While England Sleeps (26 page)

“I cannot let go what will not let me go,” I said.

Bonet gulped. For the first time that afternoon he appeared to be nonplussed.

“Well, that is all then, I suppose,” he said, rising, putting out his hand. “Good day, Mr. Botsford.”

“And can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“When something happens—when a decision is made—you will let me know. I’m staying at a pension in Altaguera. You can leave a message if I’m not in.”

“I would be pleased.”

He bowed.

“Goodbye, then,” I said.

“Goodbye, Mr. Botsford.”

“Goodbye, Brian,” Rupert said very softly.

I looked into his eyes, but they were blank.

“Goodbye, Rupert.”

A door swung open, revealing the claque of hovering guards.

The doors to the church, though heavy as trees, gave gently, at the slightest pressure. I stepped inside. Candles, lit for the dead, glowed in niches, illuminating ancient frescoes, as well as a hideous diorama: a plaster Christ impaled on the Cross, while nearby Mary prayed and wept—Mary, her hair wiry and red, was in fact a porcelain doll with glass eyes. A scent of must and roses wafted from an open door. My footsteps, as I trod the aisle, reverberated, a muffled throb that filtered through the church the way the candlelight and the rose scent did, seeming to blanket and protect. There was no one else there except an immense elderly nun who sat on the balcony, snoring quietly, her head listing to one side.

I knelt, as if to pray, on the stone floor. But I did not pray. Instead I thought of Rupert. How he got there—what strange twists of fortune had carried him from Cadogan Square to Altaguera—concerned me, at the moment, not a jot. Rather, his umbrella haunted me; that and the memory of those times I’d rejected—even humiliated—him. Might he still hold a grudge? I wondered. Might he use this opportunity to avenge himself—through Edward—on me?

When my knees began to ache, I pulled myself up, leaned back against a hard bench. Above me the old nun snored on, so huge and immobile she seemed at that moment almost to have taken root.

Light surged in as the doors to the church creaked open; a woman in black crossed herself and sank to her knees. And from her lips a flutter of Ave Marias took flight, gentle as birdsong, scattering into echo as they rose toward the vaulted ceiling.

Chapter Sixteen

The next morning I was back at the barracks. This time I asked for Bonet instead of Northrop. Bonet was unavailable. So was Rupert. Nonetheless I was shown into the same office, to the same desk, where now one Comrade West held reign. He had ragged blond hair and bitten nails. American.

“I spoke yesterday with your associate Comrade Bonet,” I said. “He promised he would let me know what judgment was reached regarding my friend Mr. Phelan, who is in the brig. But I haven’t heard from him. I was wondering if anything had transpired.”

West scratched his head. “Phelan . . . oh yes, the deserter! I’m afraid the news isn’t good. They say he’s to be shot two days from now.”

“Shot! But Bonet—”

“It’s a serious matter, desertion. We can’t have the other men thinking they can just—”

“He’s a boy!” I lunged out of my seat. “How can you shoot him? A boy?”

“Hey, it wasn’t
my
decision. I’m only telling you what I was told. You’ll have to speak to Northrop if you want to know more.”

“Is Northrop back from Barcelona?”

“Yes, but he’s not on the barracks. Now if you’ll excuse me—”

“When will he be back?”

“This afternoon, probably.”

He pretended to file papers.

As if on cue, two soldiers arrived to escort me—haul me—to the gate.

From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the brig—deadbolted, guarded on both sides.

I was back at the barracks gate at three.

This time I asked for West. He was unavailable. Bonet? No. Northrop? No. Rupert? Yes.

I had no idea what I was going to say. All that was certain was this: if a life was to be taken, it would not be Edward’s. Perhaps mine. Perhaps someone else’s. But not Edward’s.

Once again I was shown into the same office. Behind the desk Rupert writhed, his legs twined one round the other like pipe cleaners.

As soon as the door had closed, however, he rose from his chair and crouched next to me.

“Brian, what on earth are you doing here?” he whispered.

“I could ask you the same question.”

“Not so loud, please! I think what I’m doing is obvious. But you—”

“I’m trying to save a friend,” I said. “A boy. And probably you’ve never forgiven me, Rupert, for everything that happened—the umbrella and Lady Abernathy—and if that’s the case, I can’t blame you, but still, you must help me, for there’s no choice. A life is at stake. You must help me.”

Rupert looked perplexed. “But I don’t understand! What’s Phelan got to do with you? Or how—”

“He’s my friend. You understand? I love him. Or he loves me. Or rather, we lived together. And the point is, he wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me. If he dies his blood will be on my hands, and so you must help me, Rupert, no matter how you feel about what I did, you must—”

“I’m not the same as when you knew me before, Brian. I’m a Communist now.”

“I see that.”

“And in other ways I’m—not the same.” Suddenly his face brightened. “For instance, I’m engaged to be married. A nurse in the ambulance corps.”

“I don’t see what that’s got—”

Rupert’s lower lip quavered.

I saw.

From under heavy lids timid eyes glanced up.

I leaned back from him.

Well, why not? I thought. Why not blackmail, if through blackmail I might save Edward?

Like Bonet, I cracked my knuckles.

“Comrade Bonet is quite handsome,” I said loudly. “Don’t you think?”

“Brian!”

The door opened again. Northrop walked in.

Immediately Rupert leapt from his crouch, saluted.

“Comrade Halliwell.”

“Comrade Northrop.”

“Ah, Botsford. Somehow I’m not surprised to be seeing you again.”

Northrop took the chair Rupert had vacated.

Where he stood against the wall, Rupert wrung his hands.

“That’ll be all, then. I’ll handle this from here.”

“Goodbye, then.”

“Goodbye, Rupert.”

“Goodbye.”

Throwing me a last tortured glance, Rupert left.

“I hoped it wouldn’t come to this, Botsford,” Northrop said. “Really, I did everything I could to keep it from coming to this. But in the end it was out of my hands.”

“Everyone says that. A boy is to die, and everyone says it’s out of his hands.”

“Boys die every day. This is war.”

“They’re not killed by their countrymen.”

“As I said, there’s nothing I can do.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Is it my responsibility to convince you?”

I stood up. “I shall notify the press,” I said. “I shall notify the press in England that an English boy is to be killed by his peers. And I shall name you as his killer.”

Northrop coughed.

“And are you aware of what repercussions that sort of .
.
. outburst might have?”

“Perfectly.”

“I’m not talking about the war anymore, Botsford. I’m not even talking about what happens to Phelan. I’m talking about you.”

“What about me?”

“Don’t think journalists are pushovers. They’ll nose around, and what do you think they’ll find? That you and Phelan lived together, that you shared a bed-sitter with a double bed. That’s very odd, they’ll think, a university-educated fellow like you sharing a bed-sitter with a ticket collector from the underground! I wonder if Mr. Botsford might be a buggerer—”

“Shut up!”

“I wonder if he might have been buggering that boy—”

“Enough, Northrop!”

“And soon enough your family knows, his family knows. What about your writing career then? What’s your old nanny going to think if you get arrested? Not very nice for her to read in the paper that her beloved little boy is—”

I lunged at him. We wrestled, frantic, silent, the way we had when, as boys, we needed some prelude to grabbing at each other’s cocks. I could smell his hair tonic, smell the tobacco on his breath.

Then he was on top of me, with a single thrust he was hoisting me into the air, hurling me against the opposite wall.

My skull smacked the plaster. I dropped to the floor.

“Jesus, man, are you mad?” Northrop was shouting. “Are you completely barmy? Well, fuck it, then! Call your newspapers, wire the fucking BBC. I’ve had it up to here with both of you! The whole lot of you!”

He sat down again, scratched at his skull.

“You bastard,” I said.

“I do what I must do. There’s a war going on, in case you don’t remember.”

“But you brought him here! Jesus, you even gave him his fucking precious copy of
The Communist Manifesto
. He worshiped you!”

Northrop clawed at his own hair. “Don’t you see? He doesn’t matter! None of
us
matters!”

I looked at him. He appeared, suddenly, to be on the verge of tears.

For a few moments we just sat there.

I pulled myself up from the ground.

“I
shall
wire the press,” I said. “They’re sure to be more interested in what you’re doing than in what I’ve done. And I’m not frightened by your threats, nor do I accept your—your ludicrous logic. You may be willing to sacrifice Edward, but I’m not.”

“You don’t care about anyone but yourself, do you?”

“I care about Edward.”

Northrop looked away. “Oh, do your damnedest! Now get out. I’m sick to death of the sight of you.”

I left. Dust clouds rose outside. Church bells rang all over the city.

I wrote out the telegram. I carried it to the telegraph office. I stood nearly two hours in front of the telegraph office, while dust churned up around me, powdering my shoes, my clothes, my hair.

I stood there until the sun was low in the sky, the streets silent except for the sounds of a cat taking pleasure in the slow dismemberment of a bird.

The office closed. I turned around.

I never sent the telegram.

I suppose on some level I believed Northrop. I believed that they mattered more than we did. Their victories, their wars. Their loves.

I went to the station, where a huge yellow timetable charted departures and arrivals all over Spain.

Unfortunately the next train for anywhere wasn’t due out until four o’clock in the morning.

I bought a ticket for that train.

Back in my room I vomited violently.

Later, I looked out the room’s tiny window. Across the alley my mad neighbor ranted. It got dark. I hurled myself into bed, tried to will sleep upon myself. But it did not come. I lay awake for what seemed hours, moving restlessly, reliving peculiar moments from my childhood, school hurts, my mother’s death. For suddenly I wanted her—desperately. I wanted my mother. Oh, where was she now, that poor, befuddled woman? I had not appreciated her enough when she was alive. I had not. I had not grieved for her, as my brother and sister had, her abstractedness, her bountiful hair that seemed always about to fall from atop her head like a cigarette ash. Had she ever been happy? Had any of us? Father, silent in death as he was in life. Caroline, so rivalrous, though perhaps that is always the way with daughters. “Mother’s bed’s still warm, and Caroline’s reorganizing the kitchen! That just isn’t right!” And now Channing would be a doctor, like Father. “I shall cure cancer,” he told me. “I shall cure the cancer that took our mother’s life.” How I longed to run back to them all, to be reclaimed, rolled up into the rug of childhood and spilled out again, fresh, unsullied! Never to have known, much less betrayed, another’s love!

And then I was in the church basement. Edward, standing against the wall, shook his leg; his satchel slipped off his shoulder. And I thought, If I’d known then what I knew now, if I’d known what it would come to, would I still have approached him? Would I still have walked up and started talking to him?

Yes. Oh, yes.

I heard a loud rapping: Mother beating out the rugs. Mother! Why must you beat out the rugs in the middle of the night? But it continued.
“Señor! Señor!”

I sat up. One-thirty in the morning.

“Señor! Señor!”

“Who is it?”

“La portera!”

I stumbled out of bed, opened the door. The proprietress of the pension stood before me in bathrobe and slippers, talking and talking, yelling almost, very fast, in Spanish. “I don’t understand,” I mumbled, and then I did. Two gentlemen were waiting for me in the foyer, and in the future would I please refrain from asking visitors up so late; people were trying to sleep .
.
.