Devastation Road Read online

Oi, said Max, taking the Woodbine from his mouth and giving Owen’s arm a slap. Dear God, are you listening? I said, what do you think?

  Of what?

  Of Connie, you plank.

  Oh, I don’t know, Max. And he didn’t.

  I mean, I know she’s a bit avant-garde but I think I might like that in a wife. Keep me on my toes.

  She’s nice, he had eventually offered.

  Nice? Bloody hell. Is that it?

  The best thing to do, Owen told himself, was to politely avoid her, but that was not easy and not once had he truly wanted that. Max wanted him to get to know her better. She’s just your type.

  A week or two later he and Max had started their training. At Hawkers Mr Camm had been none too pleased, but Owen had needed his personal approval. The design department was moving to Claremont House near Esher anyway. Kingston, they said, wasn’t safe.

  You’re more use to the war effort behind a drawing board. You know that, don’t you? Mr Camm had grumbled, but he filled in the form anyway. Just make sure you come back.

  For a while they were both at No.11 Recruit Centre at RAF Skegness, and then the Operational Training Unit at RAF North Luffenham. Connie had got a job at Smiths Industries in Putney, where she made KLG. sparking plugs for Hurricanes and Spitfires. He imagined that she looked quite the part in her overalls.

  Max was renting the second floor of a house on Caversham Rise and it made sense, he said, for her to save money and move in there while they were both in training – an arrangement that their mother wholeheartedly disapproved of.

  It’s just a silly infatuation, Owen tried telling himself. She would say it once herself. And what could he do anyway? He would push his feelings down every single time he saw her, even though it hurt.

  In an abandoned munitions factory on the outskirts of a nameless town, they tried to find some space to sleep. In the office areas, hallways and dining room, every inch of floor was taken, huddled groups of people filling the air with their whispers, their coughs and snuffles; while on the main factory floor, which was cavernous, empty and cold, hardier groups clustered around the abandoned machines that were now still and silent like the iron bones of dinosaurs.

  They picked their way through, up stairs and along hallways beneath tall arched windows that threw broken squares of moonlight across the grey walls. In the end they crammed into a corner beside the entrance of an office. Irena tried to get the baby to sleep but he was too upset and wouldn’t even feed, and soon there were others crying too – disembodied voices sobbing in the dark.

  Owen lay there, hungry and exhausted, his eyes growing heavy. He could feel the beat of his heart pumping in his ears. Don’t come back without each other, his mother had said.

  He closed his eyes and slid under.

  He was walking. Still walking. Sometimes Janek and Irena were with him, countless faceless people around them and a darkness pushing from behind. Sometimes he walked home along the lane through the Hampshire fields, and he could see his mother in the door of The Ridings except that it wasn’t getting any closer. And sometimes he walked through snow, and the image then came to him so vividly: the long trail of weather-beaten men pushing through the forest. The guards drove them on hard. The Russians, they said, were coming. They trudged on with heavy feet, the blizzard blowing and tearing at them, the snow six inches deep, and so cold he could feel his own breath freezing and clogging in his chest. His boots crunched through the snow. There were books dropped, half buried, a hat, a mitten, a glove. And in the dream or the memory that woke him, a figure then came staggering out through the blizzard towards him. He was in a coat thick with snow, and Owen felt the judder in him as he fell, this figure that might have been him.

  Apart from the odd oil lamp wedged within the carpet of bodies and giving a soft glow, the factory was dark and it was hard to tell one face from another, all pale, wide-eyed and staring hard at him. Those who slept clutched their belongings to them, their eyes blinking open as he slipped by. He made his way down a corridor, peering into offices where families had set up home in the shadows, then up some stairs and along another hallway. Occasionally he could hear a clang from somewhere in the bowels of the factory, echoing through the walls like a subterranean death knell. He half hoped it was still a dream.

  The boy was in an abandoned turbine room with two others. All three had found crowbars and were shouting and laughing as they brought them crashing against the side of the machine. A detonating boom.

  ‘Za Československo,’ Janek yelled. ‘Za svobodu! Za Petra!’

  ‘Petr!’ the boys shouted.

  ‘Za Petrovu armádu!’

  Janek struck again, his voice a battle cry.

  Owen shouted: ‘Hey! Stop!’

  The two other boys scarpered, crowbars clattering to the floor, but Janek took no notice. He struck the machine again, harder, with another bell-like clang that reverberated through them.

  ‘What the hell are you doing? Janek, stop it.’

  Janek swung the crowbar again; it hit with a boom. ‘Petr,’ he shouted. ‘Za svobodu! Freedom!’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

  Owen tried to wrench the crowbar away but Janek viciously swung it at him, almost taking him off his feet.

  ‘Just put it down. You’re going to hurt someone. My God, what’s wrong with you? What’s this going to achieve?’

  But Janek took no notice. He smashed at the machine again and then hurled the crowbar as hard as he could deep into its gullet. He glared at Owen; his eyes were filled with rage.

  ‘Our time.’ He jabbed Owen in the chest. ‘And you help us.’

  ‘Me?’ The boy was crazy. Owen couldn’t help but laugh, but that only angered Janek more.

  ‘You owe.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Two lives,’ he said, poking him again. ‘Remember?’ Then he turned on his heels.

  ‘Janek!’ he shouted after him. ‘Hey! Wait!’

  What did he owe? Two lives, for what? He stood for a minute, his heart kicking and his hand to his chest, still feeling the prod of the boy’s finger. He gathered the two crowbars up off the floor, and there it was, scratched on to the side of the machine in chalk. A bird within a box.

  When he woke, Janek and Irena were gone. There was just the baby asleep in a nest of clothes. He sat up, panicked. All around was a sea of sleeping bodies, each one a ripple in the darkness, broken only by those who, like him, could not sleep and sat hunched like rocks, the soft sea-murmurs of breath whispering around them.

  The fear that they were truly gone intensified and he stood up, staring.

  He heard them before he saw them, the sound of their breath gasping in and out. He pressed his back against the installation, knowing they were somewhere behind. He bent down and glimpsed through the gaps in the iron framework, catching sight of them through the bars and rods. Her legs were around his waist, dress lifted, hand up his shirt, pressed against the wall. She pulled him into her and he pushed and pushed. In the empty hull of the factory floor, he could hear the quiet echo of her crying.

  In the night, in his dreams, she came to him and curled her arm around him; her smell, her skin, the warm draught of her breath. They fitted quite snugly, wrapped together, the light pooling over her skin like liquid silver in the night. He could draw the curves of her then, if he wanted, her indentations and fragile lines; he could design her on the page as if she was his, and only his, and every inch of her perfect body was of his own making.

  On this sea of sleep he felt quite safe, her arms around him through the night, gently keeping him afloat. In the morning, though, she slipped once more from his mind entirely – she drifted casually away.

  Sometimes he was painfully conscious, his mind turning over and over the same things as if he were sifting through soil in search of ancient remains. Other times he fell through whole hours without realizing, his feet moving but his thoughts gone, as if somewhere within him part of him had faded away. Each day he tried to rebuild h
er. Each day something was lost. He walked the lane. Max pulled up. He was on the trolleybus, the heat through the window pulsing right through him. He could never remember what had happened to his bag. Frail tunes came to him, not the hymn but the first tendrils of another memory: the Stowe House Hotel. If only he had been able to draw her face he might remember it more clearly. Sometimes he felt the pain in his side like a bullet and wondered if it was only his soul walking, if he had left his body in a field somewhere, the sun trying to warm his cold, hardening flesh.

  Leipzig. Just get to Leipzig. The Americans that everyone said were there would then somehow get him home.

  Janek had searched for rags along the verges and hedgerows, and then fashioned a makeshift flag – unfurled wings and a ‘v’ for a head painted on it in tar. The boys from the factory were gone but there were other recruits beside him now, each with a stick held like a rapier and with a collective swagger in their step.

  For a while he and Irena rode in the back of a cart ‘liberated’ by an enterprising group of Dutch who had taken pity on her with a crying infant. At Irena’s insistence, Owen had squashed in with them among the cases and bedding, the Dutch family perched and propped around them. The cart rattled over the potholes and they could see Janek running boyishly some distance behind them, the red, white and blue flag bright in the sunlight.

  Owen held the baby. He sometimes enjoyed the weight of the boy in his arms and his soft, comforting warmth, but there was no doubt he was a worry.

  Irena was leaning out over the side of the cart gazing at the rubble-strewn and bomb-blasted road as it disappeared below. They were all miserable and hungry, and the Dutch family had no food.

  ‘Perhaps we could write,’ she said. ‘When all of this is over.’

  He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Yes, if you like,’ he said, knowing that neither of them really meant it.

  ‘I’ve never been to England,’ she said. ‘You will have to write to me about it.’

  ‘I can tell you now if you like.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I want it in a letter. It will be something to look forward to.’

  Still leaning, she held the end of a twig against the wheel of the cart, just as they had seen the children doing, and it clacked against every turning spoke and rattled through his chest. Then she turned, sitting up a little, and rested her hand on his arm.

  ‘I do know it’s impossible, you know. You think I am ridiculous,’ she said, ‘looking for the father. You think I won’t find him, and . . .’ She stalled. ‘You are right. I know that. I lied. I’m sorry.’ He thought she was going to cry. ‘It’s hopeless, isn’t it?’

  ‘I did think something was rather odd,’ he said. ‘You weren’t looking in the way Janek looks for his brother.’

  ‘Yes, well, Janek is obsessed.’

  ‘Or has more hope.’

  ‘Or has more hope,’ she conceded. ‘Yes. Perhaps.’

  He saw then just how lost she was, how it was desperation that had driven her to them in the first place, to abandon the child as she had.

  ‘Last night . . .’ he began. ‘With Janek. You were . . .’ He didn’t want to say it. ‘Did he . . .’ He took a breath and tried again. ‘I mean . . .’

  ‘He did not force me,’ she said, looking down once more at the road. ‘If that is what you mean.’

  ‘But you were crying,’ he said. ‘I saw you.’

  ‘You don’t know what you saw.’ She turned on him. Her voice had changed. ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know nothing about what has happened here. So how can you ask such things?’

  ‘I’m just worried about you. That’s all.’

  ‘It’s not your place.’

  ‘I can’t help it. And Janek. Both of you.’

  ‘He thinks they will start a revolution,’ she said, turning her attention back to the road. ‘Did you know that?’

  ‘You sound like you don’t care.’

  ‘A new Tschechoslowakei,’ she said. ‘Independence.’

  ‘Independence from what? The war’s over.’

  She took no notice. ‘It is all he says. You are very lucky your German is so bad. I think his brother is in the resilience.’

  ‘The resistance,’ he said, correcting her. It would make sense. If Janek’s antics were anything to go by, there was plenty of fire in the family. Maybe Petr had been caught and that was why Janek thought he was in Germany.

  Beside him, Irena pulled something out from under her – a small oak box – that had been causing some discomfort.

  ‘Sometimes I am like his mother,’ she said, checking behind her that no one was looking. ‘And he is like a child. Czechs are all the same. Weak.’ She undid the clasp and opened the lid. ‘Oh.’ She smiled, seeing it was a sewing box.

  ‘You’ve had a child,’ he said. ‘You’ve had to grow up.’

  She glanced at him, her fingers already in among the sewing bits and bobs.

  ‘We have all had to grow up,’ she retorted. ‘The war has made us all old now. Everyone but him.’

  She rummaged around, unsettling thimbles and bobbins of thread, before pulling something out. Then she closed the lid and squeezed the box back under her. She unwrapped a snatch of velvet, in which a line of glinting needles had been secured and a tangle of thread.

  ‘I will fix your jacket,’ she announced. ‘Look, the shoulders are split.’

  They laid Little Man in a snug nest of blankets beside them, and for a while they sat in silence as she quietly sewed the tears together and fixed a button, and Owen dozed, the rhythmical bump of the cart lulling him finally to sleep.

  When he woke, she was gone and the baby too, and it took him a minute to spot her walking in the road with Janek, the infant in Janek’s arms, bundled in his trailing flag, and the three boys he’d recruited lagging behind them like disconsolate courtiers.

  The mended jacket lay neatly folded on Owen’s lap.

  He rifled frantically through the kitchen cupboards looking for food, while all around dozens of bony hands did the same, grabbing and snatching and breaking things.

  Someone yanked a drawer of utensils out and there was a crash of cutlery falling to the floor. Owen threw open a bread bin – empty – and tossed it aside. There was shouting, scuffles and fights breaking out. If he went upstairs might he find clothes? Clothes for Little Man and something for his throbbing head. He looked around, trying to find Janek among all the people – not just boys and men but women and girls too. What they couldn’t take they would break. Through the window a girl of no more than twelve was throwing ceramic plant pots through a smashed greenhouse. The sound of shattering seemed to go on and on and on.

  Medicine, he thought. Something for Little Man. He pushed his way past those still swarming in, stumbling over the smashed glass and crockery that avalanched beneath his feet.

  ‘Janek!’ he yelled. ‘Janek!’

  He fought his way up the stairs, hordes of people pushing past him with clothes and towels and blankets and shoes. In the bedroom, hands were pulling sheets from beds and curtains from poles, their rings scattering across the landing like exploding stars. There was a smash as something went through the window. He could hear a man shouting in German louder than anyone else.

  He spotted a medicine chest on a dressing table, pillboxes thrown about the floor. He scrabbled around on his knees but he couldn’t read the labels, and anyway, he didn’t know what he was looking for. Something for the baby or was it something for his head?

  Downstairs he could hear a cheer and the sounds of a struggle. There were boisterous voices coming from the yard. He grabbed the nearest pill bottle and, pocketing it, scrambled out. The hall below was already emptying of people just as quickly as it had filled.

  When he got into the yard a crowd had gathered in a large circle, yelling and taunting. The group swelled as more joined. Owen strained to see, catching glimpses of the figure moving in the middle, waving a
piece of wood over the heads of the spectators, who still clutched their spoils.

  He elbowed through until, with some force, he managed to squeeze his way to the front. The sight that met him he would never forget; not in the weeks and months and years that followed, when everything else about those times had blurred around the edges. The old man tied to the chair, which had been kicked over so that he was flat on his back, his feet dangling. Janek, pacing feverishly around the circle, the crowd goading him, cheering him on. The piece of wood that looked like a baluster gripped so tight in his hand. The farmer begged in German while Janek prowled around him, wringing the baluster in his hands and squeezing it tighter. His face was red, an aggrieved anger that must have been pent up in him like a dark storm starting to unleash itself. The crowd fed it and stoked it with their hundred voices: ‘Zrób to!’ ‘Doe het!’ ‘Faites-le!’

  ‘Nein. Nein!’ the man pleaded.

  Then, horrified and frozen as he stood within the circle, Owen watched as Janek approached the man tipped in the dirt. He held the baluster against the man’s head as the crowd bayed louder, clenched fists thumping and arms jabbing. Then Janek swung the baluster back, testing the strike, and the excitement of the crowd rose to a melee, before he took aim and swung the wood back again, and Owen yelled: ‘Janek! No!’

  They crouched at a shallow river, washing their clothes and bodies. They had left Irena nursing the child at the roadside. Janek was in nothing but his makeshift flag wrapped around him like a towel. Owen wore only his shoes, to protect his feet from the sharp stones, and his grubby underpants. In the past he would have been embarrassed, squatting almost naked and slopping freezing water up into his crotch as he rubbed the shirt that was not his between his knuckles. But not now. His trousers and socks were drip-drying from a stick dug into the soil. Up and down the river, beneath the trees, others were doing the same: thin white figures glinting in the sun, voices subdued, just an occasional splash and giggle bubbling over the rocks.

  The incident at the farmhouse hung between them in the air, invisible but heavy. The boy swilled his clothes carelessly about in the water with a finger. His head had that familiar tilt; his eyes rested on Owen with a stern stare.