HOW DO YOU MEASURE A LIFE?
IN LOVING MEMORY OF
LEOPOLD CONSTANTINE MORAN
7 AUG 1984 – 12 MAY 2004
1ST BATTALION, B COMPANY, ROYAL ANGLICANS
18 SEP 2002 – 12 MAY 2004
WE WILL REMEMBER HIIM
May 12th, 1984
The shades are closed. The city on the other side of the windows is greener than she ever expected it could be, but the sunlight hurts her eyes, gives her such headaches that she can’t even open them. She spends a lot of time in bed. There’s three months to go, still, till the baby is due, but she feels sick and tired all the time, just wants to lie here in the quiet, dim, coolness of the room with the fans humming, undisturbed.
She’s almost asleep when noise erupts in the corridor outside. Running feet, shouts, laughter. Sebastian is almost four, August a little over a year younger and probably a couple of paces behind, determined to catch up. There’s a bit of a scuffle outside the door, then a flurry of knocks that feel like something sharp being driven into Vivienne’s skull. She groans and puts a hand over her eyes.
Sebastian is loud and restless, likes to bounce on the foot of the mattress. It’s too much for her to handle on a good day, and she’s not had one of those in months. Thank God for Nanny, who shepherds both boys away, insisting, “We don’t want to disturb Mother now, do we?”
Vivienne sighs, relieved, and hopes the new baby is a girl.
“… Ready or not, here I come.” Sebastian is seven years old and clumsy with numbers. He starts counting on his fingers but loses track somewhere after twenty and skips a couple. He repeats a few more and finally gives up, calling to his brothers who are hiding elsewhere inside the residence.
Leopold, the youngest ( and their mother’s favourite, despite the fact he’s another boy ), is hiding inside a wardrobe in one of the empty state bedrooms. He’s not scared of the dark like Sebastian is.
The British High Commission is not a cosy building—a lot of the furniture is antique, breakable, and there are many rooms the boys are not supposed to go into—but if they ignore that, which they often do, it’s a great place to play hide and seek. So many rooms and cupboards and corners to squeeze yourself into.
He waits for what feels like hours, but really, is only fifteen or twenty minutes, hands over his mouth when Sebastian thunders into the room, but after ducking to look under the bed and yanking back the curtains, he wrenches the wardrobe door open, and for a second, the two brothers just stare at each other, identical blue eyes, before Bash grins and holds out his hand. “Help me come and find August?”
August seems like a long time away. Leopold’s not sure whether he wants it to come quicker or slower. He’s looking forward to seeing his brothers again, though they seem like very distant figures now, voices on the other end of a telephone every two weeks or so. But when they left to go to school, they didn’t come back, and that’s what’s making him nervous. Torn between staying close to his mother’s side and spending every minute he can out of doors, playing cricket with the friends he might never see again.
It’s very hot out today, and Vivienne’s taken to bed with another of her headaches. Leopold doesn’t need to pack yet, but he’s trying to decide what he wants to take with him when he goes to England in a couple of months’ time. These, definitely. His father’s always telling him he’s far too old for toys now, but Leopold still loves the collection of little tin soldiers he was given one Christmas when he was younger. They go with him everywhere.
Once upon a time, he’d had a whole platoon of them, but now there are only three left. He makes them parachute into the open suitcase one at a time. Sebastian. August. Leopold. Then they crawl on their bellies under the mesh that he thinks he’s supposed to put his socks in or something, climbing up and out the other side.
Absorbed by this game, he forgets about his upcoming trip again until bedtime.
Bash and August look very grown up in their parade dress uniforms. Dark blue jackets and trousers with a red stripe up the leg, gold braid on the shoulder, and a crimson band around their caps. Leo scans the rows of cadets, more than two hundred of them saluting the General as they pass by the stand, for their faces. Shoulder to shoulder, though one slightly taller than the other, both with their chins up and their chests puffed out. They have every right to be proud.
Neither of their parents thought it worth flying out for, and Leo, sitting next to his uncle and his aunt, looking very smart himself in a navy-blue suit and a blue and red striped tie, is privately relieved. No doubt his father would have found some fault somewhere and ruined the day for them, whereas Uncle Thomas realises how important this is for them both.
“Will you come to my passing out parade too?” Leo asks him, while they wait for the ranks to be dismissed so they can go and offer their congratulations to the two brand-new 2nd Lieutenants. He’s already decided he’s going to be one too, when he’s older. “Only two years, then it’ll be my turn.”
Bash’s hand is outstretched again. Leo thinks back to that afternoon at the Embassy, fifteen years ago. “Help me come and find August?” Then, he’d let go of Bash’s hand as soon as he could and gone tearing off down the corridor ahead of him, little legs flying as he was determined to find their brother first. Now, he holds on tightly for as long as he can.
He thought it would hurt more, dying, but mostly, he’s just cold. Even with the fiery, Afghani sun beating down on the back of his neck, he’s shivering. Must be the shock. His fingers contract around Sebastian’s, nails digging into the back of his hand, but Bash does not react. Not at all. “Don’t let go!” he calls, but it’s his fingers that are slipping out of Leo’s grip. “Helicopter will be here, help’s coming, you just have to hold on.”
“So do you.” Leo grits his teeth and tries to pull Bash’s hand back. He can taste sand and iron when he coughs, chest spasming. “You can’t—” It’s getting harder for him to talk in between coughs. “—You can’t give up; do you hear me? No matter what happens, you can’t—fucking—” Another cough, longer this time. When the fit’s passed, he’s so tired, he can hardly keep his eyes open. He screws them up against all the grit and the dirt and sand and fixes them on his brother, two pairs of identical blue eyes.
“—I love you, brother.” A red-toothed smile, then his eyelashes flutter, and he can hear Bash calling to him from the other end of a very long tunnel, but when he tries to turn back, the blackness is too much. It swallows him up whole.
