The Album

Haven't we all been cast out of our Eden moment? Haven't we all left the warm comfort of some idyllic womb of memory? We did not need to taste the apple. There was a garden of fruit to enjoy and yet the devil had us circling that one tree, the one that would break it all. Cast out, split up, moving out and away. This is the human experience since our fall from grace.

The old places that once shone with glory are now ruins. They have fallen into shadow, become something else in our mind's eye. They have become something strange, twisted, and brutal. We were heroes once, now remembered as monsters.

Adam's pen hovered over the page but no more words came. His inspiration spent, he put his diary away in a bedside drawer and rose to start the day.

His wife Evelyn was a lark. She'd be up for an hour or more by the time Adam stumbled into the kitchen in his PJs. She'd already been for a run, showered, dressed, and prepared the breakfast table and coffee. He kissed her on the cheek from behind and she giggled in his arms before shaking herself free. Her nose turned upward, "Morning smelly, you need a shower." Yet despite his apparent uncleanness, she kissed him on the lips and then elegantly curved away to finish her preparations for the day.

He took some freshly brewed coffee from the pot and watched her loading her laptop into her work bag. How can she make such simple things look like a dance to heavenly music, he wondered as the sunlight struck her blonde hair and glittered in her green eyes. "So Mrs Gardener, will you be joining me for breakfast?"

"Why sir, the prospect and the privilege of such an occasion fills my heart with joy," she replied in her 'Gone with the Wind' voice. The one that never failed to give him butterflies.

"Then let us begin," he waved his hand benevolently over the table she had prepared and she giggled again. They sat grinning at each other to enjoy cereal and toast with bread and jam. Breakfast was his favorite meal of the day,

Several weeks later he was in Paris, on Saturday morning, due to a late business meeting on Friday with an international branch of the bank he worked in. He was woken up in his hotel room by his mobile ringing. It was Evelyn, he smiled, She's probably been up for hours, he thought glancing at the clock which already said 10:30.

"Adam, I found your album. Who the frig are you!!!? Pictures of dead people, my goodness what kind of sick weirdo are you?"

His heart sank within him. How stupid, I should have thrown that away years ago. It was pictures of his confirmed kills, from a life he'd left behind after he had married Evelyn. Then the album had been a matter of personal security a sort of insurance policy against his bosses. He was black ops, off the books, against the rules, and he was worried that they would just try and kill him to ensure plausible deniability if ever things went to pot. On the back of each photo were details of the operations he had carried out for Mi6 including the name of the target, time and location of the hit, the reason for the hit, and identifying details. He posted the photos to a post box after each hit for the years he was active. No one but him ever knew about it, it was a backup plan he had never implemented. He had no desire to betray his country after all. He'd moved it into the house and into the album several years after he'd finished working. It was a momento of a life gone by which he never really faced up to. Then he forgot about it as the years passed. Yet still, it lay in one of his drawers, a place he thought Evelyn never went.

"Were you in my drawers?"

"That is not the point, I was cleaning and they were dusty," for Evelyn that was all the justification she would ever need.

"We can talk when I get back," said Adam, "I guess this conversation is long overdue in fact."

"No, no you lied to me I am going to change the locks. You need to meet me in a public place where there are lots of people."

"Evelyn do not tell anybody about this, it could get them and you killed. I love you and would never harm you but there are people out there..."

"You are scaring me, Adam, I think I do not know you at all..." Her voice was broken by tears.

"I will be back in town this evening, let's meet in the park near the clocktower at 5 pm."

He spotted Evelyn sitting on one end of the crowded park bench. She looked ruined, her eyes red from crying.

"Hello Evelyn, shall we take a walk?"

She rose but did not kiss him as she would normally have done. Instead, she regarded him with a cold hostility that made his heart sink through his bowels. They walked with several feet between them.

"I should have told you this many years ago. I had forgotten about the album. It is a record of a previous life. One that did not fit with the happiness we found together."

"You told me you were a soldier and then a policeman when we met, did you lie?"

"Well, there are a great many different kinds of policing action. I was in the SAS and you just do not talk about that and then I developed a specialist role after my service but not for the regular police force, I was in Mi6. We are not allowed to tell people about our jobs. I made promises not to say anything. But I have also made promises to you and as time has passed you have become the most important person in my life. I realize now that there should be no secrets between us. If you tell on me then likely I will be in a lot of trouble but worse than that it may expose you also to some very bad people."

"In Mi6?"

"No amongst those who work in their world too. Secrets are hard to keep in the modern world, especially since everything went digital."

"So you did not tell me to protect me from these people?" There was some hope in Evelyn's eyes.

"No, that was one reason... not the main one," Adam decided on total honesty, turning away a moment before turning back.

"Then why?" Evelyn swung round to face him and seized his forearms. It was an intimate moment and felt like a restoration of trust. He wondered what his next words would do to her feelings. He hesitated, she squeezed his arms and her beautiful eyes implored through fresh tears. This was a time for truth.

"I was scared of how you would look at me if you knew the kind of man I was before I met you."

Evelyn withdrew her grip, studied him a moment, and gulped. "After we spoke I went back to the album and took the photos out of their sleeves. I read the details on the back of them. That is the only reason I came to the meeting. It seems you were an assassin killing bad people for King and Country. That made all the difference, I could not have forgiven a serial killer or some kind of vigilante. You went where they pointed you and you did what they told you to do."

"Yes, that is pretty much it, except it was for Queen and Country when I did it." It was a poor attempt at humor and Evelyn did not even smile in response.

Her head dropped as she considered the situation. Then her eyes rose to challenge his own, "Is this where the nightmares come from?"

"Yes, I am haunted by the people I killed. When you meet these guys in person they often seem much better than their profile suggests. They sound reasonable and like they have just cause for what they do."

"I read the reasons on the photos, some were pretty bad people."

"Some were organized crime, you know drugs and people trafficking, those don't trouble me much, they were just pure evil."

"So which ones give you nightmares?"

"Some were just serving their country, they had families. I killed one in his home during the night, but then met his child in the corridor, still holding the bloody knife. The little girl screamed and then when she saw her daddy through the open bedroom door, screamed some more. Her mother had died the previous year in a car crash and her daddy was all that she had left. I orphaned that poor kid. I fled the house but I see that little girl in my nightmares all the time." He shook his head. "I am sorry, I have done horrible things and you are such an angel. You deserve better..." His voice broke and he started to cry.

Evelyn reached for him, drawing him into a hug. They squeezed each other and the distance between them melted away as they cried together.

"Come on soldier boy, you are coming home with me." She took his hand and smiled at him.

Later that evening before he went to sleep Adam reached for his diary and started to write again.

"The devil is in the details of our lives, threatening to destroy everything we build with our darkest secrets. But that is not the whole story. We are fallen broken people but so also we are redeemed Pentecostal souls, reunited by an eternal flame that burns the shadows away. I can smile again not because I have earned that right but because love, grace, and mercy allow me that privilege. The privilege of our joy is built on sure foundations."

He put his diary away and kissed the sleeping Evelyn on the cheek. He glanced over at the chest of drawers in the corner in which the album had been rehidden, then switched off the light to sleep.


W/C 1717