‘I added some mushrooms I found in the woods. They’re good for the blood.’
Magnus accepted his portion with a nod, resolving not to touch the mushrooms. Belle looked at her bowl with distaste. The puppies had greeted her with wiggling rears and wagging tails and she had both of them curled on her lap. She slid the dogs to the floor, poured a glass of water from the jug on the table and lifted the bowl Father Wingate had given her. ‘I’ll take this up to Jeb.’
Jacob looked up, his spoon poised halfway to his mouth. ‘Eat first. I’ll take him something when I’ve finished. Jeb and I have things to talk about.’
The girl ignored him. She left the room, the puppies trotting after her, the clack of their claws loud against the flagstones. Jacob and Magnus exchanged glances, but it was Will who said, ‘Do you think she should be on her own with him?’
Magnus wondered what Will knew. He said, ‘Jeb’s still laid up, if it’s her honour you’re worried about.’
Father Wingate had stirred his lentils into his rice and was picking his way through the mess with the determination of a man doing his duty. ‘A broken leg wouldn’t have stopped me when I was a young sinner.’
They laughed, but Magnus noticed that each of them cast occasional glances at the door as they ate.
The dishes were washed and Jacob had lit the paraffin lamps he insisted on leaving on the kitchen and sitting-room window sills each night as a welcome to passing strangers, though no one had been drawn in by them yet. Raisha was still out somewhere in the darkening evening and Belle had not returned from Jeb’s room. Father Wingate was sorting through a biscuit tin of odds and ends he had found, looking for ‘anything that might be of use’. He had set a candle at his elbow and every so often he would lift an object from the tin and hold it near to the flame, examining it closely, as if it were an ancient artefact and he an archaeologist looking for the secret of what purpose it might have served.
Magnus’s back ached from two days on the combine. He wanted to be on his own, but felt too weary to rouse himself and go up to his room. He sat at the kitchen table with the three men, an ill-considered bottle of malt and four glasses between them. The puppies skated into the kitchen, their paws losing purchase against the stone floor, mouths grinning. Jacob aimed his boot at them and they yelped out into the hallway and beyond. Something moved above and all four men looked up at the ceiling.
Father Wingate said, ‘It’s only the dogs. They don’t know it’s wrong to be alive.’
Jacob had spread an old newspaper on the kitchen table and was cleaning his gun. An actress Magnus did not recognise was flaunting her cleavage next to the headline Royal Family Hit by Sweats. Magnus watched as the soldier-priest oiled the gun’s mechanism and then methodically wiped the grease from it with a cloth. He wondered if the actress had had something to do with the royal family, or if the photo had simply been intended to add some colour. The world before the sweats already seemed strange. He would struggle to explain it to someone who had not been there.
Jacob took a sip from his glass. ‘It isn’t wrong to be alive. God gave us the gift of life. We should cherish it.’ His voice was dark and bitter, thickened by the whisky.
Another noise sounded upstairs and again all four of them looked towards it.
‘I’m turning in.’ Will pulled himself to his feet.
Jacob said, ‘You should tell her how you feel.’
‘I don’t feel anything.’ Will’s voice was a monotone.
‘You stare at her.’ Jacob had finished wiping his gun clean. He inserted the magazine into its chamber. ‘There’s no shame in it. But if you want her, don’t stand there with your tongue hanging out, tell her.’
‘I had a girlfriend. She’s dead.’
Will started to leave the room, but turned back before he reached the door. The Dutchman had drunk less than Magnus and Jacob, but there was a whisky gleam in his eye.
‘Boys…’ Father Wingate’s voice was a tremor.
Will put both hands on the table and leaned in close to Jacob. ‘You are the one who wants her. Why don’t you tell her, instead of playing with your pistol?’ He straightened up and said in a louder voice, ‘That man up there is the same type as you. He might enjoy sharing. Isn’t that what soldiers like? Sharing the women they rape?’
Jacob’s tone was weary; a headmaster disappointed with a particularly stupid boy, but his eyes narrowed and his hand sat next to the loaded gun. ‘You had a girlfriend? Good for you. I had a wife and children…’
Magnus got to his feet and took hold of Will’s arm. ‘C’mon, man, it’s been a long day.’ Part of him was tempted to let them fight each other, but he tightened his grip and began to pull him away. ‘It’s up to Belle who she goes with. There are no rapists here.’
Will let himself be towed from the table. They were almost in the hallway when Jacob said, ‘That’s right, go to bed. You wouldn’t have lasted a day on our squad. Where were you when the sweats took hold? Blubbing over your dead girlfriend? My men didn’t have that luxury. We were in the bloody thick of it.’
Will jerked free of Magnus’s grasp and bolted back into the room. ‘You bet you were in the thick of it. The military made that bloody virus. You’re the reason everyone’s dead. Fucking murderers.’ He made a lunge for Jacob, but the priest shoved the table forward, knocking Will off balance. He slammed into a kitchen cabinet and a plate smashed against the flagstones. The bottle of whisky toppled and the contents of Father Wingate’s tin of odds and ends clattered across the floor.
‘Jacob!’ The old man had almost toppled too. He braced himself against his chair, thin and spectral, but a survivor all the same. ‘We mustn’t fight among ourselves.’
Magnus made a grab for the whisky and set it upright, but a good quarter of the bottle had leaked across the table and on to the flagstones. It scented the room; the smell of Christmas Eve, the Snapper Bar, night fishing with his cousin Hugh.
He shoved the memories away and slipped into the soothing tone his father had used to comfort sheep in labour; soft and coaxing.
‘Father Wingate’s right. Let’s leave this till the morning. We’ve an early start tomorrow.’ By Christ, Magnus resolved, he would forget the deal he had made to harvest three fields. He would be gone, away from this mayhem, before dawn. Will righted himself and Magnus saw a kitchen knife in his hand. ‘For God’s sake, man.’ Magnus could hear the fear in his own voice. ‘What the fuck do you think that’s going to do? He’s got a bloody gun. Do you think you can out-stab a bullet?’
The soldier-priest was on his feet too, the revolver less than a hand’s breadth from him on the table. Magnus looked at Father Wingate, but the old man seemed mesmerised by the knife. Will clenched it in both hands, as if it were a much heavier weapon, an axe or a claymore meant for cutting a swathe through ranks of enemies. Magnus saw the way it trembled and took a step backward.
Will said, ‘You keep telling us this is a new beginning, but maybe Harry and Melody are the ones who got it right.’
‘You’re wrong.’ Jacob unlocked the magazine from the gun and slid it out of reach across the table. The soldier’s jaw was still clenched, but Will’s words had hit some mark. Jacob picked up a small metal screw from the table, a remnant of Father Wingate’s box of odds and ends, and rolled it between his hands. ‘Harry and Melody didn’t—’
A crash boomed from the floor above them. There was a moment of stillness and then Will ran for the door, the knife still in his hand. Magnus followed. The hallway was in darkness, the staircase a vague shape lit by moonlight. They sprinted up it, the sound of their work boots muffled by carpet. Magnus heard Jacob’s breath close behind him and wondered if he had retrieved his gun.