Heavy, p.45
Heavy, page 45
She prayed for Maureen.
One of the Cures the Chinese had invented was the simple sound of dripping water. She had read about it. The dripping wore away at the mind the way that it wore away at stones over time; Irene was perfectly certain that Maureen, who was easily bored and constantly fidgeting, would be driven to insanity far faster than anyone else.
Captain Foley bent to the firelight and screwed up his face to get a proper look at his own hand-drawn map. His hand strayed over the Party buildings. They appeared to feature in his contemplation, but he did not seem to want to waste the batteries of his torch on it.
After a while, he tossed the map into the fire, and lay down.
Irene contorted herself on the cold concrete floor. After weeks of sleeping on the sled, on the frozen ground, on the tiled floor of the mosque, and one night on some sacks of rice in Jake Zen’s strange outpost, the concrete floor still felt unduly uncomfortable.
She could not sleep. Little by little, the fire burned down, until it was nothing more than glowing embers against the unforgiving concrete. She lay surrounded by sleeping bodies. Captain Foley breathed deep and easy; Ridell gurgled and gasped and groaned and made sounds like a backed-up lavatory, as he always did. Mr. Shoe’s heavy, uneven breaths and occasional snores did not join the chorus: Irene peered into the dark.
He lay back-to-back with the man who had brought him back, staring into the last of the fire.
“Please don’t run off again,” Irene whispered.
“It was hardly running.”
“If you leave us here alone—”
“Then I won’t be with you when you’re inevitably caught and interrogated,” he said, in a harsh, low voice. “You do understand that’s going to happen no matter what he does, no matter what I say to them?”
There was none of his warm, enveloping charm. He seemed alien, as abrasive as a scrape from rough stone. Irene thought: You won’t persuade anyone like this.
“We need an interpreter.”
“I think,” said Ernie, rolling on his side to face Ridell’s back, “you can understand a kick in the stomach without an interpreter.”
Dawn woke her. The morning cars had already passed: their rush hour was before it got light, and inside this new building the sound of the farther-away road did not cut into her dreams. Irene felt her hair, still wrapped in its scarf, and knew full well that she would have to cut all of it off on her return to England. Mother and Father would be unimpressed with her lack of brushing; whatever cover had been provided for her long absence would not explain why she was so unkempt.
“Good morning, Irene,” said Captain Foley, already on his feet. “I’m afraid I’m torn between taking us on a little further reconnaissance for the extraction and laying low until I’m sure we’re not under observation. A thorny problem, and one I wish to God I had coffee for.”
Irene looked up at him dumbly as Ridell and Ernie, silent as two graveyard statues, sat up and stretched on the far side of the dead fire. “Extraction, sir?”
He looked surprised. “Well, naturally. Coffee, I find, is one of those vices it’s impossible to give up. Smoking one can just dip in and out of at will, but coffee is the devil – excuse my French.”
With this, Captain Foley went to his canteen and splashed water on his face. The water must have frozen and thawed dozens of times within the walls of the steel bottle; it was fit for little else but washing now. He sat down, cross-legged on the floor, and used the back of his cigarette case as a mirror to shave in.
Extraction.
Irene’s heart gave a tentative leap.
Ridell said to Ernie, “I will sit on your SWEARWORD legs if you even think about SWEARWORD going to that SWEARWORD door.”
She removed the scarf from her hair – cold air enveloped her head immediately – and replaced it in a less tangled position. The smell of unwashed hair, unwashed clothes, and unwashed bodies had grown familiar, and now – watching Captain Foley shave – she felt a little ashamed of this. For the first time since leaving home she felt her sex acutely; she was dishevelled, as they were, but she had a duty to remain presentable. Captain Foley, after all, was doing his part.
Irene recalled that Maureen looked as if she had been dragged through a hedge or ten backward and that her hair was two different colours at once. She bit the end of her tongue; Maureen was in no position to fuss about her appearance, for all that she ever seemed to anyway.
“I’m going for a SWEARWORD, you SWEARWORD,” Ernie replied, angrily.
“You said that last time and then I had to punch you in the SWEARWORD head,” Ridell pointed out. “SWEARWORD well stay where you SWEARWORD are.”
“For safety’s sake,” said Captain Foley, his safety razor scraping over the underside of his chin, “I shall have to pursue reconnaissance alone today, Irene. I couldn’t live with myself if you ended up in custody too.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Irene.
“We’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed, eh, Irene?” said Captain Foley, swatting his face with his handkerchief. “Brr. That is invigorating.”
“Sir,” Irene began. “The extraction—”
“As soon as I know where we’re going and how best to avoid pursuit,” Captain Foley said, turning to give her a smile she recognised as indulgent. “I’m aware there’s a limited time frame. If we leave it too long the chance will be gone. But those who run in haste stumble, and we’ve done enough stumbling on this mission. Braithwaite will not forgive us if we muck it up.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Irene. “Sorry, Sir.”
He rose, made a show of patting his pockets and gathering up pencil stubs, and left them in the deserted foyer with a cheery wave, as if he were leaving to see the football.
Maureen only had to hold out for as long as it took them to come to her, Irene thought. It was a comfort. She was blessed with a certain amount of natural fortitude, and if she could only keep her spirits up in custody there would be a chance that she would be in better shape than… than…
She faltered a little, as Ernie spat a gob of saliva at Ridell like a foul little schoolboy, and Ridell cursed at him like a sailor, but she rallied. She would pray for Maureen, and she would pray for them all.
With luck and God on their side, Maureen would come to be saved not only from the clutches of the Communists but from her own internal imprisonment by false ideals – grateful for their intervention, exposed to the horrors of the Left, she would swing around to support her Country. It would be All Right.
With undertones of desperation slipping into their row, the two battered men squabbling like little boys ignored her as if she were not there. Irene was accustomed to this, and she could scarcely see that the alternative would be an improvement. She had been warned before that men were Not To Be Trusted With Lone Women, but had not really supposed that the test of their character and self-restraint would come while the men in question were slinging accusations of sodomy at each other.
It was hard to imagine Maureen admitting she was wrong, exactly, but as Irene organised the remaining supplies into one easily-lifted bag, she thought she could picture the woman saying, Jolly silly of me to think the Left was the solution, wasn’t it? Still, I’ve had my eyes opened, all right. Shan’t be making that mistake twice!, as bluff and whole and infuriating as ever.
* * *
Despite not having requested an entire day being subjected to threats of being sat on, having his legs broken (again) and getting the world’s closest and least welcome escort every time he went to piss, Ernie got just that.
Dick left them shortly after dawn, blithely surprising Ernie with his insistence that he have to get some more bearings if we’re going to get this woman out of here, his satchel swinging against his side as he marched off whistling.
While Jack threatened bodily inconvenience if he, Ernie, so much as considered leaving, Ernie sprawled on the grim concrete floor and tried to work out if he’d heard correctly, if he remembered right.
Dick was looking to spring Maureen. Presumably not on his own, that being a degree of risk-ridden heroism that was ironically somewhat more Maureen’s forte. Ernie allowed himself a thin smile. She’d probably made ten escape attempts already. She’d probably managed to get herself locked up somewhere diabolically secure, if they had any such prison in this cowed, empty-seeming town. It would not be easy, and Dick would want to strategize.
It was apparent, then, that the expertise of someone who’d lived a decade in this country – albeit thousands of miles to the south and east, in easy reach of the sea and with a network of actual accomplices and support – was going to be necessary.
Ernie sat up next to their temporary hearth and absently chewed his knuckle through his glove. It tasted every bit as foul as it smelt. She’d probably still be at the police station; even in the transport of infiltrators paperwork was the SinoSoviet watchword, and processing her would take time. If they were unlucky, and there was someone ambitious working in the station, they would have to contend with a certain amount of physical damage – Ernie ran his tongue over his missing teeth.
If the city wasn’t equipped with its own centre for dealing with Enemies of the People – and it was a nowhere place, this oil town – or if they deemed Maureen a big enough threat, someone would be required to escort her to Beijing. That would take days.
His stomach made a pitiful noise.
Jack Ridell said, “We’re out of kindling.”
“Go and get some, then,” Ernie suggested, spite taking over his tongue while his brain worked.
“Very fucking funny.”
He listened with half an ear as Jack explained to Irene what sort of wood to look for. They were in the middle of a bloody building site, he thought. There had to be something.
A small twinge of guilt – the brief light of a cigarette, swiftly extinguished – flared in him at the idea of sending her out alone. She wouldn’t be going far. Irene was not Maureen; she could be relied upon not to do anything stupid or dramatic or dangerous.
Dick at least hadn’t changed in one respect, Ernie thought, as Irene rose to leave bundled up in clothing until she looked like an old woman or a child with an overbearing mother. The urge, strong as it ever was, to see that he lost no one. Maureen was an annoying, unpredictable, dangerous and unexpected addition to the party and yet he still wanted to put himself out to fetch her back.
Ernie grudgingly admitted that it was pretty big of him.
Did I really hear him in the dark of that room? he thought, as Jack went through the bag Irene had just packed, looking for matches, or a Ronson. Perhaps I just wanted to hear a friendly voice.
Dick could even be said to have seen a little of himself in Maureen, he thought. There was an undeniable similarity, their cheerful confidence that Everything Would Be Alright. Dick’s borne of careful planning and a lifetime of experience, Maureen’s of whatever mad fantasy she’d constructed in her head. Irksome, but not entirely without its charm…
For the rest of the stingy, brief hours of daylight he turned over in his head what precautions Dick would need to take, what phrases he might need, what obstacles the city’s police force might present. Forged paperwork demanding the release of the prisoner; a brisk manner and perhaps some officious Russian, something to throw attention off their appearances; or an infiltration based solely on stealth. They had counselled against these, in his training. Risky. Heroic-looking but guaranteed to cause casualties. Much better to lie politely and move in and out unimpeded. No doubt Dick knew this.
Dick returned just after the skies outside the building grew thick with ominous, heavy clouds, and the night fell upon them with the uncouth abruptness of a roof collapse. He was pink with the cold, pleased with himself, trailing snow into the relative warmth of their temporary base.
“One doesn’t like to tempt fate,” Dick said, without waiting for any questions, as he tossed his satchel lightly onto the floor, “but I do think that went rather well, all things considered. Yes, rather well. Oh, you have the fire going, splendid. It’s chilly out there.”
He rubbed his hands theatrically in front of the small flames, making brr noises.
“Irene got more kindling,” said Ernie.
“Mm,” said Dick. “You’ll be pleased to see her, no doubt.”
He did not elaborate on this for some time, only removed from his satchel a handful of white balls of what seemed to be baked potato paste, or something similar, wrapped in paper. The paper had been stamped in red with the name of what Ernie assumed was a shop; someone’s family chop, a little stylised nonsense about migrating birds. Plainly he’d come upon some money from somewhere: they had been bought.
Dick distributed them.
“I was thinking,” said Ernie, the substitute rice-cake in hand, as if he hadn’t tried to flee the scene the day before, “that if you’re going toe-to-toe with the authorities here I might be able to provide a few pointers.”
“Very kind of you,” said Dick, taking a bite out of his dinner and making an immediate face. “It’s like glue,” he said, evidently unimpressed. “What’s the lie of the land from your perspective, Ernie?”
“Paperwork,” said Ernie, promptly, ignoring his potato-cum-rice cake. “The more paperwork you can drown them in the more likely they are to just comply without question. If this place is anything like Nanjing, as long as you have some important seals and papers and can act a big enough bully, no one will ask a single question.”
“That’s very interesting,” said Dick. “We’re not in the most effective position to generate our own paperwork here.”
“It’s less risky than pulling a more brutal in-and-out rescue mission,” Ernie pointed out. “And supplies can be purloined. Or bought. If you have money.”
Ernie realised that, in the silence of their foyer base, Jack and Irene were listening to him intently. She was a paperwork-handler herself, Dick had said, in passing, hadn’t he? Irene was an efficient administrative machine; you’d ‘need six women to replace her’. Quite why he’d brought her along, why he’d sent her after him, why – it had never really made sense. But she could, he was sure, cough up the goods if they just had something to work with. He remembered clearly enough the right form, just didn't stand a hope in hell of drawing it tidily any more.
“A foreigner going in and buying red ink and stamp-carving supplies might look a touch suspicious,” said Dick, with a quirk of the mouth, “but agree, we have to consider it.”
“They could be bought separately,” said Irene, cutting into the silence. “I could go to different shops. With a note. Running errands for someone more important.”
“That’s right,” Dick said, cheerfully. “I told you today had gone rather well. I think we shall have this situation under control very soon.”
Squatting by a second night’s cinders, trying to coax wet wood into flame, Pig found he’d already given Maureen up for dead.
Foley left, satchel over shoulder. Miss Gaitskill left, note transcribed from Ernie’s clumsy, wobbling hands shoved into pocket.
It was not what he wanted, he told himself, as he scuffed the ashes with the sole of his boot and started again. It was just what was most likely.
The Hospice Regrets Deeply To Inform You
More fired up than he had been since Pig wrapped himself about his legs and toppled him, Ernie made frustrated noises as he went through the supplies. There was little left and Miss Gaitskill had already repacked them twice; Ernie seemed less interested in the durable kit they’d kept from the snowfields and that which they’d acquired from Zen, turning out pieces of paper and muttering.
It wasn’t what he wanted, it was just what happened. Rankin, up in flames. Michael hanging from the cord of his dressing gown. Just what happened when anyone was in his orbit.
What had Foley said… what exactly had he said?
He’d come back to the building, their new base, their new hiding place. He’d been pleased. There was a look in his eye. Beneficent. Was that it? Rev. Prewitt’s borrowed English & Language And Grammar For Boys. There were balls of gum. Nothing here had the texture it did in England, or in the disputed territories. No grittiness or graininess, just cloudlike malleability. Unstable, soft.
Pig shook his head. What had he said?
I’ll hold his legs but we have to make it quick.
No, not then. What had he said now?
There were the balls of gum. Ernie was excited, back on Foley’s right hand as if he belonged there. As if Pig had only imagined chasing him through the snow. As if there wasn’t still Ernie’s blood mingled with his own on the increasingly gory front of his coat, on his scarf, on his hands.
Pig squinted at Ernie, legs splayed on concrete, trying to form letters with cold, shaking hands. Not letters, characters. Chinese writing, where every word was a tiny picture.
Before Ernie got excited, started making plans. Before Miss Gaitskill offered to get something or watch someone or carry something or be useful somehow, anxious and tiny. Foley had said something. Something about getting someone.
He coughed, and felt the itch inside what was left of his nose that in other times would have been the birth of a sneeze. Now it was just uncomfortable. He couldn’t sneeze, and he couldn’t rid himself of the itch. Pig contorted his face and tried to keep his hands away from his nostrils: If you keep scratching your scars we will tie you to the bed, Ridell.
That was it. Foley had come in, thrown down his satchel full of gum balls, gooey cake things, wrapped up in shop paper and stamped by a shop keeper, and said the day was good, and said they were making progress, and said to Ernie: You’ll be glad.
Something like that.
He’d said to Ernie, “You will be glad to hear I’ve found a way to get—“
Was it him or her?
