Free Home Boys by Bernard Beckett

The longer they didn’t speak the easier the silence became, until eventually even the thought of talking felt unnatural. It was like an evening in with Dad. No point talking when there’s nothing needs saying he’d say, nodding his head in time with the words and then, when he’d finished, repeating them, as if the sentence only made sense when said twice. Colin wouldn’t disagree.
    They had an end of a leg each. The meat was hot and full of juice, and tastier the closer it got to the bone. Colin held both ends tight and felt the blood and fat dribble down his chin, and watched Dougal through the flames doing the same. For the first time since he saw the ship Colin felt a happiness that didn’t come with sleep.
    Behind him, stretched out between two sticks stuck in the ground, wool faced away from the flames, the skin of the sheep the farmer shot dried out.
    ‘Shall we bury the bones too?’ Colin asked, when he had sucked the leg white and clean.
    ‘We’ll do it tomorrow, when we hide the fire.’
    ‘What about the rest of the meat?’
    ‘We’ll eat more in the morning. We’ll carry the rest with us.’
    ‘Carry it where?’
    ‘Where we’re going,’ was all Dougal said, and in a way that made it obvious he didn’t want to hear the next question.
    But Colin still asked, because it worried him now and it would worry him more in the morning. ‘Where’s that?’
    ‘Wherever you want to go.’
    ‘I don’t want to go anywhere.’
    ‘You want to go back there?’ Dougal motioned with his head back towards the farmlands of the valley.
    ‘No.’
    ‘We’ll that’s where we’re going then. We’re not going back down there.’ He said it like that was the last word to be said on the matter and Colin said nothing, because he couldn’t think of any others.
    * * *
    The cold crept back in as the embers faded. Colin lay as close to the reminder of fire as he could and wrapped himself in the sheepskin, which smelt more of smoke now than death. At first Dougal stayed sitting up, ‘on watch’ he said, but the cold must have got to him too, or the efforts of the day.
    ‘Give us some of that then.’
    Dougal pulled on the sheepskin, and lay down so his front was warm against Colin’s back. The closeness forced the cold into retreat, and Colin would have slept then but for the sounds Dougal was making. At first Colin thought it was a cough, but it was too quiet for that; regular, gulped swallowing, like he was trying to stop himself from choking, then his body moving, racked with painful, silent spasms. Colin could feel the wet warmth of sadness on his neck. He wondered if he should say something, or turn around and confront the crying, but he knew there was no real point. Whatever it was that was troubling his friend, he was keeping it to himself.
    Colin didn’t expect the dreams to come. It was too strange here, and he was too tired to think of anything much, and the images that first sealed his eyelids were nothing more than the usual jumble of half thoughts and memories that had lost their way in the dark. But slowly and irresistibly a new picture formed, as clear as any of the other dreams, but different too.
    To start with, Colin wasn’t part of it. It was as if he had looked in on a dream that was perfectly happy unfolding without him, or it was somebody else’s dream. It was daylight, but only just. The sun was low and burnt an angry orange against the fading grey-green of the hills. It was back at the farm. The truck was parked out front, the tray still loaded with milk cans, unusual for that time of day. Not unusual were the sounds.Mrs Sowby mostly, in full flight, using every phrase she knew to explain to her husband just how useless he was, and then, when the supply was exhausted, inventing new ones. Her hair was down again, and her eyes shone with a rage past Colin’s imagination. From the place where Colin’s dream had set him he couldn’t see much of Mr Sowby’s reaction. All that was on