Peacetime Read online

  PEACETIME

  Robert Edric

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Acclaim for Peacetime

  Also by Robert Edric

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Part II

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Part III

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781409032496

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  PEACETIME

  A BLACK SWAN BOOK : 0 552 77206 2

  Originally published in Great Britain by Doubleday,

  a division of Transworld Publisheers

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Doubleday edition published 2002

  Black Swan edition published 2003

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Robert Edric 2002

  The right of Robert Edric to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  The publisher has made every effort to obtain permission from the estate of Edna St Vincent Millay to reproduce lines from an untitled poem by Edna St Vincent Millay in Make Bright the Arrows, published in 1940 by Harper & Row. They invite the estate to contact them direct and shall be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.

  Condition of Sale

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Set in 11/13pt Melior by Falcon Oast Graphic Art Ltd.

  Black Swan Books are published by Transworld Publishers, 61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA, a division of The Random House Group Ltd, in Australia by Random House Australia (Pty) Ltd, 20 Alfred Street, Milsons Point, Sydney, NSW 2061, Australia, in New Zealand by Random House New Zealand Ltd, 18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland 10, New Zealand and in South Africa by Random House (Pty) Ltd, Endulini, 5a Jubilee Road, Parktown 2193, South Africa.

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc.

  for Lauren and Nathalie

  Robert Edric’s previous novels include Winter Garden, A New Ice Age, Elysium, In Desolate Heaven, The Sword Cabinet and The Book of the Heathen, which was shortlisted for the 2001 WHSmith Literary Award. His latest novel, Cradle Song, is now available from Doubleday. He lives in East Yorkshire.

  www.booksattransworld.co.uk

  Acclaim for Peacetime

  ‘There aren’t many novelists whose new book I would read without question (Banville, Marias, Proulx) but I would read a new novel by the Yorkshireman, Robert Edric, even if its blurb told me that it was about a monk calculating how many angels could dance on a pinhead … If other novels deserve this year’s Booker Prize more than Peacetime, then they must be very remarkable indeed’

  John de Falbe, Spectator

  ‘Peacetime has a seriousness and a psychological edge that nine out of ten novelists would give their eye teeth to possess … it will be mystifying if, 50 years hence, Edric isn’t taught in schools’

  D. J. Taylor, Sunday Times

  ‘A marvel of psychological insight and subtly observed relations … Why Edric has not yet been shortlisted for the Booker Prize is a mystery’

  Ian Thomson, Guardian

  ‘Edric is one of those immensely skilled novelists who seems fated to be discovered insultingly late in a productive career when caught in the arbitrary spotlight of Booker nomination or television adaptation. Booksellers take note: this is a writer to put into the hands of people looking for “someone new”’

  Patrick Gale, Independent

  ‘This is a novel of ambition and skill, at once a historical meditation, an evocation of a disintegrating society and, perhaps most strikingly, a family melodrama … Peacetime deserves the recognition that Rachel Seiffert’s Booker-nominated début received in 2001’

  Francis Gilbert, New Statesman

  ‘A gripping read, full of meaningful conversations and bleak introspection’

  Sunday Herald

  ‘Edric’s evocation of far horizons, tumultuous seas and drifting sands is masterly … There are many memorable things in this novel … Edric has cleverly created a microcosm to represent a world still haunted by its terrible past and uncertain of its future’

  Francis King, Literary Review

  Also by Robert Edric

  WINTER GARDEN

  A NEW ICE AGE

  A LUNAR ECLIPSE

  IN THE DAYS OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM

  THE BROKEN LANDS

  HALLOWED GROUND

  THE EARTH MADE OF GLASS

  ELYSIUM

  IN DESOLATE HEAVEN

  THE SWORD CABINET

  THE BOOK OF THE HEATHEN

  CRADLE SONG

  We think – although of course, now, we

  very seldom

  Clearly think –

  That the other side of War is Peace.

  EDNA ST VINCENT MILLAY

  Summer, 1946

  Part I

  1

  The girl came slowly towards him, and James Mercer watched her through his binoculars, convinced that he could not be seen by her. He adjusted his lenses and brought her more sharply into focus, his elbows sinking deeper into the fine sand which was already beneath his shirt and in his boots.

  It had not been his intention to spy on her. He had been watching for the lorries carrying the labourers, already an hour late, when she had come unexpectedly into view. In the week since his arrival, this was only the second time he had seen her. She walked with no apparent purpose or destination, frequently pausing to look around her. And watching her, even at that distance, Mercer sensed that she gained some small pleasure from being so alone and so aimless. The road was narrow and badly worn, and led only to the houses and abandoned buildings
at its end.

  The sun was high, and in the opposite direction the line of the road was molten in the haze, its boundaries lost to the drifting sand which came and went from its margins.

  The dunes in which Mercer lay provided the only natural vantage point for miles in any direction, and he had gone there to watch for the approaching vehicles so that he might be ready for the men upon their arrival. They were an unwilling workforce and delayed each day’s start for as long as possible. It was his intention that particular morning to watch for them coming and then to start up the generators before they arrived, filling the still air with their pall of blue smoke, and hopefully suggesting some degree of urgency about the work ahead.

  He looked beyond the girl along the line of the road, marked to the horizon by telegraph poles, but saw nothing. Little other traffic used the road. His own convoys – seldom more than ten or twelve lorries – were often held up by the narrow bridges, and by vehicles coming in the opposite direction. The open expanse of land, sea and sky joined seamlessly all around him.

  He lowered the glasses until the girl was once again in focus. She had stopped walking and was now leaning against a post. She brushed the sand from her feet and calves. She wore no shoes. She shielded her eyes and looked around her, pausing briefly – or so it seemed to Mercer – when facing in his direction. He knew she would have seen no light reflected from his glasses because he had gauged the position of the sun before settling himself into the dunes. The act of checking, and then of ensuring that he broke no skyline, had become second nature to him, and realizing what he was doing made him smile.

  He raised his head slowly. The girl no longer stood against the post. He scanned the road on either side of this, but saw nothing. He searched the levels beyond, but there was still no sign of her. He raised himself further to take in the wider view, and only then did he see her rise from where she had been sitting a short distance from the post. She straightened the simple dress she wore and resumed walking. It occurred to him that she had been deliberately hiding from him, letting him know that she knew he was watching her, but he saw by the same casual manner in which she resumed her walking that this was unlikely. He let himself sink back into the sand, feeling its warmth against his arms.

  He lay with his eyes closed for several minutes, knowing how easily he might succumb to this comfort and warmth and allow himself to fall asleep, but even as he considered this he heard the distant rasp of an engine as the first of the approaching lorries negotiated a bend in the road. He raised his head and saw them coming, relieved that he might now continue with the work he was there to undertake, and at the same time disappointed that his time alone was at an end.

  The path behind him, at the landward side of the dunes, would take him quickly back to the excavations, where he might start his preparations in advance of the others.

  He rose to leave, and as he did so he saw that the girl was now on the road directly beneath him and that she was watching him. Her eyes were lost to him in the shadow of her hands, only her mouth remained visible, and he knew that she must have run to have come so far from the post in such a short time.

  ‘I was waiting for the lorries,’ he said. He indicated the vehicles, still distant and slow-moving, their exhaust smoke hanging like dust behind them.

  The girl made no acknowledgement of this.

  He felt uncomfortable, imagining he was about to be accused by her.

  ‘We’re working on the new Station,’ he called down to her.

  She said something he did not hear.

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ he said.

  ‘I said we know who you are.’ She took several paces towards him, her bare feet sinking into the sand of the dunes.

  ‘I ought to be getting back there for when they arrive.’

  She waited where she stood.

  ‘Nice meeting you,’ he said.

  She repeated the words, but in a low voice.

  Watching her at a distance, he had guessed her to be twelve or thirteen, a child, but seeing her beneath him, seeing her height and her outline beneath the thin dress, he knew that this guess had been wrong, and that she was three, perhaps four years older.

  ‘You have no shoes,’ he said, not knowing why he’d said this, and immediately regretting the words.

  She looked down at her buried feet.

  ‘Is that what you were looking at through your binoculars?’ she said. She shook the sand from her feet until they were uncovered.

  ‘Like I said, I was watching for the lorries.’

  ‘You were watching me,’ she said. There was more amusement than threat in the remark.

  ‘I saw you,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’ He started down the slope towards her.

  ‘I thought you had to get back.’ She lowered her hand, revealing herself fully to him.

  ‘Present or absent, they take little enough notice of me.’

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  The remark surprised him. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Only what we hear. You think anything gets said, anything happens round here that everybody doesn’t get to know about one way or another?’

  There was something conciliatory in the remark and he continued down the loose sand until he stood beside her.

  He held out his hand to her. ‘I’m—’

  ‘Mercer,’ she said. ‘From the Authority.’

  ‘James,’ he said. ‘The Authority?’

  ‘The lifeboat people.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot.’

  ‘Like I said …’ She turned to look around her.

  ‘And you are?’

  She considered the question, as though a choice existed, as though she might either reveal nothing at all or create herself completely anew for him.

  Her hesitation made him smile.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing. I asked you your name, that’s all.’

  ‘Mary Lynch.’ She turned away from him as she spoke.

  ‘I wasn’t spying on you,’ he said.

  ‘Yes you were.’

  ‘How did you know I was up there?’

  ‘You’ve been there every morning for the past week, ever since you came. You spy on us all. That’s why you’re here. You’re knocking down all the stuff from the war, and when that’s done you’ll knock down the houses and we’ll all have to leave.’

  He was caught off-balance by how swiftly and directly their simple pleasantries had moved into the unrevealed future. There was some truth in everything she said, though none of it could have been known for certain by her, and he was responsible for only a small part of what she had suggested. Equally, he knew that nothing would be served by his denial of what she had said.

  ‘You seem to know a lot about it.’

  ‘And you think I’m stupid and that you can treat me like the rest of them.’

  ‘Rest of who? You mean the other’ – he stopped himself from saying ‘children’ – ‘people living up there?’ He indicated the distant row of houses.

  ‘Forget it,’ she told him.

  In the short time they had been standing together, the lorries had come much closer, and the first of these was already approaching them. They were seen, and the driver of the leading vehicle sounded his horn. Three men sat in the cab, and all of them called out as they came close. Mercer hoped they might keep going, but knew this was unlikely. The driver and his companions, along with the dozen or so others in the covered back, were perhaps only four or five years older than the girl. They would be unable to resist talking to her, propositioning her, making some remark about the two of them being together in such an isolated place. He had heard the lascivious remarks they made whenever any of the women from the houses came close to where they were working; heard, too, their conversations regarding wives and girlfriends during their long breaks; he had seen the magazines and postcards they occasionally brought with them.

  He wished now that he had not gone down to her. The other lorries drew up behind the first. H
e told the leading driver to carry on to the site, but the man was reluctant to leave.

  ‘What about you and her?’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, you coming with us?’ He grinned broadly at the girl. ‘Plenty of room up here for you,’ he said directly to her.

  ‘We can make our own way back,’ Mercer told him.

  But even as he spoke, the girl approached the cab and raised her foot onto its high metal step, causing her dress to rise and reveal her knee and thigh. The driver and his companions appreciated this, and all three men leaned towards the open window. Everything Mercer now said was ignored by them. The drivers of the other lorries sounded their horns.

  He withdrew until he was back in the sand.

  The girl did not enter the cab, but stood on the step with her arm looped around the mirror. He was reluctant to say anything more to her in front of these others. She turned to look down at him and he avoided her gaze. Then she said something to the driver which caused him to laugh aloud and then to push the engine noisily into gear. The heavy tyres spun briefly on the road and the lorry moved away. The others followed it.

  As they passed him, the men called out to Mercer from the shadowy interiors. He ignored them and looked back to where the girl still clung to the door of the leading vehicle. He saw how her dress was pressed more tightly to her as the lorry gained speed. He saw the hand of the driver hanging loosely beside her, casually brushing her bare arm, as though he was preparing to grab her in case she lost her footing and fell.

  2

  Later, waiting until the last of the men had left the site, he made a survey of the day’s work. Even a cursory glance over the workings showed him that the preparations were behind schedule: a great deal remained to be demolished, and not enough of the new foundations had yet been excavated.

  He had made his temporary home in what had been the perimeter watchtower of the nearby airfield. The boundary of this lay across the broadest of three converging drains, and the tower had been used to look out for the returning aircraft as they approached the runway and the body of the airfield half a mile distant. This, too, was in the process of being demolished and returned to farmland. The place had ceased to be operational almost a year earlier, since which time it had fallen quickly into disrepair. A second airfield lay five miles further inland, at Walsham, and this remained in limited use, largely as the test base for the jet-engine planes being developed and flown there.