John Lanchester - The Wall

There are no positive thoughts about type 2. It cuts and slices and seeps into you. The other cold feels like something outside you that you have to cope with and overcome; type 2 feels internal. It gets inside your body, inside your head. It displaces part of you; it makes you feel as if there’s less of you. Type 1 you can fight by moving, you can fight by thinking about something else. Type 2, there is nothing else. At times there’s not even you. Type 1 people complain about. Type 2 makes them go silent, even afterwards. Type 2 is a premonition of death.

That first day was a type 1 day. We climbed out on the ramp and started down the Wall towards our posts. Cold, horribly cold, but not dangerously so. Cold and medium clear. You can always tell the visibility on the Wall by how many watchtowers you can see. That day I could see the next two but not the third: they’re three K apart so that meant six kilometres but not nine. Call it seven. Medium visibility. It’s the first thing you check because it tells you how far off you’ll be able to spot Others. Clear days are better, unless you are looking into the sun at sunrise or sunset, in which case they’re neither better nor worse. Attacks often come at that time and from that angle – which would give the Others better odds, except we know that that is a time they’re likely to be coming and so tend to be prepared. At least that’s what you’d think. Of the attacks which succeed, though, about half happen at dawn or dusk.

My fellow Defenders grumbled and muttered and bitched as we walked. The Wall has gravel on the top, along some sections anyway, to help with grip in the wet. This was one of those sections. We crunched as we trudged. Every two hundred metres, somebody stopped at their post, peeling off from the shrinking group and taking up position beside whoever had been on guard from the other squad. There were sometimes a few words of abuse or relief, a mixture of Thank God and About Fucking Time; all of the Defenders leaving their posts looked grey with exhaustion. They walked heavily. One or two of the guards at the furthest posts were already walking back towards us, notwithstanding the fact that we hadn’t got to them yet and their stations were technically unmanned in the interval. They wouldn’t have done that if the Captain had been there, and if he had seen them he would have automatically added a day to their time on the Wall.

It was already light. The sun was low but, thanks to the layer of cloud, not dazzling.

The posts were numbered in faded white paint at hundred-metre intervals. Each post had a concrete bench, big enough for two people, facing the sea. The bearded man stopped at 8, the woman he’d been sitting next to – maybe they were in a relationship, there was something about their unspeaking ease with each other – took 10. At 12, Hifa, the blob in the balaclava, pointed at me and said, ‘Here,’ and kept walking on towards the next station, 14, the last one attached to our watch house. The Defender who’d been at my post, a bulky man of about my height, picked up his rucksack and slung his rifle over his shoulder and walked away without a word or gesture.

I took off my backpack and put it against the rampart. I stood and looked out at the sea. Twelve hours here felt like it was going to be a very very long time. Some companies divide their time into two shifts of six, but our Captain was one of the old-school ones who were more binary about it: you’re on or you’re off. That seemed like the worst idea in the world right now, but I knew that in eleven hours and fifty-five minutes I’d be all in favour.

Although everybody always calls the Wall the Wall, that isn’t its official name. Officially it is the National Coastal Defence Structure. On official documents it’s abbreviated to NCDS. Guard towers have a name and a number. This tower was Ilfracombe 4. We were on the outermost stretch of a long coastal curve. Straight in front, and for the ninety degrees to each side, there was nothing to see except the ocean. If straight in front was twelve o’clock, it was nothing but water from nine o’clock to three o’clock. Turn a further ten degrees to either side – turn to eight o’clock or four o’clock – and you could see the Wall undulating into the distance. The engineers who built it tried to keep it as straight as possible, because straighter = shorter, but there were many places where the natural shape of what used to be the coastline meant that it was more economical, in time and effort and concrete, to use the existing shape of the coast as the guideline for the Wall. This must be one of them. My new home.

In every walk of life, every job and vocation, there is an experience which distinguishes actually doing the thing from the training and preparation, however extensive. You don’t know what boxing is until somebody punches you, you don’t know what doing a shift in a factory feels like until the bell has gone at the end of the day, you don’t know what a day’s march with a full backpack is until you’ve done one, and you don’t know what the Wall means until you’ve stood a twelve-hour watch.

Time has never passed as slowly as it did that day. Time on the Wall is treacle. Eventually, after you have put in enough hours on the Wall, you learn to cope with time. You train yourself not to look at the time, because it is never, never, ever, as late as you think and hope and long for it to be. You learn to float. You become completely passive; you let the day pass through you, you stop trying to pass through it. But it takes months before you can do that. In the first weeks, and especially on your first day, you look at the time every few minutes. It’s like there is a special slow time on the Wall; you can’t believe it; you check and check again and that only makes it worse.

After two hours, at nine o’clock, a member of the kitchen staff brings around a hot drink. Sometimes it’s tea, sometimes coffee, but really, who cares? It’s a hot drink, it’s a sign that you’ve done your first two hours. Somebody comes round on a bike, bringing a big heated flask. That first day, it was a woman, one of the cooks, who came along the Wall. I watched her stop for a minute or two at each post as she came. She was chatting with the Defenders. I felt my eyes fill with tears: the thought that someone was going to stop and talk to me suddenly seemed like the greatest act of compassion and empathy I had ever encountered. As she got to the post before mine, where the woman next to me was on guard, I could hear both of them laughing. The sound of laughter on the Wall – it felt like an intrusion from another world. And I’d only been there two hours.

‘Hello darling, I’m Mary,’ said the cook, as she stopped her bicycle next to me, her curly hair peeking out from under her cap. ‘Got your mug?’

I hadn’t. I put my rifle down on the bench and got the standard-issue tin mug out of my backpack. She poured hot brown liquid out of the flask.

‘First day, isn’t it? Poor thing. It always hits people hard. You get used to it though. And at least it’s not raining or blowing a gale or night-time so there’s always that.’

‘I’m Kavanagh,’ I said. The liquid was dark brown tea, stewed and bitter, with so much sugar in, it was as sweet as ice cream. I had never drunk anything so delicious.

‘I know you are, darling. Well, we’ll be seeing each other at least three more times today, so we mustn’t wear out all the chat now. Keep ’em peeled!’

And with that Mary was back on her bike, heading off towards Hifa, who had already put down the rocket launcher and turned to her in expectation. I kept watching while I drank my tea. It occurred to me that if the Others were able to work out a way of attacking during a tea break, their odds would be good. Mary got to Hifa and they gave each other a quick, very unmilitary hug. Mary got off her bike and leant it against the bench. Then she poured out Hifa’s tea and awarded herself a mug too and they settled down to talking. I was jealous. Mary didn’t seem to be worried about wearing out the chat when she was talking to Hifa, did she? They talked for about five minutes and then Mary got back on her bike and pedalled back down the top of the Wall, with a little wave for each one of us as she went past. It was three hours until lunch. I decided to break the time up into two sections of ninety minutes, with an energy bar in the middle.