Sandman Page 4

  It is too torturous to keep your mind on what lies ahead. Oscar shuts his mind down. Not a single thought crosses his head. They’re going up: he and his men. Whatever is up there, they have to confront it and overcome it. You need a clear head. The emptiness pervades every fibre of his body. The silence. The vacuum of thinning air. The darkness.

  It isn’t too late to go back.

  An explosion rips the night to shreds: one of his men trod on a mine. And now it is too late for him.

  The Argentines crawl out from the holes in the mountain – a hail of machine gun fire hammers the paras’ heads; flares go up towards them, exposing their positions, opening the night into a premature dawn. Oscar is dodging bullets, running for the nearest shelter – a cavity in the bare slope – but it is soft and flattens under his weight. It’s heather and gorse. The earth around him is ploughed with bullets. They turn it over. It splatters in his face, into his mouth. He can’t breathe. His throat is full of soil. It’s suffocating him –

  He wakes. The breathing is still laboured and wheezy. His face is wet with sweat. Mechanically, he wipes it off: the sweat and the wet soil. He sits up, brings his breathing under control. The light of the bedside lamp – sudden and red – startles him. He recoils. A scream escapes him.

  ‘Go to sleep, Oscar, for God’s sake,’ Heather mutters from her side of the bed. He searches for her face, just to assure himself that this isn’t a dream. She is holding on to the duvet, most of which he has pulled away from her as he jumped up. Her eyes are closed – she’s trying to hold on to her sleep as much as she is holding on to the duvet. The red light of the lamp is kind to her face. It is soft and smooth. Her platinum blonde hair is swept away from her face and has made a halo around it. The diamond in her ring reflects the light and sparkles. Oscar is fully awake – thank God! – for he knows the dazzle comes from a ring, not the enemy’s flare.

  ‘Sorry, my love. A bad dream.’ He is looking at her, feeding on her domesticity and feminine vulnerability. He’s breathing evenly.

  ‘Turn the light off. I’ve got work tomorrow. Go to sleep, Oscar.’

  Reluctantly, he switches off the lamp. Darkness will bring back the nightmare, he fears. He lies on his back, eyes wide opened. He doesn’t want to go back to sleep. He got away with it lightly tonight. He woke just at the right time, before –

  The bunker is well camouflaged. It’s really just a cave fortified with sandbags, a sharp escarpment overhanging it and offering cast-iron overhead and rear protection to the gunner inside. The bastard is hard at work. Bright yellow sparks shoot out of his machine gun without a break. Three paras are down, the rest cowering behind boulders, unable to carry on with the charge. Check mate. The bastard sniper has a one hundred-and-eighty-degree visual over the whole of the southern slope where he has Oscar’s men pinned down. Oscar has to make a decision. He can’t sit here and wait for ever. He tasks Walsh and Butler with taking the bunker. They’ll attack it from both east and west simultaneously whilst Oscar and the rest of the company engage the gunner head-on with constant fire. ‘I’ve got you covered!’ he hears himself shout over the noise of the battle, spit flying out of his mouth. Walsh can’t control the shaking of his lower lip. His eyes are in the grip of panic. Butler is in charge. He nods. He too wants this job done quickly and efficiently. He too wants to go home, but he’s more experienced than the twenty-year-old Walsh to know that the only way home is through that fucking bunker. ‘Sir!’ he confirms their orders.

  An insanity of relentless fire follows. Butler and Walsh take off and soon Oscar loses visual contact with them. If he can’t see them, neither can the sniper. He must be busy crouching behind the sandbags, covering his arse. Bullets punch those sandbags and crash into the escarpment like a hailstorm. As soon as two hunched silhouettes materialise near the bunker, Oscar gives a signal to his men to lower the line of fire. He watches in slow motion as Walsh tosses a grenade into the mouth of the bunker and Butler charges in, his bayonet first.

  He doesn’t make it. His body is pushed up and back, a series of bullets animating it like a puppet on strings. He falls. Walsh stabs the mouth of the bunker. Oscar screams and gets to his feet, and runs – runs blindly at the fucking gunner; the paras follow. Not a single shot is fired at them. Butler’s down. ‘Sergeant Butler! Richard!’ Oscar is pulling up his torso, but it resists him, heavy as lead. ‘Get up, Butler! This is in order!’

  ‘He’s dead, sir,’ Walsh informs him, his lower lip stiff. ‘He got ‘im...’ He is pointing to the body of the Argentine gunner, a small dark man who’s staring back at Oscar with wide-open, dead eyes. Screaming, Oscar shoots at those eyes; empties a whole magazine. Walsh is pulling at his sleeve. ‘Stop, sir! He’s dead!’

  His wild cry wakes Heather. ‘Oscar, wake up!’ Her grip is on his arm, her fingers digging into it. Thank God, he’s awake! A dream that happened thirty years ago. A fucking dream.

  ‘Sorry, I’m sorry... ’

  ‘You’ve been screaming. Again.’

  He swings his legs off the bed. ‘I’ll go and get some water. Do you want anything, Heather?’

  ‘I just want to sleep.’

  Katie hasn’t changed in the last thirty years. Only her hair grew out of its deep chestnut brown and is now wired with grey. It is still thick and long, and he still wishes he could stroke it and bury his face in it. Her face is a constant – the same high cheekbones and deep set eyes, velvety skin, untouched by time. It froze that day all those years ago when he stood on her doorstep, telling her how sorry he was – and she just listened, numb and still. Pain sculpted her face in cold marble that day. Even today, years later, when she opens the door to him and conjures up a smile, it fails to reach her eyes. ‘Look who’s here, Tommy,’ she announces Oscar’s arrival to her grandson. To Oscar she says, ‘We didn’t expect you today. It’s a nice surprise. Come in, please...’

  ‘If that’s OK?’ He is always timid with her, despite all those years of his urgent, impromptu visits and despite their closeness.

  ‘Of course it’s OK. Tommy loves your company. We both do.’

  ‘Hi, Oscar!’ Tommy acknowledges him with a passing glance from above his tablet. He’s sprawled on the floor in the living room, knees up, his back propped against the side of the sofa. He’s had a haircut; his blond tresses sheared off, he suddenly looks older. Oscar would normally tousle his hair, but today there’s nothing to tousle; it’s a short crop. Oscar sits on the sofa and looks over Tommy’s shoulder at the tablet. ‘What’s the game?’

  ‘Just playing,’ Tommy shrugs his shoulders. ‘It’s boring.’

  ‘Then why play it?’

  ‘I’ve got nothing else to do.’

  ‘You could try doing your homework,’ Katie suggests.

  ‘I told you, Nan – I haven’t got any.’

  ‘Teachers don’t like too much marking. Oh well... You could read a book.’

  ‘Now, there’s a thought!’ Oscar gives Tommy a friendly punch.

  ‘I have a better one,’ Tommy puts away his tablet, ‘but it depends on you...’

  ‘Shoot!’

  ‘You know how you promised to take me camping? And fishing? And that we’d sleep overnight in a tent, make a campfire and cook what we caught...’

  Oscar searches Katie’s face for any clues as to how to respond. Tommy gets there first, ‘Nan, please! You said, when I was two digits you’d let me, remember?’

  ‘You’re not two digits yet -’

  ‘I will be! In six weeks’ time – forty-two days and six and a half hours, to be precise! Well – you promised...’

  ‘I don’t know...’

  ‘Please... I’ve never been camping, or anything! I just have a boring life! That’s all I have!’

  Anxiety creeps into her eyes. They dart between Tommy and Oscar. He can tell she wishes he had never made any stupid promises to the boy; he shouldn’t have come today. But Tommy is unrelenting and she’ll have to say yes. They all know that. ‘Nothing bad will happen! Osca
r will be there to protect me, won’t you, Oscar?’

  ‘With my life!’ What else is he supposed to say?

  ‘You see?’

  ‘All right, then... You can go, for a day – camping, fishing, but no sleepovers. The nights are too cold this time of year. You’ll be back by six.’

  ‘By midnight!’ Tommy grins.

  ‘By ten o’clock sharp, and that’s final!’

  ‘When? When are we going?’

  ‘I’ll make plans – will let you know as soon as I have the all-clear from Mrs Holt.’

  Tommy jumps to his feet, his face lit with excitement. He’s holding his tablet, a tangled earphone cable hanging down. ‘I’m telling Robert! He won’t believe it. He said Nan would never let me, because I don’t have a dad. That’ll prove he’s a liar!’ He sprints out of the living room, his feet punching the stairs as he heads for his bedroom. Katie winces when he mentions the word dad. Oscar pretends he hasn’t noticed that. He says, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of him.’

  ‘I know you will. Thanks. I have to let him do these things, if only to prove Robert a liar.’ She smiles. It is her usual surface smile, one that doesn’t spread to her eyes. Oscar wishes she’d stop pretending with him. She is quick to offer him tea and promptly scuttles away to the kitchen, leaving him alone in her living room, facing the photographs on the mantelpiece: Tommy, Izzie when she was a schoolgirl, and Richard in his uniform, medals shining on his chest...

  Hiding behind her cup, she tells him, ‘I thought I saw her, two days ago.’

  ‘Her?’ He is putting his mandatory two teaspoons of sugar into his cup.

  ‘Izzie.’

  Oscar puts away the teaspoon without stirring the sugar into his tea. He tries to see through her cup, see what her face is saying. She hasn’t spoken of Izzie in years, since Izzie walked away, leaving behind Tommy and Katie on their own, disjointed, like a broken string of beads. ‘This young woman I saw – she looked just like Izzie: the same long hair, same deep brown colour... She had it picked up, you know – twisted into a hairclip, just like Izzie used to... I followed her, called her name. Izzie! Izzie, stop! Isabella, it’s your mother! I yelled like a total maniac. The woman didn’t answer. It wasn’t her name, obviously. Though the way she walked, the way she pointed her toes as she walked... Izzie would do that, she did ballet, remember?’

  Oscar nods. He remembers. He remembers that day when he sat with Katie at the kitchen table, sewing sequins onto Izzie’s costume. They had made a butterfly shape. Izzie loved it. When she put it on, she did resemble a butterfly.

  ‘I ran after her, angry that she wouldn’t stop, that she was ignoring me, was trying to get away from me... Selfish girl!’

  Katie jolts him out of his reverie. ‘I wasn’t going to let her, not again. I would demand answers. She’d give me answers. She’d tell me why the hell she let me think, all those years, let me think she was-’ Her voice breaks off, crumbles away. She puts down her cup – almost drops it on the saucer; it falls with a clank; some tea splatters. ‘Oh, look at this mess!’ She dashes out and comes back with a cloth, starts dabbing the spilled tea. ‘It’s going to leave stains!’ she laments, her hands jittery. Oscar quietens them with his hand – places it gently over them. They stop. ‘It wasn’t Izzie, was it?’

  ‘I grabbed her shoulder, she turned. I gave her a fright, poor girl. Of course, it wasn’t Izzie. She looked like that ten years ago. What would she look like now?’ She gazes at him. There is a plea in her eyes and they slowly well up. A sob escapes her. Oscar takes her in his arms and buries his face in her hair.

  ‘Now, now,’ he says soothingly. ‘We don’t know anything for sure.’

  ‘You went to see her, didn’t you?’ Heather knows. She always does – she can see it in his eyes, smell it on him. Whichever way she knows, doesn’t matter – she doesn’t like it. She is looking at him, resentful. Something stabs in his gut. She has no reason to be angry. She has no right to deny him those moments. He needs them, and he has a duty of care, it’s simple. ‘You think you owe her something, don’t you? Well, you go on thinking what you like, but I don’t owe her anything! I don’t see why I have to put up with this... this...’

  ‘Calm down, for God’s sake! I just popped over to see how she – how they were doing. It’s not a sin. As it happened, she needed a friend, someone to talk to.’

  ‘And you were on hand, naturally,’ she snorts – a woman scorned. ‘I wish you had as much time for me as you do for her.’

  ‘I have a lifetime for you, Heather. You’re my wife. I love you, don’t forget that!’

  ‘If you say so.’ She escapes with her eyes. Why doesn’t she believe him? She is his wife – he’s made her his wife. Why can’t she accept that? He can’t win with Heather. She will have to come to the right conclusions in her own time. Oscar slumps in his chair, picks up the remote and puts on the News. It’s a habit of a lifetime, he does it automatically, even if, more and more frequently these days, he doesn’t really watch it. What matters is just the knowledge that the world goes round and round quietly in the background. After a fashion – the debris of what once must have been a fishing boat floating off the Italian coast tells a different story. Oscar knows the narrative to this tragedy. He heard it before. Too many times for comfort.

  ‘I’ll just fade into the background then, shall I?’ Heather mutters under her breath as she settles on the sofa, legs curled up as is her longstanding tradition. Oscar wishes he could give her a good smacking, or a great big hug, but, wisely, he chooses neither, just shakes his head, smiles ruefully and says, ‘Silly old girl you are, Heather! How can I not love you?’

  VI

  It looks like an upturn. Yvonne’s upper body has been slightly elevated in her bed so that, as she puts it, she can watch the action instead of the ceiling. There isn’t much action on the ward – in the main, people just die. ‘That’s what we come here to do,’ Yvonne informs Wanda philosophically.

  Wanda puffs up her pillow and takes her pulse. She has difficulty finding it in the first place. ‘That’s what I mean – I’m as good as dead,’ Yvonne points out.

  ‘Just be still, for goodness’ sake!’

  ‘I’m as still as can be. I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘Good. It’s looking good, Yvonne. You just carry on – regardless!’ Wanda learned this phrase a few days after she started working at the hospice, and she has been using it liberally ever since. Yvonne finds it amusing. She even chuckles. That is a good sign! She has been wasting away since she arrived four months ago: losing weight, losing muscle tissue, and most tragically, losing the will to live.

  ‘Stop fussing around – you’re making me giddy!’ Yvonne is a right troublemaker, but Wanda knows better than to take her antics seriously. She is pumping up the armband to check her blood pressure. ‘What good is that going to do?’ Yvonne sighs. There is a slight tremble to her voice – the pain must be nibbling away at the edges. She’s already on the highest possible dose of morphine – any more of it, any more frequently dispensed, would simply kill her. She has to wait for her next fix. Wait and bear it. She purses her lips, and suddenly she looks tired and defeated. ‘Sit with me awhile,’ she says weakly. ‘Tell me... things.’

  Wanda settles on the side of the bed. Yes, she is a busy woman: rounds to do, several more patients to check upon, but company is the best medicine you can offer to a terminal cancer patient. Everything else fails sooner or later. Wanda knows this from experience; she has been working in the hospice for three years now, since she arrived in the country. She has seen most of her patients die, and they told her they didn’t want to die alone. She takes out Paulina’s photo, shows it to Yvonne. ‘I got it yesterday, from my mother,’ she looks tenderly at the image of her smiling child showing off a big gap in her teeth. ‘It was Paulina’s seventh’s birthday last week. She had a party, all her friends came with presents. She was showing us what she got on Skype, then she ran off...’

  ‘Of course she d
id. She was busy having a party.’

  ‘It didn’t feel good when she ran off like that. She wasn’t even looking at us – not really. I could tell her heart wasn’t in it.’

  ‘Like I said, she was having a party. That’s where her heart was.’

  ‘I miss her.’

  Yvonne puts the photo in her hand. ‘Then you should go and be with her!’

  ‘Do you think?’ Wanda wants to hear it. She let Andrzej convince her to come here – to build their future – but it is the present time that is slipping away from her that she is more concerned about. Money isn’t everything. They can buy a smaller flat. Wanda wants someone to tell her that, someone wiser, like Yvonne.

  ‘I do think that. You must go and watch your daughter play, lose the rest of her milk teeth and grow up, become a woman. Her childhood, you know, it won’t wait for you – it will pass. Life passes – it’s in its nature to pass, to slip through our fingers.’ She winces. The pain. Wanda wishes she could ease it for her, but according to Yvonne’s chart she won’t be due for another painkiller for a couple of hours yet. ‘I wish mine just got on, and be done with me...’

  ‘You mustn’t say that, Yvonne. You’re looking better today.’

  ‘Ha!’

  ‘There’s always hope.’

  ‘Even you don’t believe that. I’m dying and I just want to die quicker!’