Out of Time (31 page)

Things had gone very quiet. The enemy was lying in ungainly positions on the ground. All were dead. The horses, eased of their burdens, grazed in unconcern, as though nothing had happened.

They had won. Joe looked round. Meredith was limping towards him, pale but upright. Joe gave him the thumbs up sign and they grinned at one another. Victory tasted sweet.

Joe turned and noticed at the far end of the line of trees a group standing like statues in a semi-circle, Randolph, Belinda, Otto. They were looking down. His heart stood still. He walked slowly, deliberately, towards them, his intuition telling him what he did not want to know. ‘No, it’s not possible, not possible,’ he told himself. He moved forward in a trance, everything happening in slow motion, his steps, Meredith coming up behind him, Belinda putting her hands to her face, Otto turning to look at him, slow, slow motion as though time had frozen.

He reached them and the circle opened before him. Lying between the two men she had slain lay Kathryn, her fair hair tumbled over her face, partly obscuring it. She did not move.

Joe knelt at her side. He felt as though the life had gone out of him.

THEY carried her on a bier, Joe and Meredith at the front, Belinda and Randolph at the back. All were wounded. Otto led the procession, past the house closed in on its mysterious self, up the grassy slope to the crest of the hill. Here they gave Kathryn one last sight of the beloved land below. They walked slowly to the farm, taking care not to jog her, they carried her into every paddock and every shed, stopping by each animal, and down into the fields where cows and oxen grazed. They rested the bier by the stream and sprinkled drops of water on her hair and face.

Then, satisfied that she had seen everything for the last time, the small procession moved to the cemetery and lowered her gently into her grave, freshly dug the night before by Randolph and Meredith. The amber necklace rested on her neck.

‘You come from the earth and we return you to the earth. Your deeds live after you. We will never forget you.’

Joe took a knife out of his pocket and with desperate intensity hacked at chunks of his hair, leaving himself half bald. He spread them gently over her, then watched the clods fall, until nothing remained but fresh earth. They planted a sapling silver birch, elegant and lithe like Kathryn herself, to watch over her.

Joe was the first to leave. The others followed. They gathered in the kitchen, listlessly drank mead and toasted Kathryn in celebration of her life. They regarded one another blankly, each one too deep in sorrow to find words. No one knew what to say. They looked with sympathy at Joe but he had withdrawn into himself. They could not reach him. Tainted by the finger of death and sorrow, numb with shock and confusion, Joe felt like an untouchable, someone with a terminal illness who needed to keep the world at bay. He was superfluous, had no hold on life. His raison d’être had ceased to exist.

Ignoring his wounds, he wandered into the farmyard in the hope of finding something to do in this pointless universe, to replace loose tiles, rehang a stable door, all jobs that were outstanding. He got as far as the tool shed, collected the gear but when he looked at the repairs that had once seemed urgent decided they did not need doing after all. He put everything away, uncertain where to go.

The ordinariness of life overwhelmed him. Why had everything not stopped with this cataclysmic event, why did the animals go on eating, the grass growing, the sun shining? He realised with despair that the unheeding world would go on turning, indifferent to sorrow.

Randolph approached him with an oblique invitation,

‘I’ve got a carving to complete.’

Joe followed him into the shed. He had started on a composite group of wolves standing proud, ears forward, listening. It was only partially sculpted out of the square block of wood he had prepared a lifetime ago. He studied its form and feigned interest in what he was going to do next but the emerging sculpture held neither meaning nor promise. He dutifully picked up a gouge but it lay limp in his hand. He watched Randolph busy and purposeful and then, muttering an excuse, wandered back to the top of the hill where so recently he had carried Kathryn on her last journey. His back against a tree, he absently surveyed the land, green undulations once as familiar as his erstwhile home. They now seemed like a foreign country.

Meredith limped up the hill and sat beside him, put out a comforting hand but then withdrew it. Joe was too distant. Meredith felt he was intruding but he stayed, a silent companion. Joe was only marginally aware of his presence.

‘It must be time to milk the cows,’ Joe said eventually. He rose wearily.

‘Not till the evening. It’s only morning now.’

‘I’ve been here several hours, haven’t I?’

‘No,’ Meredith gently said. ‘It’s still morning.’

Time had stopped, a minute passing like an hour, an hour like a day. The sun stood still, the world stood still, feeling ceased. That day passed like a year, the next day and the next like a slow, endless journey in a spiritual no man’s land.

‘This must be what hell is like,’ Joe thought vaguely, not caring. Oblivious to the outside world, without emotion in the inner, he barely knew what had happened. No tears came, no outpouring of grief. He had the curious sensation that his body existed only in outline, the rest transparent, invisible. He clutched his stomach to make sure it was there, he was surprised to find his heart still beating when he placed his hand against it. He did not know it but his eyes had gone dead.

How he passed time he never knew, realised with hindsight that he had been like the walking dead for weeks on end. Only scattered memories remained. His only remedy was work, carried out with the mechanical gestures of old habit. He worked all day and took to wandering about the countryside all night, exploring further and further the wilderness that surrounded farm and house. He became familiar with the forest’s night sounds and the furtive activities of busy night animals. Once, he came face to face with a pack of wolves. He looked them coldly in the eye and they fled and Joe ran after them in the grip of a boundless rage, the Furies lending him speed and strength. He wanted to kill but the wolves were too quick for him and disappeared into the trees. Joe stayed in the wood that night, his anger turned in on himself. He felt unclean, unworthy to have survived.

He returned to the carving shed and, choosing times when Randolph was busy elsewhere, gradually finished the wooden sculpture. The wolves were no longer looking forward, planning their next move, but were crouching, snarling, tongues lolling, teeth bared, ears lying back, one male wolf, behind him four wolverines. Joe was shocked at the ferocity he had brought to life. He hid it in a corner, and did no more.

*

Helmuth has waited in vain for the return of his troops and the captured boy. He cannot believe that his well-trained men have been vanquished. He sends two scouts to follow their trail.

The scouts return and tremblingly inform him that there is no sign of the men but they have captured all the riderless horses wandering in the countryside. They have brought them back in the hope that they will not be punished.

Helmuth is not accustomed to being thwarted. He lays his hands on the two scouts and throttles them. The Councillors watch impassively.

Helmuth storms out of the Meeting Room to pace in rage inside his own house. The refusal of the dissidents to be eliminated, to remain alive, is like a death-toll to his own existence. They personify who he once was and can no longer afford to be.

*

Joe no longer slept in the house. It held too many memories and he shunned it, sometimes lying in the hay barn all night, shivering. Meredith or Randolph would sit beside him, sometimes Belinda, occasionally Otto but there was little to be said. He felt estranged. He wanted to be away, anywhere except here where every dewdrop reminded him of what had been and never again could be. He felt his old world pulling him back but it was a lost land he did not know how to reach.

Late autumn turned to a bright early winter. Leaves eddied to the ground. He remembered how he and Kathryn would kick them into burnished spirals, how joyful they had been. He had lost Paradise. He turned away but there was no escaping memory, nowhere to hide. It waited to attack at every turn, from every crevice.

The temperature dropped and the nights turned too cold for Joe to remain outside. He did not enter the room that had witnessed his and Kathryn’s passion and wandered round the house to find another, settling finally in a small cell facing the back courtyard and the hill. There was no view and no sunshine. This suited his blank mood.

Guard duty was now desultory for they were familiar enough with the townspeople to know that, despite their ignominious defeat, it would be some time before they gathered enough energy to attack again. Apathy would take over after so strong a burst of energy. It gave the community some respite and space in which to try and recover.

It was now their habit to collect at breakfast time and start the day together. It gave them strength. Joe did not join them. He preferred to be alone, leaving the house at dawn to feed the animals and milk the cows for he had taken to waking in the dark, early hours. He did not want to lie in bed and brood, to put out a sleepy arm to a form that was no longer there, to recreate Kathryn, how she had looked, how moved, how smelt, fragrant and clean, hear her voice and her infectious laugh. How they had laughed together! He had deluded himself into believing it would go on forever. Sometimes he was overcome with guilt. Had he used every minute, every second to its full? He thought with shame of his escape to the cave. All those precious days, hours, minutes lost. He would give the world to have them back and spend them with his beloved.

The early risings had the disadvantage of a long morning but Joe was perfecting the art of keeping himself busy and, under Randolph’s tutelage, had taken to hunting whenever food was needed and even when it was not. This gave him the excuse for long wanders in the wilderness, close observation of the wild life and an occupation to stifle his bewilderment. He could not believe that Kathryn could be there one minute and not the next, could not visualise her unbeing. His mind perceived what his heart failed to absorb and he would turn automatically to speak to her about the most trivial event, about things that would amuse her; but his words met empty air.

One morning, his daily tasks completed, unable to immerse himself in other work, he wandered into the house while the others were having breakfast and sat down with them. They smiled at him and he began a random conversation about some fencing that needed repair. But as he spoke he felt hot tears fall down his cheeks, unbidden and unwanted; no sobs, no crying, only tears. He turned his head aside in embarrassment, wiped them away and resumed what he was saying; but they kept falling. He apologised self-consciously and ran from the room but Otto went after him and seized him gently by the shoulders.

‘Come and sit down. You can’t keep grief inside you forever, Joe. It will poison you. Let it out, share it. We need to cry too and for every tear we shed there is one less.’

Joe was not accustomed to crying but he found now that, whatever he was doing, no matter how mundane the task, even when thinking about nothing in particular, the tears would come as though a hidden spring was pushing to get out and wash away his sorrow. He wiped them away with his hand.

One blustery night he returned to Kathryn’s grave. The silver birch had shed its tremulous leaves and the dug earth had darkened. He flung himself down with desolating cries, a last farewell. They brought him back to the house in the morning.

*

The guard brings into the dungeon a grim-looking man dressed in black, clearly someone in authority. The children are told to line up and he walks up and down, looking carefully at each child. Then he points at Rob and Margaret and says:

‘Those two.’

‘You’re going somewhere else to work,’ the guard says brusquely.

They are told to bundle up their meagre possessions and are marched out of the sewer, their hands tied behind their backs. They are pushed into the back of a cart.

‘Take them to Star Farm,’ the driver is instructed.

Despite the relief of leaving the dungeon, Rob and Margaret are certain that their last days have come. They lie inert in the cart, bruised and uncomfortable but at least in glorious fresh air. They gaze into the sky and wish they could fly into it for ever and ever, away from the hell that is earth. At least in their last days they will have seen and felt the sun. They smile at one another.

Soon they notice that the rooftops they have been passing have been replaced by trees. This is even more wonderful. They are in heaven and in hell.

Eventually the cart stops, the guards let down the tailboard and haul them out. They are tied together and locked inside a dark wooden shed, the only light seeping through knots in its wooden sides; but even this is a gift after the endless nights in the dungeon.

They listen to the noise of the departing cart. They are alone. Nothing happens. Mice and rats scuttle round the floor, the bolder of the rats inspecting these small shivering humans. One starts to nibble Margaret’s big toe but she kicks it away. The children are used to rats.