Draca. Geoffrey Gudgion
the door, enough to show the silhouettes of trees and the outline of the boat seat, hunched like a monk ’ s cowl against the night. Grandpa ’ s carved dragon would be in there, invisible, black within black. Jack reached in to touch its snout, and settled beside it until there was enough light to see his footing.
On calm, moonless nights the dawn starts in the sea, not the sky. Its flat surface reflects a light the human eye can ’ t see. In time, the light softened to show tendrils of mist, still hanging between the trees and floating over the water. The outlines of the Scots pines began to form against it. Now the same two branches could be arms raised in surrender.
When the tide was just on the ebb it sucked at the beach below the cottage, a soft susurration at the limit of hearing. In the pre-dawn darkness it sounded like whispering, so human that he strained to distinguish the words. The break of each wave could be a soft consonant, a n ‘ f ’ perhaps, followed by a longer vowel as the water spread over the shingle and left a softer, lisping retreat. F- aay – th , f- aay – th , endlessly repeated. It was as if a mass of men waited there, watching, murmuring among themselves and all of one, menacing mind.
Enough. Jack didn ’ t want to start that line of thought again. Breathe the dawn. He stood, walking towards the threat, not running from it. Soon the sandy path beyond the garden gate was a faint paleness between black gorse, and its softness masked his footsteps through trees that were just trees. The track led along the coast and away from the beach until the dominant sound was not waves but the pre-dawn cacophony of seabirds. A stream flowed out into the harbour in Freshwater Bay, tumbling off the hills fast enough to stop the inlet silting, and sweet enough to allow banks of reeds to form at the water ’ s edge. Their sound was a soft, silken rustle, as real a bridge onto the peace of Witt Point as the rough logs across the stream.
On Witt Point , Jack sat on a stone, sniper- still, at one with nature and its morning routine. Navigation lights winked out in the harbour, sending brief pulses of green and red over the water. Grandpa said he found them comforting, these signposts of the sea. Now there was enough light to see shapes moving, black within grey : the snuffling waddle of a badger, the dainty steps of a deer through the trees. He could inhale sea smells and pine resin and dew-damp grass. There used to be a Saxon chapel here, though there was nothing left of it but mounds in the grass and a few corners of dressed, mossy stones that had been brought up when some trees blew down in a storm. Even so, the place was cleansing, as if it had absorbed centuries of devotion and could give back a little of that peace. It was a spot where thoughts could be allowed to float to the surface of the mind.
And that morning, Jack could feel his grandfather slipping away with the tide.
II: JACK
Grandpa Eddie did not have a good end. He was drifting in and out of consciousness when Jack arrived, wired up to a morphine pump by his bed. Harry was already there and Jack hung back, feeling sorry for his father because he didn ’ t seem to know what to do. Harry sat on a plastic chair, a little hunched but still with the sergeant-major’s set to his shoulders, watching Eddie die. Harry ’ s hands twisted in his lap and emotions crossed his face like cats ’ paws of wind across water.
‘ I called Tilly. ’ Harry spoke without taking his eyes off Eddie. ‘ She said she ’ d already been. ’
‘ A few days ago. ’ Jack had given the hospice his sister ’ s number. Tilly had clicked into the hospice in high heels, tight skirt and trout pout. She didn ’ t bring her kids, and Grandpa had been sad about that. She ’ d seemed surprised that Jack was there. ‘ You never come to see us , ’ she ’ d moaned, and Jack had bottled his anger as Tilly wasted one of Grandpa ’ s lucid moments, filling the silence with bright, brittle inanities until Grandpa closed his eyes, feigning sleep.
Now Grandpa was beyond conversation. There might have been things that Harry wanted to say, but he didn ’ t have the chance. Jack left them alone for a while, but when he came back Harry hadn ’ t moved so Jack stayed, waiting for his own turn to say goodbye. The windows were open, and a gentle breeze lifted and dropped the net curtains, letting in the sounds and smells of town. Traffic. Diesel fumes. The clatter and calls of workmen nearby.
The rip of machine-gun fire had Jack diving out of his chair, shoulder-rolling over the carpet, with his mind screaming at the impossibility and certainty of combat. Close range. Close enough to feel the vibrations of each round resonate in his body. Low cyclic rate, heavy calibre. He ended up crouched on the carpet, the fingers of one hand splayed, the other hand reaching for a weapon that wasn ’ t there, and his father still sat in his chair, looking down at him with his eyebrows lifted in surprise. The burst finished with a scrape of metal over tarmac as a pneumatic drill was repositioned, and Jack ’ s shoulders slumped in humiliation.
Idiot. Stupid, stupid, bloody idiot. He stood, brushing his hands down his trousers, too ashamed to meet Harry ’ s eye, and turned away towards the door, muttering that he ’ d ask them to shut up. He stopped as Grandpa screamed from the bed.
‘ Don ’ t let him take me! ’
Grandpa was trying to get out of bed, but didn ’ t have the strength. Harry held him by the shoulders, easing him back, and Grandpa looked up at him in a way that seemed to plead for something : mercy, forgiveness, understanding, who knew what ?
‘ I tried to give it back. Honest. I tried … ’
Jack lurched out of the door towards the main entrance , his shame hardening into anger, brushing past a nurse running in the other direction.
He ’d lost it. Totally lost it. Thirty yards down the road they ’ d set up temporary traffic lights and plastic barriers, and two guys in hard hats and high-visibility jackets were digging a hole. They didn ’ t hear him coming. One of them worked the drill, with vibrations rippling over his beer gut, while the other watched, leaning against a mechanical digger. He flipped the drill man on the arm to stop him when Jack stood beside them, shouting, and they swivelled their ear defenders up onto their hard hats. Jack had to repeat himself.
‘ There ’ s a man dying in there! ’
They both shrugged in a way that said That ’ s not our problem , even though the words were, ‘ We didn ’ t know about that. ’
‘ Then for fuck ’ s sake let him die in peace. ’
The man against the digger pushed himself upright and squared his shoulders.
‘ You ’ ll have to talk to the council if you want us to stop. We ’ ve got a job to do. ’
Jack made a fool of himself again, and started shouting. All they needed to do was pull down their ear defenders and start the drill with studied insolence every time he opened his mouth and he was left raging at nothing like a kid in a tantrum. Someone behind him grabbed his arm as he started to swing at them, holding him while the two workmen dropped the drill and backed away, lifting their fists.
‘ Jack! ’ Sandra, the nurse, stared at him, forcing eye contact. Some buried logic in Jack ’ s head told him she ’ d had training in restraint. ‘ It ’ s too late, Jack. Come away, now. ’
Grandpa lay across the bed, with his mouth open in a silent scream and his eyes staring upwards, but sunken so deep that they seemed to have fallen back into the skull. A look of absolute terror was frozen on his face.
Jack had never seen that before. He ’ d seen dead people, too many of them, and usually their faces were slack, as if they were asleep. Some looked slightly surprised until you closed their eyes. A few had faces still stretched in agony. But Grandpa looked petrified, and Jack wished he could have been there with him, even held him. Eddie ’ s institutional pyjama jacket had fallen open so that his old man ’ s body lay bare-chested in a tangle of sheets, a parchment husk of a man. Harry still sat on the same chair, staring at the body. Slowly, as uncomfortably as anyone breaking decades of distance, he reached out and touched Eddie ’ s arm.
III: JACK
Jack