Sky High (7 page)

The shell of the MacMorris house was still smoking gently. It was as if someone had torn the top half roughly away, lifted it into the air, and dropped it back sideways on to the bottom half. The soft moonlight made it look somehow even more horrible.

The General said, ‘Here’s Artside. I asked him to come along.’ He sounded like a host putting a late guest at ease. ‘I’d like you to talk to Queen.’

‘Talk?’

‘Tell him he mustn’t go into that house yet.’

Constable Queen said obstinately, ‘It isn’t a matter of talk. It’s a matter of duty. The man may still be alive.’

‘My duty as a magistrate,’ said the General, ‘is to save any further loss of life. Tim, will you talk sense to him?’

Tim looked at the house.

‘There’s no one alive in there,’ he said. ‘The blast alone would kill instantly; even if nothing else hit him.’

The little crowd had fallen silent as Tim spoke. Nobody answered him directly. They were ready to help, if wanted, but were not going to put themselves forward. Tim could not help reflecting that most of them must have seen that sort of thing before in the last fifteen years.

‘I’ve sent for the fire brigade,’ said the General, and as he spoke a squeal of tyres on the main road brought all heads round together.

A big car cornered sharply and came to a halt. A dapper, black-haired man climbed out from behind the wheel, and Constable Queen went forward, relief evident in every line of his figure.

‘Good evening, Sergeant,’ said the General.

‘Good evening, sir,’ said Sergeant Gattie. ‘Would someone mind telling me what’s been happening?’

The General looked at his watch.

‘It happened just over fifteen minutes ago,’ he said. ‘I doubt if anyone can tell you much more than that.’

‘How many people inside?’

‘Only one, as far as we know. Major MacMorris. The next house is empty.’

‘Bit of luck there,’ agreed the sergeant. He caught sight of Tim and moved across.

‘Did you see it happen?’

‘More or less,’ said Tim. ‘My mother and I were both looking out of the window, and we got a good view, even if we were a bit far away. I don’t think it was a gas explosion, if that’s in your mind. Much too heavy. If it hadn’t been so impossible, I should have said a solid charge of H.E. And detonated.’

‘Would have made a good deal more sense in Tel Aviv,’ said the sergeant softly.

‘I agree,’ said Tim.

They had reached the back of the house, out of sight of the others. The damage here seemed less extensive.

They looked at each other.

‘If it hasn’t come down by now, it’ll probably stay put,’ agreed Tim.

That’s right,’ said Gattie. ‘I’ve often noticed that. It’s the first ten minutes you want to watch – whilst it’s still rocking. Have you got a torch?’

‘I’ve got my bicycle lamp. Better not let the others see. The General practically put Queen under arrest when he wanted to dash in.’

‘Quite right,’ said Gattie with a grin. His strong teeth showed white under his line of black moustache. ‘Can’t waste trained constables.’

There was no need to open a window. The whole casement, frame and all, was slewed outwards, sagging drunkenly on a single upright.

Inside the dust still hung in choking clouds.

Tim barely recognised the sitting-room he had been in two hours before. The word ‘snuggery’ came unbidden into his mind.

The light from Gattie’s torch was swivelling round the floor, along the rubble of plaster on the carpet, under the table, where a space showed, clear and black; a heap in the corner.

The sergeant squatted and probed gently. It was nothing more sinister than a tapestry stool, which some freak of the explosion had covered with the tablecloth and then buried in debris.

‘I think he’d be upstairs,’ croaked Tim. He was speaking through the handkerchief that he had tied over his mouth and nose.

Sergeant Gattie nodded. He also was wearing a handkerchief and it was impossible to make out much of his expression.

Tim slid gently out into the hall. The door was immovably shut, but it was no longer completely filling the doorway. The bottom half of the staircase was quite intact, the stair carpet and even the rods in position. The top half had disappeared.

Tim got as high as he could and felt above him. There was a ledge of broken joists. It was awkward, because he had to hold the bicycle lamp in one hand, but so far as he could feel it was tolerably secure.

After a moment’s thought, he put the lamp away. There was a dim radiance over everything, and he looked up and saw the moonlight shining through the space where the roof had been.

He pulled himself up, got one knee on the jagged edge, grabbed at something solid looking, found that it was a pile of loose slates, and started to slip.

The hand of Sergeant Gattie came up from below, grabbed his foot, and steered it into a hold.

This time it was easier. Another pull, a quick wriggle, and he was up.

If the bottom rooms were a mess, the top storey was naked Bedlam. The blast had been more direct and more wilful. It was almost impossible to tell where passage ended and room began.

If there’s any of him anywhere, thought Tim, he’ll be in his bedroom.

Immediately in front of him, turned on its side and almost completely blocking the passageway was a mountain of twisted metal which Tim tentatively identified, after stubbing his toes on it, as the cold water tank.

He edged round to the right of it, and a crunch of broken china suggested that he was now where the bathroom had been.

A few steps further and he sensed he was in the bedroom.

He got his lamp out again and flashed it around.

The explosion had played its usual tricks. Three of the walls were more or less intact. A picture, its glass unbroken, hung above the fireplace, whilst the heavy iron bed had been picked up bodily and flung across the room.

Pillows and bedclothes had been spewed about the floor.

There was one long, brightly coloured bolster lying against the wainscoting under the window. Tim looked at it twice before he realised that he had discovered Major MacMorris.

Forcing himself to hold the torch steady he made a quick examination. There was nothing that he could usefully do. The body presented that general appearance of a rag doll with all the stuffing out that high explosive produces where it lays its hands too intimately on a human being.

Lying beside MacMorris, on the floor, was an envelope. The flap was stuck down and the envelope itself was old, and crumpled, as if with much handling. Impossible to guess where it had come from. Off the table, out of the eviscerated cupboard or the ripped-up chest of drawers? Had it fluttered down from behind some picture? Or had it been by chance in MacMorris’ hand at the moment of the explosion? He pushed it into his pocket for later inspection.

Tim had no real recollection of going back. The next thing he clearly remembered was sitting on the edge of the broken staircase. Sergeant Gattie was peering up at him.

‘You found him, did you?’ he said.

‘He’s in the bedroom,’said Tim. ‘He’s wearing pyjamas – I think.’

‘Was he in bed, when it went off?’

Tim forced himself to think.

‘He might have been sitting on the bed,’ he said, at last. ‘I don’t think he was in it or he’d have been lying by the mattress and the bedclothes. They were the other side of the room. They might have protected him a bit.’

‘And he’s—’

‘Yes,’ said Tim. ‘Yes. Very definitely. I’ve hardly ever in my life seen anyone more so.’

Sergeant Gattie peered up at him again. His face and head were white with plaster. It was so caked into his hair and smothered over his forehead that it was difficult to see where the handkerchief over his nose and mouth began. Only his black eyes were alive.

Tim felt an urgent desire to laugh at him, but he had a feeling that once he started he might not be able to stop.

‘I should come down if I were you, sir,’ said Sergeant Gattie. That sounds like the fire brigade arriving. We’d better give them a clear run.’

The following evening, after supper, Liz Artside put down her book and said, ‘How much did I ever tell you about your father’s death?’

‘Never very much,’ said Tim, looking up with a frown from a black covered exercise book in which he was working out something in pencil.

‘I wasn’t sure,’ said Liz.

It looked for a moment as if that was the end of the conversation. Tim picked up his pencil again.

‘I meant to explain about last night,’ said Liz. ‘I’ve been thinking about it. I expect it was the coincidence that set me off.’

‘I knew that Dad got blown up,’ said Tim slowly, ‘and that it was an accident, and that it happened in Cologne, a little time before I was born. That’s really all anyone’s ever told me about it.’

Liz said slowly, ‘It was an autumn evening, like yesterday, only rather darker and more overcast. I was sitting, looking out of the window. We had a flat in the Onkeldam suburb, overlooking the Rhine, just south of the city. From where I sat I could see Bill’s headquarter building. It was a big house – an old school – further up, on the South Bank. He was working late that night. He didn’t often work late. He usually got it all done in the day and he liked to sit at home in the evenings and plan what we were going to do when we got back to England.’

Tim looked up quickly. But there was no feeling there, suppressed or other. His mother’s voice was as matter-of-fact as it always was.

That evening he had told me he would be late. There’d been some trouble. It was large scale looting by one of the Army contractors. He had all the papers with him to study. I think it was worrying him, a little. We had dinner together, and he left soon afterwards. I could see the window of his office. It was almost the only lighted one in the building. Then, suddenly, just like last night, when no one was expecting anything in particular, it happened.’

The same sort of explosion as last night?’

‘Not really. They wouldn’t have the same sort of explosives in those days, would they? It was a sort of white glare. Then the crash. Then lots and lots of smoke. I knew that something awful had happened and I ran down and out into the street. I’d forgotten about curfew. There wasn’t a person or a car in sight. I ran all the way there, through the empty streets. It was nearly a mile, and I don’t remember feeling tired at all, but it must have taken some time, because when I got there, there was a cordon round the building and they wouldn’t let me in. They never let me see the body. I never saw Bill again.’

Liz was silent, looking back at her more than thirty years younger self, a serious, rather squat black-haired girl, scudding through the empty streets of Cologne. She had wondered afterwards why it hadn’t killed the four-month old child she was carrying. Afterwards. Not at the time. At the time she hadn’t given it a thought. It had started to drizzle, she remembered. She had been glad, because people were unable to tell if the moisture on her face had been tears or rain. It had seemed important then.

She was silent for so long that Tim said, ‘I shouldn’t go on if it worries you.’

‘It doesn’t worry me,’ said Liz. ‘I worried so much at the time that, in the end, I worried all the worry out of myself. I got calloused over. Nature’s like that, she breeds her own anti-bodies. I haven’t talked to you about it before, but it wasn’t because it worried me – at least, not that part of it. It was the thoughts which came afterwards.’

Tim looked up sharply, but said nothing.

‘There was a Court of Inquiry and I suppose there was an inquest as well, but I don’t remember it. It came out that there had been a lot of explosive stored in the headquarters building. It seemed a bit odd. But I don’t think people were quite so careful about things then. We’d just finished the biggest war anyone had ever heard of and I expect people were still a bit casual. It came out that the engineers had been dismantling the charges which the Germans had laid under the Rhine bridges. The charges had never been used, because the war was over before we got near the Rhine, but they had to be dug out eventually and disposed of. I gather they were quite primitive things – slabs of gun-cotton and detonators – and, of course, they’d taken out all the detonators, or thought they had.’

‘But they hadn’t?’

‘So the Court of Inquiry decided. I didn’t understand it all. There was talk about some gun-cotton which had been protected and some which should have been but hadn’t.’

‘Sheathed, I believe we call it now.’

‘Something like that. It was just one of those ghastly mistakes that happens. The C.R.E. was the man I was sorry for. Brigadier Tom Havers. He was a nice little person, with a face just like a duck. It was the end of him, of course.’

‘He got the sack?’

‘Yes. I don’t think he was cashiered. Severely reprimanded and lost seniority. He took the hint and handed in his papers. I never thought it was his fault at all, and I said so. We were very good friends after he left the Army.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘He’s dead. He died a few years later – boredom, I fancy.’

‘Was it an accident?’ said Tim.

His mother did not reply directly. She got up and went across to the cupboard in the corner of the room and pulled out a heavy, old-fashioned, cash box. Originally, no doubt, impressive in green and gilt, it was worn with age and travel to a uniform drab. Tim could remember that box as long as he could remember anything. It was full of old Post Office Savings books, certificates, passports, licences, photographs; the hundred and one things that had once seemed valuable. From it she extracted a bundle of letters, fastened with a rubber band, and took out the top one.

It was evident that she knew just where it was and that she had taken it out lately.

She passed it across to Tim, who looked at it curiously.

It was on cheap grey paper, much folded, in the faded, chunky handwriting that he knew to be his father’s. It was undated, and headed Trenches, near Ginchy’. It said:

‘Darling Liz, a great day. I’ve got my “step”. In fact, the chances are the next letter I write won’t be headed “trenches”, but Chateau – Something-or-other. In this part of the line even Brigade Commanders live in Chateaus (Chateaux?). If Roney gets the Corps – and no one deserves it more thoroughly – then it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility – splotch – sorry, that was half a ton of flying pig landed near the dug-out door and blew out the candle. Don’t worry about it, though. My privilege as Commanding Officer is to have the deepest and safest dug-out. As I was saying. It’s not even beyond the bounds of possibility that they might leap-frog me straight up to Division! In which case, I shall be writing to you on embossed notepaper, and I shan’t even post it. I shall get one of my gilded aide-de-camps to bring it to you personally. Seriously, though, I do sometimes wonder how all this is going to end. Most people at the top are doing jobs that are two, three and four grades higher than they could hope to hold down in peace time. To say nothing of the fact that we always treat the Armed Forces as Cinderella as soon as the war is over. I suppose the cynical answer is to make the most of it whilst it’s there. You can hardly expect the government to maintain a war-sized army in peace time so as not to have to demote a lot of brass-hats. However, don’t let’s count chickens. Better to wait and see if we get up there, before complaining about being booted down again.’