I turn to thank her, my arm brushing against her breast.
‘On your way,’ she says resignedly.
‘I’ve disappointed you.’
‘You said you had to crack on.’
I begin to dress. Grace slips into a nightgown, her breasts and a roll of skin at her belly bulging against the satin. Standing inside the bedroom doorway she adopts the posture of sentry, her arms folded. On her face she wears an expression of impatience. ‘Your wife, what is it she hates about you?’
‘She hates herself. Or hates that she is a woman. If you saw how women are treated like cattle. Maybe it’s her one and only line of defence, something she can hang on to. Or maybe it’s just that she imagined something else. Sunshine. Money. Not these damp houses and. ’ I stop as I try to ease the trouser leg up my left shin. ‘I have a trigger point under the skin, about three inches below the knee and a little to the left. If I scrape it pulling on my pants I scream, even when I know it’s going to happen and try and hold it in.’
‘You sensitive, then?’
‘A trigger point is a knot of nerve tissue, but no one really knows why it fires off such awful impulses.’
‘We all have one of those,’ she says ruefully.
‘I know.’ I think of the picture by the bed. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘They can burn yours off,’ she says thoughtfully. ‘Ask the doctor.’
I look up and offer her a weak smile. ‘Perhaps I am in need of it.’
My tunic buttons up like a corset, causing me to stand up straight. She brushes the cap badge with her fingers before handing me my peaked cap and saying softly, ‘Don’t put it on indoors.’
She helps me down the stairs and to the front door. I turn to look at Grace. Her shoulders sink with an air of resignation. Her lips tremble and for a moment I think she is about to cry.
‘They took her to a home. Not good enough, see, me, on account of the pills and whatnot.’ She laughs. ‘I fought them, yeah, I got knocked out.’ With mock pride she points to the gap in her mouth. ‘I lost.’
Gripping the cap tightly in my hands, I shake my head very slowly. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I’m not needy,’ she snaps. ‘You can go now.’
‘Didn’t you want to trade? Secrets?’
‘Myself, I don’t tell lies, but you Pakistanis aren’t straight. Not one I’ve ever met.’
‘I think. ’ I struggle for words. ‘I think you allow them to take advantage.’
Grace takes a step forward, her body almost brushing against mine, and rubs the fabric of my tunic between her fingers. ‘You’re prickly on the surface.’
‘As you say, we Pakis, we’re trouble.’
‘So come on then,’ she looks up imploringly, ‘let’s trade.’
I pull away and stare at the collection of dogs on the far wall. ‘Sometimes you have to do a wrong to address a bigger wrong. You have to do that to make your point.’
‘Not worth indulging in those thoughts,’ she says.
‘Life has to count for something.’ I pause to think. ‘Wouldn’t you trade a year without your daughter for a single day with her?’
‘You leave her out of it,’ she says.
‘Those that took her, don’t you want to smash their faces in?’
Grace considers what I have said. ‘For months I’m on the pills. I go out but it’s not proper work. I come home and crawl under my duvet and hate myself and don’t resurface until it’s clocking-on time.’
I catch my angular shadow against the wall and stand as tall as I can. ‘It’s about style — ours is different.’
‘Day after day it’s the same and then suddenly, as though the sun has come out, I snap out of it and I’m like any other person. I don’t mind, not really. I can’t change it.’
‘If there’s a wrong and you can right it — even if it means a huge sacrifice — why wouldn’t you?’
‘The pills, they stop me thinking the worst, but when I’m on them I never properly laugh, as though my lips can’t form the necessary shape.’ She sees the direction of my intent gaze and picks up the picture. ‘It’s just life.’
I feel caught in her grief and suddenly conciliatory. ‘She’ll come back to you one day.’
Grace laughs mockingly. ‘They say it’s in her best interests.’ She looks up at the ceiling, down at the floor, gazes at the wall. ‘They say that, don’t they, authority people? But what a kid really wants and what they can’t give her is love.’ She turns to the window, which is misted with condensation. ‘She’s out there, proper little princess. She’s even getting a horse.’
‘But you’ll see her today?’ I ask.
‘Yeah. There comes a point in your young life when an image of your parent is fixed and you as a child are in need of it. You see, she was three and a half when she was taken, and because of that my face is etched like a carving inside her heart. They even let her keep a photo of me next to where she sleeps. That’s why they have to let me see her — or her me, as they put it.’ She looks up and says hopefully, ‘We get to hang out. At least, we do for now. Once a month.’
‘Can’t you get her back?’
She shakes her head vigorously. ‘There’s a world beyond soldiering. A world where no one takes orders in black and white.’
‘But she’s yours,’ I say.
‘Quit going on about it, will you?’
‘A mother. her daughter. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘It’s just life.’ I can see the hurt behind her eyes as they dart about as though she’s facing an enemy with a loaded rifle.
‘But if you were married, say?’
‘Yeah.’ She opens the door for me to leave. ‘It’d be a suicide mission to take me on.’
11
The door closes softly behind me. There is a powerful chill in the street. I feel a sudden fear, as though I’ve left something behind or forgotten to tell her something important. I draw breath as though the feeling will disappear into the cold white clouds I exhale. Something about the street, its familiarity, its clean parallel lines and the narrow strip of road between houses, catches me in a momentary wave of melancholy. I try to compose myself and rationalize. I am fond of these dilapidated streets and conscious that this is the last time I will pass through them. As a child, these streets were mine and every time I went out I discovered something novel and amazing: a secluded and sheltered place to build a fire; an abandoned garden with a fruiting apple tree; a square of turf below which someone had hidden a knife with a long, serrated blade. Sometimes I’d make a friend hunting for treasure on some random piece of wasteland, or in the park I’d meet someone who knew someone I knew.
It is half past five and the sky a carbon black. It is too early to proceed, even at a leisurely pace, towards my target, towards the war memorial where the armistice commemoration will take place at eleven.
The wind whistles in the few trees dotted at regular intervals along the main road, and I hear small animals rustle in the hedgerow. The absence of traffic on Sunday mornings gives the scene an eerie, apocalyptic quality, as though I am the sole inhabitant of a land that will never see dawn. It is brief, this time. Soon the sun will rise; dog walkers will be out whistling and shouting commands, shift workers will travel, and before long people will be hurrying into and out of shops for Sunday papers and bread and milk.
By six I reach the Saltwells. To keep warm, I walk as fast as the stick will allow, and I know that this town is simply too small to measure out the remaining five hours on foot. The clouds are low and menacingly cold. I tilt my head to Allah somewhere distant in the night sky. He knows I have been tempted. He hears and sees all, but He is just and His written word tells me that the final transgressions of a martyr are forgiven and that there are many paths to martyrdom, so many that not all are known.