The facility, p.20
The Facility, page 20
He digs and tries not to think about what he is digging. He tries not to think about the last time he was digging, and with whom. About whose body might be the first to lie where Arthur’s feet are now.
The end is easier: love always. He does not have to sign it. He was stuck on that for a while: how to sign it. Dad or Daddy but then it would have to be Dad/Arthur, Daddy/Arthur, which is ugly and unnecessary because it is not like they will not know. So love always, nothing more. Which leaves him still with how to start.
It is just another drainage ditch, he tells himself, even though the thought is ludicrous given the dimensions they have been instructed to follow. Eight by eight, the first guard said. Or, said the second through a grin, if it’s easier: imagine four people lying side by side.
He would experiment, see what the words look like written down, but the act of writing it once might be all that he can stand. Better to decide now and then just write, without having to think about what he is writing. Like the digging, in fact.
Looks like a goddamn grave. Isn’t that what Roach said last time? And he said, maybe it is. Maybe they’re planning to toss us both in when we’re done.
Ignore the start. Come back to the start. He is only obsessing about the start because he is struggling at the moment to think beyond it.
It is just another drainage ditch. Even though there are four separate teams, four separate holes; even though they are fifty yards beyond the outer fence and in a clearing between the trees and there is nothing whatsoever that could possibly need draining; even though the prisoners are dying and their bodies . . . Roach’s body . . .
It is a drainage ditch. It is just another drainage ditch. And the point is to concentrate on the letter.
He should say sorry, above all else. That, then, is how he should start.
I’m sorry.
To you, Julia, he will write, for a hundred thousand things. Most you’ve probably forgotten and I’m doing myself no favours by bringing them up. But the Gower, for instance. Not that I didn’t enjoy it and I’m fairly sure you did too but it was the fact that we went there at all. That I made us go. That you wanted to go to Sardinia and I said – like I always said – maybe next year. Which is actually the point I’m trying to make because it’s not the Gower, as such, that I’m sorry about. It’s the maybe next year. It’s insisting on Chez Pierre because we know it’s reasonable and the food is decent and it doesn’t take an age to get served. It’s arguing about the car even though you won the argument about the car. It’s the two-for-one deals on wine that neither of us likes. It’s spending Saturday morning shopping around for cheaper insurance. It’s buying insurance, for everything. It’s never, not once, even though you insisted I would like them, ordering oysters.
He knows what he means. She will too, probably, but he will have to limit the letter to a page or two and the Gower, oysters: do they really deserve to take up half of it?
I’m sorry that I made you marry me. I’m being succinct now so there’s no space to argue because we both know the truth and I did. And now you’re arguing even though I’ve already told you there isn’t space. You’re saying, how dare you? I seem to be implying that your mind is not your own. But that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying it was always my plan. That’s how despicable I am. Right from the day we met – or maybe the week after, because it took me a while to reconcile myself to those dungarees you were so fond of wearing – my plan was to make you marry me. You didn’t seem so immediately convinced but that was only, I told myself, because you didn’t know me. So I became your friend. I wanted to be your lover so I became your friend. To be near you, mainly, but also so you’d never be far. And I plotted and I planned and I dreamed and I schemed until finally I convinced you to take a chance. So I did. I made you marry me. So stop arguing, please, and accept the fact that I am sorry.
Which is all very well because he is, in one sense, but in another sense he is absolutely not. Because if they had never been married they would not have had Casper and how could Casper possibly engender regret? So he is sorry but he is not and there will certainly not be space enough to be equivocal.
I’m sorry we did not stay together. You know how sorry I am and you’re sorry too, in your way, but I think – I know – that if you had given me one last—
It is Arthur’s turn to rest and just as well. He has taken that paragraph as far as it ought to go.
There is water but it is brown. He drinks anyway, filtering out the larger clumps of soil between his teeth. The man who replaces him in the hole will soon be filling one, Arthur can tell. Only the well work – the well men – but the man is not well. He claims to be, he claims to be fine, just give me the shovel, but there is a rash on his forearms that Arthur could recognise now in the dark, through a bandage, beneath seeping ulcers and scabs of blood. The man – Taylor, his name is – must know what he is digging but still he insists on working. If it were Arthur, he would take the opportunity to be excused. Or perhaps not. Being excused means sitting in your cell, on your bunk, reckoning the hours until . . . Well. Until whatever comes next. So probably Arthur would dig too.
The three men in the trench nearest to theirs work shirtless. It cannot be more than seven degrees but the sun is dripping through the branches and the ground, given the time of year, is surprisingly firm. Some gloves would help. Some clean water too. Arthur looks to the nearest set of guards, three men stationed beside his trench, and maybe if he were to catch one’s eye he would ask but none sees him looking so he turns away. And in fact he cannot be bothered. He knows how the conversation would go. He knows how it would end.
So: to you, Julia, for a hundred thousand things.
And something more.
And then move on.
To you, Casper, for not being there: now and tomorrow and every day after that. For not being there to watch when you learn to balance your bike, to tie your laces, to pee standing up. To walk you to school. To help with your homework. To drop you off and pick you up and embarrass you in front of your friends simply by being your dad. To teach you to shave. To teach you to drive. To give you money and say, what happened to the last lot? To watch you graduate. To meet Chloë, Christina, Cleo and then your fiancée. To shake you by the hand at your wedding and to slip into your pocket a cheque for the honeymoon. To watch you, just watch you, and not be able to speak past the lump in my throat.
But he would have to write it, not just think it. What kind of message would it send if the letter were stained with tears?
The guards are laughing. Arthur looks behind him to see what is funny. He turns back and realises they are laughing at him. He wonders why. He drinks and they laugh again and it is the way he drinks: siphoning and then spitting and then slurping again. One of the guards makes a rabbit face, rabbit noises. Arthur watches. He takes another scoop from the bucket and raises it to his lips. No way they are getting clean water now.
Some advice perhaps. Something that will stand his son in good stead. Which is a suitably responsible phrase in itself and possibly, Arthur thinks, worth using.
But the advice.
Don’t be a dentist. The money’s good but it’s boring as hell—
He cannot say hell.
Don’t be a dentist. The money’s good but you should choose a career that has the potential to be more fulfilling—
Can he say fulfilling? It sounds like a pun but possibly one only dentists would get. Dentists, and Roach. Roach would have got it. He would have insisted, too, that Arthur use it. He is grinning, in Arthur’s memory, and that he is grinning makes Arthur smile too. It is a painful smile, though, and he swallows it down.
—more fulfilling, like painting or composing or writing or even teaching, like your mother.
Julia, though, might have something to say about that. Teaching, she would point out, is noble and worthwhile and, yes, it can be fulfilling but it can also be frustrating and exhausting and heartbreaking, and probably it is those things on more days than not. And painting, composing, writing: they are hardly the basis of a steady income. How can he in good conscience advise his son to turn his back on a decent credit rating? Whoever follows Chloë, Christina, Cleo will need a home. She will need a car. She will need the knowledge that the children she bears will not suffer because of what their father cannot afford.
Be a dentist, then. It can sometimes seem dull but the money’s good. Don’t, whatever you do, become a painter or a composer or a writer. You might consider being a teacher but talk to your mother about that.
He does not want Casper to be a dentist. He is not sure he wants Casper to be a teacher either, not after seeing the pain it caused Julia.
Be yourself. Be what your heart tells you to be. Listen to your head too because sometimes it might be necessary to be a little bit less yourself than is comfortable but, when in doubt, listen to your heart.
That is not bad. He will use that. Unless it is a trifle throw-away? Be yourself: it sounds as though Arthur could not be bothered to think of anything more meaningful. It is evasive too. It is exactly what someone would say if they were worried about being held accountable. Throwaway, then, and evasive: not, on reflection, an impressive distillation of thirty-one years of accumulated wisdom.
He would like to ask Julia. Julia would know what he should write. She would smile and slip behind his chair and wrap her arms around his shoulders and nestle her cheek against his. And she would say . . .
His break is over and he returns to the ditch. They are thigh deep now, which does not seem bad going, although it strikes Arthur that he has no idea, actually, how long they have been digging.
Taylor lets his shovel drop. He crawls from the trench and he sits, slumps, with his head sagging and his elbows jutting. It is not his turn to rest but Arthur and the other man, the third in their team of three, have an understanding, somehow, that they will each take only one break in two – for Taylor’s sake. The guards have not noticed. Or, if they have, they do not care. The excursion is a jolly for them, a chance to smoke and chat and ridicule.
He should say something about his state of mind. Obviously it will not reflect well that he felt it necessary to write the letter in the first place but he should include some words of reassurance.
Although part of him thinks, why should he? The same part that says, when he thinks about how frantic Julia must be, good. I’m glad. I hope she cannot eat or sleep or breathe from all the worry. With any luck she blames herself and she should blame herself because it is her fault. Because if they had not been separated, would he be here? If he had been in his home, with his wife and his son, would they have dared to take him away? And then another voice joins in, and this one tells him that she is glad he is gone. That she has been waiting for it, planning it somehow. And though neither voice sounds quite like his own they are compelling and convincing and Arthur, through his shame, finds it hard not to listen.
Some days. On some days he listens. Today he will not because he knows, he knows, that the worst part for Julia when she reads the letter will be trying to imagine what Arthur would have gone through.
Don’t worry about me, he will write.
But it will be too late, of course, because she will have, so he cannot say that.
It’s not so bad here, he will write.
But it is, of course, so he cannot say that.
I have a friend, he will write.
When, of course, he no longer has. So he cannot say that.
His state of mind, then. How best to sum up his state of mind?
A state. But what kind of message would that send?
He stops digging and plants his shovel. A guard calls his name so he picks the shovel up again. He digs, even though he is so tired now that when he stabs with the blade it ricochets from the earth. He hears his name again and tries to dig faster. When he hears the guard shout a third time, Arthur turns.
‘Jesus Christ, Priestley, are you deaf? Get out here.’
Arthur hesitates. He looks at Taylor, who looks right back.
‘Either he’s deaf,’ says the guard to his colleagues, ‘or he soon fucking will be.’ He rests a palm on the butt of his truncheon and directs his smile towards Arthur. The smile is a warning: he does not expect to have to ask again.
Arthur leans his shovel against the side of the trench and checks for the easiest point from which to climb out. He presses his palms to the earth and swings his leg but falls back down. He tries again and this time keeps his balance. He drags up his back leg behind and clambers to his feet.
‘Come with me.’The guard turns away but not before Arthur recognises his face. It is the guard with the knuckles – the one who took such offence when Arthur last asked for a chance to see Graves.
Arthur looks at Taylor, still slumped at the edge of the trench. ‘What about the hole?’
The guard is already walking away. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘We’ll save you a space.’ The other guards laugh and Knuckles turns to show his sneer.
They are halfway to the outer fence, Arthur being made to walk in front now and the guard directing him from behind, when they hear a shout. Both men stop and look. Arthur sees only what was there before: the prisoners, the guards, the graves in progress perforating the ground. The guard, though, peers in a single direction, frowning slightly as though vaguely amused. Arthur tracks his gaze.
Someone is running: one of the inmates who removed their shirts. The guards are giving chase but the prisoner has a head start and he is flying, above the roots that try to trip him and beneath the branches that reach to grab him. The trees thicken ahead and all he needs to do is get that far. And he will. The guards yell and stumble and curse and move like they are tethered by elastic. One has a rifle and he fires. It is just a warning shot though and the crack, if anything, acts like a whip at the fleeing prisoner’s back. There are cheers and even Arthur finds himself muttering, wishing the man on, and it works because he is, he is flying, and he is only yards now from the—
He falls. There is another crack. In that order, which is why Arthur thinks that perhaps the shot has missed. He is not alone either because the cheering among the prisoners continues. They think he knew the shot was coming so he dived and in a second he will be on his feet again, running again. But the guards know. They stop and why would they stop if they did not know? When they start forwards once more they take their time. They wade through the foliage like holidaymakers paddling along the shore. By the time they reach the man’s body, the forest is silent.
Arthur feels a hand at his back. The guard shoves and Arthur stumbles.
‘Move,’ says the guard. ‘Keep moving.’
Arthur cannot help but look round. He can no longer see the body, just the guards who are clustered around it. The guard with the rifle is there, the weapon slung now across his back and the hand of another guard resting on his shoulder.
‘Keep walking!’ Knuckles gives Arthur another prod.
What is the point? The letter: why even bother? It will not bring his friend back. It will not make his absence seem any less present, even temporarily. And Julia, Casper: what hope is there that they will read it? What chance that they will be allowed to? There is no point, then: that is the truth of it. In every respect, writing the letter would be futile. It would be an exercise to distract him from the pall that is over him, to convince himself that his fate – like Roach’s, like that of the man who ran – was not long ago decided. And if his fate has already been decided . . . Well. Why leave it in somebody else’s hands?
‘Pick up the pace, Priestley. I didn’t ask you along for a gentle stroll.’
He would not be the first. There was the man in the cell three along from Arthur’s who hung himself from the frame of his upturned bunk. He was ill, it is true, and in that sense his choice was easier but there is the inmate, too, whom Arthur has just seen shot. And he was well. Well enough to work, at least. Well enough to run, and to know that he could never run far.
‘I’m not kidding, Priestley. Jesus Christ. Anyone would think you were ill.’ Knuckles sniggers at his own wit.
Well or not, though, what difference does it make? The point is, there are ways. The point is, everyone has their reasons. And without Roach; without Julia and without Casper. Without the prospect of seeing them or speaking to them or to anyone, ever, who is not another human being condemned, it is a reason to carry on that Arthur lacks.
The guard pauses to light a cigarette. There is a flick of flint and the sound of Knuckles exhaling, followed by bootsteps as he marches to catch up. Then, between smoking and sniggering and digesting the fact he is a witness to murder, he manages to give Arthur another shove.
He remembers everything. He remembers thinking it would hurt and then the pain itself: in his neck and behind his skull and then in his arm as if it was ripping in two. And the noise, like a bottle bank being emptied from a height. After that, screaming, and the thought that screaming was a good thing because it meant they were all still alive. They were his screams, though. They were only his screams. He screamed and the car slid and when the car stopped he did too. Silence followed, until he remembered to breathe. He tried to turn but could not. He was facing the passenger-side window and he had lost all feeling in his limbs; he could move his head but only a fraction and he was straining his muscles but only thought he was because in reality, he felt sure, he was paralysed below the chin.
He shouted for Julia. He shouted for Casper. He was shouting so much he would not have heard them had they replied. They did not. They might have jumped from the car before it hit for all the sound they were making after it had. Screaming was good: the thought returned. So he shouted and he screamed again and still he could not break the silence.
And it dragged on. The waiting was almost the worst part of it. He waited and he waited and all he could do was stare at the same piece of sky. He stared at a cloud, which seemed to have interrupted its journey in order to stop and stare right back. Then it left, just as the ambulance arrived, as though it had dallied too long already and had no desire to get caught up in the commotion that was to follow.
