Owain knew that such thoughts were vaguely seditious—but only if he ever expressed them. Which he had no intention of doing. As the service ended he sprang up and opened the door, almost standing to attention as his uncle came out first, Giselle following.
“Don’t forget to collect the hymn books,” the field marshal said to him with a gruff laugh as he shuffled off down the corridor, tapping his stick almost jauntily as he went.
“He’s not going to need you this morning,” Giselle told him. “Probably not for the rest of the day.” She handed him a two-way radio. “I’ll contact you if you’re wanted.”
They were in a secluded mansion near Catterick with protected short-range communications. His uncle had a series of meetings with strategic planning groups, who had various war-game scenarios to present to him. They had flown in by Shrike early that morning from London.
Owain checked his watch. It was not yet eight o’clock.
“Anything you’d like me to do?” he asked.
Giselle shook her head. “Relax. Go and get some breakfast. There’s quite a good menu—by English standards.”
I tried to make him say something, but he was perfectly controlled, letting nothing untoward out. It was as if he rationalised my presence merely as an occasional tendency towards careless thoughts and actions, a slightly wayward aspect of his personality which he was determined to resist.
He followed the signs downstairs to the canteen. The smell of bacon greeted him, drenching his mouth. The chalked menu was also advertising fresh farm eggs, greenhouse tomatoes and Assam tea. I sensed him still holding himself under strict control; I could observe but not participate in any way.
He ordered a full English breakfast. The place was already crowded, mostly with naval staff. At a table in one corner sat a small group of raddled young women, migrants by the look of them, tarted up in fake leather, clinging skirts and dark stockings. Sipping drinks and smoking cigarettes, they jabbered at one another in heavily accented English. The youngest looked barely pubescent.
Owain carried his tray to the opposite side of the room, occupying a stool at a ledge near the serving counter. It faced a mirror, which began to ripple like water. He focused on his food: bacon, eggs and tomato with a thick triangle of fried bread. Three spoonfuls of sugar in his tea.
It was hot in the canteen, and the drone of conversation from the other tales was like a murmuring in his head. His stomach felt both hollow and bloated. He kept eating, forcing the food into his mouth, washing it down with the tea. There were other servicemen he’d recognised when he’d entered but he couldn’t contemplate the idea of small talk and brittle bonhomie.
His head was throbbing. He looked up, and I saw myself, my tongue poking out.
I squeezed my eyes shut, opened them again. My tongue was a healthy pink at its edges but yellowish-grey at its centre. A pale sea-blue room surrounded me. It stayed.
There was a toothbrush in my hand. I used it to scrub my tongue until I gagged.
A few deep breaths. Still here. I looked down at the blister pack of tablets on the window ledge above the sink. Small red ones, anticonvulsives, anti-psychotics, antidepressants—I couldn’t remember which. To be taken after meals, with water or a hot drink.
I pressed out two but dropped them down the toilet. There was a bottle containing white tablets. Again I removed a pair and consigned them to the same place. And flushed, watching the water swirl and foam with pine-scented cleanser, before putting the pack and bottle back in the overhead cupboard.
I’d been doing this for days, I remembered: morning and night.
Tanya’s bathroom, a bright clean space of gleaming chrome, white porcelain, aquamarine tiles. I was standing naked, just out of the shower, a navy towel at my feet. There was a disposable razor on the washbasin—one of Tanya’s. I’d been about to use it, despite the fact that my own electric razor sat in full view on the window sill. It was years since I’d last wet-shaved.
I looked in the mirror. Owain was gazing over the shoulder of his own reflection. One of the young women was close by. Eighteen or nineteen, with peroxide hair, dark eye make-up, lipstick like a silvery bruise. She was clad in a tight black skirt and a khaki combat jacket. Slavic, by the look of her, probably with a limited grasp of English, a stock vocabulary of come-hither phrases.
Owain looked past her to the others at the table. They were laughing, appeared to be enjoying one another’s company. The Soft Division, soldiers called them; the Pink Brigades. They could absorb any thrust, frontal assaults or rearguard actions. They were experts at close-quarter engagements.
The blonde woman’s face was ash-pale with lack of sleep. Doubtless she had a quota to fulfil. There would be rooms set aside for them, perhaps even an anonymous customer log. Payment according to results.
Owain stumbled off his stool and went in search of the nearest men’s room. They unnerved him, these whores, even though he knew they were powerless. He’d served with men on the front who’d ruined such creatures in a single brutal encounter; men who would only take women in the teeth of their opposition; men who liked an audience, who preferred minors or mutilation. Under circumstances where there was no prospect of sanction, any appetite could be satisfied.
He’d had his own opportunities, of course. Once, while doing a routine sweep of houses in a Polish village near the NGZ, he and his men had come upon a young woman who’d tried to attack them with a knife. A real vixen whom he’d only managed to subdue by pinning her down on a bed. When he looked around his men were withdrawing, laughing, saying that they’d give him ten minutes.
The woman lay beneath him, her handsome face still full of a defiance that suggested she was determined to survive anything he could do to her. This aroused him, as did her continued angry silence as he tore open her clothes. She would submit to him, her expression said, but he would never conquer her. Terms that he considered more than acceptable.
But when it came to it, he couldn’t perform. It wasn’t long after Caroline had left, and something had shut down. Physically nothing would stir, despite his ardour, despite all his frantic strivings. Eventually she began to laugh at him—a scornful, heartless laugh, devoid of redemption for either of them. He put his pistol to the side of her head, his other hand around her throat. Almost fired. But she’d gone silent and was looking at him with terrified eyes. Eventually she started to make gagging noises. He tore his hand away, fired a single shot into the wall just above her head and stormed out, flooded with rage and shame.
Ever since he’d avoided the danger, embracing chastity as a form of purification. He had even, despite all his usual instincts, confessed to Marisa soon after they met that he was incapable of physical arousal. The admission was a form of intimacy that liberated both of them not so much from temptation itself as from its necessary consequences. He was free to enjoy her company without the risk of compromising himself.
I could sense Owain writhing at these thoughts, wanting to banish them to the deepest recesses of his mind. They were a fact of his life that he preferred to remain implicit and guarded from the attentions of others. It was another reason why he was drawn to Marisa: she had accepted his condition from the outset, seeing it as noble. But he was also shamed and angered by it.