Peacetime (37 page)

‘He burned everything he owned.'

‘What else did your father say?' It was clear to him that Lynch had had no idea that Mathias and Jacob were in the tower when he had come there earlier.

‘He said that he was going, too. I told him that I was going with him, and my mother grabbed me and asked me what I was talking about. He waited until I'd told her I was leaving and going with him before telling me he had no intention of taking me with him. He let me say it. He stood and smiled and nodded at her while I said it.'

‘Proving another of his points. Letting her know what lies ahead of her.'

‘She knows that well enough.'

‘You still said what you said to her.'

‘And he made sure she heard every word of it. I told him he'd promised me and he told me to go to him. He grabbed me and shook me and shouted in my ear to ask if I was hearing him any better. He laughed at me, at us both. She told him to go back out and to carry on picking a fight with Daniels. She said Daniels was ten times the man he would ever be.'

‘And so, presumably, he hit her to prove her wrong.'

She took a deep breath. ‘He went on hitting her. Those outside must have heard the noise she made because someone knocked on the door and shouted in to ask if everything was all right. Daniels came, too, and shouted the same. He banged on the door. My mother shouted that she was fine and for everybody to go away and leave her alone. He hit her again, but she didn't make any noise after that. He was hitting just her instead of both of us. He made that much clear to her. He kept asking her if she'd had enough, because he hadn't finished yet. She shouted for me to go upstairs to Peter.'

‘And?'

‘And I went.'

‘Where is he now?'

‘He waited until everybody had gone and then he went out. I thought he might have come here again.'

‘Do you think he might have done what he's been threatening, and gone for good?'

She shrugged. ‘He had nothing with him.'

‘Had he been drinking?'

She nodded.

A noise from above distracted them both.

‘I have to go back up,' he told her, still unwilling for her to accompany him and see Jacob there.

‘Is it Mathias?' she said.

‘Yes, Mathias.'

‘No, it isn't,' she said. ‘I saw him leave earlier. It's Jacob, isn't it?'

A further noise silenced them both.

‘He's ill,' Mercer said. ‘They were both here earlier when you and your father—'

‘I know,' she said. ‘I saw the two of you carrying him last night. I watched you from the dunes.'

‘I have to go back up to him,' he said. He climbed the stairs and she followed him.

Jacob had again half-fallen from the mattress and Mercer pulled him back onto it.

‘What's that smell?' she said.

Jacob had vomited onto his blankets. A clear, viscous pool. She wiped the bulk of this up with newspapers and then soaked a cloth and dabbed at what remained.

‘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.

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.