White and Other Tales of Ruin

Perhaps I’d been in there, in the pub with those men. Maybe I’d drunk myself into oblivion after oblivion, coming back again and again for weeks on end. The barman would know not only my name and life story, but my direct banker’s number as well. Perhaps by now he even owned my house.

I looked for the door between the pub and restaurant, but there was only a bare spread of wall.

Laura.

I was covered with dried mud and blood, some of it my daughter’s. I could smell her on me. I could remember her, how she’d thanked me what seemed like minutes ago and how I’d kept my selfish truth silent from her in those last few moments before … before …

I stood and ran home, ignoring the pain and stares, the comments and shouts, trying not to see the scared looks on kids’ faces as I breezed by. And with every step I took I expected a meteor to come blasting down out of the sky, a gunman to turn a corner with fifty pounds of explosive strapped to his chest and a belt-fed machinegun spitting death, a wall of water to come washing along the street, thirty feet deep and carrying the city’s story with it, sweeping up history and washing it clean.

I looked for disaster and death, but I saw only typical, mundane life. I wanted to stop people in the street and tell them just how fucking lucky they were, why didn’t they smile, why didn’t they live.

But right now wasn’t the time.

Now, I had to get home.

And Laura was there. Huddled on the doorstep like a shame-faced kid come home after her first night away. She was in a worse state than me, and when I saw her I burst into tears. She looked up, smiling and crying at the same time, and our tears weren’t of sadness or despair or fear. They were because never, ever have two people been so happy to see each other alive.

I knew what we were, and I whispered it into Laura’s ear as the world went on around us.

“We’re survivors,” I said, “because there’s always a survivor.”

I believed that. They let us survive.

I know that I should tell people what I know and what I’ve seen, but somehow it feels secret and forbidden. And every time I work my way to doing so I see Laura sitting in the sunlight or browsing through a book or cooking us a meal, and I dread changing anything. It’s all so perfect now, it’s drawn us together, and it really feels as though we’re doing Janine — my wife, Laura’s mother — proud.

Besides, sometimes I see demons in the dark.

So I live with the guilt and bad memories, and the certainty that every time I go to a concert or sports match with Laura I can cast my eyes across the crowds, and know that amongst them there are people who will suffer an horrendous fate. Normal people who will find Hell, not because they need it, but because Hell needs them. For fodder.

I feel terrible. I hate myself for saying nothing.

But I live with it.

There are worse things in life, after all.

The First Law

1. THE DEVIL’S CHAPLAIN

On their fifth day adrift at sea, they saw an island.

At first, there were only teasing hints of land: a twisted clump of palm fronds; darting specks in the sky which may have been birds; a greenish tinge to the underside of the soft clouds in the north, just above the horizon. They should have felt impelled to paddle towards it, but five days of sun, thirst and heat had drained them of hope. They lay slumped in the boat, their skin red and blistered, tongues swollen, lips split and black with dried blood.

Their ship had been torpedoed and sunk five days earlier. So far as they knew, they were the only survivors. They had begun to feel cursed, not blessed.

“I think there’s an island there,” Butch said, “unless the clouds are green with envy.” He was small, normally chipper, and one side of his face was badly bruised from the sinking. He knelt at the front of the lifeboat and stared out across the sea, a grotesque figurehead.

Roddy closed his eyes against the blazing sun, but still it found its way through. It was as though his eyelids were turning transparent through lack of sustenance. The lifeboat had been capsized when they found it, and any supplies previously stored on board had been swallowed by the sea. On the third day it had rained, and they had managed to trap enough water in cupped hands and bundled clothes for a few mouthfuls each. Since then, they had gone thirsty. Roddy felt life seeping from his body with every drop of sweat.

Ernie was the only officer with them, but thankfully he had refused to pull rank. He seemed to acknowledge, as they all did, that their position levelled anything so fleeting as grade. They had all been thrown together by the disaster of war, into the same class; that of survivor. So he prayed out loud instead, and at first his praying had helped, until Roddy had commented on how prayers had not aided the other three hundred of the ship’s crew. Since then Ernie had been sitting at the stern, spouting occasional brief outbursts of worship as if to goad the others into violence.