John Boyne - The Absolutist

“And where did I grow up, Mr. Miller?” I asked, eager to be entertained. “Can you tell?”

He narrowed his eyes and stared at me, remaining silent for almost a minute, save for the sound of his heavy, nasal breathing, before he opened his mouth again, speaking cautiously. “I should think Chiswick,” he said. “Kew Bridge. Somewhere around there. Am I right?”

I laughed, surprised and delighted. “Chiswick High Street,” I said. “My father has a butcher’s shop. We grew up there.”

“We?”

“My younger sister and I.”

“But you live here? In Norwich?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, I live in London now. Highgate.”

“That’s quite a distance from your family,” he said.

“Yes,” I replied. “I know.”

From behind the bar, the sound of a glass crashing to the floor and smashing into a million fragments gave me a jolt. I looked up and my hands clenched instinctively against the side of the table, only relaxing again when I saw the shrugged shoulders of the proprietor as he bent down with pan and brush to clear up his mess, and heard the delighted, teasing jeers of the men sitting close to him.

“It was just a glass,” said my companion, noticing how startled I had become.

“Yes,” I said, trying to laugh it off and failing. “It gave me a shock, that’s all.”

“There till the end, were you?” he asked, and I turned to look at him, the smile fading from my face as he sighed. “Sorry, lad. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“It’s all right,” I said quietly.

“I had two boys out there, you see. Good boys, the pair of them. One with more than his share of mischief about him, the other one a bit like you and me. A reader. A few years older than you, I’d say. What are you, nineteen?”

“Twenty-one,” I said, the novelty of my new age striking me for the first time.

“Well, our Billy would have been twenty-three now and our Sam would have been about to turn twenty-two.” He smiled when he said their names, then swallowed and looked away. The use of the conditional tense had become a widespread disease when discussing the ages of children and little more needed to be said on the matter. We sat in silence for a few moments and then he turned back to me with a nervous smile. “You have the look of our Sam, actually,” he said.

“Do I?” I asked, strangely pleased by the comparison. I entered the woods of my imagination again and made my way through gorse and nettle-tangled undergrowth to picture Sam, a boy who loved books and thought that one day he might like to write some of his own. I saw him on the evening he announced to his parents that he was signing up, before they came to get him, that he was going out to join Billy over there. I pictured the brothers finding solidarity on the training ground, bravery on the battlefield, heroism in death. This was Sam, I decided. This was William Miller’s Sam. I knew him well.

“He were a good boy, our Sam,” whispered my companion after a moment, then slapped the flat of his hand three times on the table before us as if to say, No more of that. “You’ll have another drink, lad?” he asked, nodding at my half-finished beer, and I shook my head.

“Not yet,” I said. “But thank you. You don’t have a tab on you, by any chance?”

“Of course,” he replied, fishing a tin box out of his pocket that looked as if it had been with him since childhood, opening it and handing me a perfectly rolled cigarette from a collection of about a dozen. His fingers were dirty, the lines on his thumb heavily defined and darkened by what I decided was manual labour. “You wouldn’t see better in a baccie’s, would you?” he asked, smiling, indicating the cylindrical precision of the smoke.

“No,” I said, admiring it. “You’re a dab hand.”

“Not me,” he said. “It’s the wife who rolls them for me. First thing every morning, when I’m still about my breakfast, she’s sat there in the corner of the kitchen with a roll of papers and a packet of gristle. Takes her only a few minutes. Fills the box for me, sends me on my way. How’s that for luck? There’s not many a woman would do that.”

I laughed, satisfied by the cosy domesticity of it. “You’re a lucky man,” I said.

“And don’t I know it!” he cried, feigning indignation. “And what about you, Tristan Sadler?” he asked, using my full name, perhaps because I was too old to be addressed with the familiarity of “Tristan” but too young to be called “Mr.” “Married gentleman, are you?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head.

“Got a sweetheart back in London, I suppose?”

“No one special,” I replied, unwilling to admit that there was no one who was not special either.

“Sowing your wild oats, I expect,” he said with a smile, but without that leering vulgarity with which some older men can make such remarks. “I don’t blame you, any of you, of course, after all you’ve been through. There’ll be time enough for weddings and young ’uns when you’re a bit older. But, my Lord, the young girls were thrilled when you all came home, weren’t they?”

I laughed. “Yes, I expect so,” I said. “I don’t know really.” I was beginning to grow tired now, the combination of the journey and the drink on an empty stomach causing me to feel a little drowsy and light-headed. One more, I knew, would be the ruination of me.

“You have family in Norwich, do you?” asked Mr. Miller a moment later.

“No,” I said.

“First time here?”

“Yes.”

“A holiday, is it? A break from the big city?”

I thought about it before answering. I decided to lie. “Yes,” I said. “A few days’ break, that’s all.”

“Well, you couldn’t have picked a nicer place, I can tell you that,” he said. “Norwich born and bred, me. Lived here man and boy. Wouldn’t want to live anywhere else and I can’t understand anyone who would.”

“And yet you know your accents,” I pointed out. “You must have travelled a bit.”

“When I was a pup, that’s all,” he said. “But I listen to people, that’s the key to it. Most people never listen at all. And sometimes,” he added, leaning forward, “I can even guess what they’re thinking.”

I stared at him and could feel my expression begin to freeze a little. Our eyes met and there was a moment of tension there, of daring, when neither of us blinked or looked away. “Is that so?” I said finally. “So you know what I’m thinking, Mr. Miller, do you?”

“Not what you’re thinking, lad, no,” he said, holding my gaze. “But what you’re feeling? Yes, I believe I can tell that much. That don’t take a mind reader, though. Why, I only had to take one look at you when you walked through the door to figure that out.”

He didn’t seem prepared to expand on this so I had no choice but to ask him, despite the fact that my every instinct told me to leave well alone. “And what is it, then, Mr. Miller?” I asked, trying to keep my expression neutral. “What am I feeling?”

“Two things, I’d say,” he replied. “The first is guilt.”

I remained still but kept watching him. “And the second?”

“Why,” he replied, “you hate yourself.”

I would have responded—I opened my mouth to respond—but what I might have said, I do not know. There was no opportunity anyway, for at that moment he slapped the table again, breaking the tension that had built between us as he glanced across at the wall clock. “No!” he cried. “It’s never that time already. I’d best get home or the missus’ll have my guts for garters. Enjoy your holiday, Tristan Sadler,” he said, standing up and smiling at me. “Or whatever it is you’re here for. And a safe trip back to London when it’s over.”