Peacetime (2 page)

She repeated the words, but in a low voice.

Watching her at a distance, he had guessed her to be twelve or thirteen, a child, but seeing her beneath him, seeing her height and her outline beneath the thin dress, he knew that this guess had been wrong, and that she was three, perhaps four years older.

‘You have no shoes,' he said, not knowing why he'd said this, and immediately regretting the words.

She looked down at her buried feet.

‘Is that what you were looking at through your binoculars?' she said. She shook the sand from her feet until they were uncovered.

‘Like I said, I was watching for the lorries.'

‘You were watching me,' she said. There was more amusement than threat in the remark.

‘I saw you,' he said. ‘That's all.' He started down the slope towards her.

‘I thought you had to get back.' She lowered her hand, revealing herself fully to him.

‘Present or absent, they take little enough notice of me.'

‘I know,' she said.

The remark surprised him. ‘Oh?'

‘Only what we hear. You think anything gets said, anything happens round here that everybody doesn't get to know about one way or another?'

There was something conciliatory in the remark and he continued down the loose sand until he stood beside her.

He held out his hand to her. ‘I'm—'

‘Mercer,' she said. ‘From the Authority.'

‘James,' he said. ‘The Authority?'

‘The lifeboat people.'

‘You seem to know a lot.'

‘Like I said …' She turned to look around her.

‘And you are?'

She considered the question, as though a choice existed, as though she might either reveal nothing at all or create herself completely anew for him.

Her hesitation made him smile.

‘What?' she said.

‘Nothing. I asked you your name, that's all.'

‘Mary Lynch.' She turned away from him as she spoke.

‘I wasn't spying on you,' he said.

‘Yes you were.'

‘How did you know I was up there?'

‘You've been there every morning for the past week, ever since you came. You spy on us all. That's why you're here. You're knocking down all the stuff from the war, and when that's done you'll knock down the houses and we'll all have to leave.'

He was caught off-balance by how swiftly and directly their simple pleasantries had moved into the unrevealed future. There was some truth in everything she said, though none of it could have been known for certain by her, and he was responsible for only a small
part of what she had suggested. Equally, he knew that nothing would be served by his denial of what she had said.

‘You seem to know a lot about it.'

‘And you think I'm stupid and that you can treat me like the rest of them.'

‘Rest of who? You mean the other' – he stopped himself from saying ‘children' – ‘people living up there?' He indicated the distant row of houses.

‘Forget it,' she told him.

In the short time they had been standing together, the lorries had come much closer, and the first of these was already approaching them. They were seen, and the driver of the leading vehicle sounded his horn. Three men sat in the cab, and all of them called out as they came close. Mercer hoped they might keep going, but knew this was unlikely. The driver and his companions, along with the dozen or so others in the covered back, were perhaps only four or five years older than the girl. They would be unable to resist talking to her, propositioning her, making some remark about the two of them being together in such an isolated place. He had heard the lascivious remarks they made whenever any of the women from the houses came close to where they were working; heard, too, their conversations regarding wives and girlfriends during their long breaks; he had seen the magazines and postcards they occasionally brought with them.

He wished now that he had not gone down to her. The other lorries drew up behind the first. He told the leading driver to carry on to the site, but the man was reluctant to leave.

‘What about you and her?' he said.

‘What do you mean?'

‘I mean, you coming with us?' He grinned broadly at the girl. ‘Plenty of room up here for you,' he said directly to her.

‘We can make our own way back,' Mercer told him.

But even as he spoke, the girl approached the cab and raised her foot onto its high metal step, causing her dress to rise and reveal her knee and thigh. The driver and his companions appreciated this, and all three men leaned towards the open window. Everything Mercer now said was ignored by them. The drivers of the other lorries sounded their horns.

He withdrew until he was back in the sand.

The girl did not enter the cab, but stood on the step with her arm looped around the mirror. He was reluctant to say anything more to her in front of these others. She turned to look down at him and he avoided her gaze. Then she said something to the driver which caused him to laugh aloud and then to push the engine noisily into gear. The heavy tyres spun briefly on the road and the lorry moved away. The others followed it.

As they passed him, the men called out to Mercer from the shadowy interiors. He ignored them and looked back to where the girl still clung to the door of the leading vehicle. He saw how her dress was pressed more tightly to her as the lorry gained speed. He saw the hand of the driver hanging loosely beside her, casually brushing her bare arm, as though he was preparing to grab her in case she lost her footing and fell.

Later, waiting until the last of the men had left the site, he made a survey of the day's work. Even a cursory glance over the workings showed him that the preparations were behind schedule: a great deal remained to be demolished, and not enough of the new foundations had yet been excavated.

He had made his temporary home in what had been the perimeter watchtower of the nearby airfield. The boundary of this lay across the broadest of three converging drains, and the tower had been used to look out for the returning aircraft as they approached the runway and the body of the airfield half a mile distant. This, too, was in the process of being demolished and returned to farmland. The place had ceased to be operational almost a year earlier, since which time it had fallen quickly into disrepair. A second airfield lay five miles further inland, at Walsham, and this remained in limited use, largely as the test base for the jet-engine planes being developed and flown there.

Upon discovering that he would be required to
remain at Fleet Point, Mercer had enquired about using the abandoned tower and had been told to go ahead, that it was unlikely to be demolished. In all likelihood, he guessed, its crude and unrendered brickwork would quickly succumb to the salt air and it would soon collapse and be lost.

The building consisted of two rooms, one above the other. The lower space was damp and derelict, possessed no windows and had been stripped of its flooring and anything else it might once have contained. The upper room, reached by a simple wooden staircase rising through a central trapdoor, was dry and reasonably weatherproof, at least during those summer months, and it was here that he had set out his few possessions. He slept on a campaign bed, and one of the Trinity House quartermasters had provided him with paraffin lamps and a supply of food and water.

He left the tower and walked around the perimeter of the workings. He made notes and sketches of what had been done and what remained to be completed. He imposed order where, as yet, little existed. He mapped out a plan of works in which he alone possessed faith. His masters and the planners elsewhere remained distant and faceless to him.

He crossed from the site towards the open sea. The tide was out and the water shone in the distance. Several miles of marsh and exposed mud lay between him and the far low-water mark. When the water was high and the marsh covered, the broad drains were filled and running, and all too often work at the edge of the site had to be abandoned until the water fell. In places, the diggers had already undermined the banked drains and had caused further short-lived flooding. The last time this had happened he had
accused the men concerned of negligence and the whole of the six-man crew had refused to resume work until the accusation was withdrawn. He had apologized to them, but had made it clear that his understanding of what had happened remained intact. There was no doubt in the minds of any of those involved that the drain had been deliberately breached. The flooding had lasted three days until the water had finally soaked away and the gap filled.

Coming again in sight of the road, he was about to cross it and climb the opposite bank when he heard the sound of collapsing rubble behind him. He paused, listening as the bricks and shattered concrete fell and settled. But this did not fade as usual, and instead there was the sound of further movement, as though someone were moving across the unsteady surface. Signs had been posted warning the locals against trespassing on the site, and they were especially warned against letting their children roam the place. But he knew that little attention was paid to these warnings, and he knew, too, that he and his workers would for ever remain intruders, and that the people living there resented this intrusion onto land they considered they had every right to wander over.

He climbed the embankment and searched the site, knowing that whoever had made the noise would now be hiding somewhere, and would, in all likelihood, be watching him where he stood.

He searched as he had been taught to search, scanning the land beneath him from left to right at a steady pace, starting with the spaces closest to him and then broadening his scope to include the wider area. He saw nothing. A flock of crows rose from the rubble beside the tower. A fire burned on the distant airfield and a column of smoke rose unbroken into the air.

He was about to resume his inspection, knowing that it would serve no purpose to confront whoever might have been there, when a movement caught his eye, and he looked more closely to see a man he did not recognize emerge from amid several pieces of sheeted machinery and walk to the road.

He called out and the man turned and searched for him. Whoever this was, he made no attempt to run or hide, and instead he came further out into the open and waited beside the road as Mercer went to him.

The two men stood several yards apart for a moment, until the stranger extended his hand and went forward. He walked with a slight limp, Mercer noticed, or, if not a limp, then with a certain weakness or injury which would not allow him to make a full and rigid stride. He carried a satchel over his shoulder, but this held no weight.

‘What are you doing?' Mercer asked him.

‘Searching for buried treasure,' the man said disarmingly.

‘Did you find any?'

‘Oh, bits and pieces.' He patted his bag. It was immediately apparent from his accent that he was foreign. He spoke English well enough, but with the intonation and emphasis of a foreigner. ‘Jacob Haas,' he said, introducing himself, and pronouncing the name ‘Ya-cob'.

Mercer took his hand. It felt thin and insubstantial in his own, and the man withdrew it at the slightest pressure. He wore his frayed cuffs buttoned tight across his wrists, and the sleeves of his jacket were too long for his arms.

‘You're Dutch?' Mercer said.

‘I won't congratulate you on your guess,' the man said. He squinted against the sun, and Mercer
indicated that they might both turn their backs to it.

‘Would you mind if I sat down?' Jacob said, and the two of them sat against the embankment.

‘Are you working on the airfield?' Mercer asked him. He knew that among the men tearing up the runways there were some foreign labourers, and a party of German prisoners of war – those who had even then, fifteen months after the war's end, not yet been repatriated for one bureaucratic reason or other, and those who showed no inclination to leave. During the hostilities they had been imprisoned elsewhere, many of them in Scotland, and some in Canada, and at the war's end they had been returned here to work prior to their release. Some among them had found even these spartan conditions preferable to what awaited them in Germany and so had requested to remain. Many had formed relationships with the farming families to whom they had been allocated, and some had courted local women and were hoping to make new lives here for themselves.

‘The airfield?'

‘I thought you might be working there. The demolition.'

The man turned in the direction of the rising smoke. He considered this for a moment and then bowed his head. ‘I live here,' he said. He indicated along the line of the road towards the town. ‘I came here a year ago. Before that I was in London and then Cambridge.'

‘A displaced person.'

‘That was my title.'

‘Are you here with your family?'

Jacob shook his head. ‘Only me. I promise you, I have been well vetted by all the various authorities and boards of examiners.' He continued to look down at the ground as he spoke, and Mercer sensed that he
had said it all a hundred times before, and to inquisitors far more hostile and suspicious than himself.

‘I didn't mean to pry,' he said. ‘Forgive me.'

‘And you, I guess, are English,' Jacob said. ‘Through and through.'

Mercer laughed.

‘I did once work at the airfield,' Jacob said. ‘But I wasn't up to the mark. What is the expression? Oh, yes – I was found “wanting”.'

Then, and afterwards, Mercer noticed, Jacob took great pleasure in using such phrases, as though he alone truly understood them and gained some advantage by this.

‘I tried to work there, but it was too much for me. I was told to go away and get strong. I returned several times more, but on each occasion I was unsuccessful. I know men who work there. They keep me informed each time more labour is required. I persist – I fail, but I persist.'