healthy cynicism. The thought gave Will the same uncomfortable feeling as Kim’s scars.
“I was sickened,” Kim went on. “Whereas my comrades, the ones with whom I’d planned a British revolution, were positively thrilled. They talked with enthusiasm about setting up a British Cheka. They wanted a secret police and summary killing of class traitors. Most of them were Oxford and Cambridge men of birth, I should observe.”
“Of course they were.”
“They revelled in the idea of mass execution, bodies in the streets. I can’t convey what it was like to watch civilised people go through the intellectual gymnastics necessary to persuade themselves that state murder was first a regrettable necessity, and then a high treat.”
“I suppose you’d need to,” Will said. “If what you believe in goes wrong, either you let go the belief, or you believe even harder.”
“And it hurts to let go. God, it hurts. My ideals were a bad joke. My family had disowned me over them. My brother, my little brother had called me a coward and gone to war in my place, and he was dead. If I’d gone he’d be alive now, but he was dead because of what I chose, and every piece of news from Russia made it clearer that I’d chosen poorly. My idols were false, and for all my principles, the only person I had saved by not going to war was myself. Everyone who despised me for it had been right.” He breathed out hard. “And it all rather came crashing down.”
Will put both empty cups on the bedside table and reached for Kim’s hand, squeezing his fingers. They felt cold. “Kim—”
“Don’t insult me with comfort. If I’d enlisted, Henry would be alive now, but since I refused, he’s dead. It’s as simple as that.”
“No, it isn’t. You might as well say If Henry had stood a foot to the left, he’d be alive, and blame him for being in the wrong place. I was there, Kim. I knew a chap who tripped over a rock and his pal behind him took the bullet that went over his head. He never got over it to my knowledge. Was it his fault?”
“He didn’t duck it deliberately. I did.”
“And your brother signed up deliberately. He was a grown man who chose to march into a meat-grinder that had already chewed up millions of us. It was mass murder; maybe if more people had stood against it, fewer would have died. I know why he went to war, I signed up too, but that doesn’t make either of us clever.”
“Nobody ever claimed Henry was clever,” Kim said. “But he had to go because I did not. It really is that simple.”
“It bloody isn’t. I’m trying to tell you. You can’t just say if this then that, and decide what would have happened when the whole thing was a sodding lucky dip. What if he’d gone anyway and you’d both got killed? What if he’d stayed home and died of the ’flu? What if there’s some German lad right now discovering a cure for the common cold because you weren’t there to put a knife in his ribs? What if one of the men I killed was going to be a great leader, but he met me in a trench? If you want to start on They’d be alive if only I hadn’t, we’ll be here all day.”
“Yes, but—”
“Not ‘but’. You’re talking as if you had some sort of control, like if you’d behaved differently, the whole world would have been different. Don’t flatter yourself.”
Kim gave a short laugh. “I had no idea that was what I was doing. You cannot talk this away, Will. I did harm. Henry went to France as a direct consequence of my refusal to enlist, and he died there. I lived, he died, and it was all for nothing. I’m not asking for absolution: I took the wrong path, and there’s no comfort in pretending I didn’t. Christ, I made a hash of things.”
That part was inarguable. “So you joined this Private Bureau to make them right?”
“I can’t even claim that. I couldn’t see any way ahead. But I’d met a fellow socially who, little did I know, was the Bureau chief. He paid me a visit, and said he had a use for me. I told him it was more than I did, that I didn’t care if I lived or died, and he said excellent, that was exactly what he wanted.”