Ink (20 page)

A GRAND PLAN

“And just what are ye going to do, Jack? Are ye going to walk into Germany and kill Adolf yerself, and then take a wee trip down to Italy and see to Benito too?”

Seamus shakes his head. He's a good man and his heart's in the right place, sure, but he's an eedjit. They're a pair of fookin eedjits.

“Maybe I will at that,” says Jack. “We could do it, you know. I think we could do it.”

Seamus stubs the stinking Gauloise out in the ashtray and leans back against the dresser. The garret room is tiny, slope-ceilinged and with just a wee dormer window jutting out. A bed, a wardrobe and not much else. Seamus's digs aren't any more grand, sure—well they wouldn't be on a dockworker's wages— but at least he keeps his place decent, bed made neat, square-cornered sheets as the army taught him. Jesus, but Jack's place is like the inside of his fookin heid— a right fookin state, it is, with dirty fookin laundry everywhere and empty whisky bottles, five or six, no, Christ there's another one sticking out of the fookin drawer, in amongst all the fookin socks and shite. Aye, but he can fair drink for an Englishman. He can give Seamus a good run for his money in that these days and that's fookin saying something.

The two of them spend a lot of time drinking now.

“Oh, so it's
we
could do it, is it?” says Seamus. “Just march through Nazi Germany saying top o’ the morning to ye and what ho, old chap, and they'll just let us in to see the Führer. Or maybe we can steal some Nazi uniforms, sure, and say
Sieg heil!
and they'll never know the fookin difference. Oh, that's a grand fookin plan, Jack. Chin up, boys, and over—”

Seamus stops himself just in time from saying
over the top.
It would be a low blow. What's past is past, he tells hisself. If he repeats it enough times, it might just fookin stick.

“Maybe it
is
a plan,” says Jack. “We just walk to Berlin and kill anyone that gets in our damn way.”

Jesus, but he's fookin serious and all.

“Kill them all?” says Seamus.

Jack doesn't answer, just stands up from the disheveled bed, picking an empty bottle off the floor and carrying it to the dresser. He places it there beside the ashtray, moving Seamus to one side, and walks back to the other side of the room, the whole four paces of it.

Then he just says a single word and—

—and the broken glass lies like a powder all over the top of the wooden unit and Seamus's ears are ringing and he's sick to the stomach and the mirror on the dresser's all warped like a fookin fun-house thing showing their shapes distorted limbs all out of kilter twisted room skewed broken bodies on a battlefield and crow flapping at the window black and white and red and Seamus is feeling the cold iron of the bedpost in his hand as the world stops shivering.

“We're different,” says Jack. “You and I, we're different.”

Seamus closes his eyes to cornfields stretching as far as the eye can see, snaps them back open again, breathing deeply.

“What do you see, Finnan?” says Jack. “What do you see when you close your eyes?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you see when you're drunk and crazy, when you have your turns? That's what you call them, isn't it, when the words come out of you from somewhere so deep you can't even touch it when you're sober?”

“It's not…”

But he doesn't know what it is, sure, so how can he fookin deny it?

“I know what you're saying, Finnan. I've heard you. Remember it's me that's dragged you home in the night when you can't stand on your own two feet. I've listened to you talking. I've
understood.
I've heard it before.”

And Jack tells him about an expedition into the wilds of the Caucasus, about the language that he found there, written on the skins of dead men, the language that Finnan speaks but is too afraid to understand, that Jack understands but is too afraid to speak.

——

Jack opens the wardrobe door and pulls out another bottle from behind a leather satchel that looks like it's seen better days. This bottle's full and he unscrews the top. He takes a swig and passes it to Seamus. Seamus takes a slug, bitter, aniseed and burning.
Christ.
He hacks, looks at the bottle.
Jesus, isn't this stuff illegal?

“Do you know what we are?” says Jack.

Seamus takes the top from Jack and screws it back on the bottle.

“No,” he says.

“But we're different, aren't we?”

Seamus nods, then shakes his head.

“It's not us, Jack. It's not us that's different, but…”

He hands the bottle back to Jack. He looks at the two of them in the warped glass of the mirror, attenuated things with heads too small, stick creatures, like a child's drawings or paintings on a cave wall. A reflection changed by a word.

“Ye know what I see when I close my eyes, Jack? War. An endless fookin war and us fighting in it, killing in it, over and over and over again. But it doesn't make sense, Jack. Some of it just doesn't make sense. Oh, I can tell ye that ole Joe and Adolf are about to sign a fookin pact to carve up Europe between them. I can tell ye that it won't hold because the both of them are fookin cunts. But… I used to think it was the future I was seeing, ye know? But I'm not so sure now. Some of it doesn't seem like this world at all, Jack. There's these little creatures, see, these little black creatures crawling over everything and—Jesus, I'm as fookin mad as you are.”

Jack runs a finger through the powdered glass, brushes it off with his thumb.

“I don't think we're mad at all,” he says. “I think we've been given … a gift. That we have a duty to use.”

Jack's warped reflection stares out at Seamus from the mirror.

“If we can change things,” he says. “If we can change things …”

TO CHANGE HISTORY

“The world,” says Jack. “The past. The future. Everything, man.”

Seamus flicks his cigarette ash into the steel sink and turns the tap on. There's no ashtrays in the kitchen and he's hardly going to drop it on the floor, sure, so he watches the clear stream of water battering the paper and tobacco apart and spinning it away down the plughole. He turns off the tap when the last
of it is gone. Upstairs there are voices, high-pitched giggles and squeals, stomping. That'll be the Frenchman's wife and kids; they met her briefly when she opened up the back door to them, took one look and called for her husband. Seamus crosses to the door leading out into the hall and pulls it closed, muffling the sounds. He's not sure how much of it is for secrecy's sake and how much of it is just to close the door on something he knows that he'll most likely never have himself.

“You
Anglaise
…” the Frenchman is saying.

“Irish,” says Seamus.

“That doesn't matter,” says Jack.

“The fook it doesn't,” says Seamus.

“My friends, I don't understand how this … book could change … the world? I think perhaps you have been drinking,
non?”

“Not since this morning,” says Jack.

The kitchen is small but clean and well stocked, pots and pans hanging above the iron range, bowls of fruit and baskets of fresh vegetables on top of the cupboards. The air is filled with the scent of herbs and smoked things—fish or sausages, cheeses—onion and garlic of course, from a pot of stock simmering on the range. Sure and Seamus would give his right arm to have this man's quiet life of domesticity.

“Monsieur Reynard,” he says, “all that matters is … you know that Hitler won't stop at Czechoslovakia.”

Reynard nods and Seamus joins them at the kitchen table, the solid pine block of furniture that takes up most of the center of the room. Reynard sits in a chair at the side nearest the door into the hall and, beside it, what must be the door into a pantry tucked under the stairs. Seamus can smell the aroma of good food coming from it. Jack sits at the end nearest the range, a pile of francs on the table in front of him, pitifully small but all that they've got. Seamus picks the seat facing Reynard.

“All that matters,” says Seamus, “is that there's a war coming and we might be able to stop it.”

“To change things,” says Jack. “All we're asking you to do is use your skill.” Seamus looks at the leather satchel hanging over Jack's shoulder. He spotted it a few times back in the Ebro, sticking out of Jack's kit bag, and never got round to asking about it. Sure and it never seemed important, just a wee satchel like that, hardly big enough to hold anything of value. Now that he knows what's in it, by Jesus but it's another story. They must be fookin mental.
If we'd won the war
in Spain
, Jack had said.
If the fascists were… divided somehow. If it wasn't for Stalin and Chamberlain, and their Moody deals with Hitler… You have the Sight. You can see what changes need to happen. I know the language, but… neither of us have the skill for it.

“Yer the best man for the job, so we hear,” he says. “The only man for the job.”

“But this, Monsieur Carter, Monsieur Finnan”—he picks up a couple of notes—“this is an insult. Enough for only
… un passeport
, a diploma. You are asking me to create a book, for this?”

“You don't understand what's at stake here, man,” says Jack. “You—”

Seamus puts his hand on Jack's arm.

“Sure and I know it's nothing. I know it's a fookin joke. But it's all we can give ye but the shirts off our backs, and I'll give ye that if ye fookin ask for it. I'll work me fookin fingers to the bone as yer slave if ye'll do this for us. I swear on me mother's grave and Jesus Lord Almighty hisself. Look into me eyes, Monsieur Reynard, and spit in me fookin face if I'm not telling the truth.”

Reynard holds his gaze for a second then looks away.

“I believe you, Monsieur Finnan. I believe you are an honest man. A
poor
, honest man, unfortunately, but then most honest men are.”

He drums his fingers on the table, the long delicate fingers of a pianist, thinks Seamus, or a jeweler. Or a forger. Eventually, it seems, he comes to a decision.

“I do not promise anything,” says Reynard. “But … show me these … scriptures you wish me to copy, please. Let me see how much work would be involved.”

“Mon Dieu,”
Reynard says quietly.
“Mon Dieu. line cigarette, s'il vousplait?”

Jack pulls the pack from his breast pocket, passes one to Reynard and one to Seamus, pats at his jacket. Seamus takes his own lighter out and flicks it open, lights his fag and passes the lighter still lit to Jack. Jack lights his own cigarette and snaps the lighter shut and open again, sparks it back up with a flick of his thumb and lights Reynard's cigarette, all in what's almost one swift motion. Old habit.

The contents of the leather satchel lie spread across the table, squares and rectangles of treated skin, of dried hide, of vellum, golden brown and so thin they're almost translucent. Reynard holds one up to the lamp and it seems to glow, the gravings on it so intricate, so subtle that they look like filigree, the work of a needle rather than a brush. Sure and they should do, thinks Seamus.

“The craftsmanship is beautiful,” says Reynard.
“Formidable.”

He turns the page over to look at the reverse.

“My friend, this is a challenge I would dearly love to take but what you want is … to forge something like this, I mean. The ink is
in
the vellum, you understand? This is not painting, not drawing but… I do not know the technique. If anything, I should say these look like tattoos.”

‘? pin instead of a pen,” says Jack. “Couldn't you create the same sort of stain?”

“But even the vellum. What is this? Calfskin? Pig? It is so beautifully cured. Feel the texture, the suppleness.”

“You would have to use the back of these … pages.”

Reynard raises an eyebrow.

“With the true script right there on the other side. I don't understand. If this is to fool some private collector—”

“It's not,” says Seamus.

“But do we have enough here, to create this book you wish?”

“If you need more, by God,” snaps Jack, “I'll give you the skin off my own back.”

Seamus kicks him under the table, as Reynard gives Jack a worried glance and takes another look at the page in his hand. He holds it up to the light again.

“Where
did
you get this?” he says, quiet but firm. “What is this … ?”

“I will not do this! It is an abomination.
Brute! Bete!”

“You will,” says Jack. “All you have to do is write what we tell you. You don't understand what's at stake here.”

‘? petty fraud,” says Reynard. “And a sick one. Your collector is some deviant, some beast,
non?
He would have to be to want this—this travesty.”

“This is about the future of the world,” says Jack. “You need proof?”

“Jack, wait,” says Seamus.

Jack grabs the francs off the table, throws them at Reynard.

“This is not about money. It's about this—”

And he spits a word out of his mouth that lifts Reynard up into the air and holds him there like a puppet on a string. Seamus can see the total panic on the man's face, absolute horror at these creatures with their satchel full of human skin and their magic words and, Christ, he'll never do it now. Seamus punches Jack full in the face with everything he's got and he goes down. Reynard crumples to the floor.

“Listen. Wait. No, wait.”

Reynard scrabbles back away from him.

“C'est diabolique! Vous etes le diable.
You are the Devil!”

And then Seamus is grabbing hold of the man, he is, and he's got him by the front of the shirt and he's dragging him in toward him, Jesus, maybe he is the Devil, because sure and he feels like a man possessed, with the roar in his head as loud as it's ever been, in the Somme or in Inchgillan or anywhere, as he pulls the man close and hisses something in his ear, not even knowing what it is he's saying, but it's such a word, oh Christ, that Seamus burns his mouth on it, he feels it ripping out of his lungs and ringing in his head, and then he's screaming and, fook, did he pass out then, did he?

What did he say to the man? What did he fookin say?