THE DAWN PATROL

CHAPTER XII

1944

Jack came back about an hour later. Before he left, he told us to stay hidden, just in case.

“In case of what?” I asked.

“Just in case,” he emphasized.

During that time, Cecelia came to. She moaned first, and then when she realized where she was and what happened, began crying. The dead body lay under the blanket on the floor in front of her, and she thrashed about, trying to move the chair around so she didn’t have to look at it. The blood had soaked through the blanket.

“She’s gonna fall over,” Ray said, grinning.

“Should we pull her around so she doesn’t have to look at it?”

“Jack doesn’t want her to know we’re here,” Ray reminded me.

“Why not? She’s going to find out sooner or later.”

“It might have something to do with scaring her. She might be more willing to talk when he gets back and she’s had time to think things over.”

“Really? And how would you know that?”

“It’s not much different from the dreams I have - I mean the choices I have to make.”

I looked at him in the dull light of the room and he sort of tilted his head and gave me a shrug as if to say that was the only way he could describe it. I’d never thought of his dreams that way - never thinking how he might have had to make a choice as to who should live and who would die. What was it Jack called it? Playing God.

Jack came in a moment later, calling out Cecelia’s name.

“Celia? Are you still here?”

“Of course I’m here, you bastard!” she hissed at him. “You’ve got me tied to a chair.”

“It’s not a very good knot,” he said. “I did it on purpose, thinking you might get away.”

“Did you want me to?”

“A part of me did,” he smiled. Then he turned away and walked down the hall to open the door and tell us to come out.

“Did you get it?” I asked. He nodded.

“How long have you two been in there?” Cecelia asked.

“All night,” Ray said. “That was quite the show you put on.”

“Shut up Ray,” Jack said.

He kicked the plate and candle aside and pulled the Persian carpet over to the body. He rolled the man on top of the carpet, and then rolled him and the carpet up together.

“What’re you gonna do with him?” Ray asked.

“I can’t leave him here, canI?” Jack said slowly.

“At least you got that part figgered out,” Ray said. Jack looked at him and Ray fell silent.

“Where are we taking them?” I asked.

“Out into the country.”

“Good idea, less prying eyes,” Ray said.

“Less prying eyes for what?” Cecelia said.

“I thought I told you to shut up Ray?”

“That was for somethin’ else.”

“Well then, I’m telling you now. Shut up. Don’t talk. Don’t say another word. It’s your fault we’re in this mess in the first place.”

“My fault?”

“You’re talking again.”

“How is it my fault?” Ray asked me. I shook my head. I wanted it to be over; I wanted to get away from there as fast as I could.

“Let’s just do what we have to, and leave,” I said.

“Good idea,” Jack said. He approached Cecelia. “Now darling, I’m going to have to gag you so you don’t try to call for help. I couldn’t find a truck—a lorry,” he said for her benefit, “but I did find a car. We’ll put your friend there in the trunk—the boot—and you’ll sit in the back with me. One of you two will have to drive.”

“I will,” Ray said.

“You know I don’t know how to drive,” I said to Ray.

“Alright, it’s settled. You two take care of him, and I’ll watch her,” Jack said and unwrapped the electrical cord. “I parked the car downstairs right in front of the door. I’ll walk Celia down to the car, while you two wait with him until I get the trunk open. Then you stuff him inside, and we leave.”

“What if he doesn’t fit?” Ray asked.

“What?”

“Well, this is a big carpet. We might have to unroll him and stuff him in. Someone might be watching.”

“Don’t try to think this through too much, okay Ray?”

“I’m just saying—”

“Too much. You’re saying too much. Now let’s go,” Jack said, tying Cecelia’s hands behind her back with the cord again, and then stuffing a gag in her mouth. He wrapped a rag around her face, tying it tight.

“Don’t fight it,” he told her. “You’ll choke on the gag, or maybe throw-up. It’ll go into your lungs and you’ll drown in vomit. Not a nice way to go.”

*

We drove south into the North Downs of the Surrey countryside just as the sun was coming up. We drove past Banstead, Epsom and the towns of Ashtead and Tadworth, where the countryside spread out wide, lush, and green. I saw soft rolling hills and distant islands of brush and trees that caught the rising sun as the morning mist melted through the fields. Streams and brooks reflected the morning light, glittering like a silver chain on a woman’s breast, where huge willows crested the horizon—and I thought of home.

I watched Cecelia in the rear-view mirror as she sat behind me looking out at the countryside. Jack removed the gag almost as soon as we were out of London proper, and then untied her hands. She turned away from him, rolling the window down and spitting out a mouthful of blood. She gasped in the cold morning air and then rolled the window up again.

She leaned her head against the door; her once beautiful face appeared swollen and broken, her lips cracked and bloodied, and my heart cried out for her. Tears spilled down her cheeks as they caught up in her eyelashes a moment, hesitating as if they refused to fall. In spite of everything I’d heard, everything I’d witnessed, and everything I’d learned, I found myself thinking of her as the victim in this little passion play of a different zeal.

  Jack sat beside her, forlorn and heartbroken; I could see tears in his eyes as he looked out of the other window. Was this the price he was going to have to pay for the war he so fervently believed in? Would he willingly forsake the love he had for her and give it up for a cause there seemed no end to?

“Where are we going, Jack?” Ray asked, breaking the silence.

Jack quickly wiped his eyes, trying to turn himself so Ray couldn’t see him in the rear-view mirror, and looked directly at me. I turned away and looked at the narrow roadway, fumbling for a cigarette in my tunic pocket.

“God, could you light me one of those?” Ray said. He looked at Jack in the mirror. “Jack? Where to?”

“Reigate.”

“Reigate? There’s a lot of people there, don’t you think?”

“We’re not going into it, we’re passing through. We’ll take one of the country roads until we come across the Mole.”

“The Mole?”

“It’s a stream. It has a current. It flows back toward London. We can dump the body there. It probably won’t make it past Fetcham, Leatherhead for certain.”

“And what about her?”

“I’ll think of something,” Jack said, and looked directly at me.

*

We passed through Reigate about twenty minutes later. Once an old market town, now a part of south London where it merged with Redhill to the east, and Merstham to the north, it came into sight through the morning mist. A town made of old buildings and warehouses—with thatched roof houses towards the outskirts of town—and wide open fields of lush farmland fading into the distance of the North Downs. Sheep grazed along the side of the road where a shepherd moved among them with his collie. I could hear him calling his flock as the dog barked and ran among them, the sheep bleating as they leapt across the field.

“A man could learn to live in a place like this,” Jack said. I turned to look at him and he gave me a slight smile—almost remorseful—that made me think with all that had happened, he was still the boy I remembered from my youth who proudly wore his heart on his sleeve. Our father saw Jack’s sensitivity as his greatest weakness; his compassion as a morbid failure, and seemed determined to beat the weakness out of him. Maybe it was his own weakness he was attempting to censure?

“Why would you want to live here?” Ray said with a shake of his head.

“You stupid prairie gopher,” I said with a forced laugh as I passed Ray a cigarette. “This is what farmland is supposed to look like. Not that flat tableland you’re used to. Right Jack? You look to the horizon, and the only thing standing between you and it are grain silos; here, you have hills and valleys, with streams for fishing, and fields for hunting. This is what home should look like. I never knew how much I missed it until now.”

“It would have been better for you to be stationed up in  Manchester,” Jack said.

“What’s up there?” Ray asked.

“Industry. Dirt and squalor. Just like the Big Smoke, back home,” he said, forcing a thin smile.

“The what? What the hell is the Big Smoke?” Ray asked me.
“Toronto.”

“Why do they call it that?”

“You don’t get out much, do you Ray?” Jack said.