A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (19 page)

I looked him squarely in the eye.

“Before going to the Crimea I thought that death was the worst thing that could happen to anyone. I soon realized it was only for starters. Anton died; I can accept that. People get killed
in war; it's inevitable. Okay, so it was a military debacle of staggering proportions. They also happen from time to time. It's happened many times before in the Crimea.”

“Thursday!” implored Landen. “What I said. It was the truth!”

I rounded on him angrily.

“Who can say what the truth was? The truth is whatever we are most comfortable with. The dust, the heat, the noise! Whatever happened that day, the truth is now what everyone reads in the history books. What
you
told the military inquiry! Anton may have made a mistake, but he wasn't the only one that day.”

“I saw him point down the wrong valley, Thursday.”

“He would never have made that mistake!”

I felt an anger I hadn't felt for ten years. Anton had been blamed for the charge, it was as simple as that. The military leaders managed to squirm out of their responsibilities once again and my brother's name had entered the national memory and the history books as that of the man who lost the Light Armored Brigade. The commanding officer and Anton had both died in the charge. It had been up to Landen to tell the story.

I got up.

“Walking out again, Thursday?” said Landen sardonically. “Is this how it will always be? I was hoping you would have mellowed, that we could have made something out of this mess, that there was still enough love in us to make it work.”

I shot a furious look at him.

“What about loyalty, Landen? He was your greatest friend!”

“And I
still
said what I said,” sighed Landen. “One day you'll have to come to terms with the fact that Anton fucked up. It happens, Thursday. It happens.”

I stared at him and he stared back.

“Can we
ever
get over this, Thursday? I need to know as a matter of some urgency.”

“Urgency? What urgency? No,” I replied, “no, no, we can't. I'm sorry to have wasted your fucking precious time!”

I ran out of the café, eyes streaming and angry with myself, angry with Landen and angry with Anton. I thought about Snood and Tamworth. We should all have waited for backup; Tamworth and I fucked up by going in and Snood fucked up by taking on an enemy which he knew he was not physically or mentally prepared to face. We had all been flushed with excitement by the chase; it was the sort of impetuous action that Anton would have taken. I had felt it once before in the Crimea and I had hated myself for it then too.

I got back to the Finis at about one in the morning. The John Milton weekend was ending with a disco. I took the lift up to my room, the distorted beat of the music softening to a dull thud as I was transported upward. I leaned against the mirror in the lift and took solace in the coolness of the glass. I should never have come back to Swindon, that much was obvious. I would speak to Victor in the morning and transfer out as soon as possible.

I opened my room door and kicked off my shoes, lay on the bed and stared at the polystyrene ceiling tiles, trying to come to terms with what I had always suspected but never wanted to face. My brother had fucked up. Nobody had bothered to put it so simply before; the military tribunal spoke of “tactical errors in the heat of the battle” and “gross incompetence.” Somehow “fucked up” made it seem more believable; we all make mistakes at some time in our lives, some more than others. It is only when the cost is counted in human lives that people really take notice. If Anton had been a baker and forgotten the yeast,
nothing would have been made of it, but he would have fucked up just the same.

As I lay there thinking I slowly drifted into sleep and with sleep came troubled dreams. I was back at Styx's apartment block, only this time I was standing outside the back entrance with the upturned car, Commander Flanker and the rest of the SO-1 interview panel. Snood was there too. He had an ugly hole in his wrinkled forehead and was standing, arms crossed and looking at me as if I had taken his football and he had sought out Flanker for some kind of redress.

“Are you
sure
you didn't tell Snood to go and cover the back?” asked Flanker.

“Positive,” I said, looking at them both in turn.

“She did, you know,” said Acheron as he walked past. “I heard her.”

Flanker stopped him.

“Did you? What
exactly
did she say?”

Acheron smiled at me and then nodded at Snood, who returned his greeting.

“Wait!”
I interrupted. “How can you believe what he says? The man's a liar!”

Acheron looked offended and Flanker turned to me with a steely gaze.

“We only have
your
word for that, Next.”

I could feel myself boil with inner rage at the unfairness of it all. I was just about to cry out and wake up when I felt a tap on my arm. It was a man dressed in a dark coat. He had heavy black hair that fell over his dour, strong features. I knew immediately who he was.

“Mr. Rochester?”

He nodded in return. But now we were no longer outside the warehouses in the East End; we were in a well-furnished
hall, lit by the dim glow of oil lamps and the flickering light from a fire in the large hearth.

“Is your arm well, Miss Next?” he asked.

“Very well, thanks,” I said, moving my hand and wrist to demonstrate.

“I should not trouble yourself with them,” he added, indicating Flanker, Acheron and Snood, who had started to argue in the corner of the room near the bookcase. “They are merely in your dream and thus, being illusory, are of no consequence.”

“And what about you?”

Rochester smiled, a forced, gruff smile. He was leaning on the mantelpiece and looked into his glass, swirling his Madeira delicately.

“I was never real to begin with.”

He placed the glass on the marble mantel and flipped out a large silver hunter, popped it open, read the time and returned it to his waistcoat pocket in one smooth easy movement.

“Things are becoming more urgent, I can feel it. I trust I can count on your fortitude when the time comes?”

“What do you mean?”

“I can't explain. I don't know how I managed to get here or even how you managed to get to me. You remember when you were a little girl? When you chanced upon us both that chill winter's evening?”

I thought about the incident at Haworth all those years ago when I entered the book of
Jane Eyre
and caused Rochester's horse to slip.

“It was a long time ago.”

“Not to me. You remember?”

“I remember.”

“Your intervention
improved
the narrative.”

“I don't understand.”

“Before, I simply bumped into my Jane and we spoke briefly.
If you had read the book prior to your visit you would have noticed. When the horse slipped to avoid you it made the meeting more dramatic, wouldn't you agree?”

“But hadn't that happened already?”

Rochester smiled.

“Not at all. But you weren't the first visitor we have had. And you won't be the last, if I'm correct.”

“What do you mean?”

He picked up his drink again.

“You are about to rouse from your sleep, Miss Next, so I shall bid you adieu. Again: I can trust in your fortitude when the time comes?”

I didn't have time to answer or question him further. I was woken by my early morning call. I was in my clothes from the previous evening, the light and the television still on.

Dearest Mum,

 

Life here in the
DELETED BY CENSORS
camp is great fun. The weather is good, the food average, the company AOK. Colonel
DELETED BY CENSORS
is our CO; he is a cracking fellow. I see Thurs quite often & although you told me to look after her I think she can look after herself. She won the battalion ladies' boxing tournament. We move up to
DELETED BY CENSORS
next week, I will write again when I have more news.

Your son, Anton
Letter from Anton Next sent two weeks before he died

A
PART FROM
one other person I had the breakfast room all to myself. As fate would have it, that one other person was Colonel Phelps.

“Good morning, Corporal!” he said cheerfully as he spotted me trying to hide behind a copy of
The Owl.

“Colonel.”

He sat down opposite me without asking.

“Good response to my presence here so far, y'know,” he said genially, taking some toast and waving a spoon at the waiter. “You there, sir, more coffee. We're having the talk next Sunday; you
are
still coming, I trust?”

“I just
might
be there,” I responded, quite truthfully.

“Splendid!” he gushed. “I must confess I thought you'd stumbled off the path when we spoke on the gasbag.”

“Where is it being held?”

“A bit hush-hush, old girl. Walls have ears, careless talk, all that rot. I'll send a car for you. Seen this?”

He showed me the front page of
The Mole.
It was, like all the papers, almost exclusively devoted to the upcoming offensive that everyone thought was so likely there didn't seem even the slightest hope that it wouldn't happen. The last major battle had been in '75 and the memories and lessons of that particular mistake didn't seem to have sunk in.

“More
coffee
I said, sir!” roared Phelps to the waiter, who had given him tea by mistake. “This new plasma rifle is going to clinch it, y'know. I've even thought of modifying my talk to include a request for anyone wanting a new life on the peninsula to start filing claims now. I understand from the foreign secretary's office that we will need settlers to move in as soon as the Russians are evicted for good.”

“Don't you understand?” I asked in an exasperated tone. “There won't be an end. Not while we have troops on Russian soil.”

“What's that?” murmured Phelps. “Mmm? Eh?”

He fiddled with his hearing aid and cocked his head to one side like a parakeet. I made a noncommittal noise and left as soon as I could.

It was early; the sun had risen but it was still cold. It had rained during the night and the air was heavy with water. I put the roof of the car down in an attempt to blow away the memories of the night before, the anger that had erupted when I realized that I couldn't forgive Landen. It was the dismay that I would always feel the same rather than the dismay over the unpleasant ending to the evening which upset me most. I was thirty-six,
and apart from ten months with Filbert I had been alone for the past decade, give or take a drunken tussle or two. Another five years of this and I knew that I would be destined not to share my life with anyone.

The wind tugged at my hair as I drove rapidly along the sweeping roads. There was no traffic to speak of and the car was humming sweetly. Small pockets of fog had formed as the sun rose, and I drove through them as an airship flies through cloud. My foot rolled off the throttle as I entered the small parcels of gloom, then gently pressed down again as I burst free into the morning sun once more.

The village of Wanborough was not more than ten minutes' drive from the Finis Hotel. I parked outside the GSD temple— once a C of E church—and turned off the engine, the silence of the country a welcome break. In the distance I could hear some farm machinery but it was barely a rhythmical hum; I had never appreciated the peace of the country until I had moved to the city. I opened the gate and entered the well-kept graveyard. I paused for a moment, then ambled at a slow respectful pace past the rows of well-tended graves. I hadn't visited Anton's memorial since the day I left for London, but I knew that he wouldn't have minded. Much that we had appreciated about one another had been left unsaid. In humor, in life and in love, we had understood. When I arrived in Sebastopol to join the 3rd Wessex Tank Light Armored Brigade, Landen and Anton were already good friends. Anton was attached to the brigade as signals captain; Landen was a lieutenant. Anton had introduced us; against strict orders we had fallen in love. I had felt like a schoolgirl, sneaking around the camp for forbidden trysts. In the beginning the Crimea just seemed like a whole barrel of fun.

None of the bodies came home. It was a policy decision. But many had private memorials. Anton's was near the end of the
row, underneath the protective bough of an old yew and sandwiched between two other Crimean memorials. It was well kept up, obviously weeded regularly, and fresh flowers had recently been placed there. I stood by the unsophisticated gray limestone tablet and read the inscription. Simple and neat. His name, rank and the date of the charge. There was another stone not unlike this one sixteen hundred miles away marking his grave on the peninsula. Others hadn't fared so well. Fourteen of my colleagues on the charge that day were still “unaccounted for.” It was military jargon for “not enough bits to identify.”

Quite suddenly I felt someone slap me on the back of my head. It wasn't hard but enough to make me jump. I turned to find the GSD priest looking at me with a silly grin on his face.

“Wotcha, Doofus!” he bellowed.

“Hello, Joffy,” I replied, only slightly bemused. “Want me to break your nose again?”

“I'm cloth now, Sis!” he exclaimed. “You can't go around bashing the clergy!”

I stared at him for a moment.

“Well, if I can't bash you,” I told him, “what can I do?”

“We at the GSD are very big on hugs, Sis.”

So we hugged, there in front of Anton's memorial, me and my loopy brother Joffy, whom I had never hugged in my life.

“Any news on Brainbox and the Fatarse?” he asked.

“If you mean Mycroft and Polly, no.”

“Loosen up, Sis. Mycroft
is
a Brainbox and Polly, well, she
does
have a fat arse.”

“The answer's still no. Mind you, she and Mum have put on a bit of weight, haven't they?”

“A
bit
? I should say. Tesco's should open a superstore just for the pair of them.”

“Does the GSD encourage such blatant personal attacks?” I asked.

Joffy shrugged.

“Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't,” he answered. “That's the beauty of the Global Standard Deity—it's whatever you want it to be. And besides, you're family so it doesn't count.”

I looked around at the well-kept building and graveyard.

“How's it all going?”

“Pretty well, thanks. Good cross section of religions and even a few Neanderthals, which is quite a coup. Mind you, attendances have almost tripled since I converted the vestry into a casino and introduced naked greasy-pole dancing on Tuesdays.”

“You're joking!”

“Yes, of course I am,
Doofus.
”

“You little shit!” I laughed. “I
am
going to break your nose again!”

“Before you do, do you want a cup of tea?”

I thanked him and we walked toward the vicarage.

“How's your arm?” he asked.

“It's okay,” I replied. Then, since I was eager to try to keep up with his irreverence, I added: “I played this joke on the doctor in London. I said to him when he rebuilt the muscles in my arm, ‘Do you think I'll be able to play the violin?' and he said: ‘Of course!' and then I said: ‘That's good, I couldn't before!' ”

Joffy stared at me blank-faced.

“SpecOps Christmas parties must be a riot, Sis. You should get out more. That's probably the worst joke I've ever heard.”

Joffy could be infuriating at times, but he probably had a point—although I wasn't going to let him know it. So I said instead:

“Bollocks to you, then.”

That
did
make him laugh.

“You were always
so
serious, Sis. Ever since you were a little girl. I remember you sitting in the living room staring at the
News at Ten,
soaking in every fact and asking Dad and the Brainbox a million questions—Hello, Mrs. Higgins!”

We had just met an old lady coming through the lichgate carrying a bunch of flowers.

“Hello, Irreverend!” she replied jovially, then looked at me and said in a hoarse whisper: “Is this your girlfriend?”

“No, Gladys—this is my sister, Thursday. She's SpecOps and consequently doesn't have a sense of humor, a boyfriend or a life.”

“That's nice, dear,” said Mrs. Higgins, who was clearly quite deaf, despite her large ears.

“Hello, Gladys,” I said, shaking her by the hand. “Joffy here used to bash the bishop so much when he was a boy we all thought he would go blind.”

“Good, good,” she muttered.

Joffy, not to be outdone, added: “And little Thursday here made so much noise during sex that we had to put her in the garden shed whenever her boyfriends stayed the night.”

I elbowed him in the ribs but Mrs. Higgins didn't notice; she smiled benignly, wished us both a pleasant day, and teetered off into the churchyard. We watched her go.

“A hundred and four next March,” murmured Joffy. “ Amazing, isn't she? When she goes I'm thinking of having her stuffed and placed in the porch as a hat stand.”

“Now I know you're joking.”

He smiled.

“I don't have a serious bone in my body, Sis. Come on, I'll make you that tea.”

The vicarage was huge. Legend had it that the church's spire would have been ten feet taller had the incumbent vicar not taken a liking to the stone and diverted it to his own residence. An unholy row broke out with the bishop and the vicar was relieved of his duties. The larger-than-usual vicarage, however, remained.

Joffy poured some strong tea out of a Clarice Cliff teapot into a matching cup and saucer. He wasn't trying to impress; the GSD had almost no money and he couldn't afford to use anything other than what came with the vicarage.

“So,” said Joffy, placing a teacup in front of me and sitting down on the sofa, “do you think Dad's boffing Emma Hamilton?”

“He never mentioned it. Mind you, if you were having an affair with someone who died over a hundred years ago, would you tell your wife?”

“How about me?”

“How about you what?”

“Does he ever mention me?”

I shook my head and Joffy was silent in thought for a moment, which is unusual for him.

“I think he wanted me to be in that charge in Ant's place, Sis. Ant was always the favored son.”

“That's stupid, Joffy. And even if it were true—which it isn't—there's nothing anyone can do about it. Ant is gone, finished, dead. Even if you
had
stayed out there, let's face it, army chaplains don't exactly dictate military policy.”

“Then why doesn't Dad ever come and see me?”

I shrugged.

“I don't know. Perhaps it's a ChronoGuard thing. He rarely visits me unless on business—and never for more than a couple of minutes.”

Joffy nodded then asked:

“Have you been attending church in London, Sis?”

“I don't really have the time, Joff.”

“We
make
time, Sis.”

I sighed. He was right.

“After the charge I kind of lost my faith. SpecOps have chaplains of their own but I just never felt the same about anything.”

“The Crimea took a lot away from all of us,” said Joffy
quietly. “Perhaps that is why we have to work twice as hard to hang onto what we have left. Even I was not immune to the passion of the battle. When I first went to the peninsula I was excited by the war—I could feel the insidious hand of nationalism holding me upright and smothering my reason. When I was out there I
wanted
us to win, to kill the foe. I reveled in the glory of battle and the camaraderie that only conflict can create. No bond is stronger than that welded in conflict; no greater friend is there than the one who stood next to you as you fought.”

Joffy suddenly seemed that much more human; I presumed this was the side of him his parishioners saw.

“It was only afterward that I realized the error of what we were doing. Pretty soon I could see no difference between Russian and English, French or Turk. I spoke out and was banned from the frontline in case I sowed disharmony. My bishop told me that it was not my place to judge the errors of the conflict, but to look after the spiritual well-being of the men and women.”