The Blind Light Read online

  ‘Thanks for this, Jessie,’ Gwen says, embracing her. ‘You’re a lifesaver.’

  ‘You’re welcome, love,’ Jessie says, then whispers. ‘Now go and give him one from me.’

  18

  He waits to hear the pipe noise again. There is silence. He thinks of pipes leaking. Of water in pipes, water pouring through them. He thinks of the hunters’ lodge. The decision to be made and him needing to shit.

  He ran water from the tap as he spattered the bowl; watched the taps flow into the basin and down to the sewers. He saw the water then himself. An older him, in the wreckage of a town, crying upon seeing a rusted tap. Crying at all the water he’d once had and had let drain away.

  He turned off the tap and made the decision. He was certain at that moment, the sex still in his blood, the intensity of sharing a bed with a woman.

  A life is choices, a running sum of them; this something Drummond had never considered before. Carter had made decisions over the course of his life, and they radiated with consideration, with gut reaction or deep thought: they were consequential, burdened with expectation. Drummond had a choice of two suits; three ties. These the decisions he had made. No one to notice whether he’d agonized over them, or simply picked the nearest clean item. Two suits, three ties.

  He hears the pipe noise again; the clank, the clink. Unsure whether further away or closer now. He checks his watch. He will be late, but one last stop. A final place of decision.

  19

  Upstairs, she checks in on her father. He is in his chair facing the window, looking out towards Haverigg,

  ‘How you feeling, Da?’ she says.

  ‘Dim saesneg!’

  He coughs, a gunnel of spit running from the corner of his mouth. There is a maritime whiff about him, like unwashed groin. He’s half dressed, as far as a shirt, but still in the flannel pyjama trousers, a shawl over his shoulders, face glowing orange from the three-bar fire.

  ‘Dwi’n aros i farw.’

  ‘Same as usual, then,’ she says. ‘You want tea?’

  He grunts and points to the china cup on the footstool beside him.

  ‘You need to go though, Da, before you have any tea.’

  ‘Na.’

  ‘Need to do it, Da.’

  She helps him up, his slack skin and sparrow bones, and shifts him to the commode. He pulls down his trousers, slips his penis under the lip so he won’t spray the carpet. She waits until piss dribbles against the pan; there are breaths of flatus but no movements of the bowel. She hears a feeble spray. Another. She waits for five such, then passes him some toilet paper.

  ‘Urddas,’ he says. He wipes but pisses at the same time, wetting his hands and thighs, this last spray more vital than the preceding, positively a stream.

  ‘I’ll get a bowl of water,’ she says.

  The water takes an age to warm, the time calming, no need for shout or stamp. She takes the bowl through and washes his hands and thighs, the smell of carbolic and piss, the gentleness of her dabs. His pubic hair is steely, his penis thin, his legs constrained by a muddle of pyjama bottoms. She dries his legs and hands, a small stirring at his crotch, something tightening. He pulls up the pants and the bottoms, shuffles himself back into his chair.

  ‘Fy nocturne. Fy nghariad,’ he says. ‘Dwi’n aros i farw.’

  ‘You’re not dying yet, Da. Though if you wet the carpet again, I’ll kill you myself.’

  In the kitchen she tidies away his lunch plate, boils the kettle, thinks of scalding him. She sees herself pouring hot water on his arms. The inflammation, the flesh turning flush, then milky white. On the counter, surrounded by crumbs and crusts, there’s a serrated knife. The softness of the gut as the keen blade enters; the thin incisions on a wrist, the red smile below an earlobe. The surprise on his face. The horror of that. She picks up the knife and quickly closes the drawer on it.

  The kettle whistles, and she makes the tea, takes through the pot. He is asleep in his chair. No point in waking him. To sleep now. He will understand. When he wakes, he’ll understand. John will be back soon. Barbara’s a registered nurse and only too happy to call him Da, wipe him down, make his lunch. He’ll understand. It will be better this way.

  20

  The spire of the church is canted and riven. Drum looks along the high street, down towards the town square, the war memorial scythed through its middle. The clinking, clanking continues, getting closer. No voices though, no call-outs. Perhaps a street sign flapping in the breeze, tapping against stone. Something like that. Something along those lines.

  He takes a right at two old Fords, burned out and yet clearly Anglias, such a waste of fine motors; should have got junkers, not things people could drive. The first time he saw them, he’d had to pause, stand by them, look inside to see if they were genuine. The odometers were melted into the dash, the number reels spun black.

  The pathway banks down, away from the high street. In the centre of the road, a pub sign, like the mast of a ship, blocks the way; its wooden plinth soot black and the paintwork blistered, the pub name obscured. He stops and hears the clinking again. Louder, the clinking. Coming for him. Into the pub, inside to be safe. Always safe there.

  Drum visits the pub most often, even more than the library. The walls are still intact, even one of the windows. There is something in the way the pumps remain at half mast, still at pour; something in the way the cash register rings a permanent sale, charred notes and coins blackly inside; something in the way glass scatters the bar, in the way the jug handles still hang above. It is almost soothing, the barroom; it’s the closest thing he knows to hope.

  The pubs he and Carter have drunk in. All those pubs and taverns. The conversations had, the confidences exchanged, the lies traded. And when it comes to it, it is his One and he is alone. He should be going home. He should be on his way to Gwen’s. Instead he is sitting on a stool, at a table that would collapse if he put his elbows upon it.

  The clinking. The clanking. Closer now. Loud in the dark. Familiar, the closer it comes. A tap and a chink and a clank. Closer and louder and coming towards the pub, coming towards the door. Louder and more familiar. Glass on glass, glass inside a bag.

  The door is stout, it has withstood every blast and fire, and it opens with a slow whine. There are pit clouds of smoke and the orange coal of a cigarette. Behind them, Carter stands in the doorway, clean white bandages over his busted arm, a white bandage over his head, blood on the bandage.

  Drum stands, as though a lady is present, a commanding officer. Carter limps towards him, bids him sit, sets down a bag of bottles on the table that does not fold under its weight.

  ‘Jerrick told me he’d seen you,’ Carter says, standing over him, looking down on him. He smokes his cigarette, looks for an ashtray and throws the cigarette to the floor.

  ‘I thought you’d be here,’ he says. ‘You can’t escape me, Drum. I’m like the bad penny. I always turn up.’

  21

  From the bookshelf, Gwen takes the Atlas of the British Isles and searches out Dagenham, finding it by the Thames, close to the estuary, a few miles from Southend-on-Sea and Foulness Island. She puts the book back on the shelf. She decides to wear the blue shift with white polkas. Both her father and Drum have complimented her on it.

  She dresses in her bedroom, makes up her face. So long a distance. So far away. Are you sure, my love, are you sure, cariad? She looks at herself in the mirror and sees no change. The same face and the same eyes. The mirrors will be different there. She will see a different woman. No longer a nocturne.

  It is quarter to one. It will take her ten minutes to walk to the clock tower. She wants to be there first. She wants Drum to see her first. She wants him to know all is well. She will greet him with the widest of smiles, with delirious kisses. Is that not what happens in books?

  22

  In one of their war stories, Carter described a moment they realized they were in trouble.

  Something in the angle of the light, something i
n the air, like fat frying, a low hum like a radio that’s on but with the sound turned right down. It’s hard to explain, but when you’re there you recognize it. You see the whole picture, the whole of what is about to happen.

  A lie, but well crafted. And that’s how it feels. Sitting in the pub, Carter across from him, pouring drinks. Like waiting for the report. Waiting for the bullets to fly.

  ‘I couldn’t find the whisky,’ Carter says, handing him over a glass. ‘So it’s brown ale, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You should be in hospital,’ Drum says.

  ‘People keep telling me that,’ he says. ‘But I didn’t want to let you down, did I? Didn’t want to leave you alone on our very last day, did I?’

  He raises his glass.

  ‘To the One,’ he says.

  ‘To the One,’ Drum replies.

  *

  On the last Thursday of their Civil Defence Training, the servicemen would make it off base, head into Millom to celebrate the eve of their One. The next day, Drum would see the aftermath: the black eyes and broken arms of Friday morning, the missing teeth. The other nine men on Carter’s course mostly left the base on those Thursdays, got as far away as possible, Carter often with them.

  The course changed Carter. Drum doubted whether Daphne or Carter’s parents would have noticed anything materially different in him, but it was the depth of his silence when he didn’t speak, the vacancy of his eyes in that quiet, which suggested otherwise. For the first time there was equivocation, a lack of certainty when they were together. Drum no longer even knew if they would see in their One together. They had secrets from each other now; they talked less, and when they did, Carter slipped back on his surety, wore it like a fine coat. As though nothing had changed.

  Yesterday, the last Thursday of their service, they met at the library after early dinner. It was there amongst the stuffed shelves they usually met for quiet drinks on base. A morbid, quiet place, but always warm.

  ‘So we’re going, then,’ Carter said.

  ‘If you want to,’ Drum said.

  ‘We made it to the end,’ Carter said. ‘We need to celebrate.’

  Drum couldn’t say no. Wanted to, but couldn’t. Couldn’t tell him about the engagement, either; Gwen still disallowing that. Anyway, better to have a reason to write. To tell him the good news. Better that. Better than spoiling their One. No, not spoiling it. The wrong word. Better than disrespecting it.

  Carter and Drummond rode down to Millom in a wagon with men they did not know, some already drunk. A clutch of motorcycles, pillion riders on each, boys whooping bandit shrieks, tore up in front of them; servicemen thinking themselves the first to have absconded en masse, the first to throw bottles at cows and sheep, the first to dream of fingers inside the knickers of local girls.

  ‘Stick close to me tonight,’ Carter said as the wagon dropped them at the edge of town. ‘You promise me that?’

  ‘It’ll be just like Oman,’ Drummond said. ‘Or like that stand-off in Belfast. I’ll be right behind you.’

  ‘I’m serious,’ he said. ‘No fucking jokes. You stick close to me tonight.’

  They took the first pub they came to, the whole company, the saloon and public bar both. Talk only of what would happen after their One. The girls back home. The jobs. The things they would do. Swim. Sleep all day. Eat fish and chips. Go to the football. Watch their hair grow. Never eat bully beef again. Joy on the faces, beer in their guts.

  ‘What’re you going to do, Carter?’ one of them asked.

  ‘I’m going to live, boys,’ he said. ‘I’m going to live.’

  Carter took a hip flask from his pocket, drank from it, handed it to Drum.

  ‘After what we saw in Cyprus, we’re both going to live, right, Moore?’

  ‘Amen to that,’ Drum said, holding up the flask. A present from Daphne, a quote in Latin etched in its silver.

  Carter began the Cyprus abduction routine – the dark shadows and rushing footsteps, the bags over heads, the occult accuracy of Drummond’s thrown knife that disabled their captors. It was perhaps Carter’s favourite, the one he told most often, certainly; something in the descriptions of the heat and the peril that felt a touch more picaresque than the other fictions. It was probably why he talked over Drummond’s asides, did not ask Drum for corroboration. This last time, just for Carter.

  ‘And all of that,’ Carter said, ‘I’d do a hundred times over rather than spend one more minute with my future mother-in-law.’

  Carter shivered, exaggerated, as though someone had walked over his grave. ‘Ugly?’ he said. ‘If they gave her a facelift they’d drop it.’

  The men laughed and banged tables as Carter shifted smoothly from soldier raconteur to the end of the pier. After each gag, Carter banged the table, boom, boom. A gag about Daphne, boom, boom. Another gag about her mother, boom, boom. Carter laughed loudly, hugely, neck jutting out over the pints-heavy table, pointing at the men – he knows what I mean! – and the men leaning back in their chairs, tears, actual tears, of laughter at Carter’s bile. Boom, boom. My mother-in-law. Boom, boom. Take my wife.

  In a lull, a collective getting back of breath, Carter turned to Drum. He pointed at him, right at his face.

  ‘I don’t know if you know Moore, here,’ he said to the crowd. ‘I’ve known him since the first week of Service. And he’s a diamond, is Moore. A real diamond. Do you know what they called him back at base?’

  Drummond had no idea how he looked, what face he was stuck with, how the men saw him. Narrowed eyes maybe. A pleading look. Something weak. Something desperate, most likely. Please don’t.

  ‘Back at base, everyone called him Horse,’ Carter said. ‘They called him Horse because Moore’s hung like a horse. Hung like a fucking shire horse, he is. It’s like a baby’s arm holding a hand grenade, like a third leg it is. The officers, they called him Tripod. Did you know that, Horse? That they called you Tripod?’

  The men laughed and pointed, more of them now, standing around the table.

  ‘Come on, Horse,’ Carter said. ‘Show them. Show them all. Get. It. Out.’

  The men chanted with Carter, fists stomping the table. Get. It. Out. More joined in, the noise and the heat and Carter’s face red, hair brushing his eyes, smiling that wolf smile. Get. It. Out.

  ‘Enough,’ Drum said. The tattoo diminished, the voices lowered.

  ‘I would,’ Drum said, ‘but I’m afraid I’d have your eyes out with it.’

  Huge applause. More laughter. More banging of tables. Carter clapped him on the back, hard, and the men roared and cheered. Carter handed him the hip flask. Drum didn’t take it.

  ‘Can’t you take a joke, soldier?’ Carter said. ‘Can’t you take a fucking joke now, boy?’

  More drinks arrived, more pints. Drum didn’t take his from the table. No one noticed. Carter was deep in another story as Drum moved through the bar. He got to the door and no one noticed. The freedom of that. To open the door, which he did; to push through it, which he did; to walk onto the silent, unpeopled street, which he did; to walk towards Gwen’s place, which he did. The freedom to see her, drink a quiet pint, share a kiss before tomorrow. The freedom of that.

  Slowly he took the incline up towards the rise, the fury acid in Drum’s stomach, the rage tight in his jaw. He should have seen it. The eventual humiliation, the punchline to a joke that had run so long even Drummond had forgotten the set-up. The One. The fucking One. A reckoning, the One. Should have seen it. Two years. Two years and come the One, all over. An unnecessary employee; a shiftless worker; a batman. Watch the posh, his grandpa had said. They’ll bugger you whichever way they want.

  He stopped at the war memorial and sat down on the bench to calm himself, dead flowers within kicking distance. He stayed there for some time, imagining punching Carter. Smashing him with fists. More than kissing Gwen, killing Carter. Time spent with that. His punches and kicks.

  The clock tower tolled, and down the hill he heard voices; the uniforms spilling
out of the pub. He watched them walk into town, then saw the door open again, a small knot of servicemen involved in an altercation with some locals, Carter at its centre. Carter was shouting at a local, then at four or five of them. Drum couldn’t work out what he was saying, but could see the tendons in his neck even from that distance.

  Two men attacked Carter. The uniforms were held back by the other locals, forced to watch. The two men took turns, alternating foot and fist. Drum watched the kicking, watched the punches. Counted them like breaths as he walked towards them. Carter slumped down to the pavement, but the men didn’t stop. Stopped only when Drum launched himself against them, knocking them down like pins. The men fled, uniforms and locals both, running off leftwards, rightwards. Just Carter and Drum. Drum and Carter, Carter’s blood on the asphalt, on the brickwork of the pub.

  Drummond got his arm around Carter’s shoulder, pulled him up, lugged him up the road, towards the war memorial.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Drum said as he dragged him. ‘I’m so sorry, James. I’m so sorry.’

  Drum put Carter down on the bench, held his head, tried to keep his head from lolling. Carter moved to say something, then puked down the front of his tunic.

  Stick close to me. Stick close. Until the ambulance comes, stick close.

  *

  In the light streaming through the pub window, Carter looks almost dead. Were it not for the alarming dance of his eyes, Drum would think he was dead. But it’s clear to Drum that something is abroad, something has happened. Carter knows the truth of the previous night. He has been told the full story. That Drum could have done something much sooner. That Drum let the beating happen. That Drum is a coward, deserter, turncoat. Drum could not take a joke. Drum could not give his friend the benefit. Drum made a promise and did not keep it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Drum says. ‘I should have—’

  ‘What should you have done, Drum?’