He’d crept over to the old man as soon as he’d got back, wakened him with broken piece of pie held under his nose, thrusting out his arm to show off his new-found prizes.
“Look,” he had whispered, a touch a pride in his voice. “Trousers too!”
The old man had taken the pie and held it gingerly to his mouth. His teeth, loose in his reddened gums, moved sideways as he bit into it. He worked a piece slowly round his tongue, chewing carefully and swallowing hard.
“How’d you come by all this lot?” he had asked.
“Farmhouse,” the boy had told him. “Off a line.”
Wiping the crumbs back in from the corner of his sore stubbled mouth, the old man reached out and touched it.
“That’s real quality you got there, son. Sticks out a mile on you. They’ll be wanting to know how you’ve come by it. You’d best dirty it up some more or they’ll hang you up on the hooks and beat the shit out of you.”
He’d taken the old man’s advice, pushed the jacket up and down the floor, rubbing sawdust and dirt into the material. Fighting over that dead rabbit had helped.
He looked for the old man in the line of men hacking at the granite wall, but couldn’t see him. Perhaps he’d been sent further in. Peter, that was his name. Same name as his father. Sonya had been his sister’s. And his? He could hardly remember. He hadn’t had a name for such a long time. He was just feet now, feet and arms and runny shits, all wrapped up in a brand-new coat. This would get him through the coming months. Pillow, blanket, coat. He patted it lovingly. What a night that was, the car coming quietly up that wild stretch of path, him crouched underneath the gorse hedge, the rain starting to get up. The car had stopped not a body length from him. Everything foot level. Door open. Black rain on the car’s mudguards and the shine of a cape and a man’s boot, stepping into the squashed wet of the puddles, door swinging open and the light inside shining on the hatted head sleeping in the back. Low mutters from the man, sensing the urgency and the hurry of it. Not hunting cats in the headlights at this hour; nerves and fear afoot, something quick and something bad. Then the man had pulled the door open and out the figure fell. With the hat and the jacket and the way the body rolled on the ground he had thought it another man at first, a stumbling drunk, but then as the hat slipped off and began to roll across the ground he saw the back of her legs and the fall of her hair. Then her face was staring at him along the spongy ground, six foot away, open eyed, bare Ups grinning on her face like blade work on a pumpkin and her dress slapping in the mud like a hooked fish on a river bank. The man had chased the hat and stuffed it in his pocket and then had starled to drag her off, one leg in each great hand, the dress riding up over her arse, bare and moon-white, her arms trailing high above her head, her outstretched fingers leaving trails in the flattened grass, the jacket peeling up over her, like she was one of the jig-a-jig girls, stripping for him even though his back was turned, first one arm and then the other, over her shoulders and head, blown back to the bush where he crouched, his heart tight in the grip of such close danger. Reaching one of the shafts the man picked her up and counting to himself, one, two, three, lifted her clear, her bare feet swinging over the hole, before he lowered her carefully into the deep of it. Down she went, until all he could see was her head and her mouth, luminous and vile, drowning in the night air. Then, not fifty yards away, the boom of a gun went off, and hiding his face he felt the earth recoil. When he looked again the air shaft stood empty and the man was running back to the safety of his car, bumping down the road without lights, the engine gunning out of sight. And as he crept round and tugged the jacket free it seemed to him that she had been brought to her underground tomb, not by chance nor for her captor’s indecent pleasure, but to offer him the means by which he might survive in his. He knew what they had done to her, what she had suffered. He did not feel sorry for her. It was what happened, what the world was made for. All the rest was a delusion. He had seen it before. Seen it with his sister that night. One after the other they came, dropping their trousers round their ankles while their predecessor hopped back into his, laughing coarse encouragement, some queuing up for a second or third time. The officer in charge, a tall, handsome man with not a speek on his uniform, had come round to their cottage that afternoon and ducking through the low doorway, had stepped in, dusting off his cap with determined politeness. There was just him and his father and sister left. Their mother and the baby had been taken into the church, along with Grandmama and all the others. The officer had looked around the room with interest, the only room they had, and picking up a sample of Sonya’s embroidery work had held it out, questioning her with a friendly look. His sister had nodded and, smiling, the officer had replaced it back on the dresser with care. Then, noticing his parents’ bed hidden at the back, he had gone over, drawn back the curtain and patted the snug, high mattress.
“Good,” he said to his father. “Teil your daughter to keep it nice and warm. This is where we’re all going to fuck her tonight.”
His father had wanted to end it for them that afternoon, but there was no gun for him to do it quickly, to shoot them both and then turn it on himself, just the gutting knife and the rolling pin and Grandmama’s walking stick she used to whack his legs with, and he couldn’t bring himself to use any of those. So they sat, the three of them, praying and singing soft songs of their homeland, hoping that the soldiers might go away or forget. When the time had come and the officer had put his head round the corner, tapping at the watch he held in his hand, his father, weeping, had shaken his head, imploring him, pointing to her youth and the trust she had placed in his ability to protect her.
“Do not worry,” the officer had told him, “I understand,” and slipping the watch back into his pocket, had taken him out and shot him underneath their broken window. The soldiers had to step over his outstretched arms to come through the door. They had come through the door all night.
Six
Wedel parked the car at the top of the road. As the two men set off down the hill a group of nurses appeared on the brow of the other side, laughing and chatting. On seeing the Major approach they feil silent. One of them waved nervously. Lentsch nodded.
The house was bathed in a blank grey daylight, the blinds drawn, the pinned-back slatted shutters rattling in the spasmodic wind. Ned hesitated by the gateless entrance. Even when he had come here before, when there had been life and brazen purpose to his visit, it had seemed to him then that despite the thought that had gone into its construction and the young woman whose willing form would lead him up the stairs or out into the lush wilderness at the rear, this was a house in which footsteps and voices and words of love would always ring hollow, one where its occupants would always appear transitory. Perhaps it was true what his old man had claimed. “Some houses,” he used to tell him, “are built for crime, for misery, desertion. It doesn’t matter if you’re a saint or a sinner, the bricks and mortar will get you in the end.”