The Wall(7)

I took my eyes off him and pretended to scan the horizon. Nothing to see. I wouldn’t have minded a boatload of Others, just to break the suspense.

‘Kavanagh,’ he said when he arrived. His voice was deep and naturally severe – he was one of those men whose default mode sounds like an order or a rebuke.

‘Sir.’

‘We’re here to look out at the sea,’ he said. I took that to mean he had seen my long absorption in my midmorning snack. The Wall is not a place where people blush, but I felt myself flush red.

‘Sorry sir.’

He stopped staring at me and turned to look at the water. Concrete sky wind water. A few moments passed. Directly above us I could see the contrails of a plane. Energy is plentiful, thanks to nuclear power, but fuel isn’t, especially not aviation fuel, so now only very few people get to go on planes. That would be members of the elite, flying off to talk to other members of the elite about the Change and the Others and what to do about them. At least that’s what they say they do. I felt the familiar longing to be up there, one of them, instead of down here, one of us. The Captain and I both watched the plane move into the distance. If he had been a different kind of person, he would have spat.

‘Everyone finds the first day hard. The second is easier. The third easier still. Eventually you get the measure of it.’

He turned to me again.

‘This is my fourth tour on the Wall. No Other has ever got over the Wall on my duty. I’ve never lost a company member. I don’t intend those things to change.’ He looked at me again to make sure I got the point, then nodded and marched off towards Hifa at the end of our section of Wall.

I thought: he’s an impressive man, our Captain. He’s a leader. Four turns on the Wall: that meant he had done three supplementary tours of duty, each one of which earned perks and privileges for himself and his family. Better house, better food, better schools for his children. They say this is one of the ways people rise up and become members of the elite. So, a family man. A brave man, a family man, a leader, an athlete. A person with a sense of duty and responsibility. A good man to follow into battle. If you had asked me right then and there what was the least likely thing I could think of about the Captain, it would be that he was also, above and beyond any other thing, the biggest fucking liar I’ve ever met.





4




I took so long over my power bar and my chat with the Captain that the ninety minutes until lunch was actually only eighty minutes. I started to get the hang of the fact that looking at the time made it pass by more slowly. Another plane went past, heading in the other direction this time – more members of the elite, coming and going, talking their talk. Oh how wonderful it would be to be up in the air … The wind rose, not to gale force but to something a little stronger than a breeze, and the sea swell was both rolling and choppy. The sky cleared and I could now see four watchtowers: visibility twelve kilometres. I began to understand just how hard it could be to see what was in the water, even on a clear day, when the wind and waves and sun did not cooperate.

The drill at lunch varies from watchtower to watchtower. At Ilfracombe 4 the routine is that people are allowed to gather together for ten minutes with the two defenders in the nearest posts. The furthest anyone is from their post is two hundred metres; the biggest gap between a group having lunch is six hundred metres. Safe enough to have a gap of that size for ten minutes twice a day. You’d have thought. At three minutes to twelve, I saw Hifa at post 14 put down the grenade launcher and take something out of his or her rucksack, then pick up the weapon again and begin walking towards me. I turned and looked the other way and the red-haired woman from post 10 was heading towards me as well.

They arrived at the same time and both of them sat down on the bench without speaking. They put down their weapons and started opening their packed lunches. The woman pulled back the hood of her outer coat, and I could see some strands of red hair escaping from underneath her beanie. She looked less irritable than she had earlier in the day. Not a morning person. Hifa was still entirely wrapped up, and all I could see was the eyes and the tip of the nose. If you had asked me beforehand, I would have said it was impossible to eat a meal without taking off your balaclava, but that was clearly what was about to happen.

I got my food out too and sat down at the end of the bench.

‘So how’s it going, new meat?’ asked the woman.

‘Kavanagh,’ I said, sticking out my hand. Both of us still had gloves on. She gave it a quick firm shake.

‘Simpson,’ she said. ‘Or Shoona.’

‘Shoona. It’s OK. The Captain caught me staring at my power bar.’

‘Yeah, he does that. Catches people. That right, Hif?’

Hifa grunted, mouth full.

‘Wouldn’t you rather have lunch with …?’ I said, and gestured towards the man she’d been sitting next to at breakfast. He was in the next group of three, four hundred metres away. Shoona shrugged.

‘You know what they say. For better, for worse, but never for lunch.’

Hifa snorted a laugh.

‘You’re Breeders?’

This time both of them laughed.

‘No of course we’re not fucking Breeders. Do I look like a Breeder? Don’t answer that. Cooper and I are just having sex.’

‘You like him,’ said Hifa, at some point equidistant between a statement and a question and a tease. I was sorry to hear the question, because what I wanted to ask was something else: where did they have sex? There was no privacy on the Wall. Only Breeders (i.e. people trying to be Breeders) and officers got separate accommodation. The showers?