He went to find a map that would tell him where the island was.
Chapter Fifteen
He walked and could have dropped. Without the strength and tread of his shoes, he would long ago have stopped and sunk down to a bench beside a pavement. He had a sandwich in him, sausage and chilli, and the bulk of a map bulged his hip pocket. He had gone east from the city.
Behind him were the proud places of the city, and its shamed corners – the outer and inner Alster lakes, the Rathaus, the New City and the Old City, the warehouse quarter and the former docks where cranes now lifted building materials for apartment blocks, over bridges and alongside canals, and through satellite communities housed in high towers, under autobahn routes using threatening pedestrian tunnels.
But at Kirchsteinbek, with the map unfolded and his finger tracing the route, he turned south – and he thought the danger of the city receded. Ahead of him now were scattered villages, small towns and fields, drainage channels excavated geometrically across them. The map guided him.
Bare poplar trees, tops bent in the wind, made aisles for him along straight roads. He passed a modern gaol wall, set back on his left, and the light had gone down enough for the arc-lights to shine out brilliantly. The map told him that soon he would swing his course to the west. There was a memorial stone set in the grass short of the prison perimeter but his eyes were too exhausted and his attention too dulled for him to read its inscription. In the growing darkness, beyond the gaol, a track led to low buildings, and beside the road, set among the poplars, was the sign: KZ -
Gedenkstatte Neuengamme, and below it was a second sign directing visitors to a museum and exhibition centre. Before the prison there had been traffic on the straight, endless road, but none after it.
The buildings, what remained of a concentration camp, seemed isolated. Malachy went faster, struggled to lengthen his step, and his shoes stamped out on the road's Tarmac. He wondered who came here, and why. Were there still lessons for learning?
Hallucinations delved in his mind. Did men in vertical striped pyjama suits, which hung on fleshless bodies, watch the tramp of a lone figure on the road?
Did he smell the smoke that curled from a high brick chimney? Did he hear the trap of a gallows sprung, and the rattle of shots? If he could have run he would have. He did not have it in his limbs to hurry and the sights and sounds of the fantasy played in him till he was far beyond the shadows of the place.
Malachy Kitchen lived. Ghosts had died there – starved and died, fallen from exhaustion at a work site and died, had been dragged to a noose and had died, or had been forced down to kneel in a grave pit and had died. He saw no self-pity and heard no cry for mercy.
He lived.
Far away, behind his back, was the evening glow of a city with orange light bouncing off low clouds, where men searched for him.
At the end of the road was the Elbe river and a bridge. Across it was a bus shelter where two elderly ladies waited. They eyed him with acute suspicion.
The stubble was on his face, his clothes hung wet on his body, his breath came in pants and he sagged down on to a seat beside them. They shifted from him as far as was possible and held their handbags tight in their gloved fists. He thought of the young woman who, to save him, had kissed his mouth, and he thought of the last young woman he had tried to kiss: she had turned away from him, flinched from him.
He asked them where the bus went. They were in their best as if they had visited family or friends. The bus went to Seevetal.
Was there a railway station at Seevetal? They showed no willingness to engage in conversation with the vagrant who shared their shelter. There was a railway station there.
Where did the trains go to from Seevetal? They sniffed in unison, as if he disgusted them – to Hamburg, Rotenburg and Bremen.
Malachy's head dropped. The tiredness came in waves across him. He thought of two young women.
One had turned her face from him, one had kissed him and he dreamed… The sharp jab of a bony elbow woke him, and he walked behind them to board the bus. In his mind was only pain and the sight of the one young woman, his wife.
25 January 2004
'For God's sake, don't you understand anything? No way was I going to traipse down to Brize Norton. What did you think I was going to do? Hold up a bloody banner on the apron, "Welcome Home to My Hero"? Don't you know what you've done to me?'
The doorbell rang.
He might at least have shown some fight, but he played what they called him, 'a gutless bastard', and denied nothing. Just said, each and every time, that he didn't know what had happened. In deniaclass="underline" that was what her father had said on the phone when Roz had called him an hour ago, denying it because he couldn't face what he'd done – and her father had said he was right behind his girl for not meeting the aircraft in from Basra.
The doorbell rang again, as if this time a finger was on the button and staying there… It was now eight days, on the corps's calendar in the kitchen, since 'it' had happened, whatever it was, and six days since the gossip mill in Alamein Drive had produced the whisper. He'd come home the afternoon before, like a rat running, with a train warrant and a taxi from Bedford station. He'd tried to kiss her when he'd dumped his bag down – no bloody chance.
Explanations were what she'd demanded, but all she'd had was the whimper that he didn't know what had happened, like that was supposed to be enough for her.
The bloody bell kept ringing.
It had all been explained to her in the secretariat, while he'd been on the train and coming home. Resignation would be best, and then a quiet departure – no future. The papers would be sent round. God, there were some hateful bitches in Alamein Drive! So she'd entertained a couple of guys – what was the big deal? Just Jerry and Algy, and maybe they'd stayed till late, or was it early? Didn't half the bitches entertain a friend when the husband was away? If he'd fought, Roz could have believed him. All that last evening, she had followed him round the house and demanded to know if it were true: was he, her husband, a
'gutless bastard'? Doors slamming behind him, he'd retreated, but she'd followed. Through the kitchen, the dining room, the sitting room, out into the garden where the whole bloody world of Alamein Drive would hear her yelled question, but not the answer. She'd slept in her bed; he'd used the sitting-room sofa. She'd shopped that morning, every curtain in Alamein Drive twitching as she'd gone to the car, and twitching again when she'd come back and offloaded the plastic bags – like it was she who had done it.
'Right bloody entertaining for me, my husband called a coward. I don't suppose you thought of that.'
Maybe if he'd hit her it would have been better. He was slumped at the kitchen table and he winced each time she attacked. She spun.
She crossed the hall. Roz's dad, retired sergeant – a man who had spent the best part of his service in ditches in Ireland knowing that if a farmer's dog located him it was down to a Browning 9mm automatic to stop him being bloody tortured, then slotted, by the Provos – her dad had said on the phone that her room was all shipshape at home for her, that she should ditch the useless bastard.
The padre, who doubled as the welfare officer – and wanted everyone to call him Luke – was at the door.
She said curtly, 'Yes, Luke, good to see you. Before you ask, is it convenient? No.'