Six

Next day, David feels well enough to get up for a while.

They carry him downstairs and he sits at the kitchen table, in the big armchair, with his foot straight out in front of him, on a cushion on a stool.

Rebecka is cooking at the stove.

Erik and Benjamin have gone out; always working.

David knows how much work there is to do on a farm; when he was a young boy he used to spend his summers in Devon, staying on a farm. He has no idea now, thinking about it, why he went there. His parents were somewhere else. But then, his parents were always somewhere else.

It was while he spent those summers on the farm that he knew he wanted to fly. He can remember, clearly, drinking milk while sitting on the back doorstep of the farmhouse. The milk was still warm from the cow, and as he sat there, it must have been early evening, he guesses, dozens of little birds flew around his head. They were swifts, nesting in cracks in the eaves of the farmhouse.

At that point, he’d never seen a plane, but when he did a year or so later, he knew that’s all he wanted to do with his life. That, and to fall in love.

Somehow, he knew that when he was a young boy, too.

*   *   *

His memories are brought back to the present.

“At least, let me do something,” he says to Rebecka. “I feel terrible just sitting here, watching you all working.”

Rebecka shrugs, goes to the pantry, and returns with a large basket of peas, still in their pods. Skilla briefly lifts his head from where he sits, under the kitchen table, at David’s good foot.

“You can shell these,” she says. “You know how to do that?”

David can see she’s only teasing, but he feels slightly nettled.

“Yes,” he says. “I know how to do that.”

For a while, they work in silence, David shucking the peas into a white bowl, letting the empty pods lie on the table, and Rebecka chopping and grinding at the stove, where a pot is simmering. There is a strange smell, but David doesn’t really notice.

His mind is on other matters.

“Why are you arguing?” he says. “You’re arguing about me, aren’t you?”

“No…” Rebecka says, but she is interrupted.

“Yes,” says Erik, suddenly filling the doorway. “We are arguing about you.”

David drops his pea pods and raises a hand.

“Listen. I am very grateful to you both, to you all. But what can I do?”

He looks at his ankle, realizing he actually has no idea how long a broken ankle takes to heal.

“You should not have come here,” Erik says, barely hiding his anger.

“I didn’t exactly choose to come here,” David says. “Come to that, I’m not exactly sure where here is.”

“Here,” says Erik, coming into the kitchen, “is somewhere that is not part of your war. We have not chosen to fight and kill each other. We want to remain out of your war. Neutral. And yet, your war comes here anyway.”

David shakes his head.

“So what would you have me do? I’d like nothing more than to fly away, I promise you that. Just give me my pistol back and I’ll be gone.”

Erik grunts, turns, and washes his hands in the sink.

Drying them, he turns back to David.

“I dropped your gun in the sea,” he says. “It is part of your war, your life, not ours.”

“What do you mean by ‘my war’? The enemy…”

“The enemy? There are two sides fighting in this war, are there not? But yes, though we said we will not take part, we have your enemy on our soil anyway. They should not be here, but there are reports of them all along the coast. And they hunt for the enemy soldiers. For airmen whose airplanes have crashed. Just like you. And they will come looking for you, and then your war will come here, to Blest Island.”

He bangs his hand on the table in front of David, so hard that the white bowl wobbles.

He leans down in front of David.

“I want no part of it.”

He turns and storms from the kitchen.

Now angry himself, David calls after him. “Where is my pistol? What have you done with my pistol?”

But Erik has gone and, cursing his ankle, David cannot follow.

Rebecka stands at the stove still, her back to the scene, her shoulders trembling.