Hero Read online

  The bonnet of a passing motorcar catches the sun. Something both burning and chilled grips my heart, a double clench of hope and fear. The car reaches the clearing in front of our driveway; I view the silhouette of an officer through the passenger window. The soldier has Simon’s nose and brow beneath his peaked cap. My arm aches to wave, even partly raises itself to do so. But the face remains in profile—not even a glance sideways at our house—then slips from view.

  Towards the end of the lane the engine makes a moaning sound. Even through the glass I can hear the crunch of wheel on gravel as the vehicle turns into Mr. Jenson’s drive.

  Why did he not turn? I think of my letter again; the ugliness of shame has seared its contents upon my memory. I would be able to quote its contents word for word even if I had not made a copy, which I kept in the drawer of my nightstand:

  Before I go on I should let you know what you undoubtedly suspect, that I share one horror with all who remain at home—that I am gushing forth words that may seem vain and foolish to those, like you, who have fought and suffered and who suffer still.

  What could a man like Simon Jenson possibly have to say to such hand-wringing? How could I blame him for passing without a sign? I think of the ceremony at the hospital Major Pickard wrote to us about. A small room. No fanfare. An atmosphere solemn and respectful as the general pins the Distinguished Service Cross upon Simon’s chest. A cough of slight embarrassment perhaps. A nod. The mere hint of an approving smile. Men who feel oceans but say little. Opposite from myself.

  “Is it him?” calls my mother, who is reading in the dimmest corner of the room—her habit of late.

  “I believe so, Mother.”

  My voice is dull as though the words have been spoken into a sack of flour. Feeling her interest prickle the back of my neck, I turn. She is peering at me, spectacles halfway down her nose, her book upon her lap. Her expression changes from curiosity to kindness, and I feel a first tear working its way into my eye, blurring her face for a moment, until I blink it away.

  “Don’t worry, Sarah. He has to see his father first. He’ll come as soon as he’s able.”

  I think of mentioning that he did not turn towards us, and that, after a two-year absence, a man in love would surely glance at the house of his lover, but I’m tired of this new side of myself—the bleating, complaining Sarah. Instead, I say, “I don’t know who he is anymore.” A short involuntary laugh escapes me as I realize how completely true this statement is. Many times in the last few weeks I have tried to envision the change of two years upon my Simon. Each time my imagination crafted a leaner cheek, a steadier gaze, even the beginnings of an early receding hairline. And each time the clay of my speculations would collapse upon itself, leaving something quite formless with which I would do battle through nights of sleeplessness.

  These physical changes, I realized, meant nothing. The man with the black wavy hair, the grudging smile, and the soft manner would look different now. The army would have made him sturdier and wiry, perhaps even gaunt, given recent reports of dysentery among the regiments. My fleeting vision of his profile tends to confirm this.

  But when I tried to impose the old smile upon that spare and wiry soldier, when I tried to imagine this older, leaner Simon teasing me about the frizzy red hair of mine, which wouldn’t lie straight under a band, I realized two incompatible worlds were colliding, that the new Simon and the Simon of my memory could not mix.

  In his letters I glimpsed a depth of slow change. It was like watching a well gradually drying after its spring deviated to another place. There was joviality during training and when he first reached the front. The rough and tumble of young men echoed on the pages—joking between officers, ribbing of the men, a palpable sense of excitement that enraptured even me. Even in the dank underground quarters that became his home, there was still life and vitality. He was so witty about the rats and the mud I felt he had to be exaggerating to entertain me. If he were not, I thought, then how marvellous to be a man, how marvellous not to worry about such things when there is work to do.

  But the months wore on and his tone altered. There were fewer details, fewer words of any kind. A forced quality crept into the humour; he crammed jokes into mirthless situations. He talked of the constant noise, and then he talked of the unnatural quiet, how quiet itself became noise. Finally, there was that one last plea, made desperate because only I understood his pride well enough to know that it was a plea. It was a standard letter, saying little, attempting few pleasantries, then those two words after his usual signature: write soon. This was the day before the battle.

  I had many sleepless nights about Simon after the news came in, and many strange dreams when his letter followed. It haunted me that these two words should be the last he had written to me before his own injury and Charles’s death. I had a recurring vision of him standing on the cliff edge, near the old graveyard. He was in his officer’s uniform, ribbons and medals on his chest, and in his hand he held a bone the size of a Sunday joint of lamb but thinner. A human bone, perhaps. Although there was no sound, his lips were moving, and I could tell that the circling wind that tugged at his ribbons stole also his words as he spoke them. I rode like a spirit upon that same breeze and with each revolution willed myself a little closer to him so that I might catch his message. Although he spoke continuously, each time I passed his lips I could make out one phrase only: write soon. The faint request loosened shells from the bank, and scattered them on the beach below. Write soon, I caught again as the breeze scooped me suddenly into the sky.

  And now, as my ears catch the dull opening and closing of car doors in the distance, I can sense that the dream was real after all, that my reply came too late for him. Now I am no more substantial to him than the wind.

  My hand reaches towards the window. As my flesh meets the glass, a fog appears in halo around each fingertip. I think of Major Pickard’s letter, of that brightly flickering hope that it gave me: even through the direst horrors, the sweetest kernel remained unharmed. Somehow the gentlest part of Simon’s humanity had been not only protected, but enhanced, by the hardships and dangers. It made so little sense, this belief, but was magical simply because it was against logic. Like the calves and oxen kneeling at the stable, such impossibilities demand belief because they promise to transcend all losses, to act as balm for human pain.

  Despite all that he has been through, I told myself, despite the suffering, the pain, and the degradation, Simon has remained true to his nature. And he will return to us, even gentler than before. I told myself over and over up to the very moment of hearing the car upon the road. Yet when he did not turn to our house I was not surprised. It is almost a relief now the suspense is over. I have been holding onto a hope that each day has slipped an inch, each day has seemed just a little more far-fetched. He was upon the cliff edge three months ago when he wrote that postscript, and there was a world of horrors between then and now.

  I could cry and write love poems. I could lay myself at his feet and weep for all that is and all that has been. But regardless, one fact must remain: the soldier in the car is a stranger to me now.

  The doorbell is so unexpected I let the book fall from my lap. I’m still dressed, but the lateness of the hour gives the proceeding hush an ominous feel.

  Isabelle scurries through the hallway towards the sound. She hesitates for a moment at the open doorway, giving me a questioning look. I manage something between a nod and a shrug, as if to say we must know who it is before we can decide whether to grant or bar their entrance. She continues to the front door, and I hear her open it gingerly as though reluctant to wake a visitor who sleeps upon our threshold.

  “Oh, Mr. Simon!” she exclaims. Like a jack-in-the-box, I shoot up and cross to the dying fire, where I stand irresolute, a moth expiring too close to a flame. I don’t hear him say a word, but I hear his step—uneven, unfamiliar—as he approaches. He appears in the doorway, his face lean like a dark-furred greyhound, his grey suit too baggy for
his shrunken figure. A pale pink groove—more like a washed out ribbon than a scar—begins at his temple and takes a jagged course through his hair until it disappears somewhere near his crown. He seems altogether smaller than I remember, and much smaller than my imagination has since painted him. His eyes are dark, questioning, almost feral in nervousness, and he is too close to the door frame. The Simon of old would have strode into the middle of the room and taken possession.

  My breath has deserted me, but I will myself to recover. He has changed as I knew he would. A strange aura hangs about him, a pungent scent I have detected from other men but never from him. But he has come. Waves of feelings ancient and glorious are crashing in my heart. I suspect that very soon they will loosen my tongue and spill tears of joy onto my cheek. For the moment they are held at bay by the tension in Simon’s face, by the knowledge that we cannot instantly return to where we once were, that we are entering a delicately balanced phase of re-acquaintanceship.

  “Simon,” I manage at last, my voice a whisper. I take half a step from the fire towards him.

  He shrinks away and his eyes grow pained.

  “Didn’t you know I was home?” he asks. His look darkens in a manner I can’t interpret.

  “I saw you from the window,” I say, a smile taking over my face despite the tension, moisture touching the rims of my eyelids.

  “I’ve been here for five hours,” he says dully, as though the fact itself was hurtful to him.

  “I know.”

  I take a full step towards him then gesture him to an arm–chair, mouthing the word please.

  He turns from me as though I have dealt him a blow, but then walks slowly towards the armchair, showing me his back until he turns to sit. Some impulse tugs at me, telling me to sink onto my knees in front of him, to take his shoes, or perhaps rest my cheek upon his knee. But something stops me. I move only a few paces nearer.

  “So there is someone else.”

  This is what I hear, but I can’t take it in. They seem the words of a sleepwalker, or a quote from a melodrama. I search through our time together before the war for some clue to unlock the reference—endless games of charades, the plays and pantomimes we put on at home and in the village hall—but nothing comes. His eyes remain focussed on mine, and there is no humour or irony about his expression.

  “Someone else,” I repeat, trying to keep the confusion from my smile.

  “Of course,” he says, his reduced frame shrinking further into the armchair, his eyes narrowing into what I now suspect is a permanent wince. “You should have told me. You shouldn’t have allowed me to hope.”

  Sparks of both anger and fear are emanating from his dark eyes.

  “No, no, no!” The words rush out as I lunge forward and sink to my knees, my body following the impulse of a few moments ago. I watch myself from above as I bury my head on his lap, a fractured part of me critiquing this melodramatic flourish. But this is a new territory, and I must take risks. What is dignity, after all, to life and limb? I have blundered already by holding back. This new lexicon of risk and disclosure is one I will have to learn quickly.

  “There is no one,” I sob quietly, aware that the door is still open and Isabelle may be lingering for orders. “How could there be?” A hot tear oozes from my eye and sinks into the fabric of Simon’s trousers. I take in the alien scent once more, but this time I recognize it—whisky. “Everyone is like you, gone to war.”

  No hand comes to rest upon my head, and I feel no warm yielding from his leg. After a moment, I draw away and look up at his face.

  “Is that why there is no one?” he asks, an odd distemper quivering on his lips. “Simply because none were available?”

  “Simon,” I say, “this is mad! It was only you from the start. I’ve waited for you. Today, at the window, I watched you go by. Why didn’t you look?”

  He lurches forward in his seat in such a way that I am forced back onto my ankles. He hangs sideways from the chair, half off, half on. The critic hovering above me smirks faintly. I told you, she says. You have fallen from tragedy to farce. But as I crouch before him in silence, watching his face twitch in response to some internal rhythm of pain, I hold on. I have glimpsed a new hope. All this time I thought of Simon as the returning hero, and of course he is. But he is wounded inside. His kindness and confidence have been shocked into jealousy and anger.

  “Simon,” I say, laying a calm hand upon his knee, “it’s all right. I’m here for you. I’ll wait.” My voice sounds more like a nurse than a lover. But something in him buckles completely. His head comes down close to my shoulder, and he lets out a sound I have never heard before—something unformed. I reach out to bury it, holding his head in the crook of my shoulder and neck. His head is heavy and his skull digs into my collarbone. He is overtaken by spasms of crying.

  I glance to the open doorway to catch Isabelle, aghast, on the threshold of the room. She turns and scoots away. Gratitude floods through me in two simple words: at last.

  Here is my Olympian struggle. Here is my part in the war.

  CHAPTER 8

  Simon

  My father’s shed door drums hard against its frame as the wind gathers speed. So you’re home now, it clatters from below my bedroom window. The squeal of hinge that follows is like an inward breath promising a new barrage of mocking.

  I feel as though sleep has parted company forever with the night. Those two companions—slumber and darkness—always seemed ungainly together. Now, with my head motionless against the pillow, I see the mismatch as monstrous and absurd. Night draws forth fear, guilt, and imagination. How could rest possibly follow on its heels?

  But sleep hardly matters to me now. I am merely the floating ether of damnation, and I belong to the night. This evening part of me floated away from myself, dispassionately observing the layers of humiliation through which I was falling as I accused Sarah and then crumpled before her, accepting pity where I had once commanded respect. I was like a man tumbling into a bottomless pit; I watched the changing bands of rock as the atmosphere heated and the sulphurous fumes rose to meet me.

  A floor creaks somewhere and I suspect my father’s cautious tread. He is wondering, perhaps, whether to try and secure the shed door, but he is afraid. He doesn’t want to encounter me in the pantry with a bottle of Johnnie Walker, or find me passed out upon the living room sofa. He is afraid of Mrs. Cooper’s judgment also. His eyes told me this much during and after our strange and mainly silent dinner together; each time his housekeeper entered the room, he would glance at the whisky glass in my hand.

  The floorboards are silent again. He has decided not to move.

  When I left the house at ten o’clock it was without a word. My father’s head jerked towards me as I drained my glass and stood. He was about to speak. But he, like I, had discovered that words have lost all currency. They are weightless objects now, without meaning or use. They merely draw attention to the emptiness around them. His eyes met mine for a moment as I touched the door and opened it, then his gaze fell away.

  Like a badger in search of food I crept outside and stood in the patch of scrub between our garden and the Baxters’ and watched Sarah’s house—only that at first. I had no plans, and it was getting too late to call. I watched the sturdy brick wall with the shimmering ivy and tried to imagine how it would be when we met. I thought of the slow, agonizing stages of disillusionment that would inevitably follow as I failed to act the noble warrior. How long, I wondered, would it take before they lost patience and interest? The question was deeply troubling, as I knew the Baxters would not easily give up on me.

  A light suddenly went off—Mrs. Baxter’s room if my memory of the layout was correct—and the house, viewed from the side, seemed suddenly like a stage backdrop, lacking all relief and contour. It was Mrs. Baxter who scared me most. When I passed by the house in the car, I could not look for fear of catching her face in the window. When I imagined myself sometime in the not-too-distant future blurting the horr
endous truth over dinner, it was her horrified expression, rather than Sarah’s, that I saw in the flickering candlelight.

  Now that it seemed likely she was in bed, I found myself stirring from the undergrowth. I could strike now, I thought. I could precipitate my fall from grace rapidly, and in lurid colour. I could save the days, weeks, and months of frustrated kindness and attention. I tried to conceive some pointless act of vandalism, taking a kitchen knife to their most treasured family portraits, perhaps, or throwing their hearth rug onto the fire.

  A dancing twig prodded my leg as I passed and quite unexpectedly visions of Sarah scattered into my thoughts like brightly coloured playing cards fumbled during a hasty shuffle.

  All the worry and sorrow of years, the pain of being parted from Sarah, came upon me in a rush, until—the gravel of the driveway now under my feet—I was almost choking with it.

  My crime was all but stripped away. Suddenly, the manner of Charles’s death was an aberration, a detail of no sense or importance that the whole world had, in any case, conspired to bury. Why had the world conspired to bury it? As my fingers took the bell and hesitated, skin against cold metal, the thought came to me that perhaps it had not happened after all.

  The idea quickly took root. Assuming some cosmic record existed of human action, how would Charles’s death be footnoted? Surely as a tragic accident; the question of whose blade entered his flesh was one of no consequence. It was war and by definition a bloody, noisy mess of confusion and mistakes. I asked myself why this misstep should matter more than all the others.