The Blind Light Read online

  It hadn’t felt like courage. It hadn’t felt like valour. It felt like a dumb risk, stupidly taken.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Drum said. ‘Thanks for all this.’

  ‘You are more than welcome. More than welcome.’

  Carter nodded, bringing his thanks to an end as a bottle of wine arrived at their table, two plates of meat in sauce and potatoes with it.

  Carter poured the wine and picked up his glass. Drum did the same. They chinked glasses and Drum tasted the first wine of his life, thin and sour on his lips. He looked down to his food and began to eat, the meal appreciably better than in the mess. He ate and he drank and he listened. Listened perhaps most of all.

  Unbidden, Carter began his grandstand and spiel, the stories of his short life. How he’d been sent down from Oxford; how his ‘rather important and powerful’ father had insisted he take his National Service; his erotic adventures undertaken in foreign climes. His tales came at speed: exaggerated, tall, and without restraint in language or imagination. Drum had met men like him at Ford’s, full of themselves and full of shit; but no one who seemed to believe it quite the way Carter did.

  At the conclusion of an almost certainly untrue story of a gypsy woman who’d loved him but given him the clap, Carter put his hands on the table. He didn’t say anything, didn’t eat anything, didn’t reach for the wine; just looked at Drum from a series of angles, as though what he saw might quickly change.

  ‘You don’t say much, do you?’ Carter said. ‘I thought cockneys all talked twenty to the dozen.’

  ‘I’m not a cockney,’ Drum said. ‘I’m miles from being a cockney.’

  ‘But still,’ he said. ‘You’ve said no more than ten words all night, and I’ve given you chapter and verse on yours truly. So, your turn. Tell me about you, Moore.’

  To be called Moore was already a kindness. It was appreciated. More than the wine and the food. The consideration of that.

  ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ Drum said.

  ‘You have a girl?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’ll have to fix that. Especially since . . .’

  Carter lowered his eyes to Drummond’s crotch, then quickly back to his reddening face.

  ‘Come now,’ Carter said. ‘Tell me something you’ve never told anyone before. I told you the gypsy woman story, after all. Fair’s fair.’

  He leaned in to Drummond, rested himself on his elbows. The intimacy of it, the proximity of his face: there was no chance of saying nothing now. Not with a wine-loosed tongue and a sense of owing; the keen of Carter’s face, his elbows on the table. The closeness of him.

  ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ Drum said.

  ‘Indulge me.’ Carter said. ‘If we’re to be friends, we need to share our stories, do we not?’

  Drum looked down, closed his eyes. No chance to demure. No chance of escape.

  ‘I almost killed a man,’ Drum said.

  That face. That face looking back.

  ‘Go on,’ Carter said.

  ‘We were at a dance,’ Drum said. ‘A skiffle group was playing and this bloke said something to a girl I liked. He touched her. He said things to her. And something just went snap. I don’t know. Something just snapped inside of me. Barry and Danny had to hold me back. If they hadn’t, I swear I’d have kicked his head clean off.’

  The effect he’d expected. Carter’s face glowing, a locus between horror and deep admiration. The same look he’d seen on the faces in the canteen at Ford’s as O’Driscoll had told the same story. That rushed disbelief, the sweet nip of the violence, the quickening of the pulse.

  ‘Well, well,’ Carter said. ‘Still waters and all that. Still waters indeed. I think you’ll be a very useful friend to have, Moore.’

  A useful friend. Yes. Useful.

  *

  Drum walks through the blasted house, out of its open back rooms, into a collapsed ginnel. The cobblestones are rucked, displaced, skittled around like shot. The three cobbles he arranged into a pyramid on his last visit are still there. They are approaching permanence now; surviving intact for over a month. Three stones, laid and placed, ready to be kicked.

  4

  Nick works in silence, kitten licks of the pencil, kitten sips of beer. He is a published poet, a memoirist, playwright, professional wildsman, approved of by London society, a society he disdains. Once a year he goes there, providing him with a year’s worth of reasons never to leave home again. He claims to have never spent more than one single night away from his flat in the town, and all of those under sufferance.

  In a letter, stowed inside a loaned copy of Women in Love, Nick once asked Gwen what it was like to be raised in a public house. She never replied to his letters or his questions – casual enquiries amongst digressions on birds, on the turning of the seasons – but this one had troubled her time.

  ‘There is, I believe,’ the letter said, ‘a certain kinship between those who live above places of business, as I have these last sixty-odd years. The divided kingdom: the public space below; the private realm above. The stairwell a kind of purgatorio, a portal between our exterior selves and our interior existence. I wonder, though, whether this is different in a tavern. A shop is a space of quick interaction, of expedited process; an inn, on the other hand, is a place of contemplation: an intermediary between private and public. How does that affect one, I wonder? What happens to the public space when the last patron has ambled from the fire and the doors have been bolted on the world?’

  Over the course of that week, she mentally drafted and redrafted a response. Point is. (She would start.) The thing is. When you think about it. What you don’t understand is. What it comes down to is. She would meander this course, wishing her brother were back from Service, wishing her mother were back from the dead, both around to add some pepper to the pot. Her father was no use; if she asked about the past, he embarked solely upon his own fool nostalgia, stories that were never her own.

  Point is, the bar was forbidden when we were young. Mam and Da would be downstairs, but might as well have been in Barrow or Berlin. We always had breakfast with them before school, the two of them walking us to the gates when we were young; doing the dishes and kissing us goodbye when we were older.

  The thing is, the pub was just home, nothing more. John and I used to fight a bit, him being the younger and things to prove and all that, but we were close. We all were. Mam smelled wonderful; Da did too. Mam like a fairground; Da like new shoes. Tea every night in the kitchen, watching Mam putting on her make-up, Da combing his hair. At just before six, even when we were of age, we’d kiss them goodnight and watch them walk down the stairs together, their clothes starched and their hands together, ready for the night ahead.

  When you think of it, pub hours are good for kids. Mam and Da would take us out after school walking, rambling in the afternoons, no matter the weather. We’d look for birds’ eggs and rabbits, walk the dog. Out in the fields, we’d talk Welsh, scare pigeons and magpies. Gill and Patty, they never saw their das. My da was always around when you needed him. Just don’t go down to the bar. That was the only rule.

  What you don’t understand is that we were a little frightened of the bar. Just enough. When I was little, I used to hear singing coming up from the saloon. Men off to war, those coming back, those who became names on the plaque behind the pumps. I thought singing in the pub only happened when people had died or were going off to die. I hated to hear Da sing downstairs. I thought maybe he was going to war too.

  What it comes down to is that the pub is less of a home now. Da rots upstairs, not long for the world, or so he says. John will be home in a few months to take his true position behind the bar. He will play Da to a T. His wife, that shrew of a woman, will be a hire-purchase Mam. And what shall I do, Nick? What will become of me? What shall I now call home?

  This well before she met Drum, but those last thoughts – what shall I now call home? – coming back strong over recent weeks. Is this merely expedience? Woul
d it have mattered who it was, so long as they could offer a home far from here? These the thoughts too tender to press for too long, so she lets them settle like the stout on the pale. Do not agitate. Just pour the drinks, just tend the bar, just wait until Jessie comes to relieve you. Just another handover, just another change of shift.

  5

  It is easier being in Doom Town than outside it. Over the months, he has come to believe this. When walking the blasted streets, you become inured to it, you take in the destruction, kick at things on the pavements, and it’s a salve, it’s safe. It has happened, these are the facts. This he needs to feel once more, the surprising coddle of it, the specificity of it. Away from the town, the details become amorphous, a swim of memories roiling around, confusing themselves, a kind of holistic terror (Carter’s words). He is determined to remember correctly. To look as a camera, to imprint the town exactly as is, not as he might later reassemble it.

  He turns back from the ginnel, back through the house and out onto the street. The next three houses he skips, but enters the fourth, one that has the shell of a television set in the sitting room, charred scraps of playing cards on the floorboards. Behind the TV, he notices a dead-body dummy, one unfound by the last teams, or recently added. It is a child dummy. It has a face. Crosses for eyes, a running stitch for a mouth.

  *

  On the fifth day of initial training in Shropshire they were marched to the parade ground. On the nearby lawn, sack-men dangled from a series of wooden gallows. The sergeant gave the servicemen their instructions. Approach. Stick. Twist. Remove. Drum charged his sack-man. Approach. Stick. Twist. Remove. He paced back and saw blood on his hands. Blood on his boots and on his tunic. Fine spray and huge gouts. He charged the sack-man again. Approach. Stick. Twist. Remove. The blade inside the sacking. The blade inside the man.

  That night, he slept covered in blood; that night, he slept with offal spilling from his guts; that night, he slept seeing all the men he would kill, their faces, flanks and sternums; that night, he slept as a murderer, as a soldier, and thought of his father. His smile. The photograph of him and Drum’s mother holding their infant boy, neither to reach the age of twenty-five.

  At the end of the two weeks of initial training, they received their postings, the places they would serve. Some off to Korea, Ireland, Cyprus; others stuck back home, made useful for the remainder of their tariff. Drummond had expressed a preference for the Royal Engineers but was given the Catering Corps: the Catering Corps on the training base at which he was already stationed. He came out of the assignment meeting and Carter was there, smiling his wolf’s smile.

  ‘You can thank me later,’ he said.

  Carter had organized it. Or more specifically, Carter Snr had organized it, along with a cushy two-man berth over the quiet side of the base. When Drum moved in that afternoon, their small billet had already been furnished with Carter’s gramophone and wireless.

  ‘In my village, there’s a church,’ Carter said that night as Drum polished boots and Carter drank beer. ‘As you walk in, there’s a plaque that reads, “This church was built in thanks by the Earl of Derbyshire, on the safe arrival of his three sons back from the Boer War.” Imagine. Three sons and not a single scratch! No wonder he thanked the Lord with land and stone. He built the church as he would a mausoleum, no expense spared.’

  Carter sat down in the armchair. Drum picked up another boot, began to buff it, hands black as factory.

  ‘And that’s why we’re here, Drum. Had I fought and died, that plaque would have chafed my father every Sunday. To have been so careless as to lose one boy when three of Derbyshire’s all made it home! It’d chafe him every day of his life. It’d chafe him so much I’m almost annoyed it isn’t going to happen.’

  As he started on Carter’s boots, Drum thought of where he could have been stationed; the countries he might have seen, the places he might have been slaughtered. All the countries of the world where he could have met his end. All the people he could have met, all the sights he could have seen.

  ‘I’ve never been abroad,’ Drum said. ‘Part of me wishes they’d sent me off like Curwin.’

  ‘Plenty of time for all that afterwards,’ Carter said. ‘And without people shooting at you. And without Curwin. I’d rather be shot at than have to bunk with that.’

  Carter laughed, picked up a book, began to read. The sound of the brush on the boot, the sound of pages turning. Drum looked up every now and again, saw Carter cross and recross his legs at the ankle. It was the certainty Drum could not quite grasp, the certainty and the fluidity. Carter was sure of himself in all situations, but slippery: different with officers than with the men; different when on the parade ground than when in the mess; different with Drum than with all others; and yet always himself, always surely, certainly Carter.

  With his friends at home, the ones made at school, the ones made at Ford’s, each of them knew their place: who was the joker, who was the fighter, who was the dreamer. Carter would know his place immediately amongst Drum’s friends at the plant. Would ingratiate himself, hold his own with Mikey and Don and Pat and Teddy and Jack. They would ask him more questions in an afternoon than they’d ever asked Drum. He could see them all in the pub after shift, Carter at their centre, telling a story, Drum on the outside of the group, listening in as everyone laughed.

  The weeks passed. In the kitchens from morning until night; potatoes drowning in metal vats, the curve of their peel, the dog-whiff of bully beef. The patterns of shift were familiar, the jobs repetitive, the noise surprising, the results often edible. It was blank work, undreaming work; each day starting and ending the same as the day before.

  They began to talk of Leave; of what they might do. Drum wanted to see his grandpa, his great-aunt Vi, meet up with the factory lads, but Carter had other plans. A fishing trip, an hour or so’s drive south, down to a place he knew in Wales. A bivouac to share, an abundance of carp, eating like kings over a fire he said he knew how to build.

  ‘It will be pure gravy,’ Carter said. ‘You and me and the fish on the fire.’

  Drum wrote a difficult letter to his grandpa. His grandpa wrote back that he understood and to have fun, to be safe. Always to keep himself safe.

  A week before Leave, Carter was called to the telephone. He returned to the billet and got out the Scotch, poured one for Drum, just the one, at least initially.

  ‘I’m not cancelling, you understand,’ Carter said, handing Drum the glass. ‘Just postponing. Next time, I promise.’

  Drum shouldn’t have been surprised, shouldn’t have felt slighted. He looked down at the Scotch, did not trust the face he’d show his friend.

  ‘Daphne’s back from Switzerland, you see, and has demanded my presence. Nothing I can do.’

  ‘Daphne?’ Drum said. ‘Is that your mother?’

  ‘My mother’s name is Phyllis,’ Carter said. ‘And since when do people call their parents by their first name? Daphne’s my fiancée, Drum. Do keep up.’

  In all the stories, all the chatter, Drum was sure he’d never heard the name Daphne. Carter looked at him like he was stupid; Drum tried to look apologetic rather than betrayed. Failed, sure of that.

  ‘I don’t recall you ever—’

  ‘I’ve told you about her several times, Moore,’ he said. ‘Just last week I told you about her old bag of a mother, and then I told you about that time we went to Manchester and how we had to pretend to be married to stay at some flea-trap hotel. Do you forget everything I tell you? Does it just go in one ear and out the other?’

  Carter was smiling, but it didn’t seem like a joke. Had the delivery of a joke, but not the intent.

  ‘I remember now,’ Drum said. ‘I’m sorry, mind like a sieve. Daphne, of course.’

  ‘Daphne,’ he said. ‘Yes. Daphne. Poor girl. Stuck with me forever. Makes you wonder what she did in a past life.’

  Carter smiled and took the easy chair, began to pull off his boots, then stopped.

  ‘You kn
ow I’d rather be fishing with you,’ Carter said. ‘Any day of the week.’

  That weekend, Carter said his goodbyes and Drum stayed behind at the base, sleeping mainly. In the evenings, he drank the brown ale left in the crate and wrote letters to his grandfather, telling him of the wonderful time he was having. How good it felt to cook carp over a woodfire, to have fish skin under his fingernails; how good it felt to be out in the fresh country air.

  *

  Drum picks up the sacking-child, its footless legs, its handless arms, and carries him out of the house. He lays him gently down outside on the pavement, neatly by the kerb. He assumes it is a boy child, it looks like a boy to Drum. Someone will find him. Someone will come. Sleep now, boy. Sleep well.

  EARLY MORNING OPENING

  I have never been one for taverns and bars; but over the last few years, I have found myself rising early, walking through the town to the coastal pathways and back again, trampling grass and pasture, graveyards and industrial estates, down ginnels and snickets, ending, eventually, at an inn which has become the last staging post of my morning ritual.

  You will, perhaps, have read the essay by Orwell in which he describes the Moon Under Water, his gentle, teasing description of the ideal English pub: its three bars and liver-sausage sandwiches, its stuffed bull’s head over the mantle. The inn in which I reside most late mornings to read through poems and work on this town portrait (much of which has been revised with a pint of black and tan beside me in the barroom), would, I fear, fulfil few of Orwell’s essentials.

  The Crown is a well-proportioned single room, with seating for some thirty or so patrons. The flooring is dark lacquered parquet, the colour of the landlord’s slick-oiled hair, and the tables are as dark, most of them (save the one at which I work) rickety and prone to wobble. The windows are mottled, shellacked with tobacco grease, uncleaned in all the years I have been a regular. Above the mantle, a triptych of pictures, watercolours of local scenes, is perfect for moments when the muse has vanished, and I am left, wandering-eyed, looking for some pinprick of inspiration.