Perhaps it was the smell of the bodies and the damp of the clothes on the floor, perhaps it was the rifle and the emptied bottles. Perhaps it was the woman scowling from the bed and the man crouched down hostile on the floor, perhaps it was the suitcase that was packed. Perhaps it was the guilt. She spat it out.
'You were going home?'
'I was hired to write a report.'
'Worth two pages, was she? Two pages and that's time to come home?'
'I have written a preliminary report, I will write a fuller report when I am home.'
'And that is your idea of the end of it?'
'It's what I was hired to do, what I have done to the best of my ability.'
'Enough, is it, just to write a report…?'
'It's what I was asked to do, hired to do.'
She could not see into his face. The worst for Mary was the calmness in his voice. And with the calmness was the gentleness. She could remember her tears because of what Dorrie had done to her. She could remember when she had thrown things, saucepans, books, clothes, hurled them because of what Dorrie had done to her. She could remember Charles's accusations because of what Dorrie had done to her, and how she had gone sobbing up the stairs to beat her fists on the locked door because of what Dorrie had done to her. And the guilt roved in her…
Her voice rose. 'So you walk out, you walk away?'
'I don't know what else I can do.'
'It was just empty words?'
'It was to write the report you requested.'
'What the politicians said, what that American said, just empty.. .? Fine words or empty words?'
'You wanted a report, you have a report.'
She stood her height. 'Was it just empty words? Didn't they talk about a second Nuremberg, didn't they talk about war crimes'? Didn't they talk about a new world order where the guilty would be punished, where they'd be locked up and the key thrown away? Didn't they talk.. .?' The voice calm and gentle. Not the businesslike voice from the graveyard in the village. Not the brusque voice from the kitchen of the Manor House. 'It's the sort of thing people say, politicians. It's not to be taken seriously.' 'You saw the man who killed her…' 'I saw him.' 'You found the evidence of an eyewitness…' 'I found the eyewitness.' 'You know where to go…' 'I know where he is, and I know where to go for the eyewitness.' She could not see into his face. She saw the grey shadow and the dark sockets of the eyes. 'Do you think I am just a woman to be humoured? Do you think I am just a silly woman who is obsessional?' 'I wrote my report.' She said, hard, 'If there is a will then there can be a prosecution… 'Sources and Rationale of Territorial Jurisdiction' and 'Offences Against the Person, Geneva Conventions' and 'Treatment of the Wounded' and 'Conflicts not of an International Character'. If there is determination then there can be a prosecution…' 'What do you want?' She said, brutally, 'I want those empty words thrown back down their bloody throats. I want them to choke on those empty words. I want that man before a court, I want to hear your evidence against him
…' 'What can I do?' She looked into his eyes, pitilessly. 'Go back. Take him. Bring him. Bring him to where they cannot hide behind their empty words. Go… take… bring… Or are you going to walk out on me?' He turned away from her. He was at the window. His hands reached up to the curtains. And her voice died. The silence held the grey gloom of the room. Quite suddenly, the daylight was flooding the room, and the curtains were heaved back. It was the bruises on his face and the cuts and the scarring that she saw first. She gazed at him, and she felt shame. There was a weal on his throat, and on his chest deeper bruises and wider cuts and abrasions.
'I didn't know…'
'I will go back behind the lines and take him and bring him out. Will you please listen to me, Mrs. Braddock, will you please not interrupt me… I will bring him out, but not for you. You, Mrs. Braddock, are owed nothing… I don't think listening comes easily to you, I doubt you ever listened to your daughter, but then I am sure you are a busy woman and capable and resourceful, with many demands on your time. Does life always revolve around you? For Dome's sake I will bring him out, and for myself… Don't drop your head, Mrs. Braddock, and please don't offer me more money… And don't think the United Nations in their glory will stand and cheer, nor our embassy, nor the government here… I will bring him out because knowing and loving your daughter has been my privilege. I will bring him out.'
The woman came off the bed, and she was tucking her blouse into the waist of her trousers, and then she was buttoning her blouse, and she seemed to look at Penn as if to satisfy herself that he had made up his mind. She did not question him, just checked him, and she was slipping from the bed and going for the telephone on the shelf beneath the mirror.
And the small man, the man who was crouched down on the floor with his rifle, shook his head like he heard something that he could not believe, and he said, 'That, squire, is the biggest piece of fucking madness that I have heard. Just 'cause the cow winds you up, doesn't mean you fucking have to.'
The woman was dialling a number.
She looked at the scars and bruises and cuts. 'I didn't know.'
He said simply, 'We loved her, all who were touched by her came to love her. Your problem, Mrs. Braddock, is you knew nothing about that love.'
His hand was laid on Evica's hand. Just for the moment she allowed his hand on her hand. She took her hand from under his. Milan's hand lay on the kitchen table. He drummed his fingers, he looked into her face. She did not criticize him with her eyes because the log bin beside the stove was not filled. She did not criticize him because he had sat at the table rereading old newspapers through the whole of the morning while she had been with Marko at the school. She did not criticize him because he had not risen from their bed before she had gone with Marko to the school, had not been to the store in the village to see if there was fresh bread, had not swept the floor of the kitchen. Evica pushed the last logs of the bin onto the fading fire of the stove. She did not criticize him because she had to go out into the shed behind the kitchen door to get potatoes and beetroot, and she was wearing her washed and ironed blouse and her neat skirt that were appropriate for the acting headmistress of Salika's village school, and she took the emptied log bin with her. Her face, when he had laid his hand on hers, was without expression. He could not know from looking at her face whether she was ashamed of him, whether she was frightened for him, whether she loathed him. The body of the dog was pressed against the kitchen door as if waiting for the mistress to come, as if the master were no longer of importance. They had been married more than a dozen years ago, when he was the basketball star of the Glina Municipality and she the prettiest girl in Salika village, and he did not know her. The boy, his Marko, came to him, sat on his lap, sturdy weight on his upper thighs, and he thought that perhaps the boy had been crying as his mother had walked him home from morning school, and there were the scars of fighting on the boy's face. She came back into the kitchen. She was carrying the log bin, filled, and a cardboard box of potatoes and beetroot, and he could see the stain of dried mud on her blouse, and the strain of her arm muscles because the logs were damp and still heavy. And he could see, near to the broadest of the smears of dried mud, the place on the waist of her blouse where she had stitched a short L-shaped rent in the material. She did not criticize him because it was impossible now to buy new clothes. She did not criticize him because she could no longer go to the shops in Karlovac and Sisak. She did not criticize him as if he were responsible, as if it were personal to him, for the war. She had dumped the bin. He held tight to his son. She was tipping potatoes and beetroot into the bowl in her sink for washing and peeling and cutting. She knew of the death of the Headmaster, and she would know of the killing of Katica Dubelj, she had translated the accusation of the stranger who had come to their village… and he did not know what she thought. It had rained hard in the night. Through the window he could see the cloud on the hill above the village across the river. Her back was to him. She worked methodically over the sink.
Milan said, 'Because the stream is in spate it cannot be today, and I do not think it can be tomorrow, but when the pace of the stream is settled then I will take Marko to fish. Far up the stream, up past where they graze the sheep, where they plough, there is a good pool. I saw trout there. We will dig some worms, we will bring you back a trout…'
He laughed out loud and he cuddled the boy who was heavy on his upper thighs, and the weight of Marko tautened the belt at his waist and dragged the bulk of the holster into the flesh of his hip and he would always wear the holster now, and she did not turn to face him, and he did not know what she thought.
He was waiting for them at the entrance to the barracks.
