The Eyre Affair

‘Nonsense,’ I replied. ‘Look at these lines—!’

‘Laughter lines,’ asserted Landen.

‘Nothing’s that funny.’

‘Are you here for good?’ he asked suddenly.

‘I don’t know,’ I answered. I dropped my gaze. I had promised myself I wouldn’t feel guilty about leaving, but—

‘It depends.’

‘On—?’

I looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

‘—on SpecOps.’

The coffee arrived at that point and I smiled brightly.

‘So, how have you been?’

‘I’ve been good,’ he said, then added in a lower tone, ‘I’ve been lonely, too. Very lonely. I’m not getting any younger, either. How have you been?’

I wanted to tell him that I’d been lonely too, but some things can’t easily be said. I wanted him to know that I still wasn’t happy with what he had done. Forgive and forget is all very well, but no one was going to forgive and forget my brother. Anton’s dead name was mud and that was solely down to Landen.

‘I’ve been fine.’ I thought about it. ‘I haven’t, actually.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘I’m having a shitty time right now. I lost two colleagues in London. I’m chasing after a lunatic who most people think is dead, Mycroft and Polly have been kidnapped, Goliath is breathing down my neck and the Regional Commander at SpecOps might just have my badge. As you can see, things are just peachy.’

‘Compared to the Crimea, this is small beer, Thursday. You’re stronger than all this crap.’

Landen stirred three sugars into his coffee and I looked at him again. ‘Are you hoping for us to get back together?’

He was taken aback by the directness of my question. He shrugged. ‘I don’t think we were ever truly apart.’

I knew exactly what he meant. Spiritually, we never were.

‘I can’t apologise any more, Thursday. You lost a brother, I lost some good friends, my whole platoon and a leg. I know what Anton means to you, but I saw him pointing up the wrong valley to Colonel Frobisher just before the armoured column moved off. It was a crazy day and crazy circumstances, but it happened and I had to say what I saw—!’

I looked him squarely in the eye.

‘Before going to the Crimea I thought that death was the worst thing that could happen to anyone. I soon realised it was only for starters. Anton died; I can accept that. People get killed in war; it’s inevitable. Okay, so it was a military debacle of staggering proportions. They also happen from time to time. It’s happened many times before in the Crimea.’

‘Thursday!’ implored Landen. ‘What I said. It was the truth!’

I rounded on him angrily.

‘Who can say what the truth was? The truth is whatever we are most comfortable with. The dust, the heat, the noise! Whatever happened that day, the truth is now what everyone reads in the history books. What you told the military inquiry! Anton may have made a mistake, but he wasn’t the only one that day.’

‘I saw him point down the wrong valley, Thursday.’

‘He would never have made that mistake!’

I felt an anger I hadn’t felt for ten years. Anton had been blamed for the charge, it was as simple as that. The military leaders managed to squirm out of their responsibilities once again and my brother’s name had entered the national memory and the history books as that of the man who lost the Light Armoured Brigade. The commanding officer and Anton had both died in the charge. It had been up to Landen to tell the story.

I got up.

‘Walking out again, Thursday?’ said Landen sardonically. ‘Is this how it will always be? I was hoping you would have mellowed, that we could have made something out of this mess, that there was still enough love in us to make it work.’

I shot a furious look at him.

‘What about loyalty, Landen? He was your greatest friend!’

‘And I still said what I said,’ sighed Landen. ‘One day you’ll have to come to terms with the fact that Anton fucked up. It happens, Thursday. It happens.’

I stared at him and he stared back.

‘Can we ever get over this, Thursday? I need to know as a matter of some urgency.’

‘Urgency? What urgency? No,’ I replied, ‘no, no, we can’t. I’m sorry to have wasted your fucking precious time!’

I ran out of the cafe, eyes streaming and angry with myself, angry with Landen and angry with Anton. I thought about Snood and Tamworth. We should all have waited for back-up; Tamworth and I fucked up by going in and Snood fucked up by taking on an enemy which he knew he was not physically or mentally prepared to face. We had all been flushed with excitement by the chase; it was the sort of impetuous action that Anton would have taken. I had felt it once before in the Crimea and I had hated myself for it then, too.

I got back to the Finis at about one in the morning. The John Milton weekend was ending with a disco. I took the lift up to my room, the distorted beat of the music softening to a dull thud as I was transported upwards. I leaned against the mirror in the lift and took solace in the coolness of the glass. I should never have come back to Swindon, that much was obvious. I would speak to Victor in the morning and transfer out as soon as possible.

I opened my room door and kicked off my shoes, lay on the bed and stared at the polystyrene ceiling tiles, trying to come to terms with what I had always suspected but never wanted to face. My brother had fucked up. Nobody had bothered to put it so simply before; the military tribunal spoke of ‘tactical errors in the heat of the battle’ and ‘gross incompetence’. Somehow ‘Fucked up’ made it seem more believable; we all make mistakes at some time in our lives, some more than others. It is only when the cost is counted in human lives that people really take notice. If Anton had been a baker and forgotten the yeast, nothing would have been made of it, but he would have fucked up just the same.

As I lay there thinking I slowly drifted into sleep and with sleep came troubled dreams. I was back at Styx’s apartment block, only this time I was standing outside the back entrance with the upturned car, Commander Flanker and the rest of the SO-1 interview panel. Snood was there too. He had an ugly hole in his wrinkled forehead and was standing, arms crossed and looking at me as if I had taken his football and he had sought out Flanker for some kind of redress.

‘Are you sure you didn’t tell Snood to go and cover the back?’ asked Flanker.

‘Positive,’ I said, looking at them both in turn.

‘She did, you know,’ said Acheron as he walked past. ‘I heard her.’

Flanker stopped him.

‘Did you? What exactly did she say?’

Acheron smiled at me and then nodded at Snood, who returned his greeting.

‘Wait!’ I interrupted. ‘How can you believe what he says? The man’s a liar!’

Acheron looked offended and Flanker turned to me with a steely gaze.

‘We only have your word for that, Next.’

I could feel myself boil with inner rage at the unfairness of it all. I was just about to cry out and wake up when I felt a tap on my arm. It was a man dressed in a dark coat. He had heavy black hair that fell over his dour, strong features. I knew immediately who he was.

‘Mr Rochester?’

He nodded in return. But now we were no longer outside the warehouses in the East End; we were in a