The Absolutist by John Boyne
The thought of that, of that second love, made my stomach turn violently and my eyes spring open as I leaped from the bed, knowing that I had no more than a few seconds to reach the sink, where I threw up my beer, sandwich, tea and apple tart into the washbasin in two quick bursts, the undigested meat and spongy bread forming a deeply unpleasant picture in the porcelain base, a mess that I washed away quickly with a jug of water.
Perspiring, I collapsed on to the floor, my knees pressed up against my chin. I wrapped my arms around them, pulling my body close as I pushed myself hard between the wall and the base of the washbasin, scrunching my eyes up tightly as the terrible images returned.
Why did I come here? I wondered. What was I thinking? If it was redemption I sought, there was none to be found. If it was understanding, there was no one who could offer it. If it was forgiveness, I deserved none.
I woke early the following morning after a surprisingly undisturbed sleep and was the first to use the bath that served the needs of the six rooms in Mrs. Cantwell’s establishment. The water was tepid at best, but it served its purpose and I scrubbed my body clean with the same bar of soap that had been left for me in my room. Afterwards, having shaved and combed my hair in the small mirror that hung over the washbasin, I felt a little more confident about what lay ahead, for the sleep and the bath had revived me and I did not feel as unhealthy as I had the night before. I held my right hand out flat before me and watched it, daring the spasmodic finger to tremble, but it held itself still now and I relaxed, trying not to think about how often it might betray me as the day developed.
Not wishing to engage in conversation, I decided against taking breakfast in the boarding house and instead crept downstairs and out of the front door shortly after nine o’clock without so much as a word to my host or hostess, who I could hear busying themselves in the dining room and bickering away like an old married couple. I had left the door of my room ajar with my holdall atop the bed covers.
The morning was brisk and bright; there were no clouds in the sky, no suggestion of rain later, and I was grateful for that. I had never been to Norwich before and purchased a small printed map from a street stall, thinking that I might spend an hour or two strolling around the city. My appointment was not until one o’clock, which left me ample time to see a few of the local sights and return to my lodgings to freshen up before making my way to our designated meeting place.
I crossed the bridge on Prince of Wales Road and stopped for a moment, staring down into the Yare as it flowed quickly along, and recalled for a moment a soldier I had trained with at Aldershot and fought alongside in France—Sparks was his name—who had told me the most extraordinary story one evening when the two of us were on top-duty together. It seemed that he had been crossing Tower Bridge in London one afternoon some four or five years earlier when, halfway across, he was stopped short by an overwhelming conviction that at that precise moment he was exactly halfway through his life.
“I looked left,” he told me. “I looked right. I looked into the faces of the people walking past me. And I just knew it, Sadler. That this was it. And right then, a date popped into my mind: 11 June 1932.”
“But that would make you, what, no more than forty?” I said.
“But that’s not all,” he told me. “When I got home again, I took a scrap of paper and worked out that if it really was the halfway point of my life on that very day, then what date should be my last. And you’ll never believe what it came to?”
“Never!” I said, astonished.
“No, it wasn’t the right date,” he replied, laughing. “But it was close. It would have been August 1932. Either way, it’s not much of an innings, is it?”
He made it to neither. He had both legs blown off just before Christmas 1917 and died of his injuries.
I put Sparks from my head and continued northwards, climbing the steep gradient of the street, and found myself walking along the stone walls of Norwich Castle. I considered climbing the hill towards it and examining the treasures that might be on display inside but decided against that, suddenly uninterested. Castles such as this, after all, were nothing more than the remains of military bases where soldiers might camp out and wait for the enemy to appear. I did not need to see any more of that. Instead I turned right, walking through a place that identified itself by the rather morbid name of Tombland, and in the direction of the great spire of Norwich Cathedral.
A small café attracted my notice and with it a reminder that I had eaten no breakfast. Rather than continuing on, I decided to stop for something to eat, waiting only a few moments in a corner window seat before a rosy-cheeked woman with a high hat of thick red hair came over to take my order.
“Just some tea and toast,” I said, happy to be sitting down again for a few minutes.
“A couple of eggs with that, sir?” she suggested, and I nodded quickly.
“Yes, thanks. Scrambled, if that’s possible.”
“Of course,” she replied, nodding pleasantly and disappearing back behind the counter as I switched my focus to the street. I regretted not having brought White Fang with me for it seemed like a decent opportunity to relax, enjoy my breakfast and read my book, but it was left behind in my holdall at Mrs. Cantwell’s. Instead, I watched as the passers-by went about their business.
The street was filled mostly with women carrying string bags filled with their early-morning shopping. I thought about my mother, about how she had made the beds and cleaned the flat every morning at this time when I was growing up, while my father poured himself into his great white coat and took up his position behind the downstairs shop counter, carving up the fresh joints for the regular customers who would come his way over the next eight hours.
I had been terrified of everything associated with my father’s job—the boning knives, the animal carcasses, the bone saws and rib pullers, the bloodstained overalls—and my squeamishness did not endear me much to him. Later, he taught me how to use the knives correctly, how to separate the joints of the pigs or sheep or cows that hung in the cold-room out back and were delivered every Tuesday morning with great ceremony. I never cut myself but, although I grew reasonably proficient at the art of butchery, I was never a natural at it, unlike my father, who had been born to it in this same shop, or his father, who had come over from Ireland during the potato famine and somehow managed to scrape together enough money to go into trade.
My father hoped that I would follow him into the family business, of course. The shop was already called Sadler & Son and he wanted our fascia to be an honest one. But it never came to pass. I was expelled from home just before I turned sixteen and returned only once, over a year and a half later, on the afternoon before I left for France.
“The truth is, Tristan,” my father said that day as he steered me carefully out on to the street, his thick fingers pressing tightly on my shoulder blades, “it would be best for all of us if the Germans shoot you dead on sight.”
The last thing he ever said to me.
I shook my head and blinked a few times, uncertain why I allowed these memories to destroy my morning. Soon my tea, eggs and toast were before me and I realized that the waitress was still hovering, her hands pressed together like those of a supplicant in prayer, a smile spreading across her face, and I glanced up, my loaded fork suspended in the air between plate and mouth, wondering what she might want of me.
“Everything all right, sir?” she asked cheerfully.
“Yes, thanks,” I said, and the compliment was apparently enough to satisfy her, for she scurried back behind her counter before attending to her next task. I was still unaccustomed to being able to eat at my leisure, having spent almost three years in the army eating whatever was put in front of me, whenever I could, trapped between the poking elbows of other soldiers who stuffed their faces and masticated their food as if they were rutting pigs in a farmer’s backyard and not a group of Englishmen who had been brought up with their mothers’ manners. Even the quality of the food
I paid my few pence, thanked the woman and left the café, continuing along towards Queen Street in the direction of the cathedral spire, and looked up at the magnificent monastic building as it came into sight, and the precinct wall and gates that surrounded it. I take great pleasure in churches and cathedrals. Not so much for their religious aspect—agnosticism has been my declared denomination—but for the peace and tranquillity offered within. My twin contradictory places of idleness: the public bar and the chapel. One so social and teeming with life, the other quiet and warning of death. But there is something soothing to the spirit about resting awhile on the pews of a great church, breathing in the chilly air perfumed by centuries of incense and candle-burning, the extraordinary high ceilings that make one feel insignificant in the greater scheme of natural design, the artworks, the friezes, the carved altars, the statues whose arms reach out as if to embrace their observer, the unexpected moment when a choir above, rehearsing its matins, bursts into song and lifts the spirit from whatever despair brought one inside in the first place.
Once, outside Compiègne, our regiment had rested for an hour about a mile from a small église and, despite having been marching all morning, I decided to stretch my legs towards it, more as a means of escape from the other soldiers for a few minutes than out of a desire for spiritual awakening. It was nothing special, a fairly rudimentary building both outside and in, but I was heartsick by how abandoned it seemed, its congregation scattered to safety, the trenches or the graveyard, its atmosphere emptied of the once-attendant conviviality of the faithful. Walking outside again, thinking that I might lie on the grass until summoned back to the line, perhaps even close my eyes in the noonday sun and imagine myself in happier surroundings, I found another of my regiment, Potter, leaning on the opposite side of the church at a slight angle, one hand resting forward against the wall as he relieved himself noisily against the centuries-old stonework, and I ran towards him without a second thought, pushing him off his feet and to the ground, where he fell in surprise, exposed to all, his stream of urine coming to an unexpected halt but not before splattering over his trousers and shirt. He was on his feet a moment later, pulling himself together, cursing loudly, before knocking me off my own and seeking satisfaction for the humiliation. We had to be separated by a handful of other soldiers. I accused him of desecration and he accused me of something worse—religious mania—and although the charge was false, I did not deny it, and as our tempers started to fail us we stopped trading insults and were eventually released after facing each other, shaking hands, and calling ourselves friends once again before heading back down the hill. But the sacrilege had disturbed me nevertheless.
I made my way through the nave of the cathedral now, glancing surreptitiously at the dozen or so people who were scattered in silent prayer around the church, and wondered from what hardships they sought relief or for what sins they begged absolution. At the crossing, I turned and looked up towards the place where the choir would stand on a Sunday morning, offering worship. I walked south from there and an open door led me outside to a labyrinth where a few children were playing a game of catch in the bright morning, and continued along the wall towards the eastern end of the cathedral, where I found myself brought to a halt by a single grave. It stood out. Its stark nature surprised me, a simple stone cross resting atop a two-tiered base, and I leaned forward to discover that this was the grave of Edith Cavell, our great nurse-patriot, who had helped hundreds of British prisoners of war escape from Belgium through her underground route and had been shot in the autumn of 1915 for her trouble.
I stood up and offered not a prayer, for that was of no use to anyone, but a moment of contemplation. Nurse Cavell had been proclaimed a heroine, of course. A martyr. And she was a woman. The people of England seemed to celebrate this fact for once in their history and I felt a great sense of joy at discovering her grave in such an unexpected fashion.
Footsteps on the gravel alerted me to the approach of someone else, two people, in fact, whose steps had fallen in time with each other, like a night patrol circling a compound. I walked a little further past the grave and turned away, pretending to be engaged in a study of the stained-glass windows above.
“We should be making the final list by about three o’clock,” the young man—who had the look of a sacristan—was saying to his older companion. “Assuming we can get through the earlier business quickly.”
“It will take as long as it takes,” the other man replied insistently. “But I’ll have my say, I promise you that.”
“Of course, Reverend Bancroft,” came the reply. “It’s a difficult situation, we’re all aware of that. But everyone there understands your pain and grief.”
“Nonsense,” snapped the man. “They understand nothing and they never will. I will have my say, you may have no doubt on that score. But I need to get home quickly afterwards. My daughter has arranged something. A … well, it’s difficult to explain.”
“Is it a young man?” asked the sacristan in a flippant voice, and the look that he received in response put a stop to any further enquiries of that sort.
“It won’t matter too much if I’m late,” said the reverend, his tone betraying deep uncertainty. “Our meeting is far more important. Anyway, I haven’t quite decided on the wisdom of my daughter’s plans yet. She gets notions, you see. And not always very sensible ones.”
They turned to start walking again and at that moment, the reverend caught my eye and smiled. “Good morning, young man,” he said, and I stared at him, my heart beating faster inside my chest. “Good morning,” he repeated, stepping towards me, smiling in an avuncular fashion and then seeming to think better of it, as if he could sense the potential of a threat, and moved back again. “Are you quite all right? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
I opened my mouth, unsure how to reply, and I believe that I must have shocked the two of them entirely as I spun around, turned on my heels and ran back in the direction of the gate through which I had entered, almost tripping over a raised hedge to my left, a small child to my right and a series of paving stones in front of me, before finding myself inside the cathedral once again, which seemed monstrous now but also claustrophobic, ready to take me within its grasp and hold me there forever. I looked around the confusing space, desperate for a way out, and when I found it, I ran through the nave of the church, my boots sounding heavily on the tiles and sending their drumlike rhythms echoing into every corner of the building as I made for the doors, aware that the heads of the faithful were turning in my direction now with a mixture of alarm and disapproval.
Outside I breathed quickly, desperate to fill my lungs, and felt a horrible clamminess begin to seep through my skin, covering my body, my earlier relaxed state replaced by one of terror and remorse. The serenity imparted by the cathedral had left me and I was a man alone again; here in the unfamiliar surroundings of Norwich, with a task to complete.
But how could I have been so stupid? How could I not have remembered? It was all so unexpected though; the name—Reverend Bancroft—and then the expression on his face. The likeness was uncanny. I might have been back on the training grounds of Aldershot, or the trenches of Picardy. It might have been that dreadful morning when I ascended from the holding cells in a terrible, vengeful fury.
By now it was time to start making my way back towards the boarding house in order to freshen up before my appointment. I walked away from the cathedral and took a different route, turning left and right on the criss-cr
It was I who had initiated the correspondence with Marian Bancroft. Although we had never met, Will had spoken of her often and I envied their extraordinary closeness. I had a sister myself, of course, but she had been only eleven when I left home, and even though I had written to her shortly after, my letters never received any reply; I suspected that they were intercepted by my father before they could reach her. But did he read them himself, I often wondered? Did he steal them away and tear open the envelopes, scanning my scrawling handwriting for news of where I was and how I was scraping a living together? Was there even a part of him that wondered whether one day my letters might stop, not because I had given up writing, but because I was no longer alive, the streets of London having swallowed me whole? It was impossible to know.
The war had been over for almost nine months by the time I finally plucked up the courage to write to Marian. It had been on my mind for a long time, a sense of responsibility that had kept me awake night after night as I tried to decide what to do for the best. A part of me wanted to dismiss her from my thoughts entirely, to pretend that she and her family did not exist. What help could I be to them, after all? What possible comfort could I offer? But the idea lingered and one day, tortured by guilt, I purchased what I considered to be an elegant packet of notepapers and a new fountain pen—for I wanted her to think well of me—and composed a letter.
Dear Miss Bancroft,
You don’t know me, or maybe you do, maybe you have heard my name mentioned, but I was a friend of your brother, Will. We trained together before we were sent over there. We were in the same regiment so we knew each other well. We were friends.