An Episode of Remnants.

Content Warnings

• Mentions of emotional neglect of a child
• Discussions of war
• Some minor exoticisation and romanticisation of India under the British Raj, consistent with 1940s and 1950s English attitudes (he means well but he can’t escape his roots)
• Descriptions of a warzone, including destroyed buildings
• Descriptions of a violent military attack, with no sound effects, but descriptions of sounds, death and injuries
• Descriptions of a POW camp in Austria immediately after the end of WW2
• Mentions of concentration camps with contextual details and acknowledgements of death and poor treatment, but without vivid descriptions
• Descriptions of covered violent wounds to prisoners of war

Transcript

APPRENTICE
We’re walking again. Or, still. That’s good.

SIR
Is it?

APPRENTICE
Well, I mean. I assume so. Like you said, if we’re going, we’re going somewhere. I think if we’re going, as long as we’re going, we’re on the right track.

SIR
Oh?

APPRENTICE
You know I said I could sort of see the threads connecting the remnants too each other, and I wanted to follow them? Well. I think we are. It’s just not as straightforward as following a piece of string. The connections aren’t clear and there are years between them. But we’re going. And as long as we’re going, there’s somewhere we’re going too.

SIR
You’re still running.

APPRENTICE
No. Distinctly not running. Walking. That’s it.

SIR
You’re looking for a way out.

APPRENTICE
No. I’m going to wherever we’re going.

SIR
But you hope it’s a way out.

APPRENTICE
And so what if I do?!

SIR
I don’t know.

APPRENTICE
You’re… you’re scared.

SIR
No?

APPRENTICE
You are. You’re frightened. You think if I leave, it means I’m leaving you.

SIR
I don’t know what it means.

APPRENTICE
You can’t just— you were keeping me here before but you— you have to let me go, you do understand that? What we’re doing, finding the remnants; reading them; judging them. There’s a point to it, right? We can’t just keep looping around here forever.

SIR
Why not?

APPRENTICE
Why not?! Because I— we. No. We can’t just… we can’t.

SIR
Why not.

APPRENTICE
Sir we— do you want that?

SIR
I am not a thing that wants.

APPRENTICE
Liar.

SIR
I am sure I never used to be.

[FOOTSTEPS AGAIN]

APPRENTICE
Only you don’t remember anything from before.

SIR
I remember pieces. Remnants.

APPRENTICE
Of course. But you don’t know what—

[THE APPRENTICE STOPS AGAIN]

APPRENTICE
Do you know?

SIR
Know what?

APPRENTICE
Have you remembered what— why you were keeping me here? Do you know?!

SIR
No.

APPRENTICE
You said you were part of something else. Something bigger, right? Part of this place?

SIR
I think so.

APPRENTICE
But something tore you from it?

SIR
Yes. You saw— you felt it. You see it, when you look at me.

APPRENTICE
I don’t know what any of that really means, though. What you are. How you are and aren’t… here. You look here. You look more. More here. Easier to look at, now, than you were.

SIR
Oh?

APPRENTICE
Yeah, I don’t know. I’m hoping that means something.

SIR
You’re hoping it means you’re getting closer.

APPRENTICE
I meant it when I said I want us both to leave.

SIR
What if I can’t? If I am a part of this place, how could I?

APPRENTICE
You said I’ve changed you. You said that. You’re not what you were when you first— look. You’re a. A whatever you are. Not whatever you were before. The thing you were part of, you’re not part of it now. You’re you.

[WIND BLOWS]

APPRENTICE
Look, there. You see that?

SIR
No.

APPRENTICE
Something’s catching the— not light. Just sticking out of the dust.

[A FEW FOOTSTEPS]

APPRENTICE
Yeah. Look it’s a tin soldier. All his paint’s been stripped off, but I can still see— the details where— on his uniform— ah.

[WHOOSH]

Elijah rests his chin on the ground, eye-level with his miniature army. Six tin soldiers in red and blue uniforms, their ranks padded out with pine-cones. The tiny dolls which had been his mother’s when she was a girl lay before them, the fallen dead.
The front door bursts open, does not close. The rain had been loud against the roof and the windows but now it’s loud and violent. Elijah’s mother hurries down the hall, stirring the floorboards enough that half the soldiers fall down.
‘Damn!’ Elijah hisses.
‘Language,’ snaps his mother. She marches past him, straight to the radio in the kitchen. Red-faced, Elijah gets to setting up the soldiers again, ignoring the muffled, tinny speech coming from the radio.
This spot is the only place in the whole flat where the floor is flat enough to get the whole battalion to stand. Elijah checks the illustration of the battle of Waterloo in his book, chin on the floorboards again. He needs more soldiers.
The sounds on the radio stop. There’s a crash; his mother is standing at the window, leaning out over the pavement. Elijah peers down. The radio is in pieces, wires twisting between discombobulated parts.
‘What you do that for?’asks Elijah.
His mother does not speak. She turns and walks back through the flat, out of the still-open front door. Elijah follows, watches her stoop to pick up the pieces of the radio.
‘How will we find out news about daddy now?’ asks Elijah.
‘We won’t,’ says his mother. ‘He’s dead.’

[WHOOSH]

Elijah watches his mother cleaning the dishes. There’s a wet patch on the front of here dress, over the vast swell of her stomach. There’s a baby growing inside of her. There’s a room upstairs that will be the baby’s when it’s born. Inside, a wooden crib handmade by Mr Johnson and his brother, clothes his mother had loving stitched together, knitted hats and booties for the little life growing inside her.
As she scrubs the plates, Elijah’s mother talks to the baby in her belly. Elijah shuts his eyes and pretends she’s speaking to him, all soft and fond and hopeful.
‘Elijah,’ snaps his mother, yanking him out of his daydream. ‘You should be in bed.’
‘Yes, mother.’
‘Have you even had your bath?’ she asks, not looking up from the sink again.
‘No, mother.’
‘Well. You’ll have to do without then, it’s too late now. You’ll have to get up early and have a bath before school.’
‘Alright, mother.’
‘Good. I’ll put a towel on your chair for you.’
‘Thank you, mother.’
Elijah’s mother clenches her jaw as he waits for her to tell him goodnight. It doesn’t come.
Mr Johnson’s house is a lot bigger than their old flat. There’s a big radio in the living room and another little one in the kitchen. Elijah has his own bedroom. It used to belong to Mr Johnson’s mother. The walls have pink striped wallpaper and frilly curtains still. Mr Johnson said he’d take Elijah to buy some new paint but that was last year and it still hasn’t happened. Elijah’s starting to think it never will.
Elijah keeps a photograph of his father in his army uniform tucked into the back of his book about the greatest battles in history, which he keeps hidden under his too-squashy mattress. His mother tried to throw the book out along with all his tin soldiers. He managed to save one, and the book, before the bins were taken away.
The new baby’s going to be born around Remembrance Day. If his mother is still in the hospital, Elijah might go to the big statue in the centre of town and be a part of the moment of silence. His mother has not let him go to a single Remembrance Mass, even pulled him out of school so they couldn’t take him. ‘The army killed your father,’ she told Elijah. ‘We never even had a body to bury.’
But there was a body. They just didn’t get to see it. Elijah’s father is buried in France. He’d like to go there, see the white cross planted over his grave by the army. His mother would never take him, he knows, but he’ll soon be old enough to go himself. After the new baby is born he thinks his mother and Mr Johnson probably wouldn’t even notice. They barely notice him now.

[WHOOSH]

Elijah’s mother slaps him hard, on the doorstep to Mr Johnson’s house, in his brand new military uniform. Bella and Danny are peering out from the doorway of the living room, wide-eyed. Elijah winks at them.
‘How could you do this to me?’ his mother hisses.
‘I want to do something with my life, mother.’
‘Your father gave you a job at the bakery! You could have a manager of the new branch in a few years!’
‘I don’t want to be a baker, and Mr Johnson isn’t my father,’ says Elijah.
‘He raised you,’ says his mother. ‘He let you live in his home, fed and clothed you as though you were one of his own.’
’His dead mother’s curtains are still hanging in my bedroom,’ says Elijah. ‘My father died on the Somme.’
‘Do you even remember him?’ his mother asks. ‘You think it was bravery that made him go to war? You don’t understand the first thing about him.’
‘And whose fault is that? You’re the one who threw out all the photographs, who refused to even speak his name aloud. Who cringed when you looked at me. It’s because I look too much like him, isn’t it? Well, think of it like this: now you won’t have to worry anymore. I’m only here to say goodbye. I’m leaving for India in the morning.’
Elijah put his cap back on and turns away from Mr Johnson’s house. His mother called his name, but barely louder than a whisper. A perfunctory cry, simply so she could say she’d done it. Elijah had run away to sign up for basic training three months ago. He’d left a note explaining it all. If his mother had come down to the base, maybe she could have talked him out of it. But she didn’t come. She didn’t even write. She’d waited for him to turn up like this so she could let him know she didn’t approve, but so she’dhave no chance of stopping him. She wanted him gone, she just couldn’t admit it. She’d wanted him gone since the radio reported his father was dead and more and more every day since. Elijah knows that.

[WHOOSH]

They’ve had little in the way of orders for weeks. The rebellion they’d been sent to India to quash has been much quieter than Elijah would have expected it to be. He spends days killing time on his base with his friends, smoking and playing cards.
On the weekends, they go into town, drink with the locals. The Indians brew excellent beer and cook even better food. Even the bread is spectacular, baked with herbs or else griddled and served flat, lovely when spread with butter or ghee, or stuffed with meat and spice and vegetables. And the rice. Such an abundance of rice served so many ways. Cheap and delicious and served by the bowlful.
Whenever reassignments come up Elijah does what he can to stay in India. He hopes to get a tour of every province so he can compare the local drinks and cuisines. This was not the life he imagined when he signed up for the army, but he’s glad it’s the one he’s landed in.

[WHOOSH]

He sees Nihaara with her mother, walking through the market. Catches her eye, sees her gaze flick from his face down to his chest. The stalls, the crowds, the sounds that make the busy street what it is fall away until all there is is Nihaara, basket in her arms, wisps of dark hair escaping the tie at the back of her head and drifting on the breeze.
After that he sees her again and again, starts timing his visits to the market just to see her. Every time they make eye contact she smiles and it warms Elijah to his toes, a shocking achievement given the already scorching Punjabi summer heat. One day, she’s not with her mother. She’s alone, and she’s walking towards him. She holds his gaze until she’s right next to him, then brushes their shoulders together. Elijah’s heart is in his throat. He watches her go, until she glances back over her shoulder, eyebrows raised. She wants him to follow.
Nihaara pulls him into a little side street. Kids dressed in billowy clothes run barefoot past them, running errands, busy as any of the adults. ‘You’re following me,’ says Nihaara.
‘I’m sorry, I thought that’s what you wanted.’
‘Not just today. You’re here at the same time as me every morning. Elijah Hale, officer of the British army, do you really think I’d be so clueless? You’re not exactly being subtle.’
‘I— I hope not,’ Elijah stammers.
‘Is that a threat?’ asks Nihaara, though Elijah still did not know her name.
‘I’m sorry. I’ll stop coming. I just. I really thought—‘
‘What?’
‘You always smile back,’ says Elijah. ‘Foolish of me to hope, I suppose, but I did. How foolish. I’m sorry, I’ll let you be.’
Elijah moves to leave the alleyway but Nihaara grabs his sleeve.
‘What are you talking about?’ she asks.
‘You’ve nothing to worry about, ma’am. My mother might not have been the most attentive but she did at least teach me never to pursue a woman who does not reciprocate.’
Nihaara studies Elijah’s face. ‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’
‘No. I’m sorry. I won’t bother you again, though.’
Nihaara laughs, shaking her head. ‘No. No you can,’ she says. ‘Bother me.’
Elijah blinks. ‘Oh. Alright?’
Nihaara laughs. ‘Who knows? You might even come in useful, Elijah Hale. If you’re truly so clueless that you don’t even know my name, then you might be exactly what we need.’

[WHOOSH]

Elijah’s heart is thundering in his chest. He forces himself to keep his pace to a steady walk as he leaves the Officer’s meeting, until he’s out of the lights of the base entirely. War. Real war. On shores so far away from here they feel imaginary, but the army wants Elijah to be a part of it.
When he reaches Nihaara’s home he hammers his fist on the door at the back. The goats stare at him from their pen with their strange eyes.
Nihaara glares when she pulls the door open. ‘Anyone could have heard you, Elijah Hale,’ she hisses. ‘It could have been anyone that answered that door.’
‘I don’t care, I had to see you.’
Nihaara studies Elijah’s face, expression turning from irritation to concern. She is so beautiful, hair hung over his shoulder in a heavy plait, eyes such a deep shade of brown they look almost black in the dark courtyard. Elijah stares at her, desperately trying to commit every inch of her to memory
‘What’s happened?’ Nihaara asks.
‘There’s a war in Europe. They want me to go back to England to train new recruits.’
‘So tell them no.’
‘I can’t just tell the Army no!’
‘Surely you’ve served your contract with them by now?’
‘No. I agreed to more years of service, because you told me it would be useful!’
‘That doesn’t count if you’re not going to be here!’
’What am I supposed to say, ‘sorry, I only signed up to feed information to the Independence Movement, if you want me to leave India I’m afraid I’ll have to quit?!’’
Nihaara chews her lip. ‘So there’s no way out of it?’
‘No. not unless we leave. Now. Tonight.’
‘What?’
‘My friend Imaan. He owes me a favour. He can get us out of town. But we need to go now. Right now.’
Nihaara shakes her head. ‘There’s too much work to do here. And I need to look after my father. You know that.’
‘But Nihaara—’
‘No. If you want to run away, you’ll have to go alone.’
Elijah hangs his head. ‘I don’t want to go to war for England.’
‘Then go to war so you can come back to me.’
‘But—’
‘India will still be free even if you go, Elijah. It doesn’t need a little boy from Surrey to lose its chains.’
Elijah wants to argue but he can’t. Nihaara is right, and he knows it. Nihaara smiles.
‘Go, pay your debt to England, and come home to me, alive. Maybe by then India will be its own country again.’
‘What if they won’t let me come back?!’
‘I will make them,’ says Nihaara. And in that moment, Elijah absolutely believes she could. She could do anything. She kisses Elijah softly, delicately. ‘Now go.’

[WHOOSH]

Since he arrived in France, Elijah has thought of his father every day, measures every exercise in how close they would bring him to the place where he died. This is a very different war, of course. No trenches in the ground, just foxholes and craters left by bombs. Cities on fire and homes without roofs. Grubby faced children walking past soldiers with dead eyes.
Elijah’s company is following behind this time, cleaning up the mess left by those pushing the germans back, inch by inch, mile by bloody mile. They pause in what used to be a small village, smoke still rising from the roofs of the barns the Germans had used as a temporary base until they were blown to bits just a few days ago.
There are no civilians left here. They’ve all been moved on to shelters, or buried in graves at the edge of town. It makes the whole place feel like something from the theatre, the grass in the fields too green to be real, the blackened stone facades of the houses like unfinished sets, still needing the details plucked out in paint.
They camp out in the church. Elijah makes an office of the bell tower. Half the company is replacements, men fresh out of training in England. They’re bright eyed and eager for combat, confused as to why everyone else keeps their distance from them. He knows most of the men who’ve been with him since the start won’t bother to learn the new boys’ names. No use setting yourself up for heartbreak. They might be doing clean-up now, but they’ll be leading the charge again soon.
Elijah hears shouting in the street below. He peers through the openings of the tower, spots a man, Gregson, running full pelt along the road. He’s shouting, arms raised. ‘Germans!’ he says. ‘Germans are coming!’
Elijah’s throat goes tight. Gregson must be wrong. There shouldn’t be any German force worth shouting about for three miles at least. Every town they’ve passed on the road here is the same as this one; occupied only by ghosts.
But then he hears it. Treads crunching on the ground, mechanisms growling. A tank.
Shit.
Elijah reaches for his gun, but it’s not there by the opening like it usually is. He must have left it downstairs when he woke up. Like an idiot. Some officer he is. He has his pistol but that’s no use at this kind of range. He’s shouting, barking orders even before he gets down the stairs. The men are looking at him, baffled as they set down their hands of cards and reading books and reach for their weapons instead.
Gregson bursts through the church doors. ‘Germans!’ he shouts.
Everything is a flurry of energy around Elijah as he scrambles to account for everyone. He’s short six heads.
‘I saw some of the replacements in the old shoe shop playing cards,’ says Dawlish. ‘I don’t know about Peterson.’
Elijah hurtles out of the back door of the church just in time to glimpse the back of a tank between two of the houses. He sprints across the square to the shoe shop. Everyone is there, bar two.‘Where’s Peterson and Kyle?!’ He asks them.
‘They were over by the well, near the supplies.’
Elijah’s stomach lurches. ‘Christ, what were they doing over there?!’
The germans must’ve already passed by them. They were probably dead. They’re probably dead but if they’re not there is no chance he’s leaving them behind. Kyle’s just a kid, the same age as Elijah had been when he signed up to the army, only he’s been sent right into the mouth of a dragon.
‘The others were taking the mick out of Kyle for writing home to his mum. Peterson took him out before he started fighting them.’
‘As if they don’t all do the same,’ Elijah groans.
And then, a huge, deafening boom. The ground shakes under them and shakes what’s left of the shop’s front window out of its frame. Smoke is rising from the church. ‘Bastards!’ Elijah shouts.
There’s a hail of bullets from both sides. Elijah bolts out of the back of the shoe shop, shouting instructions at the shaking men he leaves behind him.
A trail of dead Germans, three, four, five. Young men, all of them. Their uniforms are a mess. Some of them are clearly injured. A retreating force caught behind them putting up some misguided last stand. If they’d not had a tank, maybe Elijah’s company could have avoided any losses at all.
Elijah finds Peterson sprawled on the ground in a puddle of his own blood, eyes wide, staring into nothing. ‘Peterson,’ says Elijah anyway. ‘George?’
A shuffle nearby. Elijah holds out his pistol, creeps towards the supply crates. Rhys Kyle is behind them, clutching his gun. There are tears streaming down his cheeks.
A thudding boom which Elijah recognises; a grenade dropped into a tank. Screams, gun fire.
‘I tried to stop them, sir,’ Kyle stammers, barely intelligible through his thick accent. ‘I only got six. I’m sorry sir. I tried.’
Elijah puts a hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘You did good, lad. You did good.’

[WHOOSH]

The trees in the Austrian countryside are bright green with new leaves, fresh shoots of grass pushing up through the bloodied, ash-thick soil. The war only ended last week and nature is in a hurry to reclaim land churned up by boots and bloodshed. The dregs of the opposition are not so keen to give it up. Fleeing like rats from a ship, they have burned and destroyed everything they touched in their departure in a desperate attempt to conceal the horrors they’ve wrought, here. In this pretty, quiet bit of nowhere.
Elijah is glad he’s been assigned to help sort through the men at the prisoner of war camp. He’s heard stories about the other camps, about the people lying dead. Ovens and gas chambers with walls stained bright blue. Children shot in their mother’s arms when they left train cars already crammed with bodies. The war has brought few blessings to Elijah, but preventing him from seeing that with his own eyes is one he’s grateful of.
The soldiers in the prisoner of war camp are thin, sickly and weak, but they have at least been granted the privilege of being kept alive. Some of the bunks look almost hospitable. The imprisoned soldiers have heard stories about what happened nearby, though they had all assumed the stories must have been exaggerated. To turn a camp into a machine for killing. It seemed to horrific to be real. But it was.
All of the soldiers brought here before the last months of the war are well-documented. It’s those more recently captured who are the problem. Such was the chaos amongst the Germans’ upper ranks when defeat loomed close that administration was completely abandoned. Again, it’s better than at the other camps, where Elijah knows much of what was known of the masses murdered there has been destroyed in an attempt to cover the crimes.
Still, it means Elijah has his work set. All the men in these camps want to go home, and he intends to ensure they will be, but first he has to organise them, and to start doing that, he has to find out who all of them are.
He starts in the infirmary. Many of the beds are filled with the dead. Those who live have been treated by fellow inmates and are now being held together with whatever the army and the Red Cross could spare. He inspects each man’s dog tags, marks down who they are, fields a dozen questions an hour about when they’ll be set free. There are only so many times Elijah can explain he doesn’t know until he starts feeling like a flea that’s crawled out of one of the infested mattresses.
Once he’s finished in the first infirmary, he’s directed to the cells. The whole camp is a prison, but this back area looks like the kind of place you’d keep dogs. Built of unfinished wood and chicken wire, the men in the cells are filthy. ‘Why has nobody let them out of here?’ asks Elijah.
‘You told us to keep everyone where they were,’ says the soldier who’s been showing him around.
‘Get them out, give them something to eat,’ says Elijah, exhausted.
As they’re released, the men in the cells thank him. When they shake his hand, Elijah can feel the bones of their fingers.
‘This one won’t come out,’ says one of Elijah’s men.
Elijah stands over the soldier in the last cell. He’s tall but rake thin, his uniform hanging off him. He has bandages over his eyes, blood long dried and turned dark brown.
‘Hey, soldier. What’s your name?’ asks Elijah.
‘Kyle,’ he says. ‘Rhys Kyle.’
Elijah’s stomach sinks. He’d done his best to keep tabs on Kyle after what happened in France, but the boy was a crack shot, so once what was left of Elijah’s company was disbanded and sent to all four corners of Europe, it made sense that they’d want Kyle for a sniper. He’d heard he was doing well, but it had been months since he’d asked about him. Too much else on his mind.
Elijah crouches beside the boy. ‘Rhys? It’s Elijah Hale. You remember me?’
‘Hale?’ Rhys croaks.
Elijah takes his bony hand. ‘Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.’

[WHOOSH]

Elijah stirs in bed. For a moment, he’s caught between places and times. He can smell rot and smoke on the air, hear gunfire in the distance, fighter planes tracking their way across the ceiling.
He breathes deep, listens to the rain tumbling outside. So thick it looks like a sheet of fabric. The trees and plants drink deep, and what’s left of the water runs in rivulets down the hillside, washing away the last of summer’s violent heat. Everything the rain kisses will turn so green that every year it’s a surprise to Elijah. Greener than it seems could be real.
Outside the bedroom, Elijah hears Niranjan, his son, squeal with glee, Nihaara laughing alongside him. There’s conversation drifting out from the kitchen, carrying the smell of good food with it. The door opens and Niranjan comes running in. ‘Look what I found!’ he says. In his fingers, a small tin soldier, all his paint stripped back to show the bright metal.
‘Wow,’ says Elijah.
‘He’s a hunter,’ says Niranjan.
‘Is that so?’
‘Well he must be. Look he’s got a gun!’
Something strange blooms in Elijah’s chest. He pulls Niranjan close, kisses his head, ignoring his giggling protests. Niranjan breaks free and runs squeaking from the room.
‘Okay?’ asks Nihaara.
‘A hunter,’ says Elijah. ‘He must be a hunter because of his gun.’
Nihaara smiles. ‘He’s never seen a soldier in uniform. He won’t remember the British Raj. All this complicated political nonsense, it will be settled by the time he’s grown up enough to understand princes and provinces and politics.’
‘You did good work,’ says Elijah.
Nihaara shrugs. ‘So did you, secret traitor to the crown of England. Not that you ever did much treachery. You mostly just kept your nose out of things, and turned other people’s noses away too. ’
Elijah sighs. ‘My proudest work, teaching the British to keep their business to themselves.’

[WHOOSH]

Elijah has not been back to England since he helped train recruits at the start of the war. Even the air feels foreign to him now. He goes to the funeral, but only at the edges. He sits at the back of the church, stands a few feet away from the crowd as his mother’s coffin is lowered into the ground. He watches people shake his brother’s hand, hug his sister as she cries into a handkerchief. When it gets to his turn, he shakes, he hugs. His half siblings look at him, unknowing. ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Elijah tells them.
The next morning when he wakes in his hotel room, he calls Nihaara, tells her what’s happened, listens to the distant sound of his family on the other end of the line. Niranjan shouting at his siblings, his mother-in-law talking over them. He tidies up his things and gets the train out of Surrey. He watches England track by, in all its lush glory, green fields under grey skies. Strange how it all seems like something out of a storybook to him now. And then he’s crossing the border into Wales, and there is stone and hills and green and sea.
From the train station, it’s a long walk, but Elijah doesn’t mind it. He asks dog walkers and farmhands for directions, and finally, he’s there. A little white cottage on a hill so steep it’s like the whole world is tilted. Stone walls that only come to Elijah’s waist, held together with moss and prayers. A herd of sheep, stark white against the dark ground, a little black and white dog nipping at their heels.
At the bottom of the hill, leaning on an old fashioned crook and barking orders in Welsh, is Rhys Kyle.
‘Impressive for a blind man,’ says Elijah.
‘Teulu does all the work,’ says Rhys, smiling. ‘I’m just here to boss her around.’
‘Teulu?’ asks Elijah.
‘That’s the dog. It means family.’
Elijah laughs. ‘I see.’
‘I don’t,’ says Rhys.
Elijah laughs again.
‘Come on,’ says Rhys. ‘I’ll show you the house.’

[WHOOSH]

Elijah almost collapses into bed, feet aching from hours of dancing. Nihaara unwinds her clothes, setting them on the back of the chair in the corner of the room. ‘I think that went well,’ she says.
‘I hope so. We spent almost as much as we did on our house.’
‘Yes. But it was worth it, wasn’t it? For how happy Niranjan and Kushala were. She’s so pretty, too.’
‘Almost as pretty as you.’
Nihaara laughs. ‘You old flirt.’
Elijah sighs. ‘Do you wish our wedding had been like that? Hundreds of guests, two days of celebration?’
Nihaara considers for a moment. ‘No. Because it couldn’t have been that unless I’d picked another groom or a different time, and I like the ones I chose, thank you.’
Elijah smiles. ‘Well, that’s alright then.’

[WHOOSH]

Small hands nudge Elijah awake. Outside, rain. Monsoon season. Always Elijah’s favourite.
‘Papa, look,’ says his granddaughter. She’s holding Niranjan’s tin soldier up in front of his face.
‘Goodness, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen that. Where did you find it?’
‘Buried in the garden,’ she says.
‘And she got filthy digging it out,’ says Kushala.
‘I bet you did,’ says Elijah.
‘Come on, Lali, give Papa his medicine so he can go back to sleep.’
Lali sets the pills on Elijah’s tongue and holds up a glass of water with both hands for him to wash it down. He pets her hair with his stiff, crooked hand.
‘You need anything else, Papa?’ asks Kushala.
Elijah sighs. ‘More time,’ he says.
Kushala pats his head. ‘I’m not sure they have that at the market, but I can look.’
Elijah laughs. ‘So funny that my son found a clone of his mother to make his wife.’
Kushala smiles and leaves Elijah to sleep.
Elijah settles against his pillows. Outside, the rain is falling, sheets of silver silk. Tomorrow everything will be green and new again. In the other room, Elijah’s family are speaking, laughing, arguing. He feels full to the brim, a river overflowing. Every moment, every tiny kiss from his grandchildren, his children, Nihaara, his siblings, his mother. Tin soldiers falling from the sky, paint stripped off, made brand new. The medals on his father’s jacket gleam on his chest. Lali’s earrings catching in the sun.

[WHOOSH]

APPRENTICE
I wasn’t there. George Peterson was, but he was barely even mentioned and…

I thought I was getting closer to something but I wasn’t even there!

Something’s wrong I’ve made a mistake. I must have.

Sir?

Sir?!

[THE APPRENTICE GETS UP]

Hello?

Hello!

[SKITTERING]

Are you listening, whatever you are?! What do you want from me?! Huh?! You don’t want— I thought the point of this was to teach me something? Isn’t it?

Hello?

Sir?

Elio?

Anyone?

Hello?

[END]