The Wall(33)

‘Less risky is more risky,’ he said.

‘Yes. So bear that in mind. The idea that the north is harder to attack, easier to defend, may in itself be a factor which draws attacks. Still,’ he said, easing off the intensity a little, ‘we are being sent there for some respite, and it’s to be hoped that we’ll find it. As summer arrives the days are very long and the nights very short. We have a chance to get to know each other as a new company. We may well, after a period in the far north and further training, be transferred back to the south. My advice would be to make the most of it. We train, then we go north at the next deployment.’

‘He seemed almost cheerful,’ Hifa said later. We were putting away our kit to go on a week’s leave. The company had been on standby duty near our barracks. I wasn’t fit enough to fight but I was on administrative duties while I recovered: which meant, doing chores for the Captain, Sergeant and Corporal. It was uninteresting but not difficult. ‘I wonder what the secret bad news is.’

‘Cold?’ I said. ‘Remote?’ Hifa shrugged. She held out her hand to me and I took it. We were setting out to do something we had long discussed and Hifa had long dreaded.

‘Are you sure you’re ready for this?’ she said.

‘I think so.’

‘You can say if you aren’t.’

‘I know.’

‘I won’t hold it against you and bring it up later.’

‘I know.’

‘I have doubts of my own.’

‘I understand.’

‘It’s not guaranteed to go well.’

‘Yes, I understand.’

‘Not through any fault of yours – please don’t think that. It’s just, it could go wrong.’

‘I know.’

‘I don’t want to have misled you.’

‘Thank you.’

‘To make it clear.’

‘OK, Hifa, I’ve got it, I really have, and if you think it’s a bad idea and don’t want me to do it that’s completely fine, we won’t.’

‘No need to be arsey.’

‘I don’t think I was.’

‘Well that’s a matter of opinion.’

‘Hifa, for fuck’s sake, we’re only talking about visiting your mother for a few days. She isn’t Hitler. At least if she was Hitler I assume you’d have said.’

She exhaled, slow and long.

‘I just, I don’t want it to get in the way,’ she said, more subdued, less fighty.

‘It won’t,’ I said. ‘I promise.’

We took the usual journey at the end of that shift, lorry to train to London. We were leaving Ilfracombe 4 for ever. The company was the quietest and the soberest I’d ever seen it on a trip like this. The new people hadn’t really bedded in yet and the Defenders who’d been there for longer were all thinking about the people who weren’t with us. Absent friends. There was still no news about Cooper. It was odd, because if you had pumped me full of truth serum and asked me if there was anything about that section of the Wall I would miss – the section where we’d spent the winter months in the cold and dark, where I’d been the most frightened I’d ever been, and the most bored I’d ever been, and had the most intense experiences of my life, and nearly died – I’d have said no. But as we left it behind and it moved into the past, moved into the category of experiences which were over, I realised I felt a sense of loss. I’d probably never see it again: that particular stretch of concretewindwatersky, that exact patch of damp over my bed, those precise stretches of ramparts where puddles would accumulate in the gravel. The place where I met Hifa.

At London we split up as usual, said muted goodbyes. Hifa and I crossed the city to catch a train to the eastern town where her mother lived. The transport dynamic was always the same: on the train from the coast, where we outnumbered the civilians, we were the dominant force, the top dogs, and people were wary, kept away and moved away. In the city, in small numbers and as individuals, we were objects of curiosity instead of fear: people snuck glances at us, observed us, would sometimes catch our eye. Nothing made you feel the gap between us and civilians more than being in the middle of them. They just weren’t thinking about the same things, didn’t have the same priorities, had no idea how lucky they were.

You could tell pretty much without exception when the people checking you out had been Defenders: they were a certain age, within a decade or two of us, and they looked both more empathetic and more assessing. They were probably wondering how long we’d been on the Wall, how long we had to go. I still had my arm in a sling and I was wearing my medal and I could see them noticing both of those things. The look in their eyes had some pride in it, pride for you and a little bit for themselves, too; some sympathy (it was easy to see them thinking, thank God I don’t have to do that again, I wonder how long the poor sods have to go). Sometimes I thought I caught them thinking: when I was on the Wall, I used to tell myself I’d never forget how horrible it is to be cold and tired and frightened and have months more of the feeling to go, and I promise I’ll remember this moment, and if I ever get off the Wall and remember this moment I promise I’ll never again take for granted being comfortable and safe and somewhere other than here. I didn’t blame them for it, I’d had the same thought many times myself. I hoped more than anything to get to a point in my life when I was like them – when I had the luxury and privilege of having been away from the Wall for so long that I needed external prompts to be reminded of it. When the Wall would be in the past, not the present and the future.