The facility, p.19
The Facility, page 19
‘They’re close. Check the map.’
Tom reaches between his feet but is tipped backwards as the BMW accelerates. He looks up and sees they are on a long, dipping straight. There are walls either side still and fields beyond and nothing in the distance but the crest of the straight and an open swathe of moorland. Tom tries for the map again but by the time he has it spread on his lap they are swerving again. His fingertip slips from the page and the map slides back on to the floor.
There is a roar. It sounds likes an aeroplane overhead and instinctively Tom looks up. He looks around. ‘Jesus,’ he says because he cannot stop himself. The Audi is a car’s length behind.
‘There’s two of them,’ says Julia. ‘Can you see them? Who are they?’
The BMW swerves and Tom is toppled sideways. He rights himself. ‘I can’t see. I can’t tell.’ The Audi roars again and it seems suddenly that its bonnet has been swallowed by their boot. ‘Christ Almighty! What are they trying to do?’
‘Casper? Sit tight, honey. Are you buckled in? Is he buckled in?’
‘What’s wrong, Mum? Are they motorbikes? What’s that noise? I can’t see the motorbikes.’
‘He’s buckled in.’
‘I can’t see the motorbikes, Mum. Mum. Mummy. I can’t see the—’
‘Just sit tight, Cas! Please, honey, Mummy’s driving!’
The Audi hits them. It is just a nudge but the sound is like the BMW is splitting in two.
‘Jesus Christ!’
‘Shit! Shitshitshit! Casper, are you okay? Tom! Tom! Is Casper okay?’
‘He’s okay! Jesus Christ! Are you okay, buddy?’ Tom has his cheek pressed to the headrest. He is watching the boy’s face as it crumples. ‘It’s okay, Casper, I promise you. Just hang on.’
‘Just sit tight, honey!’
The impact, this time, hurls Tom towards the dashboard. The seatbelt catches him and yanks him back and drives his skull into the headrest. The pain, when it comes, is in his neck, across his chest. He needs to breathe and he opens his mouth and he realises his mouth is already open. He hears Julia scream her son’s name and he looks up and the windscreen is filled with wall. He yells, or tries to, but Julia is already turning.
‘Shit! Shit! Tom! Are you okay? Tom!’
‘I’m okay.’
‘Tom! Shit! Tom!’
Tom says it louder. ‘I’m okay!’
There is another roar. Tom turns and it is like a knife slits his spine. He spots the Audi before jerking back. It is close but falling away, as though it lunged again but this time missed its target.
Casper is wailing now and Julia is trying to comfort him. She is shouting though, almost screaming. Tom reaches and ignores the pain and his hand closes on Casper’s foot. The BMW swerves and the jolt makes Tom yell but he shuffles back in his seat and holds tight. He feel Casper’s fingers scrabbling to find his and leans further until their hands join.
‘They’re dropping back!’
Julia is smiling into the rear-view mirror – grinning, in fact, like someone touched.
‘They are!’ she says. ‘They’re dropping back!’
Tom twists. There is nothing beyond the rear windscreen but road and a brightening sky.
‘What they hell were they playing at? Did you get the registration, Tom? I can’t see it.’
‘No, I—’
Julia is not looking at the road. She is looking in the mirror still as Tom turns towards the front and she is not looking at the road and she does not see what Tom sees.
There is no time even to say her name. There is no time to point or to brace himself or to tighten his grip on Casper’s hand. He has an instant only and time for just a single thought: this is going to hurt.
PART THREE
Graves counts as they disembark. He counts again as they file towards the entrance. There are only twelve, he is about to say. But then the thirteenth and final prisoner appears. She has to be carried from the coach. There is a guard either side of her, bearing an arm and a leg each, and the prisoner slumps in her makeshift throne. She is a big woman and the guards, despite their own size, have to pause halfway across the courtyard to adjust their grip. They jerk the woman to get a better hold but they jerk too violently and they stagger. Another guard hurries forwards to catch their balance. He tries to help with the carrying but there is no limb for him to hold. He moves to the rear and then the side and then the front. He grabs a trouser leg but his colleague shakes his head. Possibly he says something, snaps something, and the guard who was trying to help moves aside. He stands for a moment, looking as useless as he no doubt feels, but then he yells at the line of prisoners and points as though with purpose and gives one of the men a shove and feels, Graves suspects, much better.
He should be hiking. He stopped at the office to collect some paperwork but he has on the boots he has not yet worn and today is his day off – the only day off he has taken – and he promised himself he would put it to good use. Instead, for the time being, he watches the scene in the courtyard below from his window. Burrows is beside him and Graves, for once, feels gratified by his presence. It could simply be that the man is not bleating. He is not talking for the sake of talking or knocking something over or breathing through his mouth as he so often does. Burrows watches as Graves watches and it feels like they are thinking about much the same thing.
Graves looks at his assistant. He looks away. When he talks, he talks to the glass. ‘Why are you here, John?’ He hesitates. ‘You said before you hardly had a choice. What did you mean?’
For a while Burrows does not answer and Graves begins to think that maybe he will not. ‘I needed the money,’ he says at last. Like Graves, he keeps his eyes on the row of prisoners. ‘I had debts. Gambling debts, if you want the truth.’ Burrows says this last with a hint of a challenge but when Graves remains silent he carries on. ‘Not fortunes. I mean, to you it wouldn’t sound like a lot of money at all, I’m sure. But they had to be paid.’
‘And?’ says Graves. ‘Did you pay them?’ It is the kind of question an interfering father would ask; the kind of question he has never dared ask his daughter.
‘They did. It was part of the deal.’ Burrows takes a breath and speaks as he exhales. ‘Now I have new ones.’
Graves parts his lips. He feels reproach tug his gaze but resists. How? he does not say. With whom?
Burrows sighs. He answers as though Graves has asked. ‘We play cards. Poker, mainly. Me, Baggins sometimes, a few of the guards.’
Graves bobs his head. ‘I’d heard rumours. I even had an invitation once, from a guard who didn’t know, I think, who I was.’
Burrows turns. ‘You should come,’ he says, forgetting the debts evidently and talking now as though about a drink at the pub. ‘It’s only for pennies, really.’
Graves turns too. ‘Pennies?’
‘Sometimes pounds.’ Burrows lifts a shoulder. ‘I haven’t been lucky.’
The last of the prisoners has disappeared from view. In the courtyard, the coach is turning. Graves has a glimpse of the driver and he wonders momentarily about the man’s life. Where he lives and with whom and what he said to his wife, if he has a wife, when he left for work this morning. Although of course the driver would have said nothing. He is army, probably, or something similar, and he is trained to say nothing, to think nothing, to follow orders.
‘What about you?’
Burrows’s tone is brave, brazen almost, and Graves shifts. He is tempted to assert his authority and avoid answering but that, he tells himself, would not be fair. What, after all, would he really be avoiding?
‘I was bored,’ he says. ‘It was important, a service to the country: they made that clear. But to me, mainly, it was something to do.’ He finds himself snorting because although the answer comes readily it is not something he has previously acknowledged. Even to himself, he has only ever admitted an adulterated version of the truth. ‘I was retired, supposedly. I retired myself. But I don’t play golf and I don’t have an allotment and I was sitting at home for most of the day building my tolerance to caffeine.’
‘You do drink a lot of coffee.’
Graves cannot help but smile. His smile, though, quickly sours. ‘This is me, John. This is all I can do. It’s all there is for me to do. I don’t have friends. I don’t have family. I have a daughter but she . . . Well. My daughter has her own life. I missed my chance to be a part of it.’
‘You have a daughter? I didn’t know that.’
‘No. There’s no reason why you would.’
‘What about your wife? I mean, I noticed you wear a ring. Is she . . . That is, does she still . . .’
‘She’s alive. We’re divorced. I wear the ring because I can’t get it off.’
Burrows swallows. He seems to be searching for another question. All of a sudden, though, Graves wants not to be here. It is not Burrows that makes him feel so, nor even the conversation. It is as though he has realised suddenly that he is late for something; that the day he has given himself seems quietly to be stealing itself back.
He turns and collects the paperwork for which he came. ‘You should get on,’ he tells Burrows. ‘Dr Silk will want to know the prisoners have arrived. It wouldn’t do to keep him waiting.’
‘No. I guess it wouldn’t.’
Graves puts a hand on Burrows’s shoulder. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, John. I’m going for a walk.’
He hikes until he can no longer see the facility, which is not particularly far but far enough that he develops blisters. He stops at the summit of a tor and finds a rock on which to sit. He is breathing heavily and his fingers are thick from the cold and he cannot work an opening to unknot his laces. After a minute he gives up. He does not have the energy and anyway the pain round his heels is subsiding. If he stretches his legs and takes the weight from his soles, it is nothing more than a memory of an ache. He puffs, slouches. He shifts his feet but then the pain returns so he shifts them back and gives another puff.
He had no idea he was so out of shape. The doctor, on the other hand, clearly had some inkling. It would be an idea, Henry, he said, if you were to take some exercise. Have you tried just walking? As though for the past five decades Graves had negotiated life balanced on his hands. But those were his words: it would be an idea. Firm but not alarmist. A suggestion, not a prescription. So Graves had not taken it particularly seriously. He promised to make an effort but his effort was a trip to buy some walking boots – even though, at the time, the only place he envisaged walking, if at all, was Hyde Park.
Needless to say he did not make it that far. He should perhaps have listened to what the doctor did not say; he should have acknowledged that he deigned to treat Graves like an adult. But Graves only went to see him in the first place at his daughter’s insistence, after he made the mistake of admitting to her about the palpitations. As far as he was concerned, he did not sleep because he could not stop thinking. It was that simple. And his heart: it was just the occasional flutter, nothing serious – the doctor said it himself. A lifetime of stress was the cause and a walk along the Serpentine would not cure that. So, yes, he is out of shape and of that he is a little ashamed. But he is too old now to start worrying about his health. His life is too far gone.
He looks at his hand and worries at his wedding ring. He thinks of his conversation with Burrows and considers how easily he lied. He twists the ring and pulls. The ring slides from his finger.
His wife, he recalls, had him jogging once. And it was just once: out of Wandsworth gates and down Trinity Road and to the common. That was the route she planned for him. He made it as far as the second set of traffic lights. Then he turned and walked back, apace with the crawling traffic and through the gates again and past the smirking guards.
The grief Carol gave him. Like she was a paragon of vitality. She ate muesli, that was her claim to healthy living. Muesli and then biscuits and sugared coffee at ten. How was that any better than a bacon sandwich? Apparently, though, it was different for men. Particularly, Carol said, for men of a certain age. And besides, it wasn’t just about keeping fit. It wasn’t just about sleeping. It was about de-stressing, which to Graves did not even sound like a real word. It was about learning to take some time out and just, for twenty minutes, letting go.
Would it have helped? he wonders. Would jogging and eating less bacon and making the effort – at weekends, she pleaded; on Sundays even – to ignore the telephone: would doing those things have saved his marriage? Certainly, in the months after their break-up, he regretted not having at least given them a try. But he has no such regrets any more. Those things on to which his wife latched were symptoms, it is clear to him now, of a character flawed but immutable. Like his wife’s, in fact. So exactly like his wife’s and that was the other problem. Graves’s only real regret, the one thing time has not pardoned, is that he behaved, when the end came, so perfectly like a child. Carol did too, he can say that now without prejudice, but his offence – their offence – was to expect their daughter, barely a grown-up, to be the adult.
He wears the ring still because he cannot take it off. That is what he said. And it is true, in a sense. He loves his daughter and he even loves his wife still and he cannot take off the ring because he does not deserve to.
He stands. It is beautiful. He has not considered – he has not, in his time here, had cause to consider – quite how stunning the moorland is. Not picturesque. Not quaint bridges and clipped hedges but jagged rock and thick-stemmed grass and trees that dance in the wind. It is raw. It is uncontrolled, uncontrollable. That, Graves feels, is the source of its beauty. The land in front of him and behind him and in every direction in which he looks is the world left just to get on with things. It is nature, unredacted.
He starts to walk, back the way he came. Gloves and plasters: he should have thought to bring gloves and plasters. A thermos of coffee would have been nice too, perhaps one or two of Burrows’s biscuits. What would the doctor, Graves wonders, say to that?
He aches and it is a worthy ache but that does not lessen his desire for a bath. A bath, ideally, he has to ease into, one square inch of skin at a time. After that a meal, involving mashed potato and gravy. Instead he braves the tepid shower and heats up another pie.
He eats as much as he did last time. Tonight, though, he does not wait before resorting to the rich teas. He gobbles one whole, snapping it against the roof of his mouth with his tongue, then carries the packet into the living room, to the chair he has positioned to catch the outer glow from the kitchen light. The papers he collected from his office are at his feet. He sets aside the uppermost file, his pretext – to Burrows, to himself – for going to the office at all, and lifts on to his lap the stack below. He nibbles the circumference of another biscuit as he reads. Crumbs patter on the pages and he dabs at them with a fingertip.
He learns nothing new but he did not expect to. He tracks the words and the pictures in the files but it is a trick, really, and one he acknowledges, that he is playing on himself. It is a delaying tactic. It is reading the brochure one more time after deciding already to place a deposit. Because he has decided, he knows he has. He knows and yet when he finishes the final folder he flips the pile and starts again from the beginning.
The curtains are drawn. It is not a curtain so much as a bed sheet but the important thing is that it covers the window. It blocks his view and that is the point, except it leaves him with nothing, after the folders, at which to stare.
He turns on the television. He does not expect it to work but it does. Coat hangers and snow, he remembers, are a relic of another age. He finds the news. There seems to be none.
It is too early for bed so he watches for a while anyway. It is sport, which he does not follow, then entertainment, which he does not understand. After that it is business, which he encourages himself to find interesting, and finally it is the weather. Some cloud, some sun, some rain, the occasional gust of wind. Comprehensive, then, but hardly enlightening. After the weather the headlines roll again. Graves missed them on the previous cycle but he no longer cares to watch. He turns off the television and listens for a moment to the silence. It is not a comfortable silence, however, so he turns the television back on.
In his bedroom he lays open a case on his mattress. He does not fill it. It is open though and that is a start. It is an acknowledgement, of a kind. But then he shakes his head and shuts the case and slides it back under the bed. He returns to the lounge. The folders are still on the chair and from his position at the door he considers them. This is the problem, he tells himself. This is his other problem. He is better not having the opportunity to think. Put him on the spot, rather. Ask him for a decision, quickly now please, and he will make one and usually a good one. But give him time – days and, most especially, nights – and he will prevaricate. He will second-guess. He will decide and then undecide and it is no wonder that he can never sleep.
And this woman’s voice. Honestly.
Graves turns to the television and the newsreader is a man. Which is all well and good but does not make the voice any less irritating. He crosses the room and reaches for the switch on the set. He presses it but then he is holding it. He bends. Still holding the button, he watches the screen. Because the newsreader, finally, has said something worth hearing. Just a name but it is enough. It is enough to keep Graves watching: the image of the mangled car, the television reporter hunched against a rain shower at the roadside, the faces in the photographs on the screen. He watches and he keeps watching, even as his finger aches and his knees creak and the blisters on his heels chafe against his socks and begin to bleed. And even after the report is over, Graves does not shift. He remains in front of the television, waiting for the news cycle to begin again, knowing that his decision has finally been made.
Dear is too formal and hi is too glib and Casper, Julia is too stark. But that, as far as he can see, is his choice: a letter of complaint, an email or a memo. Unless he just starts with the start? But then he could be writing to anyone.
