I glance at you, my dear, but your eyes are averted now, your gaze cast down. ‘And us?’ I ask our lieutenant. ‘How do you intend to treat us?’
‘You and your wife?’ she says, then watches keenly. I display, I hope, no reaction. You look away, towards the window. ‘Oh, with respect,’ the lieutenant continues, nodding, expression serious. ‘Why, with honour.’
‘But not to the extent of honouring our desire to leave.’
‘Correct!’ she says. ‘You’re my local knowledge, Abel. You know your way around these parts.’ She gestures upwards and around. ‘And I’ve always had a thing about castles; you can give me a guided tour of the place, if you like. Well, let’s be honest; if I like. And I do like. You wouldn’t mind, though, would you, Abel? No, of course not. I’m sure it would he a treat for you as well. I’m sure you have lots of interesting stories you can tell me about the place; fascinating ancestors, famous visitors, exciting incidents, exotic heirlooms from faraway lands … Ha! For all I know the place even has a ghost!’ She sits forward, the fork waved in her fingers like a wand. ‘Does it, Abel? Does the place have a ghost?’
I sit back. ‘Not yet.’
This makes her laugh. ‘There you are. Your real treasures are things the looters weren’t interested in; the place itself, its history, the library, the tapestries, ancient chests, old clothes, statues, great gloomy paintings … all still intact, pretty much. Perhaps while we’re here you can educate my men; give them a taste for culture. I’m sure my own aesthetic senses have been heightened already, just talking to you and sitting here.’ She clatters the fork down on the salver. ‘That’s the thing, you see; people like me get so few opportunities to talk to people like you and stay in places like this.’
I nod slowly. ‘Yes, and you know who I am, who we are; there are books in the library listing the generations of our family, and portraits of most of our ancestors on every wall, but we don’t know who you are. Might we inquire?’ I glance at you; your gaze has returned to the lieutenant. ‘Just a name would do,’ I tell her.
She scrapes her seat back, flexing her shoulders, arching her back, and stifling the greater part of a yawn. ‘Of course,’ she says, linking her hands and stretching them against each other. ‘What you don’t realise, until you become part of one, is the way that units in the front line the grunts, the squaddies take on nicknames. They leave their civilian names behind with their civilised personalities; they become another person, after training. Maybe it’s a sort of shamanistic thing, like a lucky charm.’ She grins. ‘You know; the bullet with your name on it will have your non com handle printed thereon, not the real one, the one your buddies call you.’ She snorts. ‘You know I’ve forgotten the real name of every man in this squad? Been with some of them two years, too, and that seems like a very long time, in the circumstances?’ She nods. ‘But, their names … Well, there’s Mr Cuts ‘
‘He alive?’ I suggest.
She looks at me oddly, then continues. ‘He’s kind of my deputy; a sergeant in his old unit. Then there’s Airlock,
Deathwish, Victim, Karma, Tootight, Kneecap, Verbal, Ghost Ah!’ she smiles suddenly. ‘See; we have a ghost already!’ She sits. forward, flicking the names off, finger by finger. ‘. . Ghost, Lovegod, Fender, Dropzone, Grunt, Broadleaf, Poppy, Onetrack, Dopple, Psycho … and … that’s all,’ she says, sitting back, closing up, crossing her arms and legs. ‘There was Half caste, but he’s dead now’,
‘Was he the young man on the road yesterday?’
‘Yes,’ she says quickly. Then is silent for a moment. ‘You know the strange thing?’ She looks at me. I watch. ‘I remembered Half caste’s name, his old name, civilian name, when I kissed him.’ Another moment’s pause. ‘It was Well, it doesn’t matter now.’
‘Then you killed him.’
She looks at me for a long time. I have out stared many a man, but those cold grey globes come close to besting me., Eventually, she says, ‘Do you believe in God, Abel?’
‘No.,
What must be one of the lieutenant’s smallest calibre smiles is dispatched. ‘Then just wish that you aren’t ever dying from a stomach wound when there’s nobody around armed with anything better than a skin plaster and the sort of painkillers you’d use for a mild hangover. And nobody prepared to put you out of your agony.’
‘You have no medic?’
‘Had. Got in the way of some mortar shrapnel two weeks ago. Name was Vet,’ she says, yawning again. ‘Vet,’ she repeats, and puts her arms behind her head, as though in surrender (her gaudy jacket falls open and, within her army shirt, the lieutenant’s breasts press briefly out; I suspect they might be, like her, quite firm). ‘Not because he was long serving. Still, you take what you can get, you know?’
‘So, at the end of this, what ought we to call you?’ I ask, thinking to break her out of such dreadful sentimentality.
‘You really want to know?’
I nod.
‘Loot,’ she tells me, passing bashful. Another shrug. ‘After a while, you become your function, Abel. I am the lieutenant, so they call me Loot. I have become Loot. It is what I answer to.’
‘Lute, with a U?’
She smiles. ‘No.’
‘And before that?’
‘Before?’
‘What were you called before?’
She shakes her head, snorts. ‘Easy.’
‘Easy?’
‘Yes. I used to say, “Easy, now,” a lot. It got shortened.’ She inspects her nails. ‘I’ll thank you not to use it.’
‘Indeed; the jibes that suggest themselves would be … eponymous.’
She regards me, narrow eyed for a moment, then says, ‘Just so.’ She yawns, then rises. ‘And now I’m going to sleep,’ she announces, stretching her arms. She stoops to gather up her boots. ‘I thought we might the three of us take a walk, later on; into the hills,’ she says. ‘Maybe do some hunting, this afternoon.’ She passes me by and pats me on the shoulder. ‘You two make yourselves at home.’
Chapter 4
I regret I am impressed with our lieutenant, if mildly. She has a sort of uncut grace, and I find her lack of beauty (as she does, not unthinking) beyond the point. I do not like people who make me notice what they fall to find impressive in themselves.
You rise and walk round the table, straightening the flag as you approach, then stand behind me, hands on my shoulders, gently pressing, kneading, massaging. I let you work my tired muscles for a while, my body rocking slightly, my head moving slowly back and forth. I do believe sleep may be coming at last; my eyes half close, and a sleepy focus brings my gaze to the surface of our flag, spread upon the table. Dried mud lies scattered on the flag, a souvenir of the plains delivered courtesy of the lieutenant’s boots. No doubt their soil lies sprinkled over most of our rooms, corridors and rugs by now. My gaze, filtered through the blurring eyelash veil of my half-closed eyes, stays fixed upon that caked dirt lying on our colours, and I recall our second tryst.
I threw you on this same flag once, though not on this table, not in this room. Somewhere higher than here; an old attic, dusty and warm with the day’s soaked in sunlight. On the other side of those slates we had used as a prop to our pleasure the night before, we crept while the rest of our party, still recovering from the night’s excitement, lunched on the lawns or soaked away hangovers in baths. I wanted you immediately my desire stoked but smothered, banked for the rest of that night first by your too proper concern for our absence being noticed, then by the sleeping arrangements, which meant we each had to share a room with other relations but you demurred at first, in some recollected aftermath of shyness.
And so, like the children we no longer were, we investigated old boxes, trunks and chests, our declared pretext become real. We found old clothes, moth eaten fabrics, ancient uniforms, rusted weapons, empty boxes, whole crates of hard, heavy phonograph records, forgotten urns, vases and bowls and a hundred other discarded pieces of our history, recent and antique, risen here like light detritus upon the swirling currents of the castle’s fluid vitality, deposited at its dusty, unused summit like dusty memories in an old man’s head.
We tried on some old clothes; I brandished an age spotted sword. The flag, unfolded from a trunk, made a carpet for our shoes and discarded clothes, then after I grew bolder, taking off more, helping you with your assumed attire, letting my hands and fingers linger, then kissing it became our bed.