The Wall(10)

When you’re on the Wall, the division of time is very simple. Twelve hours on duty, twelve hours off. In practice that means four hours for you, eight hours for sleep. I don’t really remember what I did that first evening, but I do still remember the physical sensation of coming in out of the cold, aching with fatigue, and taking my pack off and dropping my rifle at the armoury and then just sitting, sitting in the dry and the warmth, and thinking that I had never really appreciated sitting before, had never fully got the point of it, but that now I did, and I would never again underestimate how good it is to have nothing to do, no demands on you, except to sit. Most of the patrol sat around too. We were in the mess hall. There was tea and biscuits – the best tea, the best biscuits. Nobody spoke much, or made a great deal of sense when they did. Then there was hot food – I don’t remember what, but I do remember going back for thirds. Some of the shift went to clean up, others to call home and check in with whoever it was they’d left behind. A few of us were gaming on our communicators, a few went through to watch television. I did all of those things in sequence and then woke with Yos shaking my shoulder.

‘You fell asleep,’ he said. ‘Daft bugger, you might have been here all night,’ his tone kinder than his words. The TV was on but the room was empty; it was a chat show with the sound turned right down. He laughed. ‘The first one is a long one. Bedtime.’

I followed him through to the barracks bedroom. There were different generations of design at different points along the Wall; some watchtowers had individual bedrooms. This design, with everyone in one big room, was from a period when the theory was that Defenders should share things, so that they understand they’re all in it together. My shift was in bed or getting ready for it, the other shift’s beds were empty. It was the same as when I’d arrived only the day before, though that fact – that it was only twenty-four hours since I had walked into this room – made no sense. It felt more like twenty-four years. I washed, stripped off my day clothes, then put on my night clothes, starting with a thermal inner layer. The lights went out.

I took off my glasses and got into bed. But then I realised there was one last thing I wanted to do before going to sleep. I put my glasses back on and got back out of bed. I walked down to the far end of the barracks. Most of the squad was already asleep, one or two of them snoring. Someone, I couldn’t tell who, was reading under the blankets with the help of a penlight. The moon had risen by now and some sharp light was coming in the narrow high windows. I stopped at the last cubicle beside the washroom. I looked down and saw what I was looking for: caramel-coloured skin and short waved hair and a button nose peering over the thickly stacked blankets. I thought I had got away with it, but just as I turned, I saw that Hifa’s eyes were open, looking narrowly at me, glinting and amused. But I had got what I wanted.

Hifa was a woman. I went back to bed, and that was my first day on the Wall.





5




On the Wall, one day is every day. At least, it is in terms of the big-picture items such as the shape of the twenty-four hours, your duties, where you go and what you do and who you do it with. Lots of variation within that, but the architecture of the days is the same. That’s the way you want it to be, too, because on the Wall, any news is bad news. They’re never going to say, guess what, the Others have stopped coming and you can leave the Wall now. Guess what, we’ve decided we like your face and you don’t have to do two years on the Wall, in fact you can leave tomorrow, in fact, wait, why not, you can leave right this minute! Off you go! Wait, you forgot your cookies!

That’s not going to happen. The only things that can happen are bad things. So you want nothing to happen. Except it’s more complicated than that. Somewhere in the dark cave-mind there’s a gremlin, saying, But wouldn’t it be interesting if something did happen, if they came, if you had to fight for your life, if you had to do that thing you dread and train for, have nightmares about but maybe just are a tiny bit curious about too, and you have to kill or be killed? Wouldn’t it be better to do that, to feel something other than cold and hunger and boredom and fatigue? Wouldn’t it be exciting to use that bayonet you clamp on your gun every morning? You’ll get to find out something about yourself, what you are like when the worst happens. Whether you are still you.

Only the louder and stupider Defenders will ever talk about this, but we all think about it. We half-fantasise about the worst that could happen.

Mostly, though, what happens is nothing, and mostly, that’s the way we like it. My first two weeks on the Wall were like that. Every day was the same as the first day, with the main variable being the weather. Most days were about as cold as the first. Two were warmer – not warm enough to be warm but warm enough to go out with one layer less. One day was type 2 cold, dangerously cold, frighteningly cold, but the weather forecasters had told us it was coming and we were prepared. The really lethal cold is the kind that comes on when you aren’t expecting it.

I saw the same people every day, the members of my squad. I walked out to the wall with Shoona and Hifa and we had lunch together. The nickname Chewy, I am sorry to say, stuck. Yos and the Sergeant took turns pointing out things I was doing wrong, things I could do differently, things to watch out for. I realised that this was ongoing training, and though I didn’t like being found fault with all the time, I could see why they were doing it. Shoona began to tease me and Hifa about being an item, singing ‘Hifa and Chewy sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.’ There was nothing personal about the teasing, it was almost pro forma: if a male Defender and a female Defender were in any way friendly to each other, if they were anything other than fridge-temperature indifferent, they could expect to be accused of being ‘at it’. In this case, though, Shoona was on to something, because I was starting to have thoughts about Hifa. Even though I had never seen her in anything other than multiple layers of baggy clothing. Actually, maybe that was part of what was getting my attention – looking at all those shapeless clothes, it was hard not to wonder about the shape underneath them … formlessness which you know isn’t really formlessness, which you know for sure has a definite shape, an unmistakable glow … and also, it is a conclusive human truth that the only thing which makes the time pass better than daydreaming about food is daydreaming about sex. So, yes, Hifa and Chewy, but not necessarily sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.