The Wilful Eye (30 page)

‘Pig. You're just a pig. A mean fat pig.'

The others watched as Soldier's small body collided with Gollub's towering frame. Gollub stumbled, but Soldier, like an uncoiled spring, leapt away, arms wide. This all happened so fast no one moved, and before Meegey could even leap up, Soldier had already hurtled back into the dark folds of Gollub's coat, where he tunnelled in and wrapped one arm round Gollub, who thumped with his fists, grunting and kicking, his lip hanging low and trembling with disgust. Soldier held fast and then sprang off again and thrust his hand in the air with another mighty roar and everyone saw he held the keys in his hand. They jingled, dangled in the air for all to see, and round the room hope sprang into their hearts. Gollub's eyes now blazed but his voice came out with a cold unsettling calm.

‘You lame bastard. I'll kill you.'

But Soldier threw back his head and laughed as if he didn't care. Gollub's threat hung limp in the air before him. He whirled the keys at it, he whirled them above his head and whooped, before he scampered to his window where he clambered up and squatted there, one hand holding the bar and the other dangling the keys. Gollub lumbered towards him and Meegey was now up and Diffan too and both ran at Gollub, but Soldier had turned to open the window and in the moment he turned, Gollub launched himself forward, reaching up to Soldier, and he pushed him right out the window.

Soldier heard Meegey cry out. And then as if the air had gone from his body, he plunged down, his eyes closed, and the thought came to him:
I'm out of the room.

When Soldier hit the water and sank he had another thought.
I can't swim
. But he had seen her at the window before he fell. She wore a blue shawl over her shoulders, and her smile seemed to drift towards him like something on water. He had looked at her and she had looked at him and the look had sailed into his frenzy and arrested him so that he forgot for a moment that he held the keys and that Gollub was coming at him, and then everything jolted with the thrust of his body out the window and he remembered again. Did she cry out, or was it just Meegey? He thought all this as he pushed with his arms to try to reach the surface. His legs thrashed, his body yearned upwards, for if he surfaced, she might see him again. He came up for a moment but sank down again. He saw the sky, the blue of it coiling between the tower and the castle, or was it her shawl floating down. He felt himself sinking, thrust his hand up to the surface to catch hold of the shawl, the sky, his hope, air, and then he breathed in. Something caught his hand.

When he opened his eyes, there was a young boy sitting over him. The boy waved his hand in front of Soldier's face and yelled out, ‘He's alive.'

They were on a boat. Soldier coughed up brown water. It burnt his throat and lungs. The boy screwed up his nose as if the water stank. It probably did, but Soldier was too weak to care. A man approached and looked down at him with an inquisitive frown. Both he and the boy were thin and pale with thick brows and worn clothes. The man nodded his head as if he had determined enough and returned to steering the boat.

‘Well if he ain't got the phoidus, he'll be one lucky bastard. Gulligan, go get him some water. What were you doing sinking in the sewer?' he said to Soldier.

‘I fell out the window.' Soldier struggled to sit up.

The man had the same expression as the boy, sharp, quick-thinking, like a knife. He squinted and said quickly, ‘What window?'

‘I don't know.' It was true, Soldier never knew where they were, there was no name for it. ‘Where am I now?'

The man snorted. ‘ You don't know? How can you not know where you were? A likely story I reckon.' He sniggered and stuck a piece of straw in his mouth and chewed on it. He had one hand on a long oar, which seemed to be steering the boat. ‘Anyway, you're on our boat, that's where you are. Gulligan grabbed you out of the water. You were drowning. We can't keep you though. You've more than likely got one of the diseases in there. And they spread easy. We can't keep you. We'll put you down after the pass.'

Soldier tried to stand up.

‘What's wrong with your foot?' said the boy, returning with the water.

‘It's just like that.'

‘Does it hurt?' His eyes were fixed on the foot. Soldier moved it away and sat down again on the boat's edge

‘No.'

‘We've nothing to give you,' the man said.

‘I don't need anything.'

‘Have you got papers?'

‘No.'

‘They won't let you through, at the pass, without papers.'

Soldier shrugged. Gulligan gave a little cry. ‘He can hide under the sacks, Dad.'

The man wiped the sweat off his face with his arm and glanced over at the sacks.

‘Whatever you done, you've got luck on your side, and Gulligan too from the looks of it. We're the only boat that comes down the sewer and we come only once in a month. If we didn't come you'd be dead now.'

‘I've got nothing to give you as thanks. I'd give it if I had something.' It began to dawn on Soldier that he was free. He thrust his hands in his wet pockets and grinned. The key was in his pocket now. Soldier didn't bring it out. He had forgotten he was even holding it.

The man made a scoffing noise as if he wouldn't take anything anyway, and then looked at Gulligan.

‘Get under the sacks then. Quickly.'

Gulligan leapt over, lifted them up, looked at Soldier with a victorious grin. As Soldier laid himself down, Gulligan whispered conspiratorially, ‘What did you do? Are you escaping?'

Soldier nodded. The boy was proud of his catch, and full of tender hope and excitement.
This was what it was like to be a boy, to not have hope beaten out of you
, thought Soldier. Gulligan sat on top of Soldier and started whistling. It made Soldier think of Diffan and then the others, and just to think of them made him feel lonely and he started to shake. Had they all run out too? Had he set them free, he wondered.

Gulligan said, ‘Hey, stop shaking.'

But Soldier couldn't stop it.

‘They'll see ya if you don't stop. Dad, he's shaking bad.'

‘Well he's either in shock or he's coming down with something already. Get him a blanket, wrap him tight in it.'

The blanket helped a little, and Soldier hugged himself to try and stay warm, but still he shook. When they got to the pass, the inspector called out, ‘So what have you got under the sacks?'

There was a moment when no one said anything and Gulligan, who'd perched on top of the sacks, shifted and got off but he kept his hand on Soldier to let him know not to move. Then the father said, ‘It's just a boy. He's a bit cold so we put him under the sack.'

Gulligan squatted down and nudged him. ‘Okay friend, you gotta run. Can you run? You gotta jump out where the ladder is. It's close and once you get in the lane, you go like the wind, if you can, till you see the city gate, then you hide where you can. Go now.'

Gulligan lifted the sack and helped Soldier stand.

‘You! Come here. We need to see your papers.'

‘Jump!' yelled Gulligan. Soldier jumped onto the thin rusted ladder that climbed the sewer wall. He could hear all kinds of yelling, the inspector, the father, the bell clanging, the water slapping at the walls, his own breath pushing through his chest, as he ran his wobbly run. He knew he had to hide fast because once they crossed the sewer they would easily outrun him. The path ran alongside a curved wall on one side and a road lined with tall, thin, grey-brick houses all butted up against each other, their red roofs prodding at the blue sky. Nowhere to hide there. But along the wall there was a ridge of stones that stuck out, about three-quarters of the way up. Soldier ran alongside the wall, close, looking for a foothold for his one good foot. He stopped, pried away a brick where it had come loose, jammed his good foot in the hole and levered his body up, grabbing at the ridge with his other hand. He pulled himself up, just as he had at his window every day for as long as he could remember, scrambled up and heaved himself to the top of the wall and without pausing to gauge the drop, he swung over the other side and let himself down, crouching a while to catch his breath and make sure no one had seen him.

He was now in the centre of the town. His foot hurt but he quickly hobbled down a narrow lane, taking every turn he could, until he was sure he had lost them.

People, all sorts of people, flooded down the street. They walked in twos or threes, sometimes alone, or with a basket, sometimes stopping, yelling up at a window above. A young woman ran to catch up with her small son who had wandered ahead. She caught him in her arms, swept him up in a bundle and covered his face with kisses. The little boy squirmed, he wanted to be put down, the kisses he bore as if it were his duty to endure kisses. She put him down and he tottered off again, intent on making his own way. Soldier wondered what it must feel like not to have to fight, to have someone steer you down the street. He had so few memories of women. Meegey had talked to him a bit. And the others. Of their hair and their voices. Meegey had said, ‘Women, they're softer than men,' and Soldier nodded because he thought he knew it.

‘My mother smelled nice and she wept when they took me away.' He had said it even thought he wasn't sure it was the truth. It was how he'd viewed it in his memory. He saw her in a long dark skirt and her hair was long and black too, and sorrowful and silky as the river at night, but piled up and fastened with a comb, and she had a shawl, the berry-coloured one, and she wrapped him in the shawl and he could still smell her when they took him. She was whispering fast and kissing him but she didn't cry out, she didn't hold him to her, she let them take him and later they tried to take away the shawl from Soldier and it was he who cried and held on tightly, but they were stronger.

He was strong now. He looked down at his foot. It was bleeding. His clothes were wet. He was beginning to shiver again. Remembering the keys, he suddenly clamped his hand to his pocket to see if he had them still. They were there. He pulled them out and dangling them in front of his eyes, he grinned and felt a great warm rush of joy as he thought of how it felt to have won them from Gollub. And then he remembered how he'd leapt like a monkey round the heaving raging mass of Gollub and what a pleasure it had been to yield to the wild and reckless rage and not to care where it led him.

And where indeed? Had his life finally begun?

He leaned back and watched. It was a narrow street and lined with stalls, full of vegetables, grains, cheeses, breads. People walked up and down with baskets on arms, the women often tugging at children or carrying them on their hips. He watched how they greeted each other, the easy embraces, hands touching, how they stood in the sun talking, leaning on one hip then the other, how the children ran in circles round them, chasing each other. He watched a boy take an apple from his mother's basket. He bit into it and reached for his mother's hand and stood there in the crowd, eating the apple and swinging her hand. Soldier remembered the taste of an apple. He wondered if he had ever stood holding his mother's hand, not being afraid of what might happen, but just eating an apple in the sun, surrounded by people who would not hurt him. He gazed at the crowd and pictured himself walking with it, in the slow ambling way they seemed to move. He watched two men who stood at the cheese stall talking together with great enthusiasm, their voices rising, hands flying about. What were they planning? Plans could be made after all. Anything could happen. A young woman lazily twirled the beads at her neck while she gazed at the window of a shop. She looked about the same age as he was and there she stood wondering about something in a shop window. That they could choose or consider or wander made them move and talk and touch with an idle easy grace. It was as if they floated, as sticks would, on a stream, pushed along by the current, twirling this way and that, stopping at the bend, and then breaking free again in a rush. It made him sad to think of life in the tower, all of them so busy surviving, their minds wound up so tight with fear that their bodies seemed constrained, hungry, shrinking. In the tower, life was against you instead of in you.

Soldier found himself watching a white cat that sat licking its paws, so delicately. He wanted to sense the life inside him coming back. He wanted to get up and walk down the street, and buy an apple. Suddenly everything was so large and possible and close. His heart sang and wept with joy. His head swirled. He stood up. Were people looking at him, at his wet old clothes, his bleeding bare feet, the wonder in his eye? He spied a large crate and climbed in. To be quiet.

It was full of rotting food. The smell was bad, and he didn't feel right. He closed his eyes and thought, but there was a knock on the crate. Soldier jumped. A woman stuck her head in.

‘You all right, boy? I saw you climb in there. Come out. Not good for you in there.'