘Leave her back in your bed, did you?’
‘You’re being stupid,’ Mercer said immediately, knowing he dare not hesitate in his rebuttals. ‘She’s your daughter, for Christ’s sake. She’s fifteen.’
‘So what?’ Lynch said, his eyes now fixed on the tower.
It occurred to Mercer that Lynch was going to run past him and drag Mary out into the open where the others might see her, and then use her presence as evidence of all he said.
He was relieved to hear one of the younger women say, ‘Leave the girl out of it, Lynch. She’s got nothing to do with the houses. It’s him we want answers from.’ But Mercer knew that the houses were not Lynch’s true concern, and that he would not allow them all to be so easily diverted from his own narrow course.
‘Yes, she’s there,’ Mercer shouted. ‘She came an hour ago. She’s alone there now, too scared to come out.’
‘Too scared?’ Lynch said. ‘Too scared of what? You trying to tell them she’s scared of me?’ He turned from the tower back to Mercer.
‘Scared she might end up with as many bruises as your wife now has,’ Mercer said.
Several of the women began talking among themselves.
Lynch stared hard at Mercer, his eyes narrowing, and it was clear to Mercer that the man had not expected so direct or so blunt an accusation after all his previous diversions.
‘Whatever she’s said, she’s lying,’ Lynch shouted, and this vague and unconvincing denial encouraged Mercer even further.
‘Simple enough to find out,’ Mercer said, his own voice calm and low. The women, he guessed, had long since been aware of Lynch’s violence towards his wife, and perhaps they at last felt some shame at not having confronted the man themselves.
‘I never once touched the girl, never once,’ Lynch shouted. ‘Get her out here. Ask her. She’ll tell you. If she’s hurt, he did it.’ This second, faltering denial confirmed everything Mercer believed.
‘We could always go to your home and ask your wife,’ Mercer suggested. But he knew even as he spoke that this would be beyond him – that he would not perpetrate anything so cruel or humiliating on Elizabeth Lynch – and he wondered if Lynch, too, understood this and might now turn it to his own advantage.
But Lynch seemed more uncertain than ever of his own way forward.
‘Where is she?’ one of the women called to him, meaning his wife.
Lynch started to turn to her, but then swung back to face Mercer. ‘Who cares where she is?’ he mouthed silently so that again only Mercer could hear him.
It chilled Mercer to hear the words, and to see what pleasure Lynch took in them.
Elizabeth Lynch’s home remained in darkness, but she would hear everything that was happening, and would understand better than any of them the consequences of the night’s events. Mercer wished he could go to her, or that she might emerge from her home to confront Lynch directly, but he knew that neither of these courses was likely, and that the darkness within which she now sat was wholly of her own making.
Though already a year dead, the war, or so it seemed to Mercer, still clung to everything it had once touched, having lasted too long and been elsewhere too destructive and all-consuming to leave no frayed edges, no ineradicable stains and no blighted men and women fighting in its wake. They had all, he now understood, confused the dying tremors of that violent past with its lasting reverberations into all their futures. More importantly, and regardless of their tales of sinking ships, of drowned men and crashing aircraft, it was not the lingering presence of that distant war in this isolated place, but its absence with which they were all now struggling to come to terms.
The night air was filled with the scent of the smoke, which thickened in the mist, and which filled every dip and hollow in the ground around its dead heart, undisturbed in the stillness. The moon lay unbroken on the surface of the sea. The mist itself had seeped inland, filling the deeper channels and drains as though it were water flowing along them.
Lynch said nothing for several minutes. He picked up the bottle at his feet, drank from it and then offered it to the man standing closest to him, but the man simply shook his head and went on watching him.
Sensing that Lynch no longer possessed the conviction to continue, and relieved that this final confrontation had ended without any further violence, Mercer looked at those around him and called out, ‘This isn’t the time to talk about the houses.’ He took several paces to one side so that Lynch no longer stood directly between him and the others. ‘I’ll come in the morning and tell you everything I know.’
And it was as he waited for them to acknowledge this offer – to accept it because there was now no other course left open to them – that Mary screamed in the tower behind him and then appeared at the lighted upper window to stand and look down at them all with her hands and face pressed hard against the glass.
44
Lynch was the first to start running, and he collided with Mercer and knocked him to the ground. Mercer fell badly, feeling his arm wrenched beneath him. Others among the onlookers followed Lynch to the tower. No one stopped to help Mercer to his feet. The young woman who had earlier shouted to Lynch paused beside Mercer and looked down at him, and he waited for what she might say to him, which of Lynch’s allegations she might repeat, but after a moment of her silent judgement, she turned and walked back to the houses and the dying fire.
Mercer rose and followed the others to the tower. Lynch had already reached the building and gone inside. The others stood around the open door, reluctant to enter, and Mercer pushed through these and scrambled up the stairs to where Lynch, Mary and Jacob now awaited him.
Mary stood at the window where she had revealed herself, and Jacob still lay at the far side of the room, on the floor, his chin pressed to his chest and his arms stretched out ahead of him as though he had dragged himself from his bed in the act of striving for something beyond his reach.
Running back to the tower, it had occurred to Mercer that Jacob might have finally been overcome by his illness and had died in Mary’s arms, and that this was what had caused her to scream and to show herself at the window. He looked closely at Jacob and saw that he was still breathing. The fingers of his outstretched hand opened and closed slightly. The cloth with which Mary had wiped his face lay beside him.
Lynch stood with his daughter at the window, and it was clear by the expression on her face that something had happened there, and both men understood this.
Lynch grabbed the girl and shook her, asking her over and over to tell him what had made her scream.
It then occurred to Mercer that perhaps Lynch had not yet seen the man on the floor. He rubbed his wrist where he had fallen. It was discoloured and had started to swell. He attempted to flex his fingers but stopped abruptly at the sudden pain. He cried out at this, and Lynch turned to face him, looking quickly from where he stood at the trapdoor to the man on the floor beside him.
‘She was up here alone with him?’ he shouted disbelievingly. ‘You left her up here, alone, with that?’ He released his grip on his daughter and came towards Mercer, who moved to stand between him a
nd Jacob.
‘He’s sick,’ Mercer said. ‘Look at him: he hasn’t been able to move for two days. Ask her.’
‘She screamed,’ Lynch said simply. ‘Something must have made her scream.’ He moved from side to side to get a better look at Jacob. He screwed up his face. ‘He stinks,’ he said. ‘They all do.’ His fists were already tightly bunched at his sides, and he drew back one of his feet ready to kick out.
Mercer appealed silently to Mary to intervene and explain to them what had happened, what had alarmed her, but she avoided his eyes and looked only at the man on the ground. He heard the others in the room below, some of whom now stood at the foot of the stairs and called up to find out what was happening. He hoped one of the men might join them and help him to restrain Lynch, but no one came. His wrist grew even more painful.
On the floor, Jacob groaned and resumed his groping. Mercer knelt beside him and tried to lift his head back onto his pillow, but with only one hand this proved impossible, and painful for them both.
‘Help me,’ he said to Mary, but she gave no indication of having heard him. He asked her again, and this time she shook her head. ‘Then help him,’ he said. But again she made no move towards him and merely went on staring at where Jacob lay.
By then, Lynch’s anger had grown beyond him, and as Mercer tried to rise he pushed him back down.
‘You were the one who left her with him,’ he said. ‘Whatever happened, you’re the one responsible.’ He called through the hatchway that the Jew was there, that he was pretending to be ill, and that he was the cause of all the trouble. He said that Mercer had deliberately left his daughter alone with the man while he had gone out to them to spread the rest of his lies. There was a moment of silence in the room below, followed by the rising murmur of speculation.
‘Just tell me what happened,’ Mercer said to Mary, knowing that her explanation – her voice even – was now the key to defusing the situation.
Eventually, she looked up from Jacob and seemed as though she was at last about to speak.
