In the Evil Day

53

…WALES…

When they were on the motorway, he told her to drop him somewhere, anywhere, a petrol station, but she said no, they were going somewhere safe, he could decide what to do then.

Niemand didn’t argue. He tried to stay awake but the car was warm and quiet, the smell of leather, soft classical music on the player, and his head lolled and he fell asleep. He woke several times, registered nothing, and then they were entering a village on a narrow road with houses on both sides.

‘Almost there,’ said Jess.

He was asleep again before they were out of the village. He woke with the car going uphill on a stony dirt road, tight bends, their headlights reflecting off pools in the wheel ruts and turning stone walls silver.

They stopped.

An entrance, an old wooden gate.

‘Here,’ she said. ‘This is it.’

She was looking at him.

‘Where?’ he said.

‘Wales.’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Gate.’

He got out, shaky legs, no feeling in his feet. Wet air. Cold, a wind whipping. Dead black beyond the beam of the lights and the only sound the expensive hum of the Audi.

He expected resistance but the gate swung easily, old but maintained, no squeaks, grease in the hinges.

She drove through. Niemand closed the gate. He walked to the car, hurting in many places, the balls of his feet. He didn’t mind. He was glad to be alive. There was a Greek saying for what he felt, for gratitude for life outweighing pain and suffering. He reached for it, the tone of it was in his head, the way it was said, but the words didn’t come.

He got in. They went up a narrow, steep driveway, turned left. The headlights caught one end of a low building, a long cottage, small windows, and they went past it and lit up another building, a stone barn, a big building with brace-and-bar doors and a dormer window.

Jess stopped and got out, the engine running, the lights on. She stretched, arms to the sky, fingers outstretched, then she bent to touch her toes. She was smaller than he remembered her to be.

‘Let’s put it inside,’ she said. ‘I feel like I’m looking after someone’s baby.’

‘Me,’ said Niemand. ‘I’m the baby.’ He said the words without thought but he didn’t regret them, wanted to apologise more fully, thank her.

Jess didn’t reply. She went to the doors, fiddled with keys and unlocked two padlocks. Niemand opened the doors, new doors. The Audi’s lights lit a large space, new concrete floor. A vintage Morris Countryman was to the left, the one with a wooden frame. On a rack against the back wall were big tools: snipper, chainsaw, hedge-trimmer. In front of them stood a stack of bags of fertiliser. To the right, in a line, were an ordinary lawn mower, a ride-on mower, two trail bikes, a mulcher, all new-looking and clean.

Jess parked the Audi.

Lights off. Pitch dark.

The cabin light came on, she got out, opened the back door and removed their bags, closed the door. Dark again.

They didn’t move for a moment, silence.

‘Good gear,’ said Niemand. ‘And neat.’

‘Doctors,’ she said. ‘They’re rich. He’s a slob but she loves order. She wants to come and live here for a few years, grow things.’

He took the bags, closed the doors, and she padlocked them. They walked around the house to the front door, crunching the gravel.

‘No electricity,’ said Jess.

Inside, she found a candlestick close to the door and lit the candle with a plastic lighter. They were in a small hallway, coats and hats above a bench. Three doors opened off the room. She went first, through the lefthand one into a big low-ceilinged room. He could make out armchairs, a sofa, an open hearth.

‘There’s a generator,’ she said, ‘but the lamps will do tonight.’

He followed her through a door into a kitchen. There were Coleman lamps on a shelf. She lit two, she knew what she was doing, how to pump them. The grey-white light brought back memories for him, other places far away and long ago.

‘You need to eat,’ she said.

‘No,’ Niemand shook his head. ‘No thanks.’

In the car, he had woken each time with the nausea he always felt after fear, after firefights, any violence, the sick feeling, and with it the physical tiredness, as if some vital fluid in his body had been drained.

‘Are you…?’

‘Yeah, fine.’

His whole torso hurt, felt battered. It wasn’t a new feeling. The first time was at the School of Infantry, he had boxed against men much bigger, much stronger, badly overmatched, taking heavy body punches, to the ribs, the shoulders, low blows too.

‘Sure?’

‘Sure.’

‘Sleep then. It’s late.’ She pointed. ‘Through there. A bedroom, down the passage there’s a bathroom, I’ll light the water heater.’

Niemand looked around the room. He didn’t want to say it.

‘Jess,’ he said, ‘this place, they can connect it with you?’

‘Nice to hear you say my name,’ she said. ‘Con, who are they?’

‘I don’t know. The owners are your friends?’

‘Yes. I was at school with her sister.’

He was tired, he had trouble standing, legs weak, he had the feeling of not having feet. He put a hand on the back of a chair. ‘Who would know you could get the car, come here, this house?’

Jess touched her hair, pushed it back, he could see the tiredness in her.

‘I’ve been here with the owners,’ she said. ‘They’re in America. I keep an eye on their house in London. I don’t think anyone knows I’ve got these keys.’

Niemand tried to think about this but he gave up.

‘Listen, Jess,’ he said, ‘tomorrow I’ll go and you stay here and I’ll make sure they know you’re not with me, you’re not involved.’

‘Will you tell me what’s going on?’

‘Yes. In the morning. What I know.’

‘Go to bed,’ she said. ‘We’ll talk in the morning.’

For a moment, they stood looking at each other. Then he took a lamp and went to the bedroom, stripped. He walked down the narrow, short passage holding the lamp, almost bumped into her coming out of the bathroom, lowered the lamp to cover himself.

‘It’s too late for modesty,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’ve seen everything you’ve got.’

He showered, trying to keep the water off his bandage. Then he went back to the bedroom, dressed again and lay on the bed under the eiderdown, lay in the dark and listened.

Noise of the wind, hollow sound, lonely. He thought about the Swartberge, the survival course in the mountains, eyelashes frozen in the morning, lip cracks opening, the way human smells carried in the clean cold air.

They could find them here. There was no point in thinking otherwise. In the morning, he would ring the Wishart woman, tell her Jess knew nothing about the film, had never seen it, was only involved by accident. He would catch a bus, a train, go somewhere where he could work out how to get another passport.

The Irishman would help him. That was a possibility.

He drowsed, drifted away, not peaceful, exhausted.