A Breed of Heroes

1

‘Northern Ireland is perfectly simple really,’ said Edward Lumley, the company commander. ‘There are no two ways about it.’

He gazed at the passing Midlands countryside, then at the faces of his three platoon commanders and then at the dirty railway carriage floor. The frown which had creased his forehead suddenly cleared.

‘All you have to do,’ he continued, ‘is to thump ’em when they step out of line, and the rest of the time leave ’em alone. That’s all they want, really, you know, just to be left alone. There’s no doubt about it.’

He sat back and folded his arms. He was a balding, genial man with a round, foolish, good-natured face. After some years as a major he was still a company commander. The fact that he had not made staff college did not bother him, though it bothered his wife. He looked now for responses from his three young platoon commanders.

Charles Thoroughgood glanced up from his book in acknowledgment. The other two, Tim Bryant and John Wheel, nodded their consent. Tim added that there was no doubt at all. They were both a couple of years younger than Charles, products of Sandhurst, keen, clear-eyed and subservient. Charles had also been to Sandhurst but before that to Oxford. He wondered sometimes whether he might have been happier in the Army if he had not been to Oxford. He was tall, red-haired and freckled. There was a threatened ungainliness in his body that was never fully realised because his movements were gentle and slow, but there was something untidy and sprawling about the way his limbs were put together. He had never noticed this before joining the Army but it had proved an important factor in his relationship with the NCO instructors at Sandhurst, who had reminded him of it daily. He crossed his legs carefully now, trying not to dislodge Edward’s kit from the seat opposite. The floor beneath his legs was covered by his own.

‘I didn’t go much on old What’s-it’s lectures about the origins of the Northern Irish problem,’ said Edward. ‘You know who I mean, that poof — Philip Thingie, the education officer. Philip Lamb. All that stuff about the eleventh century: can’t see what that matters to anyone now. And then when he went on about the modern period I thought he meant now, you know, or at least the twentieth century, not the seventeenth. Christ knows what the Ackies thought.’

Soldiers in No. 1 Army Assault Commando (Airborne) — No. 1 AAC(A) — were often known as ‘Ackies’. Their reactions and opinions were frequently used as an acid test for any theory, policy, place or person. Tim, C company’s second platoon commander, shifted in his seat. ‘I’m not so sure. I thought it was quite interesting. I mean, at least it gave you an idea of the background and whatever.’

‘A right bloody mess.’

‘Exactly. I think the Ackies appreciated it, on the whole. At least they have an idea what they’re getting into.’

Edward nudged Charles with his boot. ‘What do you think, Professor? You can read and write better than Philip Lamb. Did he do a good job?’

‘I thought he did. I knew more about Ireland after his lectures than I did before them. And I thought he put them over quite well considering his audience was six hundred tired soldiers crammed into a gym after an exercise.’

‘I was bored rigid.’

‘Perhaps that’s because you were standing.’

‘Point there, Charles. Not for nothing you went to Oxford.’

Charles’s having been to Oxford was always a cause of comment. Opinions varied throughout the battalion. Most people thought it meant he was very clever, his brother officers were usually envious but would not admit it, the RSM, Mr Bone, was convinced he was a dangerous subversive, while the CO thought it was three years wasted out of a young man’s life that would have been better spent commanding a platoon. After his initial surprise at being treated as though he had a criminal record Charles had tried to play down his past, but in an extrovert society where reticence was weakness this was a bad tactic. He had been tempted then to become aggressively academic but had sensed that this would be playing into the hands of his critics. Accordingly, he had become stubbornly matter-of-fact, an attitude that allowed as little scope for criticism as for his own self-expression.

Charles’s first interview with the CO was not something he was ever likely to forget. Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Gowrie, MC, was a tall, energetic, black-haired man with earnest brown eyes and regular, good-looking features that were marred only by a too-tight compression of his lips, as though he were trying to express great determination. Charles had heard whilst at Sandhurst that Gowrie was a fanatic, an ogre almost, setting near-impossible standards for himself and others. His standards were apparently derived from a Boy’s Own conception of life, according to which the good would win through in the end because of their faith, loyalty and perseverance. But there would be many setbacks on the way.

On joining the battalion Charles was shown in to the CO by the obliging and, he sensed, sympathetic adjutant, Colin Wood. He marched in and saluted. The CO looked up from his desk. ‘Go out and come in again,’ he said.

Charles marched out. He felt it was best to march, being unsure whether it was regimental tradition that subalterns up for interview with the CO always had to enter twice or whether, as in one memorable incident at Sandhurst, his flies were undone. He turned about in the adjutant’s office, knocked, was bidden to enter, marched in, halted and saluted again. If anything, this attempt was even more awkward than the first but the effort must have showed because the CO invited him to sit down. ‘Welcome to the battalion,’ he said.

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Did you enjoy Oxford?’

‘Yes, thank you. Very much.’

‘Well, you can put away your James Bond books and Playboys and what-have-you now. You’re back in the real world. Back among the men.’

Charles had never read any James Bond books and the majority of the Playboys he had ever seen were in the bedside drawer of the orderly officer’s room in the Officers’ Mess.

‘You’ll have to start work now,’ continued the CO. ‘Earning your living. Getting up early. How do you feel about that?’

‘I did work at Oxford, sir. And we got up early at Sandhurst.’

‘Don’t try to argue with me, it won’t work. Leadership, that’s what I’m concerned about. Are you a leader? Your Sandhurst report says you weren’t as assertive as you might have been. Well, here you’ll be in command of some of the best soldiers in the British Army. Commando soldiers. Airborne soldiers. Are you up to it? Are you man enough? That’s what I want to know.’

‘I hope so, sir.’

‘So do I.’

The CO looked down and continued reading what Charles assumed was his Sandhurst report. He could see the MC ribbon on the CO’s service dress — won, he had heard, in a particularly heroic and ill-judged operation in Aden. The CO looked up again. ‘I see you’re an atheist.’

‘No, sir, an agnostic’

‘It’s the same difference.’

‘With respect, sir, I don’t think they are at all the same.’

‘Don’t argue. I won’t tell you again. The point is, you’re not a Christian.’ He leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk. ‘Now I’m the last person to dictate to someone what his religion should be, Charles. In fact, the Army doesn’t allow me to do it and a jolly good thing too. None of us has any right to interfere with another person’s private beliefs. But I just want to put two things to you. Two things.’ He picked up an antique and highly-polished bayonet that served as a paper-knife and pointed it at Charles, the point quivering slightly. ‘Firstly, your soldiers. If they don’t have an ethic to combat communism they’ll go under. I assure you communism, whatever else you may say about it, is a great rallying point. It’s a strong, forceful belief that gives ordinary soldiers something to cling to when they need it, quite apart from the fact that they are indoctrinated in a way that we’ve never even dreamed of in this Army. Thank God. Now, how do you suppose you can prevent your soldiers from being corrupted by this evil — because that’s what it is, you know — if all you’ve got to offer them is a wishy-washy, nought-point-one per cent proof agnosticism? Eh? How d’you propose to do it?’

Charles could not take his eyes off the bayonet. ‘Well, sir, I don’t see that my belief —’

‘And the second point, the second point is yourself. How would you — I hope you never have to, but the day may come — how would you bury one of your friends who had had his face blown away, without God’s help? Could you do it?’

‘I hope I could.’

The CO slammed the bayonet on to the desk. ‘You could not. Without belief you could not do it. Could you stand at your friend’s graveside, with your soldiers around you, and lower your friend minus face into his grave and conduct a burial service — without a faith to fall back on? Do you seriously think you could do that and look your soldiers in the eye again? Do you?’

‘As far as I can tell —’

‘As far as I can tell you don’t know what you’re talking about. You would crack up, I can assure you. The Russian soldier has his faith and, fortunately, all the soldiers in this battalion have theirs. They’re all good Christians. Think about it, Charles. I don’t want to interfere with your beliefs, I just want you to think about it. It’s all very well being long-haired, left-wing and atheistic, but when it comes to the crunch up at the sharp end it’s not enough. It won’t do. Now, anything you want to ask me?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Settled in the Mess all right?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good. Well, if you have any problems you know you can come and see me at any time. This door is always open. Or the padre. Go and talk it over with him. You’ll find he’s very sympathetic and down to earth, a good man. Used to be a private soldier in the Regiment in National Service days.’

Charles stood up to go.

‘One other thing.’

‘Sir?’

‘Hair.’

Charles repeated the word to himself. His hair had been cut the day before and washed that morning. Nevertheless, it seemed likely that the CO had in mind that it needed one or both again. He gave the response that seemed least likely to displease the CO. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Today.’

‘Yes, sir.’

It was worse than anything Charles had expected. He could not conceive how he was going to survive the remaining two and a half or so years that were expected of him. He would need a faith of some sort for that. He heard again the voice of his tutor, Manningtree, with its lisp and affected weariness: ‘The only excuse I can think of for your joining the Army is that you are experimenting with yourself in a particularly unnecessary, unpleasant and narcissistic way. I hope you fail.’ Manningtree was in no sense a military man and neither, Charles had to admit to himself, was he. He had known that all along, of course, but to have admitted to Manningtree that he might have been even slightly right about him would have offended Charles’s particular brand of undergraduate honour. To have been ‘got right’ by the remote and listless Manningtree was almost a condemnation, and not to be borne. As he left the CO’s office Charles reflected that Manningtree was probably at that moment supine in his leather armchair listening to somebody’s predictable essay and sipping sherry that was almost as dry as his own comments. The faltering student did not know his luck.

Sometime later Charles had related to the padre what the CO had said to him. The padre was a short, square Yorkshireman who smoked a stubby pipe and was universally popular, having boxed for the Army. ‘Silly bugger,’ he had said.

Charles was jolted out of his musings by a particularly vicious bit of continuous welded rail. He realised that the noise of the train and Edward’s voice had merged into an indistinguishable background, each as unvarying as the other. He tried to pay attention. ‘We shouldn’t be in Ireland at all, of course,’ Edward was saying. ‘It’s all political, not our job. Let the bloody politicians fight it out if they must fight over it. I’d rather have a good clean battle any day. I don’t like all this now-you-shoot-them-now-you-don’t stuff. Bad for the Ackies.’ Everyone knew that Edward had never been in a battle, but no one doubted his sincerity.

John, the third platoon commander, was a serious-minded young man. ‘You can’t avoid the political dimension when armies are involved in anything,’ he said. ‘Especially internal security situations. An army is then one among a number of political factors instead of being the decisive one, as in a war. In a place like Northern Ireland everything is political and everything has to be taken account of.’

Edward unfolded and then re-folded his arms, his chubby face perplexed. ‘I daresay you’re right. All you young chaps are so damn clever these days. Too much education, if you ask me. I hope you know what to do with it when we get there.’ The train jolted and lurched suddenly, throwing the four men against each other. Edward’s kit fell off the seat and got mixed up with Charles’s. Edward trod on Tim’s beret, leaving a dirty bootmark on the clean black. ‘When do we get there?’ he asked.

‘0700,’ said John, who always knew times.

‘Christ. It’s not that far, is it? Have we got to put up with this all night?’

‘That’s to Belfast. We’ll be in Liverpool in a couple of hours.’

‘Thank God for that. I was going to say, all night’s a bit long, even for British Snail.’

The door of their compartment was opened abruptly by the Intelligence Section colour sergeant, a well-known criminal named Fox. He grinned at Edward. ‘O Group, sir. Orders Group. CO’s carriage. Ten minutes ago.’

Edward’s mouth dropped open. ‘What for? What’s he want to hold an O Group now for?’

‘Search me, sir. Probably going to brief you on what to do if the boat’s torpedoed. Russian subs in the Irish Sea. Could be nasty.’ Colour Sergeant Fox slid the door to with a crash.

Edward started up and nearly fell in the swaying carriage. Mention of the CO never failed to arouse a degree of panic in him. ‘O Groups even on the bloody train — would you believe it? God only knows what it’s going to be like when we get there. Where’s my file? Has anyone seen my clip file?’ He cast about desperately, his face red, as it always was in a crisis. Crises arose frequently in Edward’s life. His file was found for him. ‘Gas mask,’ he said. ‘Respirator, I mean. Must take it with me. You know what the CO’s like. He’ll probably let off the CS canister to test us.’

‘You’re not serious,’ said Charles.

‘’Course I’m serious. Standing Operational Procedures, paragraph 4b — “In vehicles respirators are to be available at all times.” A train is a vehicle.’ He found his respirator. ‘I’d advise you all to find yours.’

‘But we’re not going to the O Group. And we’re still in England.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Thoroughgood, stop being irrelevant. Just find your respirator and have it available.’ Edward straightened his beret in the mirror and clambered over their kit to the door. ‘Which way’s the CO’s carriage?’ he asked.

‘Left,’ said Tim.

‘Was it left?’ asked John, when Edward had gone.

‘Haven’t a clue.’

The three of them rummaged slowly through their kit for their respirators. Charles couldn’t find his. He had never learned to travel lightly and seemed to have as much kit as the other two together. He gave up and tried to read. The night before he had said goodbye to Janet, his girlfriend, and memories of the uncomfortable evening kept coming back in snippets. There had been nothing positively unpleasant. It was just that he could not think of it without a sense of hopelessness, in much the same way as he felt about the ensuing four months in Northern Ireland. This was due not to any pessimistic appreciation of the situation there, nor to any dislike for the place, which he had never seen, any more than the previous night’s hopelessness had been anything specifically to do with Janet. It was a more general malaise in which he was the only common factor, though he was inclined to blame the CO.

‘Don’t get killed, please,’ Janet had said. They were in a restaurant in Fulham, and she had said it whilst sipping her mock-turtle soup, peering earnestly at him over the spoon.

‘No, of course not,’ he said, feeling absurdly British.

She lowered her spoon. ‘Really, Charles, I’m very worried.’

‘So am I.’

‘It’s worse in a way, staying behind.’

‘I’m sure it isn’t.’

‘Don’t be so selfish.’ She looked down, apparently occupied in making patterns in the soup. With her forehead bent towards him and her gaze averted she always seemed at her most vulnerable, and Charles felt inclined to be tender. But it was a distant sort of tenderness and it could not survive in conversation. She looked up again. ‘I still don’t understand why you joined the Army.’

This had been a bone of contention for some months now. He suspected that what exasperated her most was not the weakness of any explanations he might have given but the fact that he had never really given any. He didn’t know why for certain, though he was dimly aware of various promptings — a feeling he ought to do something different, uncharacteristic, a desire to shock his friends, a not-to-be-acknowledged desire to please his father, an insufficiency of cowboys and Indians during childhood, a surfeit of his subject, history, and the simple feeling that he ought to do something. Janet had become an enthusiastic social worker for Wandsworth Council. He knew that his obvious lack of concern for the difference between her profession — caring — and his — killing — annoyed her. She thought that he thought lightly of hers.

‘You will write, won’t you?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘It must be awful, all that killing and suffering. I couldn’t bear it. I’d have to do something.’

‘It’s the living conditions that worry me.’

‘I know. All those dreadful slums.’

‘Ours, I mean. There’s no possibility of privacy. We have to sleep in school boiler rooms, factories, police stations and warehouses.’

‘But you get paid extra for it, don’t you? Hard lying money or something. And lots of people have done it before, so it won’t seem so bad.’

‘It will.’

‘It’s your own fault for joining.’

‘I know.’

‘Well, don’t be unreasonable on our last night.’

They went back to her flat, and thence to bed. Their love-making lacked both affection and passion. The thought that this was probably their last time for four months added nothing to the occasion. Charles had wondered whether he would be subjected to an oblique and tentative interrogation of his feelings for her afterwards, but she fell asleep immediately. He left in darkness early the following morning. If nothing else, the hour and the cold precluded any attempt at an emotional farewell, and they parted silently with a tasteless kiss. He wondered vaguely whether she would sleep with anyone else whilst he was away. There was very little chance that he would.

The journey back to Aldershot on the early train was one of the most depressing experiences he knew. The bleak suburbs slid past like a bad dream repeated. They seemed to emphasise the unreality of his life in the Army, which he had at first mistaken for an unpleasant form of reality. But the Yorkshire exercise had convinced him that his world was not a real one. Seven days and seven nights on the moors, digging trenches, then living in them, then filling them in, then digging more and living in them, and so on. Seven days and nights of rain, during which they had the first recorded case of trench-foot in the British Army for years. This was a condition, well known during the First World War, in which a kind of crust formed on the foot after it had been deprived of air and immersed in soggy socks and boots for days and nights on end. In very bad cases toes were lost. The envied victim, a private in A company, was sent to hospital. The CO urged everyone to think how much worse it would have been on the Somme.

During the first few hours of the exercise, kit became waterlogged and never thereafter had the chance to dry. The imaginary but ubiquitous enemy — to Charles, an obvious personification of the CO’s paranoia — was more troublesome than a real one could ever be. After the first two days everyone was too depressed and wet to speak except to pass on orders and their subsequent amendments and contradictions. During the middle of one day — recognisably so because of a barely-perceptible lightening at the base of the clouds — Charles and his platoon came to a stone bridge over a swollen stream. The downpour continued. They were about to cross the bridge when Charles was aware of a surging in the water and the CO and his wireless operator emerged from beneath the bridge. They had been standing up to the tops of their thighs in the stream.

‘You have been mortared,’ the CO said to Charles. ‘Your platoon is decimated and you are dead.’

For one wild moment Charles thought he might be sent home in disgrace.

‘What do you intend to do about it?’ continued the CO.

The rain hissed in the stream. The CO and his wireless operator were still standing in it. Charles’s platoon gazed at them without curiosity. ‘We had to make a detour via the bridge, sir,’ said Charles, ‘because there’s a cross-country motor-cycle event upstream.’

‘You could have forded it. Why didn’t you do that?’

‘We were told that the stream was the Rhine, sir.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘With respect, sir, you did.’

The CO waded ashore and scrambled up the bank, followed, at the second or third attempt, by his heavily-burdened wireless operator. The rain ran in streaks through the mud on his face and tiny droplets clung to his heavy eyebrows. His dark eyes looked for a few moments as though he were considering whether to have Charles shot or drowned. He then looked at the stream, as though he had decided the business was not worth a bullet, and then as far up the hill as the clouds permitted. ‘You should have used your initiative. Anyway, how did you know this bridge was still standing?’

‘Well, sir, I could see it.’

‘Not this bridge, nincompoop, not this physical bridge. The one over the Rhine that you were attempting to cross. How did you know that was still standing, eh?’

‘I suppose I didn’t, sir.’

‘I suppose you didn’t too. Any more than you knew it was covered by heavy mortars, which you should’ve. D’you understand me?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good.’ The rain streamed down their faces. ‘Now, what’s all this about a motor-cycling event?’

‘They’re holding one upstream, sir, in the area that we were supposed to occupy.’

‘But this is a military training area. It’s MOD land. Didn’t you throw them off?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Did you try?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You’re as wet as the bloody weather, Thoroughgood. Show me.’

They set off back the way they had come. Charles’s platoon was depressed beyond speech or gesture and squelched mindlessly behind the CO. The CO marched briskly, however. He seemed to be a man who enjoyed a challenge. He no doubt saw rain as a challenge, and the more it rained the more it challenged, so the more he marched. They reached the scene of the outrage, which consisted of a huddle of wet spectators watching men obliterated by mud drive noisy motor-bikes up and down hills, and fall off on corners. The CO approached the young man who was easily the tallest, rightly assuming him to be the leader.

‘This is a military training area,’ said the CO.

The young man had a pleasant, intelligent face. ‘Good day, Colonel.’

‘There is a military exercise in progress. If you don’t get your people and your machines out of here within the next few minutes there is a very good chance that you will be mortared. My men are about to cross the Rhine.’

‘That would be unfortunate, since I have a letter here from the Army Department giving us permission to use this area today.’ He produced a soggy envelope.

‘Civil servants interfering again. It’s bloody silly.’

‘I quite agree, Colonel. Where is your Rhine?’

The CO jabbed his thumb towards the stream. ‘Down there.’

‘Yes, of course. I see it now.’

They hung around. The CO clearly wanted to continue the conversation. Four motor-cyclists collided in a great shower of mud and then, moving like moon-men, slowly disentangled themselves and their machines. The soldiers gazed impassively at the spectacle. It was doubtful whether even a real mortar bombardment would have stirred them to interest. However, the CO could not leave without a parting shot.

‘You must have a pretty spare job anyway if you can spend your afternoons watching this sort of rubbish,’ he said.

The tall young man inclined his head politely. ‘Actually, Colonel, the same as yours. Nicholas Stringer, Coldstream Guards.’

Though forced to acknowledge that there were elites other than No. 1 AAC(A), the CO always denied them real status. He referred to them all as ‘self-appointed’. This was particularly true of the Guards, and of all the Guards regiments the Coldstreams — whom he always called ‘magpies’ because of their black and white colours — were the worst, in his view. He looked at the Guards officer with an expression of baffled anger, until a retort came to mind. ‘Whose side were you on in the Civil War?’ he snapped, then turned and squelched away. The Guards officer watched him go, his own face registering polite incomprehension.

Charles squelched after him, similarly puzzled. He had a vague idea that the Coldstreams had been on Cromwell’s side. Whichever it was, No. 1 AAC(A) had no battle honours from that war, not having been raised until a century after and then not in the present form. Nevertheless, the CO’s discomfiture was something he was able to savour for the rest of the exercise as a slight antidote to his own.

This time it was the sound of the sliding door of the compartment being slammed back that jerked Charles from his reflections. It was Edward returning from the O Group, red and flustered. He stumbled bad-temperedly over legs and kit. He had been berated because of C company’s alleged scruffiness. His career was again in jeopardy. He seemed unaware of any other business discussed at the O Group. ‘Lost your respirator?’ he said to Charles. ‘Your own fault for leaving it lying around for someone to walk off with. Care of kit, first rule of survival in the Army. You’d better nick one from somewhere before the CO finds out. Go and inspect your platoon.’

Charles’s platoon was in the last but one carriage. It took about ten minutes of squeezing and shoving in the crowded corridor to reach them. When he found them the floor was littered with beer-cans and cigarette-ends, the air thick with smoke, laughter and obscenities. His soldiers sprawled in their seats, unbuttoned, feet up on the tables, happy. He knew there was no reason to inspect them, and nothing to inspect them for. It was simply that Edward felt someone ought to be doing something. He counted them and stayed chatting for a few minutes. Their company was frequently more congenial than that to be had in the Officers’ Mess. Sergeant Wheeler, his platoon sergeant, was, as usual, nowhere to be found. Charles never ceased to be amazed by the ability of soldiers to transform an environment. Within minutes they could make anywhere look as though it had never been anything but a transit camp, handling thousands of troops every week. Perhaps one day he would take them for tea in Fortnum and Mason’s.

For the rest of the journey Charles was able to read. Edward was gloomily silent, and Tim and John kept him company. None of them had books. The only interruption was when the company colour sergeant brought round cold tea and stale sandwiches, which were welcome none the less.

2

It was dark when they pulled into the station at Liverpool, and raining. They were to get the night ferry to Belfast. Charles struggled into his webbing and lugged his kit on to the platform. It took him two journeys. The noise and confusion combined with the darkness and rain to make the station seem like some vast purgatorial clearing house. Soldiers and their kit filled the platforms. Rumour flourished. It was said that the coaches that were to take them to the boat had not arrived, that they had arrived but had left, that there was a nonsense over the stations, that the ferry had left, that they would have to march to the docks. Charles’s platoon was just outside the station, where there was no shelter from the rain. For once Sergeant Wheeler was where he should be. He was the playboy of the Sergeants’ Mess, a good-looking, good-natured athlete, successful with women but too easy-going with soldiers.

‘What’s happening, sir?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘How long are we going to be here?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How far is it to the boat?’

‘I don’t know.’

Sergeant Wheeler moved his dripping, handsome face a little closer. ‘Sir.’

‘What?’

‘Any chance of us getting out of the rain?’

Charles was not sure whether ‘us’ was himself and Sergeant Wheeler or the entire platoon. He suspected the former. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Look after my kit, will you? I’m going to find the lavatory.’

‘Bog’s closed, sir. For alterations.’

‘Well, there must be one somewhere.’ Charles trudged off and found that the main lavatory was indeed closed. After a search he found a tin shed marked ‘Staff Only’. The rain drummed heavily on the corrugated iron roof. When he had finished he decided to wait there a while. Every scrap of privacy had to be savoured. He leant against the wall and filled and lit his pipe, gazing out at the rain and the teeming station. He was disturbed by a discreet cough and looked round to see the second-in-command, Anthony Hamilton-Smith, sitting fully clothed in a lavatory cubicle. The 2IC was reading the Daily Telegraph. ‘Hallo, Charles,’ he said, amicably.

‘Hallo, Anthony.’ All the other subalterns called the 2IC ‘sir’, as they were supposed to do, but for some reason unknown even to himself Charles never had. ‘Anything happening out there?’

‘Chaos. They can’t find the coaches. The CO’s going berserk and tearing strips off some poor RCT man.’

‘Wheel-men, you see. They’re all the same. Donkey-wallopers. Can’t get you anywhere.’ Someone had called Major Anthony Hamilton-Smith the last of the great amateurs, and it had not been meant unkindly. Aged about forty and probably passed-over for promotion — a fact that did not seem to worry him — he was still slim, fair-haired and fine-featured, with an elegant moustache. He never hurried, never worried and had never been known to be angry. Nor had he ever been known to work. No one knew what he did all day, but it was generally agreed that his presence lent to the battalion a certain tone, which was otherwise entirely lacking. He had an estate somewhere and bred race horses. No one knew how he got on with the CO, who seemed unaware of him most of the time, except as an afterthought. It was rumoured that during the Yorkshire exercise he had somehow contrived to avoid spending a single night in the open. ‘Thought I’d pop in here out of the way,’ he said.

‘Nowhere else to go,’ observed Charles.

‘One more officer flapping his wings and squawking wouldn’t help anyone very much.’

‘Wouldn’t help at all.’

‘Might even be a hindrance.’

‘Almost certainly.’ There was a companionable silence for a few moments.

‘What’s that you’re smoking?’

‘Foster’s number two.’

‘Very agreeable.’ The 2IC indicated his paper. ‘Things seem to be hotting up out there again.’

‘Belfast?’

‘And Derry. Looks like we’ll have to do a bit of head-bashing. Ever been there?’

‘No.’

‘I have. Years ago, mind you. Family has a few acres over the border. Beautiful country. Charming people. Very polite. Might pop over and visit it.’

‘Will we get much leave?’

‘Shouldn’t think so for a moment. We’ll be lucky to get any — certainly as far as you’re concerned. Might be able to fix something, though.’

‘Wouldn’t that be rather dangerous?’

‘Could be, I daresay. Could be. Still, may as well get what pleasure one can out of life. We’re a long time dead.’ He took up his paper again. ‘Be a sport and give us a yell if anything happens suddenly, won’t you? Wouldn’t like to be left behind.’

When Charles had arrived back at his platoon he found that the coaches had arrived and that all the other companies were preparing to board them. He had already begun to struggle with his kit when Sergeant Wheeler said, ‘Shouldn’t bother with that for a while if I was you, sir.’

‘Why not?’

‘We ain’t going yet.’

‘But the coaches are here.’

‘For the other companies.’

‘What about ours?’

Sergeant Wheeler was quiet and prim. The burden of bad news sat well upon him. ‘The commanding officer, sir, has inspected the train and found it to be dirty. He has suggested that C company clean it up. We’re to follow on when we’ve finished.’ He leant forward confidentially. ‘That is, the whole train, sir. Not just our bit. The whole lot.’

Charles lowered his kit to the ground. ‘Where’s Major Lumley?’

‘Most probably underneath it by now.’

C company eventually boarded the ferry ten minutes before it sailed. Their weapons and kit were locked in cages below deck and Charles set off to find his cabin with a lighter heart than at any time during the day. This took some doing and he seemed to walk miles in the corridors before finding it. He was to share with the new doctor who had joined the battalion the day before and whom he had not yet met — a mysterious Captain Sandy. The battalion apparently had a long history of mad doctors, the last of whom had been sent to prison for diamond smuggling. There were medical horror stories about his predecessors which made him seem normal. Charles opened the cabin door with difficulty, and discovered that Captain Sandy’s kitbag was propped up against it. The cabin was very narrow and was made of stainless steel. There were two bunks, the lower of which was occupied by Captain Sandy. Sleeping, he looked more dead than mad. His pale cheeks drooped and his mouth hung open. There were bags under his eyes.

Charles heaved his kitbag on to the top bunk, at the same time knocking undone his webbing belt to which were attached his ammunition pouches, shoulder straps and water bottle. The whole lot fell to the floor, striking the doctor on the way. At first there was no reaction but after a few moments the doctor’s eyelids fluttered open.

‘Charles Thoroughgood. I’m sorry to wake you like that.’

The eyelids closed.

Charles undressed and went down the corridor to a shower he had noticed. It was hot and ample, an unexpected luxury. When he returned the doctor was sitting on the edge of his bunk, staring at the wall. Charles introduced himself again.

‘Henry Sandy,’ whispered the doctor, and they shook hands gently.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes.’ He continued staring at the wall. ‘Still a bit thick. Bad night.’ His voice was hoarse. ‘Were you there?’

‘No.’

‘D’you know who was?’

‘’Fraid not.’

‘I wish I could remember where it was. It’s very worrying. I’ve been thinking about it all day.’ He eased himself off the bunk and began rummaging through his kit.

There wasn’t room for them both to stand and so Charles climbed on to his bunk and dried himself vigorously. The effect of the shower and the sight of a man in a worse state than himself combined to heighten his sense of well-being. ‘Dinner’s in a quarter of an hour,’ he announced.

‘Dinner?’ echoed Henry Sandy faintly. An even greater weariness came over his face. He nodded slowly and a certain resolution showed through. ‘All right.’ He went off and had a shower, and afterwards felt robust enough to have a cigarette. They went along to dinner together.

Perhaps because they were all dressed alike, Army officers seemed to outnumber civilians at the bar. In view of what he had described as the ‘operational situation’ the CO had decreed that they should all wear heavy duty pullovers, denim trousers, anklets and boots for dinner. At the far end of the bar the company commanders and a few hangers-on were grouped around the CO, who was addressing them forcefully while continually smoothing back his black hair with one hand.

‘People say he’s mad,’ said Henry.

‘I think he might be.’

‘I thought the people who said that were mad, so Christ knows what he’s like. Thank you, yes, a glass of white wine. It’s usually the best thing for my condition.’

Charles had a gin and tonic — one of the few Army habits he had acquired easily — and they went and sat in a corner. Henry lit another cigarette, not very steadily. ‘It’s not so much last night,’ he explained, ‘as the trauma of the last eight weeks. I’ve just finished my parachute course which terrified me and I never want to parachute again. They said I was the worst one in living memory. Apparently I land spread-eagled like a crab, though I don’t know because I always shut my eyes. And before that was BSTC.’

Charles had no difficulty in sympathising. BSTC — Battle Selection Training Course — was the four-week selection course for the Assault Commandos with a failure rate of four-fifths. The first ten minutes of the first day were spent seal-crawling and bunny-jumping across the huge gym in Tidworth, after which they were given three minutes to go out and be sick. From then on it had got steadily worse. Looking back, Charles did not know how he had survived it. He had somehow muddled through by emptying himself of all thought or feeling for a month and never looking any further ahead than the next NAAFI break, when there was one. Officers in the Depot Mess who were doing BSTC were always conspicuous by the difficulty they had in getting up and down stairs, by their silence during meals, their occasionally alarming injuries and their practice of going to bed at about eight-thirty. Henry still had that mindless, gentle look that everyone acquired after the first week or so.

‘It was the worst thing I’ve ever done,’ he said. ‘Even worse than the parachuting and the sea-landing from submarines. I still dream I’m on it. I think I only got through because they needed another doctor so urgently. They said they were being kind to me and I think they probably were. I collapsed in tears pulling the Land-Rover up that mountain in Wales and three of the NCOs kicked me to my feet, four times. I suppose it was kind of them, really. They could have failed me. Also, I was knocked out in the boxing.’

‘So was I.’ Charles was glad to find someone who appeared to have suffered like himself. He wasn’t sure whether everyone else was bone-hard or whether it was simply not done to mention such things.

The two men became aware that the loud talk from the CO’s end of the bar was fading, and whilst they were still looking about it died altogether. This sudden loss caused other, lesser, conversations to falter and fade. The bar was silent. Soldiers and civilians alike looked awkwardly at each other; it was as though someone had died. The CO’s face wore a look of frozen disgust. For a moment Charles thought that the gaze was directed at him and then that it was directed at the doctor who at the very least must have exposed himself or been horribly sick. But the doctor had done neither of these things and looked as uncomfortably puzzled as everyone else. The only sound was the hum of the ship’s engines.

‘Get out,’ said the CO, his voice low and taut with anger. ‘Get out and get dressed.’

Charles looked over his shoulder expecting to see a naked officer but saw only John, his fellow subaltern, blushing violently. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said John, in a voice that was higher than usual. ‘I thought it was shirt-sleeve order.’

‘Get out!’ The CO’s voice made everyone stiffen and visibly startled the civilians. John left hurriedly, the CO turned back to the bar and conversation was hesitantly resumed.

‘What had he done?’ asked Henry.

‘He wasn’t wearing his pullover.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Henry’s response was loud enough to bring all conversation to another temporary stop. He and Charles buried their faces in their drinks.

When they went in to dinner, Charles caught Edward Lumley’s eye. Edward was clearly despairing. Once again, C company had publicly sinned; once again, his career was in jeopardy. He went through several crises a day. Charles grinned cheerfully at him.

At dinner they shared a table with a married couple from Belfast. The couple ran a business concerned with central heating systems and the husband had served with one of the airborne divisions during the war. He was plump, jolly and balding; his wife was also plump but had dark hair and dark eyes that stared with disconcerting directness at whoever she was talking to. It was difficult to tell whether she was unaware of it or was trying rather unsubtly to be noticed. They were both very friendly and talked about Northern Ireland for most of the time that they were all waiting to be served.

‘Where exactly are you going?’ asked the man.

‘Killagh for three weeks, then on to West Belfast,’ said Charles.

‘That’s a very bad area, one of the worst, as you’ll no doubt know already.’

‘Don’t judge us all by what you meet there,’ added his wife, with a smile that made her eyes glisten.

The husband leaned forward across the table. ‘You could end the troubles tomorrow if you wanted. All you have to do is shoot two thousand Catholics. I think two thousand would be enough, don’t you, dear?’

‘That would be about right, I think, yes.’

They were joined by Anthony Hamilton-Smith, the only man on the ship to be wearing a dinner-jacket. ‘Almost missed dinner. Nodded off on me bunk, would you believe? Old habits are hard to break, even at sea on the way to the Emerald Isle. Wine for all, I take it?’ Regimental histories were one of Anthony’s interests and when he discovered the husband’s military past there was much rejoicing and more wine. After dinner he and the husband moved off to the bar and the wife excused herself, saying she was sure the men would prefer to talk men’s things. Henry took himself off and Charles went for a walk on deck.

It was cold, wet and bracing. The ship heaved and rolled as she ploughed into the night, though not enough to cause discomfort. There were a few other strollers and Charles stood behind one for some minutes in the drift of his cigar smoke, which mingled with the tang of the sea. He returned to his cabin and, on opening the door, saw Henry on his bunk with the businessman’s wife. He closed the door and went for another walk on the deck. This time he stood in the bows and felt the spray on his face and hair. When he returned to the cabin again he knocked and Henry, now alone, opened the door.

Henry’s pale face was slightly less pale and he grinned boyishly. ‘Sorry to have kept you out, Charles.’

‘You didn’t.’

‘I meant to. I was in such a hurry I forgot to lock the door.’ He sat down on his bunk and giggled. ‘I saw it was there, you see, for either of us. But you didn’t seem interested. Were you?’

‘No. Yes. I don’t know. I might have been.’ Charles paused. ‘No, I wasn’t.’

‘That’s good. I was a bit worried in case you thought I’d cut you out. Which is what I did, of course.’ He rocked backwards and forwards, giggling helplessly. ‘I don’t often do things like that, really I don’t. Just — just whenever I get the chance. I needed something, you see, to wake me up. I feel much better now. I’m sure it’s physiologically and psychologically beneficial. I haven’t offended you, have I?’

‘’Course you haven’t.’ Charles thought he must sound pompous and strained. ‘In fact, I rather envy you.’

‘You did fancy her, then?’

‘No.’

‘It must be an ego thing.’

‘I think it probably is.’

‘It’s partly that with me. I’m always afraid of not doing things that afterwards I might wish I had done, so I do all sorts of crazy things that afterwards I wish I hadn’t.’

‘D’you feel like that about this one?’

‘Oh no, not at all, it’s made me feel much better. Though I didn’t think I was going to get an erection first of all.’ He lit a cigarette and lay back on his bunk. ‘It’s funny, you know, but they all seem to like uniforms. This is the second one that’s made me do it in my shirt hairy. Do you find that?’

Charles recalled Janet’s hysterical dislike of anything rough, hairy or military. She had a particular aversion to his hairy Army shirts, worn in cold weather and referred to, in typical Army fashion, as ‘shirts hairy’. ‘Not recently. I heard of someone who used to do it wearing his webbing belt, water bottles and ammunition pouches.’

‘I’ve tried that. It’s all right so long as you remember to empty your water bottles. Otherwise you get a bruised arse.’

Charles undressed and climbed on to his bunk. The search for sex was the preoccupation of many in the Army, more so than the preparation for war. Since joining, Charles had found that he was either in a mood of frantic sexual desire, in which anything female was acceptable, or he felt curiously asexual and remote. This latter mood corresponded to a feeling of remoteness from the Army in general, whereas the former he thought of as a simpler and more aggressive form of escapism made stronger and cruder by the rough and ready nature of male companionship. Being in the Army was so enveloping an experience that it did not occur to him that anything could happen independently of it. If he had developed appendicitis he might have been inclined to think it the result of too much weapons training.

It was some time before he fell asleep. The events of the evening, the noises and motion of the boat, thoughts of what lay ahead all jostled for priority in his consciousness. Then, just as drowsiness crept over him, Henry Sandy began snoring and making odd masticating noises, as though he were chewing in his sleep. These continued, on and off, for most of the night. Eventually, Charles’s haphazard thoughts clustered loosely around the prospect of violence. The idea of suffering or committing an act of violence did not bother him at all, though he knew that for many people outside the Army — Janet especially — this was of crucial concern. Or, at least, they thought of themselves as concerned. He suspected that most of them, just like most people within the Army, would react to the fact of violence much as they reacted to the other inescapable facts of life — they would simply do what they thought had to be done. That, of course, was a thought that had its own particular horror, but it was not something that would concern many people.

Even before joining the Army he had doubted his own capacity for decisive action, and now that the time for action approached — or so he thought — he doubted it more. He feared that when the time came he would hesitate. He wondered now, as the boat took the swell of the Irish Sea, whether his real reason for joining was not, after all, an attempt to resolve this doubt about himself. Perhaps he was doing no more than experiment with himself in much the same way as Henry did through sex; only more subtly than Henry, less honestly and no doubt less enjoyably.

3

They were awoken early as the ship approached Belfast Lough. After a hurried breakfast there was the usual confusion in drawing weapons and kit and finding men. Eventually Charles stood on the crowded deck with his platoon complete except for Sergeant Wheeler. Charles made the mistake of asking his enemy, the RSM, if he had seen Wheeler.

‘He’s with you, sir.’

‘He isn’t.’

The RSM had a stupid, brutal face but was nevertheless capable of sarcasm. He looked pained. ‘Is he not, sir? I thought he was.’

‘Well, he isn’t.’

‘But he ought to be.’

‘I know that, Mr Bone. That’s why I’m asking you.’

‘Bless me, sir, where d’you think he can have got to?’ The RSM obviously hated subalterns more than he hated anyone, and he hated Charles more than he hated any of them. Added to the normal dislike that men with many years of service frequently have for newcomers was a special dislike for Charles because he had been to university. His manner was as sarcastically paternal as he could make it. ‘Well, never you mind, sir, you just hang on here and I’ll go and see if I can find him for you.’

If people annoyed Charles it was always by what they did accidentally or unselfconsciously. Deliberate attempts to annoy him or slight him left him quite unmoved. This morning, in particular, there was Belfast to consider. The water was calm, and in Harland and Wolff’s shipyard the two huge cranes, Samson and Goliath, towered magnificently. The harsh, disjointed cries of gulls were thrown backwards and forwards across the harbour. The air was clear but there was already a dirty haze forming above the thousands of small rooftops of the city. Beyond them the hill called the Black Mountain lived up to its name. Charles’s platoon was quiet for once. He imagined that each man was striving, like him, to see something in Belfast that differed from any other industrial British city before breakfast. They could see nothing startling, and it made their own presence seem incongruous. On the quayside was their transport — lines of lorries, as might be expected — but the sense of incongruity was heightened by the detachment of Ferret scout cars that were guarding them, their Brownings pointed at the main road. There were also soldiers from the Wessex Scouts, the regiment that No. 1 AAC(A) was relieving, waiting in armoured Land-Rovers and Pigs — ancient one-ton armoured cars which no one had seen before and which had appeared out of storage especially for Northern Ireland. They had long snouts and carried nine or ten men, lumbering along with a distinctive whine. There was little or no movement by the escorts but a good deal of wireless activity. People walked past them to work without a glance. The whole thing looked absurdly tactical.

Sergeant Wheeler appeared suddenly. ‘Sorry about the delay, sir, I got collared by the RSM. He didn’t like the way I done me kit so I had to do it again. I did tell him I was supposed to be here but you know what he is, sir, not a man of reason.’

Sergeant Wheeler was a very plausible liar, but so was the RSM. Charles could not be bothered at that moment to try to sort it out. He was reminded of the problem of his own kit. Getting it all from the ship to the lorry without humiliation or undue delay would be a serious challenge. Then there was the problem of his respirator; everyone else had theirs, he noticed, but fortunately the CO was neither to be heard nor seen.

In the event he was able to make the necessary two journeys with his kit, and they boarded the lorries after a surprisingly short period of the usual hanging around. They set off with an impressive revving of engines, with the escorting vehicles from the Wessex Scouts and the military police interspersed between them. The soldiers stood in the backs of their Land-Rovers, one facing forward and the other backwards, their rifles at the ready. The Pigs rumbled along with their rear doors open and the Ferrets followed up behind. Protruding from the turret of one was the pink face of a young cavalry officer. He wore his beret and, round his neck, a dashing red and white spotted cravat that added a touch of quite startling colour to the scene. He had, though, taken the precaution of fastening the see-through and sometimes bullet-proof macralon screen around the top of his turret. Charles had heard of a corporal who had been looking out of the top of a Ferret in a similar fashion, though without the screen, and had lost an eye to an arrow fired from a crossbow.

The first streets they passed through were narrow and quiet, ordinary enough, but after a short while they became dirtier, and the walls, roads and pavements sported slogans, in some parts anti-British and in others anti-Catholic. Painted on the side of one house was a larger-than-life-size picture of King William on a white horse. Burnt-out wrecks of cars and other bits of twisted metal littered the gutters; many of the houses were empty and boarded up, many others had their windows broken; some walls were blackened by fire, and here and there a house was missing, leaving a gap as in a row of teeth. The convoy moved fast and the few people they saw did not bother to turn their heads. Soon they were in a more prosperous shopping area that looked normal except for one stretch of about a hundred yards in which not one shop window remained. Everything was boarded up, and one soldier, a native of Belfast, pointed to a mound of rubble, glass and metal girders that he said had been a car showroom.

Soon they were on the motorway, past the Milltown cemetery and out into the open country. This was rolling and lushly green but not very wooded. The farms were stone-built and looked bleak. Killagh before the bombings was a pleasant and not particularly interesting town, a mixture of eighteenth-century grey stone, nineteenth-century red brick and twentieth-century prefabricated blocks. There was a park and a rugby pitch. The barracks were on a hill, just beneath a new housing estate which sprawled almost to the summit. Built in the eighteenth century, they were enclosed by a high stone wall and had housed at various times redcoats, rebels and policemen. They now housed the Wessex Scouts. The entrance was through huge old wooden doors. It would have been homely and rather quaint as in any small English garrison town but for the coiled barbed wire along the top of the wall, a sandbagged position just inside the gates and an ominous-looking watch-tower in the centre.

Ever since leaving the ship the soldiers had been waiting for something to happen. Despite the uneventful journey and their arrival in an apparently peaceful country town, their hopeful aggression was still aroused and it needed a focus. The Wessex Scouts provided it. As Charles’s lorry rumbled through the cobbled entrance a sentry let go of one of the doors and it swung against the side of the lorry with a crash. There was no damage but the incident was sufficient.

‘Wessex are shit,’ someone shouted. This set the tone for the next twenty-four hours and became a catch-phrase for the next few weeks. The Ackies not unnaturally regarded themselves as an élite, and so were in constant need of an enemy. Anything wrong with the barracks, anything wrong with the town and any conceivable misfortune during the remaining twenty-four hours of the luckless Wessex’s tenure was laid at their door. Fortunately, there were only two platoons of Wessex left — too few to be regarded as a challenge, and so there were no NAAFI punch-ups. Disdain was not confined to the soldiers. At his first O Group the CO referred to ‘the appalling state in which these barracks have been left by the last unit, which I shall not name’. Only Anthony Hamilton-Smith had a good word for them. A fine old county regiment, he said, ruined by amalgamations forced upon them by grey civil servants and thoughtless governments. It was mixing good wine with bad, and the whole thing was very sad.

The barracks were very cramped. The quartermaster and his Q staff had arrived some days before in order to take over and allocate accommodation, and to cream off the best for themselves. Charles, after the usual confusion of wrong directions and missing kit, found himself sharing an underground cell with four others — Henry Sandy, Philip Lamb, the education officer, Tim Bryant and a newly-arrived subaltern from Sandhurst called Nicholas Chatsworth, known to everyone by his surname only. There was no furniture and no door, but eventually camp-beds appeared. The tunnel on which the cell opened led from the guardroom to A company’s accommodation, and so it was never quiet. It was the oldest part of the barracks, a warren of tunnels, passages, cells and dead-ends. Everywhere was damp, cold and crowded. Charles would have found it more interesting if he had not had to live in it. As it was, potential architectural and historical curiosities were mere inconveniences, things to be cursed and moaned about.

The Officers’ Mess was an incongruous 1930s-style house on a slight rise just inside the gates. The dining and living rooms formed the public rooms, while the bedrooms housed the CO, Anthony Hamilton-Smith and, in one, five company commanders. The quartermaster was rumoured to have another bungalow entirely to himself in another part of the barracks. He was a large, gruff, bristling man with a handlebar moustache and a sour dislike for mankind in general, subalterns in particular. No one had the temerity to tax him with the rumour, while the CO never heard rumours from below. No one aired them in his presence because if he did not like them he was inclined to treat the speaker as personally responsible for fabricating stories, while if he did like them he took them up as established fact and was all the more annoyed with the speaker if they proved to be untrue.

Charles went to the Mess for coffee. It was very crowded and he was about to go away when a platoon commander from the Wessex Scouts introduced himself. ‘I’m supposed to show you people round,’ he explained, ‘but no one seems to want to know. You wouldn’t fancy a trip round the battlements, I suppose?’

Charles did fancy it. His guide was in civilian clothes and looked happy. They made their way back to the old part of the barracks. ‘I’m glad to be getting out,’ the man said. ‘Four months is a long time to spend kicking your heels in a backwater like this. Pleasant enough place, though. You’re off to Belfast in three weeks, aren’t you? Don’t envy you that. Bound to be bloody. Mucker of mine from Sandhurst was killed there, less than twenty-four hours after arriving. But this place is all right. Not a bad social life. Plenty of birds to keep the soldiers happy. One or two for the officers too, if you’ve got a car.’

‘Car?’

‘Yes. Didn’t you bring one?’

‘No.’

‘None of you?’

‘No.’

‘Oh dear. You can’t have much fun without one, I’m afraid. We all brought ours. Still, it is only four months.’ They climbed a winding stone staircase that led to the battlements, from where they had a good view of the town and the surrounding countryside. ‘Not bad, is it? In fact, it’s a damn fine view on a clear day. We used to come up here sunbathing when the weather was warm. Don’t imagine you’ll do much of that, though. That estate up the hill is where all the girls come from. They hang around the gates day and night, just asking for it. The lads see they get it too. That rugby pitch is the local club. We played them a couple of times. Good crowd. Fantastic drinkers. Some of our lads played for them too.’

They walked along the battlements and up into the watch-tower. It contained one bored soldier who was fiddling aimlessly with the rear sight on his rifle when they arrived. ‘Nothing doing?’ the Wessex officer asked the soldier.

‘Sweet Fanny Adams, sir,’ the soldier said.

The Wessex officer turned to Charles. ‘There never is, you see. We have to man this day and night which is a bloody nuisance because there’s no point. Unless you’re expecting an airborne landing or something.’

‘Have you had much trouble?’

‘None at all.’

There was some shouting below them which sounded refreshingly distant. It seemed that a morning walk along the battlements might be no bad thing during the coming weeks.

‘Even if there were any trouble,’ continued the Wessex officer, ‘you wouldn’t see much from up here. You’d need to be on the ground.’

The shouting became louder. A small group of figures, which included the CO and the RSM, was looking up at them. The CO was shouting something with his hands cupped round his mouth and several people started running towards the entrance to the battlements. Charles looked up to see if there was imminent disaster overhead but the sky was clear.

‘What do they want?’ asked the Wessex officer.

‘No idea.’

‘It is something to do with us, I suppose?’

‘Looks like it.’

The RSM was bawling as well. Charles distinguished a familiar phrase. ‘They’re shouting “hard targets”,’ he said.

‘What do they mean?’

‘They mean we should either get under cover or somehow make it difficult for the person who’s about to shoot at us to do so without being shot.’

‘No one’s about to shoot at us, are they?’

‘The CO might if we don’t go down.’

They headed for the winding stairs. The Wessex officer looked concerned. ‘Your CO’s a bit intense, isn’t he?’

‘He is a little.’

‘Frankly, I don’t like him very much.’

‘Me neither.’

They met a sweating regimental policeman on the stairs, who told them breathlessly that the CO wanted to see them both immediately. They thanked him. The CO looked furious when they reached him. The RSM at his side was full of pomp and portent. The CO glared at Charles. ‘Do you want to die?’

‘No, sir.’

The CO glared at the Wessex officer. ‘Do you want to die?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then what the hell were you both doing standing up there like that?’

The veins in the CO’s temple were swollen. Charles was aware that they were being discreetly watched and gloated over by half the battalion from behind doors, windows and corners. He had long since learned the lesson of discretion. ‘We were inspecting the defences, sir.’

‘Who the hell told you to do that?’

‘My CO asked me to show your officers round, sir,’ said the Wessex officer.

The CO obviously suppressed the urge to regimental insult.

‘Do you realise, both of you, that you were risking your lives up there? And not only your lives but the lives of those who would have had to go up and get your bodies? You’re professional soldiers, or supposed to be, and you bloody well should have realised. Especially you, Thoroughgood. It would take only a very mediocre sniper indeed to pick you off from that housing estate over there. Did you think of that?’

Charles said nothing, but the Wessex officer came from another regiment. ‘With respect, sir, there have never been any snipers here. We used to go up there all the time —’

‘That does not matter.’

‘— and the people in the estate have been very friendly —’

‘Thoroughgood,’ said the CO very slowly, ‘take him away before I screw him into the ground.’

Charles led the now speechless Wessex officer away, watched enviously by the RSM. He heard later that it was the RSM who had drawn the CO’s attention to what had, until that morning, been a normal practice. This did not alter his feelings towards Mr Bone. It was exactly what he would have expected of him. Mr Bone loved his job and worshipped the CO like a dog, adopting even his mannerisms. He was feared by the soldiers but did not have their respect.

Not surprisingly, the ‘hard targets’ episode was only a taste of what was to come. Security was tightened up all round. Edward Lumley felt that the watchtower incident had brought further disgrace upon C company. He shouted at Charles, calling him a reckless young fool. During the next two days the CO’s frenzied approach to security was carried several stages further than even the CO had intended. The sandbagged position by the gate was reinforced and another added on the roof opposite. The barbed wire was reinforced, the armoury strengthened and the guard doubled. The bored soldier in the watchtower was sent a companion and a general purpose machine-gun. There were practice alarms at all hours. However, what caused greatest consternation throughout the battalion was the order forbidding walking-out. This coincided with instructions that sentries who allowed themselves to be talked to by girls should be charged. Three days later the walking-out order was relaxed to allow officers and soldiers to walk out in groups of four for not more than two hours, in daylight, wearing civilian clothes and signing in and out at the guardroom. The CO saw girls as the greatest threat. ‘The last thing I want is to have one of my soldiers shot in the back by some bloody gunman while he’s walking his girl home. Assassination, they call it. I call it murder and I won’t have it.’

On the second day the secretary of the local rugby club tried to arrange a fixture but was turned away at the gate. Amongst those who had arrived with the QM’s advance party and had experienced the more benign regime of the Wessex there was noticeable nostalgia.

Edward called a company O Group during the evening of the first day. Company HQ was somewhere in the warren of tunnels and passages. When Charles got there Edward was again red-faced and panic-stricken. The other platoon commanders and the company sergeant major were expressionless. The company was to carry out an operation, Edward said. That night. He thought it was partly as punishment for the incredible risks taken by Charles that day on the battlements. He wanted no more such heroics. The CO was still furious. It was also, of course, a compliment to the company to be given the first operation to be carried out by the battalion since embarking upon active service in Northern Ireland. It was all highly secret. One platoon was to do a number of Vehicle Check Points (VCPs) before last light. It was not yet known where. It would be Charles’s job and he would be told later. They would then lay an ambush near one of the customs posts on the border, moving into position under cover of darkness and withdrawing before dawn. There were to be absolutely no cock-ups. Even though the battalion was in the area for only three weeks it was vital to get a grip and show the local villains that they weren’t dealing with a lot of idle bloody Wessex Scouts any more.

Everyone knew that Edward’s briefings were almost word for word what the CO had said in his briefing. Details trickled through during the next two hours. They were to do six VCPs before last light. A VCP consisted of five or six men with portable barriers and road-blocking equipment, sometimes including a tyre-puncturing chain. They were to search cars and their occupants and to change location frequently. Helicopters would carry them from one site to another. Charles’s job was to be ferried from site to site, checking. The drill had been rehearsed many times and the need for politeness had been impressed upon everyone. The helicopters would pick them up from the hill above the barracks. The only difference between this and training was that their magazines would be filled with live ammunition this time. They would then have their evening meal in the field, do an approach march to the ambush position, lie there until 0430 hours and then withdraw. There was already a cold wind.

Charles went back to the cell to collect his kit. Philip Lamb, the education officer, was lying on his bed reading and started guiltily when Charles entered. He was a small neat man with a trim moustache. Though conscientious, he had nothing to do and felt unwanted, as indeed he was on the whole. He spent most of the next three weeks hiding in the cell and playing with his pistol, a thing that intrigued and baffled him.

‘Have you got to go out on this operation?’ he asked.

Charles nodded.

‘All night?’

‘All night.’

‘When?’

‘Now.’

‘With tents and sleeping-bags?’

‘No. With nothing.’

‘You’ll freeze to death. Customs post, I suppose?’

‘Yes. It’s supposed to be very secret. How did you know?’

‘Apparently every new unit that comes here does it. It’s well known for miles around. People even turn up to watch, I’m told.’

However, everything went well in that nothing went wrong. The series of VCPs was executed without trouble or result. The evening meal in the field, near a river, would actually have been pleasant but for the fresh wind and the prospect of the night ahead. They made the approach march to the customs post across several miles of fields and through two streams. Not trusting Sergeant Wheeler, Charles navigated them and to his relief got it right. It was quite dark and already cold. It was obvious to everyone that the post, a small and practically featureless modern building, did not need a platoon of thirty men to ambush it. A section of eight or nine under the command of a corporal would have been sufficient. They spent the night on their bellies in the grass and withdrew through the wet fields at four-thirty in the morning. Their transport — lorries this time — had got lost and did not arrive for another three-quarters of an hour.

Afterwards, Edward congratulated Charles. The CO was delighted with the way things were going. ‘He’s thinking of letting us do all the night ambushes while the other companies do all the boring daytime stuff. You’ve done us proud, Charles. Thanks a lot, old son.’

That day there were various barrack duties, briefings and working parties. Charles slept for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Dinner in the Mess that night was more boisterous than usual. The CO was in a good mood, but in this as much as in a bad his presence unconsciously intimidated and directed the conversation. Edward was a little drunk and, riding on the crest of the CO’s good opinion, recounted anecdotes about various regimental characters.

‘What about Chunky Jones with that fan in Aden? Sir, d’you remember Chunky Jones in Aden? Built like a gorilla with a solid bone head and no neck. Great man. Anyway, not a word of a lie — I’m not kidding, it’s all gospel — in the middle of dinner one night he stood up on the table and — you know those fans we had out there, those big ones hanging from the ceiling — well, he stood on the table and he stopped it with his head. Clunk, just like that. With his head!’ Several roared with laughter and Edward became even more excited. ‘And then, sir, and then about five minutes later someone bet him he wouldn’t do it again. Well, you know Chunky, he’ll do anything twice. Anyway, he gets up on the table to do it again’ — Edward climbed halfway up on to the table — ‘like this, see, only this time you know what those bastards had done? They’d increased the speed of the fan. You know, they’d switched it on to fast. The bastards! So when Chunky stood up and put his head in the way of it there was this sort of dull clunk, really wooden sound it was, and he keeled off the table on to his back on the floor with this red line right across his forehead and his face covered in blood!’ The small dining room shook with the guffaws and the CO thumped his fist on the table. Edward was ecstatic. ‘There was blood everywhere, I’ve never seen so much! And d’you know what they did then? — whisky — they poured a whole bottle of whisky over him. Can you imagine? A whole bottle!’

Henry Sandy leaned across to Charles during the hubbub. ‘It won’t be long before it becomes a regimental custom, compulsory for all newcomers, whisky to be paid for by the subalterns.’

Dinner continued unabated. Eventually, when one or two people were well into their second course, the CO’s voice was raised in anger and all conversation stopped.

‘Get that out!’ he said, emphasising each word for all it was worth.

Everyone looked for the offending person, but there was no blushing subaltern or grief-stricken company commander to be seen. No one moved, except Anthony Hamilton-Smith who continued to eat whilst gazing with mild curiosity at the CO.

The CO banged his fist on the table. ‘Corporal James!’

The cook hurried in from the kitchen, his mouth hanging open and his flabby cheeks vibrating. ‘Sir.’

The CO pointed to the dish of gravy on the table. ‘Get that noxious liquid out of here.’

Corporal James picked up the dish. ‘Something wrong with it, sir?’

‘Everything’s wrong with it. It’s gravy.’

‘Sir. Did you want something else, sir?’

‘The point, Corporal James, is that it is gravy and I will not tolerate gravy in my Mess. I don’t care what else you give us but I never want to see that revolting brown liquid in here again. Got that?’

‘Sir.’

‘Thank you, Corporal James.’ Corporal James waddled out with the gravy. The CO poured himself some more wine and one or two people tried timidly to get the conversation going again.

Anthony Hamilton-Smith helped himself to some potatoes. ‘D’you not like gravy, Colonel?’ he asked.

‘I detest it, Anthony. Ghastly stuff. Can’t stand the sight of it.’

‘Oh dear, I didn’t know that,’ Anthony popped a large potato into his mouth.

After dinner the Mess split into its customary two camps. One consisted of the CO, Anthony Hamilton-Smith, the company commanders and those captains who felt it was time they were company commanders. The other comprised everyone else and included the adjutant, an unusually popular man with more than his share of that weary resignation that is habitual with some officers. The padre, who was no respecter of persons, moved freely and apparently unselfconsciously from one to the other. Philip Lamb hovered uneasily in between.

Night ambushes on lonely customs posts and isolated crossroads were a major feature of the battalion’s brief stay in Killagh. There were no results, although a sheep was shot, but the CO and the Intelligence officer, Nigel Beale, remained enthusiastic to the end. Nigel was a squat, broad-shouldered, newly-promoted captain who took his intelligence work very seriously. He was of an earnest disposition, a keen soldier who talked about the Need for Greater Professionalism. He sometimes engaged Charles in inconclusive conversations about the growth of subversive tendencies in the universities, the BBC and the press, and his manner suggested that he held Charles partly responsible. His definition of ‘subversive’ embraced the civilian population, the Royal Air Force and even certain regiments and corps of the Army, including Philip Lamb’s. A regular feature of his daily briefings — from which he tried without success to exclude Philip Lamb — was his insistence that those ambushing roads near the border should look out for flat-bedded lorries without lights. This soon became a joke throughout the battalion and one night no less than thirty-six such sightings were reported. Nigel was hurt and the CO furious. Walking-out was suspended for three days and no one ever again reported seeing a flat-bedded lorry. Nigel also had to pass on the daily intelligence summaries from Headquarters. This was another duty he took more seriously than his audience, except for the CO. Most of the topics he mentioned had been reported on and speculated about by the television news the day before. He was frequently mortified by this, regarding it almost as a breach of the need-to-know principle. This was the doctrine that secret information should be known only by those that, for the purposes of their jobs, needed to know it. It was applied by Nigel and the CO with great determination but little consistency, with the result that most people knew most things but weren’t sure what was secret and what wasn’t.

After a spate of particularly serious mid-week riots in Belfast Nigel told them that an intelligence source graded A1 had prophesied further trouble at the weekend.

‘D’you know who said that?’ asked Henry Sandy after the briefing.

‘No, I don’t,’ said Nigel, ‘and I wouldn’t tell you if I did.’

‘Well, I know and I can tell you. It was Jimmy Murphy, who commands the Third Battalion of the IRA in Belfast and is now resident in Dublin. He said it on Twenty-Four Hours last night.’

‘You shouldn’t have said that,’ Philip Lamb said afterwards. ‘It was cruel. It hurt him.’

‘Hurt him? It hurts me to think that we’ll have to rely on him for knowing what’s going on round the next street corner when we get to Belfast.’

Nigel Beale soon became a joke throughout the battalion, the more so because his intense earnestness seemed unaffected by reversals. The result was that his wrongs were recalled with relish while his rights, of which there were at least an equal number, went unrecorded.

One afternoon Charles went out for tea in the town with Henry Sandy, Philip Lamb and Chatsworth. The four of them, all young and variously disaffected, had instinctively formed a group apart from all the others. Though three were graduates, what brought them all together was not a shared education but a communal sense of discontent, albeit for differing reasons. Henry Sandy felt himself more suited to being a perpetual medical student than an Army officer, and did not like the CO. Philip Lamb had the sense of military inferiority common to many members of his corps and wanted very much to be needed and accepted, but felt neither. Charles, on the other hand, feared to be needed and accepted — dimly divining that that was a two-way process that would involve him in needing and accepting the Army — but was at the same time uncomfortable as an outsider. Basically, he wished people well but wished not to be too involved. Chatsworth, though, was perhaps more different than anyone. He had been posted to C company in place of John Wheel who had suddenly been moved to one of the other battalions without any reason being given. Chatsworth was tall, fair and gangling. He walked with his shoulders hunched, his hands clasped behind his back and his head nodding from side to side. He was nearly always grinning and was thought to be mad. On his first day he had mistaken Edward Lumley for the paymaster and they had had a long and confused discussion about allowances before Edward realised. On his second night he had ambushed and attempted to arrest an RUC patrol. He seemed unabashed by whatever happened.

‘I like the Army,’ he said, laughing after his scolding for the second incident. ‘I want to be a general. Napoleon commanded an army at twenty-six, which gives me just over three years. But I don’t think I like it here. I don’t like some of the people and some of them certainly don’t like me, particularly the CO now. But the main thing is there’s no killing. It’s boring. I hope it’ll change for the worse when we get to Belfast.’

They found a tea-shop near the town centre. It was run by an old lady and two young waitresses. It smelt of polish and home-made cakes. It seemed the sort of place where there was small chance of meeting off-duty soldiers. Charles found it a great pleasure to wear civilian clothes again. He had that morning received an hysterical and loving letter from Janet who had seen television film of the riots in Belfast and had positively identified him as a wounded officer being helped away. They ordered tea, toast and cakes.

‘I do enjoy tea,’ said Philip Lamb. ‘It’s so civilised, so nice. Except in the Mess where it’s like rugger and they all form a scrum round the toaster. I don’t like rugger.’ They all nodded seriously. ‘I used to enjoy breakfast too but that’s all become rather tense now. I sat down this morning and my pistol fell out of my pocket on to the floor with a great crash. Everyone stopped eating and the CO just stared. The only thing that saved me was that the same thing’s happened to him twice.’

‘What gets me,’ said Henry, ‘is the way we attached officers have to carry our bloody pistols night and day while the regimental officers who have rifles can put them in the armoury when they don’t want to go out to play. I mean, we have to take ours to bed, to bath and to bog, with ammunition and a fifty quid fine if you lose any of it. Not that I’d know how to use the damn thing anyway.’

‘In the last resort,’ said Philip, ‘they’re for using on ourselves, I suspect. I’m sure I’m the only target I could hit anyway. Although I must admit that just holding it and looking at it gives one a pleasant feeling of lethality.’

Henry snorted. ‘The only lethal thing you could do with one of those is throw it at someone.’

‘Not true,’ said Chatsworth. ‘The nine-millimetre Browning is a lethal weapon, used properly. It’s more accurate than most of its users. But I agree about the pleasant feeling of lethality. I carry one all the time.’

‘You don’t,’ said Henry.

Chatsworth laughed and slapped his thigh. ‘Why does no one around here ever believe anything I say?’

‘We usually hope you’re kidding.’

Chatsworth opened his jacket enough to reveal a shoulder-holster. ‘It’s not the Army’s, it’s my own. Legally, more or less. Though we’re not supposed to bring private firearms out here, are we?’

‘Why do you carry it?’

‘Well, you never know.’

‘Never know what?’

‘What might happen. I always used to carry one in Panama.’

‘In where?’

‘The CO does too. You look at him next time he’s in civvies going to some dinner that he’s refused on our behalf. You can see he’s wearing a shoulder-holster.’

‘I thought everyone in that Mess was mad,’ said Henry. ‘You’re the maddest.’

‘I hope you’re right. I might make general yet. You see, none of the others know they’re mad but I know I am so I can make use of it.’

‘Just keep on the way you’re going.’

The waitress was a plump, homely, blushing girl with dark curls and rosy cheeks. ‘I haven’t touched a woman for nearly two weeks,’ Henry confided to her, seriously.

Chatsworth grinned at her. ‘I like women. I like you. Do you like me?’

Henry continued to gaze earnestly at her. ‘For two weeks all I’ve seen of women is photographs.’

The girl dumped the tea-pot in front of Henry, almost in his lap. ‘Keep looking,’ she said. ‘You might have more luck with photographs.’

Chatsworth stood up. ‘May I follow you into the kitchen?’

Trying not to smile the girl ran back into the kitchen as fast as her tray would allow. Chatsworth followed her and came out after a couple of minutes, still grinning. They paid and left and walked back up the hill to the barracks.

‘What did you do in there?’ asked Philip.

‘Nothing. Just got her name and address, that’s all. And telephone number.’

‘But you won’t be allowed out to see her.’

‘I shall break out. I gave her the CO’s name as mine. She thinks I’m a colonel.’

‘You are mad.’

‘I feel randy.’

‘Since our interests seem to be similar,’ said Henry, ‘would you like to come to one of the medical centre porn shows?’

‘Do you have any porn?’

‘Quite a lot. One of the orderlies gets it. It’s really hard stuff. I think you’d like it.’

Chatsworth nodded seriously. ‘I would, yes. When shall I come down?’

‘Any time. Just say you’re reporting sick and ask for me.’

‘How very appropriate,’ said Philip.

Charles’s platoon was doing the town patrol that night but instead of being able to sleep in the cell of the local police station from midnight on as usual, he was kept up until four in the morning by an explosion at the brewery. It was a small incendiary bomb and there was little damage because it had been badly placed on a window-sill. Charles’s soldiers put out the small fire before the fire brigade arrived but there was then a lot of hanging around whilst the bomb disposal man, known as an ATO (Ammunition Technical Officer) searched the area for more bombs. The brewery manager appeared and gave Charles a couple of bottles of whisky for his soldiers. Unfortunately, the CO also appeared and redirected the bottles to the Officers’ and Sergeants’ Messes. The CO was greatly pleased by the event and said it was proof that the battalion’s high level of activity had forced the enemy to waste his resources on soft targets.

The battalion’s level of activity was very high. The frenetic tempo of operations at first bewildered the local people, then impressed them and finally, when no results were forthcoming, evoked their ridicule. Everyone was very tired by the end of the first week and so much more so by the end of the second that the lack of results was not even slightly depressing. No one bothered to enquire.

That morning Charles was telephoned at six and told to report with his platoon to the barracks an hour before time. They got there to find that three companies were to carry out an area search of some flat land about ten miles away. They were to leave at once. Edward was panicking. Charles pointed out that his men had had no breakfast and, for the most part, no sleep.

Edward put both hands on top of his black beret, forcing it down almost to the bridge of his nose. ‘Charles, for Christ’s sake, don’t stand there arguing. Now means now. Just get your platoon in the lorries and get them out of here before the CO sees you haven’t gone yet. Everyone else has.’

Charles got his platoon into the waiting lorries, which were smoking and coughing in the clear morning air. They got mixed up with some of A company and had to debus and then embus again. By this time Edward was frantic. Soldiers were milling around everywhere. ‘Charles, just get in the nearest bloody lorry and go!’ he shouted. ‘Take everyone with you.’

Charles felt like shouting back but didn’t. ‘Nobody’s told us where we’re going,’ he said. ‘The driver doesn’t know.’

‘Don’t be so pathetic. Find Sergeant Wheeler. I gave him the grid reference. You can map-read your way. I’ll follow in my Land-Rover and hoot if you go wrong. Now clear off, for God’s sake.’

Everyone scrambled aboard something and at last the lorries coughed and spluttered out of the gates. Charles was in the cab of the leading one. After a while he asked the driver if Edward’s Land-Rover was following.

‘No, sir,’ said the driver with complete confidence and without looking in the mirror.

‘How do you know?’

The driver grinned. ‘His driver’s in the back with us. That’s what comes of all the hurry.’

The search lasted all day and covered several grid squares on the one-inch map. The land was very flat with many ditches and marshes and few trees. The weather was crisp and clear and it was a pleasant day’s walk for those who had slept. No one really knew what they were looking for nor where to look. At about mid-morning they came across some tinkers with their horses and caravans. They were small, sullen, frightened-looking people from across the border who resisted any attempt to get to know them by speaking only Gaelic, and little enough of that.

There was a lunchtime rendezvous with one of the lorries, from which they were served pints of hot Army tea and sandwiches. Charles said to Nigel Beale, ‘Why didn’t you tell us last night that we were going to do this?’

‘Need to know.’ Nigel munched briskly. ‘The only ones who knew were those without whom it couldn’t be done.’

‘What about those who are doing it?’

‘No need to know.’

‘Do you really expect to find anything?’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘What are we looking for?’

‘Arms and explosives.’

‘Yes, but any particular sort?’

‘Need to know.’

During the afternoon the CO hovered overhead in a helicopter, causing everyone to poke more purposefully into the ditches and derelict barns. By last light the only thing found was a rusty shotgun in one of the latter.

When Charles got back, feeling very flat and tired, he had to see that his platoon cleaned their kit and their weapons properly as Sergeant Wheeler had once again disappeared. It turned out that he had been delayed returning from the search area as the provisions lorry, in which he should not have been, had become stuck in a bog and had to be towed out. By the time Charles got back to his own quarters all the baths were occupied and by the time he got into one the hot water was cold. However, the cold bath refreshed him sufficiently to turn his flatness into decisiveness for a while and, knowing he would soon be too tired again to bother, he sat down and quickly wrote a letter to the Retirements Board. He said that he was considering resigning, giving no reasons, and asked under what conditions his resignation might be accepted. He had been thinking about doing this for some time but had hesitated to take such a decisive and eventually public step. He knew that his resignation would have to be submitted through the CO, but he did not yet want the CO to know that he wished to leave. He would feel more sure of his ground when he knew whether or not it was possible to leave. He told no one what he was doing.

That done, he went over to the Mess but it was too early for dinner and, as chance would have it, he found himself alone with the CO, who was warming his backside against the fire. ‘Have a whisky,’ said the CO. It was not an invitation that could be refused. The CO looked tired and drawn and Charles, feeling guilty for what he had just done, as though he had betrayed the CO in some personal way, made a show of enthusiasm. ‘Pity about today,’ continued the CO. ‘Would have done the battalion a power of good to have found something. Good for morale. Nothing worse than trudging round fields all day and not finding anything. I know, I’ve done it myself. And of course if one person finds something it makes everyone else look that much harder. Still, there you are, can’t be helped. Stuff had probably been moved before we got there.’

‘What was it, sir?’

‘Four hundred pounds of home-made explosives in animal feed sacks. I think we were fairly thorough, don’t you? Don’t think we could’ve missed it.’

‘I think we were as thorough as possible under the circumstances.’

‘Yes, that’s what I thought. You can’t really tell when you’re hovering up in the air like a bloody kestrel. Easy to get the wrong impression.’

Charles sat next to Chatsworth during dinner and heard how his contribution to the search had been to shoot a rat in a ditch with his rifle. This probably accounted for the shot that had been reported by the RUC. Whilst looking for what was left of the rat — he wanted to see what the bullet had done — Chatsworth had sunk up to his knees in slime and, judging by the stench of his trousers, socks and boots afterwards, had concluded that the ditch was formed by the overflow from a cesspit. He had attempted to exchange trousers, socks and boots for new pairs by claiming that there were no cleaning facilities that could cope with the contamination, but had been rudely rebuffed by the misanthropic quartermaster.

‘They’re all the same, QMs,’ Chatsworth complained in a low, bitter voice. ‘They all see their job as to prevent you from getting kit rather than to provide you with it. You’d think they had to pay for the stuff themselves. I reckon if our QM ever had to issue the whole battalion with new boots he’d go into a decline and not eat for a week. Except that, knowing him, he’d eat even more and dock it from our rations. I’ll get the stuff clean eventually but it means our room’s going to stink for a bit.’

‘Can’t you keep it outside?’ asked Charles.

‘Not without someone pinching it.’

‘Who’d want it in that state?’

‘The QM for one. He’d take anything if he could get it without exchanging. People would pinch it out of spite.’

‘And what about the bullet?’

‘What bullet?’

‘The one you shot the rat with. You’ll have to account for it. You’ll be one round short.’

‘That’ll be all right. We’re bound to get through a few dozen rounds in Belfast. At least, I hope we are. I hope it’s not going to be as dull as this place. Anyway, I’ve got some of my own from home. I always carry a few with me.’

After dinner the Mess cleared unusually rapidly. Tramping around all day seemed to have tired people. Charles had reached that stage of sleeplessness when he was prepared to delay going to bed, the better to savour the prospect of sleeping soundly no matter what noise was made by A company going up and down the tunnel outside their room, and no matter what stench Chatsworth had introduced within it. He lingered over a whisky.

Chatsworth sat back in his armchair and languidly crossed his legs, as though he were about to conduct a tutorial. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever killed anyone?’ he asked offhandedly.

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Do you want to?’

‘Not particularly, though I don’t object to the idea. It depends on who and why.’ It struck Charles that the conversation was beginning to sound very like conversations with Henry Sandy about sex. His replies were disturbingly similar. At the back of his mind there was a suspicion that he might quite like to kill someone just to see what it felt like, though it would never do to admit that to Chatsworth. ‘Why, have you killed anyone?’ he asked.

Chatsworth looked shifty. ‘Well, not really. Sort of but not properly.’

‘D’you mean they recovered?’

‘No, no. No question of that. It’s just that it wasn’t deliberate.’

Chatsworth looked embarrassed, as though he regretted having raised the subject. However, discomfiture of Chatsworth was too rare an experience for Charles to be able to resist exploring it. ‘Come on, what do you mean? What happened? Was it today?’

‘No, no. No. It was — you won’t tell anyone, will you? I won’t like it to get out, you see. It was an old woman in Bogota. I ran her over at night. Pure accident. Didn’t matter very much because they just leave the bodies on the streets out there. I don’t know who she was. But as I didn’t mean it I can’t really claim it as a kill.’

‘Perhaps you’ll be able to make up for it here,’ said Charles.

Chatsworth raised his glass. ‘Let’s hope so.’

Charles had meant it as a joke but seeing Chatsworth take his remark seriously caused him to doubt his own intentions. It was quite likely that someone was going to kill or be killed during the next few months.

Before he left the Mess that night Charles received a telephone call from Janet. She had got the number from military enquiries. In a conversation made awkward by enforced normality, she said that she was going to a wedding in Dublin the following month and suggested he came down for the night. He explained that he wasn’t allowed south of the border and asked whether she could get up to Belfast — where he would be by then — for the night. She thought it might be possible. It then occurred to him that he didn’t know whether he would be allowed to take a night off. She asked whether he was sure he wanted to see her. He said he was. She said that she didn’t want to be in the way. He tried to reassure her, but was rather reticent because he was acutely aware of Chatsworth listening to every word. In the end they agreed that he should ring her nearer the time. She asked, with a slightly nervous jokiness, whether he had killed anyone yet. She daily expected to hear that he had slaughtered dozens, and added that she presumed that that was what he was there for. They bade each other a formal goodbye.

‘Is she very attractive?’ asked Chatsworth, immediately Charles had replaced the receiver.

‘Yes, she is, quite.’

‘I wouldn’t mind meeting her when she comes over. You know, if you’re on duty or anything.’

‘That’s very kind of you.’

Chatsworth nodded his acknowledgment. ‘Let me know when she’s coming.’

During the final week in Killagh, just before the relieving unit arrived, there was an event which made national and international headlines. Charles was involved by default of Chatsworth, a part of whose platoon had crossed the border by mistake and had been arrested by the Irish Army. The meanderings of the border were such as to make accidental crossings all too easy, but fortunately encounters with the Irish Army were usually amicable. Names and details of the soldiers and their weapons were taken, and they were then escorted back to Northern Ireland. Because Chatsworth was involved, however, there was the suspicion that the crossing might have been less accidental than most. Edward was upset because the CO was angry.

The result was that Charles’s platoon had to patrol the key points, such as electrical installations, gas and water works. They divided the work between sections and Charles was in the leading Land-Rover of two on the way to inspect an electricity transformer when they heard an explosion. Though loud, it was difficult to tell from which direction it came but it felt large. They all seemed to feel it in the pits of their stomachs a split second before they heard it. They turned off the lane and drove up the rough track that led to the transformer. At the top of a short hill they rounded a corner and saw that something had happened to the track about halfway between them and the transformer. There was a large crater, the grass around was smoking and was littered with bits of yellow material. Charles stopped his Land-Rover and sat for a few moments looking. It was soon clear that the yellow bits had been an Electricity Board van. There were other, darker bits scattered about.

Charles ordered his men out of their vehicles and sent them all, except his own radio operator, to take up tactical positions on the crest of the hill. He warned them to watch for booby-traps. He feared an ambush and so dreaded having to account to the CO for dead men that he found himself shouting ‘Hard targets!’ as they doubled across the fields. He called up the rest of his platoon over the radio and then went forward to look at the mess. The crater was several feet deep, the engine of the van was about fifty yards up the track and one of the seats was smoking in the grass. A part of a body, wearing a jacket, lay nearby. When he reported to battalion headquarters he was told to do nothing but to wait for the CO and Henry Sandy. Edward was apparently still involved with Chatsworth and his troubles. It crossed Charles’s mind that Chatsworth would be very jealous of his having witnessed the carnage.

When the CO arrived he made no comment on the scene, and his face was expressionless. ‘Keep half your men as they are,’ he said, ‘and get the other half to help the medics with the bodies. You supervise them. They need an officer at a time like this.’ He pointed to the plastic bags which the medical orderlies were unfolding and laying on the grass. ‘Put the bits on the death sheets there. You don’t know how many bodies there are, do you?’

‘At least two, I think.’

The CO nodded, his lips pressed tightly together. He looked at the pieces of bodies on the grass, and then hard at Charles as though to see what he was thinking. ‘Don’t touch any bit of the vehicle until ATO’s been and had a look at it,’ he said. ‘It’s all good evidence for him. And keep a grip on your men. They’re very young. This might upset some of them. It’s their first time.’

They gathered the charred and reddened bits, enough to indicate three bodies but not enough to complete them, and put them in the back of Henry’s ambulance Land-Rover. Charles’s soldiers were pale and serious.

The device turned out to have been a mine activated by a trip-wire across the track. It had been intended for the Army’s daily visit to the transformer but had instead caught three maintenance engineers. There was considerable press interest and Philip Lamb, to his delight, was made PRO. The CO was interviewed on television and described the incident as ‘an appalling and mindless act of bestiality’. Nigel Beale thought that the brewery explosion had been a trial run for the real thing in order to test reactions, and Chatsworth felt slighted because nobody would describe the scene to him in the detail he wanted. Charles was a little surprised at himself for feeling nothing at all. When it came to it, there seemed to be nothing to feel or say.

4

It was cold when they left Killagh and there was snow on the ground. This made night ambushes seem a bitter cruelty, though the days were bright, sunny and exhilarating. They were relieved by a regiment of gunners, a polite and rather formal people who often wore civilian clothes and soon slowed down the pace of operations to what seemed to them acceptable. There was talk of a fixture with the rugby club.

Cursed though he was, and absurd though he seemed, the CO’s tactics of day and night patrolling on foot combined with ambushes and hides were ideally suited to the kind of warfare that was to develop in the border area, though it had not then. In the briefing for Belfast he stressed that they would maintain the same level of activity there but would have to discipline themselves to the notion of ‘minimum force’. The eyes of the world — the press — would be upon them, and any force used — and they would have to use a good deal of it — would not only have to be the minimum necessary but would have to be seen to be so. Every rubber bullet fired had to be accounted for and treated with the same seriousness as the firing of a real one, to which it was the only alternative. They would not use gas for riot control since it was not sufficiently specific, affecting villains and innocents alike. He would have no cowboys blasting off at every lout on a street corner; on the other hand he was not prepared to stand back and see his soldiers murdered on British streets, no matter what the politicians might think. If the IRA, or any other bunch of thugs that tried to call themselves an army, gave him trouble he would hit them; if they gave more trouble he would hit them hard; if they continued to give trouble he would kill them. Otherwise, he would leave them alone and he expected every soldier in the battalion to do likewise.

The part of Belfast they were going to was one of the most notorious in the city. It was in the south-west and had a population that was eighty per cent Catholic and twenty per cent Protestant. The Catholics lived in IRA-dominated ghettos and the Protestants in a tight little enclave in one corner of the battalion area. The two communities were divided by the Peace Line — a tortuous, tangled line of wire, corrugated iron, concrete and sentry-boxes that had to be manned day and night. During the 1969 riots the Protestants had burned down a score of Catholic houses. There had been attempts by the residents to build new ones, mostly without planning permission and sometimes without planning. The Catholic part of the area had been prominent during the recent riots. According to Nigel there were two IRA ‘battalions’ in the area and both had been ordered to step up their activities during the next few weeks. This could provoke a Protestant reaction. The CO, however, took it as a compliment to the battalion to be given such a welcome by the enemy and he was sure that the harder it was the more his soldiers would like it.

Battalion HQ was to be in a police station, while the companies occupied schools, factories, houses and a disused bus garage. C company was the largest and had what the CO considered the most interesting area. It included a part of the Peace Line, a few Prot streets and a large Catholic estate of ill-repute where several soldiers had already died that year. Company HQ was a bottling factory. Charles did not need to see it to know that it was a move for the worse. The barracks in Killagh were almost academic cloisters by comparison. The Factory was a nineteenth-century building of six storeys set in the midst of a maze of narrow, mean streets and enclosed by a high wall. The iron gate was kept closed and there were two knife-rests in the street outside, which forced traffic to weave past slowly, at walking-pace. Inside and outside the wall the ground was littered with glass and rubble. The outgoing unit’s Land-Rovers were battered, dented and holed.

Charles was greeted on arrival by the CSM, a popular, gravel-voiced Liverpudlian whose face was almost as battered as the Land-Rovers. ‘’Tain’t much, sir, but it’s ’ome. Only four more months. Won’t be so bad when we’ve cleaned it up a bit. Soon as this bloody lot clear off we can get started. Live like pigs, don’t they? Must’ve caught it from the people round ’ere, by what I’ve seen of ’em.’ He laid his hand confidentially on Charles’s arm and indicated the broken bricks, bits of piping, paving stone and glass that lay scattered about the parked vehicles. ‘See all this shit, sir? D’you know ’ow it got here? Kids threw it, little kids last night. ’Undreds of ’em in the street outside, lobbing it over the wall. I come down with the advance party, see, just in time to cop the lot of it. Like a bleedin’ avalanche, it was. And the same thing happens every time one of their Land-Rovers pokes its nose out the gate, which is why they’re all in shit order. So I says to the guard commander, like, well, what you going to do about it, ain’t you going to stop ’em? Oh no, ’e says, it ’appens every night, it’s nothing serious, we just let ’em get on with it. Containment, he called it. Containment, I ask you! Standing there letting a mob of kids chuck bricks at you. I says to ’im, I says, well, this is the last night they do it, you can tell ’em that from me, ’cos when we take over tomorrow night containment stops and ear-boxing starts. I’ll give ’em bloody containment.’

Charles struggled with his unnecessary quantity of kit up the stone stairs into the Factory. There was a continuous sound of activated machinery, punctuated every few seconds by a crash that shook the building.

‘The bottling,’ said the CSM. ‘That’s what that is. They still use the first two floors, you see. Six in the morning till ten at night. They’re all Prot workers but we still ’ave to escort ’em in and out in case of bombs and we have to do bomb searches when they’re not ’ere. We live on the other four floors. The machinery’s been ripped out but there ain’t no separate rooms, not properly speaking, just a lot of cardboard partitions with a corridor down the middle. It’s a bit noisy ’cos the cardboard’s a bit thin and don’t reach the ceiling anywhere. An’ it’s crowded. You an’ the other officers, ’cept Major Lumley, sleep on the third floor in a kind of cubicle next to the ops room, so you’re nice and handy like if anything ’appens. But it’s even noisier for you.’

The Factory soon became known as the worst of the company locations. Defaulters were sometimes threatened with transfer to C company, as though to some particularly gruesome region of hell. It was never silent. Apart from the crash and thump of the machinery below there were televisions, a juke box in the NAAFI partition, countless transistor radios and all the zoo noises that soldiers make. From their partition next to the ops room Charles, Chatsworth and Tim were able to listen to radio talk and mush for twenty-four hours a day. The partition was furnished with three sleeping-bags, three lockers and one table. There was just room to move between them. Chatsworth and Tim had already claimed the two sleeping-bags farthest from the door, which was a piece of sacking nailed to the woodwork. Chatsworth’s kit was strewn all over his sleeping-bag, but he was nowhere to be seen. Tim was lying down writing a letter, his kit neatly stowed away. Charles had often wondered whether Tim was oblivious to his surroundings or simply contented with anything. He wasn’t sure which was worse.

‘Edward wants to see you,’ said Tim without looking up from his letter. ‘Turn right and keep on till you reach the end of the corridor.’

Edward had a partition to himself. There was ample room for his camp-bed and locker. He was gazing dolefully at a street map of Belfast. ‘Hallo, old son, come in and spread yourself about a bit. Better sit on the bed, there’s no room to stand.’ Charles sat rather uncomfortably next to him. Their shoulders touched. Edward looked pensive. ‘Ever thought about leaving the Army, Charles?’

‘Yes.’ Charles wondered what was coming next. ‘Quite often, actually. Particularly recently.’

‘So have I, old son, so have I. Give anything to be out of here at the moment, quite honestly. Don’t tell anyone, though. Trouble is, who’d want to employ a bugger like me? All very well being Commando trained and Airborne and being clued up on your infantry tactics and all that, but it’s not much use in ICI, is it? The fact that I’m red-hot with a Carl Gustav rocket launcher won’t cut much ice there, will it? Or I used to be, at least. Probably can’t even do that now.’

Edward was one of those people who were at their most likeable when not trying to assert themselves. He was at heart a simple, nice man, not particularly suited to any job. Charles felt they had something in common in the latter respect, though possibly not in the former. ‘You could claim you’ve had management experience,’ he said. The concept of ‘management’ always made him feel uneasy. ‘Good at dealing with people and that sort of thing.’

Edward looked reproachfully at him. ‘D’you really think they’d swallow that?’

‘Not really, no.’

‘Nor do I. What would you do if you left — be an academic or something?’

‘Maybe, if I could. Or journalism, or something like that. Something where other people do it and I talk about it.’

‘Wise man. So long as you tell ’em what they’re doing is a load of cobblers you’ll never be out of a job. Let me know if you ever want an assistant, someone to add insult to injury, you know.’ Edward seemed suddenly to recollect that he was the company commander. He stubbed his finger on the map. ‘You’ve seen this, haven’t you?’

‘No.’

‘You should have. It’s the map of our area. You’re supposed to have one.’

It was a large-scale street map shaded green and orange to indicate Catholic and Protestant areas, and unshaded to indicate mixed business areas. Charles looked more closely at it, as though to establish by inspection whether or not he had one. ‘I thought perhaps I should have one.’

‘See the sergeant major.’ Edward held up a list of names and addresses. ‘But you haven’t seen this yet, have you?’

‘Yes.’

Edward looked puzzled. ‘Where?’

‘On Chatsworth’s bed.’

‘How the hell did he get one? It’s supposed to be secret. Company commanders only.’

‘Perhaps it was another list.’

Edward seemed relieved. ‘Yes, perhaps it was.’ He stared gloomily at the list. ‘This is what’s so bloody depressing, you see. Not only do we have a larger area than anyone else but we’ve got a list of gunmen and villains twice as long as your arm. I mean look at it. You haven’t seen this, remember. It’s secret.’

‘In that case, how are we supposed to identify them?’

‘Dunno. Good point, though. I’ll ask the CO.’ He folded the list. ‘God, I hate challenges. Why couldn’t this area be given to A company? They’re always so bloody keen. Anyway, must fight back, I suppose, which is where you fit in. I’m making you sort of acting, unofficial, unpaid second-in-command. Only you mustn’t tell anyone. What it means is that I want you to send in the weekly Intelligence and Community Relations reports and deal with all the odds and sods and also with any PR that comes along — God forbid — that isn’t being done by that queer, what’s-his-name, up in battalion HQ?’

‘Philip Lamb.’

‘Lamb, that’s it. Queer as a coot, if you ask me. So if you can deal with all that, plus anything else that crops up — you know, complaints and things — it’ll leave me free to concentrate on — er — all the other stuff, tactics and whatever.’ Charles nodded and Edward suddenly became brisk and cheerful. ‘Good. Right. That’s settled, then. S’pose you haven’t been in the ops room yet, have you? Well, when you do you’ll see a wallful of obscene photographs — mug-shots of the villains in the area whom we’re supposed to look out for. Everyone’s supposed to memorise them.’

‘Right.’ It was a word that Charles had discovered to be almost indispensable in the Army, so powerfully suggestive of grasp and prompt action that its user frequently escaped further enquiry. When he got back to his partition Tim had gone but Chatsworth was there, sitting on his sleeping-bag with his rifle stripped for cleaning. ‘Have you got a secret list of IRA suspects?’ Charles asked.

Chatsworth paused in the cleaning, the piston in his hand. He looked shifty. ‘Not necessarily. Why?’

‘I just told Edward you had.’

‘Thanks a bunch.’

‘I didn’t realise you weren’t s’posed to, so I then told him it was probably another list and he seemed only too happy to believe it.’

‘Tell him it’s my kit list if he asks.’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘I stole it from Nigel Beale. It seemed only fair. He always goes around as though we’re more of an enemy than the IRA. It’s an accountable document so I hope he’ll get into trouble. There is another one in the ops room but it’s an amended version and I’d rather know everyone who’s likely to shoot at me rather than just some of them. Wouldn’t you?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘You can borrow it if you like, though.’

‘Thanks.’

Chatsworth returned to his cleaning with loving care. ‘How are you off for ammunition?’

Charles was puzzled. ‘All right. I mean, I’ve got the regulation number of rounds, unless I’ve lost some since this morning. Why?’

‘Nothing. Let me know if you need any extra, that’s all.’

The company area divided naturally into Catholic and Protestant ghettos. The Protestant area was very small, a few streets of back-to-back terraced houses. Their front doorsteps were scrubbed white every day, the kerbstones were painted red, white and blue and models of the disbanded B Specials stood in nearly every curtained window. It was a tight, defiant little area, surrounded by what it saw as the enemy. The streets were mean and clean. It was more British than the Britons, though a government that had disbanded the beloved B Specials — their own reserve police force with whom they felt safe — would never again be trusted. The Catholic area fell into two parts — the old part near the Factory and a new estate some way from it. The streets and houses of the old part were identical to those of the Protestant area, from which they were divided by the Peace Line. They were respectable, though not as stridently clean as the Protestant. Adjacent to the Peace Line there was even one street that was still mixed — Protestant on one side and Catholic on the other, but no one except patrolling soldiers ever crossed the road. In the middle, and not very far from the Factory, was a monastery. It was the only other large building and was rumoured to serve as an arsenal for the local IRA, though it had never been searched because of the popular feeling that would have been aroused. Nevertheless, the Army had access to an observation post on the top of it from which they could survey the Peace Line area. Nigel Beale said that this part of the Catholic community housed the important leaders of the IRA gangs that flourished in the modern estate.

This had been built after the war as a mixed community, billed then as ‘homes fit for heroes’. It was a series of concentric streets built around a concrete circle of shops, known as the Bull Ring. Gradually, the community had become less mixed as more Catholics had moved in and the Protestants had moved out. One night in 1969 most of those that remained, concentrated in a small area near the primary school, had been moved out by Protestant leaders, who said they could no longer protect them. The few who had lingered on had soon been persecuted into leaving. Now the school had to be protected night and day by the Army because it included a community hall that had been built by a Protestant, and the IRA had sworn to destroy it. The estate was a violent, rat-infested slum. Long stretches of paving stones had been torn up for use in riots, and manhole covers and drains had been put to similar use. No street-lamps worked, no rent or bills were paid, hardly a house had all its windows complete, and the burnt-out wrecks of cars and barricades littered the streets. There had been frequent riots in the past few weeks and the previous unit had patrolled the area only in Pigs, and then not often. The RUC had not been into the estate unescorted since the troubles had begun.

About forty children gathered outside the Factory gate that evening for the usual stoning. Charles was in the yard when the first bricks flew over. One hit a Land-Rover bonnet and skidded off on to the wall by which he was standing. He buttoned up his flak jacket and moved away with what he hoped was officer-like composure, one hand behind his back. The children jumped up and down outside the gate, yelling and hurling as much as they could. For a while broken house-bricks rained into the yard and Charles was forced to abandon some of his officer-like composure and shelter behind a Pig. He was wondering about getting into it when he saw the CSM and a snatch squad of six men creep unobtrusively to the gate, open it suddenly and charge out. The bricks stopped and there was a lot of screaming and shouting. Children fled in all directions. In less than a minute the CSM and his snatch squad reappeared with seven of the largest children and dragged them quickly into the Factory. They were aged about twelve to fourteen and their struggles weakened as they got farther from the street. It crossed Charles’s mind that they might be put into bottles on the conveyor-belt — or whatever it was that made the noise — and sent on their way. He unbuttoned his flak jacket and then followed them in.

Five minutes later he went to the ops room and found Edward, panic-stricken, shouting on the radio to battalion HQ. ‘Alpha Zero, this is Alpha Three. I say again we are being attacked. We are under siege. Over.’

Back over the radio mush came Anthony Hamilton-Smith’s measured tones. ‘Zero roger, could you tell us a little more? Over.’

‘Alpha Three, wait out.’ Edward turned to Charles. ‘Give me details quickly. How many of them? What’s happening? What weapons have they got?’

‘Well, there were about forty and the sergeant major counterattacked, capturing seven. They were armed with bricks.’

‘Bricks?’

‘And they were aged nought to fourteen.’

‘Children!’ Edward passed his hand slowly over his eyes. ‘Hallo, Alpha Zero. This is Alpha Three. Reference my last — er — The attack has been repulsed and we no longer require assistance. Over.’

Anthony Hamilton-Smith was not a man to give way to strong feelings, nor did he try to impress upon others his state of mind, but on this occasion even his voice sounded faintly puzzled. ‘Zero congratulations — very quick work. What about casualties and prisoners? Over.’

‘Alpha Three, no casualties, but seven prisoners. Over.’

‘Alpha Zero — very impressive — three and a half brace — send them to my location. Over.’

‘Alpha Three — er — we’d rather thought of letting them go. Over.’

‘Alpha Zero — I don’t understand — why did you take them? Over.’

Edward pulled a face. ‘Alpha Three — they’ll be with you in figures one-five minutes. Over.’

‘Alpha Zero — thank you. Out.’

Edward turned beseechingly to Charles. ‘What’s the CO going to say when I send him seven kids? He’ll go spare. You know what he’s like, he’ll be expecting ringleaders at least. Where are they now?’

‘In the showers being tortured.’

‘Tortured!’

‘I was joking. The sergeant major’s put them in there because it’s the only empty room.’

‘Don’t joke, Charles, it’s bad taste. Take me to them, would you?’

Edward put on his beret and Charles went with him to the shower-room — so called because of three rusty and feeble sprinklers that projected from one wall. The seven victims were now standing more or less at attention, eyed almost affectionately by the CSM. Their bravado was gone and they looked very young and very frightened. Edward strode in purposefully. ‘Well done, Sergeant Major.’

The CSM grinned. ‘Sorry there wasn’t more of ’em, sir, but there will be if they try it again tomorrow. I was just telling ’em about the water-torture but I ’adn’t made up me mind who was goin’ to be first.’

‘Don’t joke, please, Sergeant Major, I’m in no mood for it. They’re to go down to battalion HQ immediately. Send them in one of the duty platoon’s Pigs.’

Contrary to expectations, the CO was delighted by the capture. He felt it had got the battalion off on the right foot and would set the tone for future operations. Anyone who made trouble would be sat on: that was the policy. The sooner it was understood around the neighbourhood, the better. All arrested people were to be sent to battalion HQ, where the RUC or, if necessary, the RMP, would deal with them. This included children. Although stoning was too common an occurrence to merit a summons, the children would be held there until their parents came to collect them. That would be an inconvenience that might lead to greater parental control. Furthermore, it had come to his notice that there were rumours of ‘no go’ areas in the city — no doubt press exaggerations — but they had to be taken seriously. He wanted to make it crystal clear that there would be no ‘no go’ areas in his parish. His soldiers would not even understand the meaning of the term, let alone acknowledge the thing if they saw it.

There were foot and vehicle patrols throughout the area, day and night. In the worst part of C company’s area — the modern estate — the soldiers patrolled at night with blackened faces through the gardens and alleyways, avoiding the streets as much as possible. Meeting the soldiers unexpectedly outside their back doors brought forth some good and holy Catholic oaths from the wives of the estate. It made it difficult for them to signal the approach of patrols by banging dustbins, which was the way the Army was normally heralded. It also made the soldiers a more difficult target for snipers. It was the CO’s idea, and although the Republican press criticised it as being both unreasonably military and deliberately sinister it soon reduced the random violence in the area. Unknown civilian cars were no longer stoned on sight, and even the Army Land-Rovers attracted only the occasional brick from over the rooftops.

The CO had promised that he would visit every company location every night, and this he did. He clearly thought that his appearance was good for morale, as well as contributing to military effectiveness. In fact, his visits were looked forward to with all the enthusiasm normally reserved for headmasters, and their effect was to deny any hope of autonomy to any commander with whom he came into contact. Edward, in particular, was hardly the man to stand up to the CO, but fortunately his company ran itself without either his assistance, or knowledge; and the CO, once he had issued his general directives, was often unaware of how they were interpreted in practice.

However, no one in the company could keep from Edward the knowledge that ultimately he would be held responsible for everything that happened. He lived in a fever of anxiety which he passed on to his subordinates in a stream of contradictory and mistaken instructions. What saved him from having to live with the results of his decisions was his failure to notice that they were generally ignored. The process by which this happened was a kind of unspoken conspiracy, tacitly acknowledged throughout the company, which actually did more for company morale than anything else.

Unfortunately, though, the CO’s concern for his soldiers did not stop at tactics and morale: he also regarded himself as the guardian of the battalion’s moral well-being, with the padre as an uneasy second-in-command. It was an incident in C company that caused him to launch a moral crusade within a few days of their arrival.

Charles was with Chatsworth in the ops room. They were each trying to drink an acrid liquid that the Army called coffee. Apart from its bitter taste at the time, it left the drinker feeling for an hour or so afterwards that he had consumed bile. All that could be said in its favour was that it was wet and warm and, sadly, this was sometimes reason enough for drinking it. Chatsworth poured his into the paper sack marked ‘Confidential Waste’. ‘There’s going to be some more gate-thrusting tonight,’ he remarked quietly.

‘What’s that?’

‘Haven’t you heard about it? It’s having it off, you know, through the main gate. The sentries do it.’

‘Through the gate?’

‘Through the bars.’

‘Who with?’

‘The local birds, of course. Who d’you think?’

‘But they all look about fourteen.’

‘Nice, isn’t it? Though I’m told there are older ones if you prefer them, unless they’ve been spoilt by having it off in bed.’

Girls turned out to be a problem throughout the battalion’s tour. From the CO’s point of view they were a menace to his young soldiers, whom he liked to regard as virgin. From the soldiers’ point of view they were a forbidden paradise which it was almost impossible to enter but which was sufficiently close to make trying worthwhile. There was also a security risk: three Scottish soldiers had once been murdered after being lured away by girls, and even now the fat, prematurely old women of the new estate occasionally jeered ‘Scots porridge’ at passing soldiers. There seemed to be a great many young girls in the area, many of whom were prepared to risk tarring and feathering, or worse, to secure a soldier-lover who would marry them and take them away. As it turned out, few achieved marriage. Not many were even touched by No. 1 AAC(A), since during their tour the soldiers had no social life and no time off in which to have it. No one set foot inside a pub, no one went to dances, no one went shopping.

‘I haven’t done it myself,’ continued Chatsworth. ‘I don’t know what it is, but one feels somewhat inhibited in front of one’s own soldiers. I’m not even sure how they do it, which is why I’d like to watch. They must be contortionists, though I s’pose love always finds a way. D’you fancy watching tonight? We could hide in one of the Pigs.’

As it happened, Charles was on duty in the ops room that night and Chatsworth had to take out a patrol. However, when the CO made his nightly appearance in the ops room, accompanied by the signals officer, the RSM, his driver and two bodyguards, it was clear that something was wrong. His lips were pressed firmly together, his expression was set hard and he stared bullishly at Charles. ‘Where’s Edward?’ he asked.

Charles went to Edward’s partition and awoke the dozing man. ‘I was dreaming,’ said Edward. ‘I wish you hadn’t.’

‘The CO wants you. He looks angry.’

‘Oh God.’

They returned to the ops room, Edward still blinking.

‘D’you know what your soldiers have been doing?’ said the CO. ‘They’ve been screwing girls through the main gate.’

Edward’s eyes opened wide. ‘Good Lord, sir. Really? How?’

The CO exploded. ‘How? How d’you think? What a bloody stupid question, Edward. What are you going to do about it, eh? What are you going to do?’

Edward reddened. ‘I’ll punish them, sir, punish them right away.’

‘What with?’

Edward gazed helplessly at Charles, who looked away. Castration was the only answer that came readily to mind.

The CSM came to Edward’s rescue. ‘I suggest Section 69, sir,’ he whispered.

‘69? What do you mean, Sergeant Major? You’re not trying to be funny, are you?’

‘Conduct likely to be to the prejudice of military discipline. We might also throw in not being at a place at which it was their duty to be.’

The CO was slightly mollified, though clearly far from satisfied. It turned out there was only one offender, who had apparently been caught in the act, and he was marched into the ops room with unnecessary violence by the RSM and marched out again to be charged in the company office by the CSM. The CO stared disapprovingly at him but everyone else gazed with frank curiosity.

The CO took Edward aside. ‘I’ve been worried for some time about moral standards in the battalion, Edward, and what I’ve seen tonight has absolutely sickened me. It was a disgrace. I never thought to see the day when Assault Commandos would behave like that. I know they’re young men and have to be allowed a little licence now and again — let off steam and that sort of thing — but to do that in public, in uniform and on duty is going about a hundred miles too far. And as for those girls, I really don’t know what to say. What sort of future do they have, eh? What chance of living a life that’s even halfway decent if this is what they’re like now? Where do they go from here? They’re not even out of school, I bet you a pound to a penny. My heart bleeds for them, you know, it really bleeds.’ The CO’s dark eyes shone with sincerity. Edward stood before him like a schoolboy in trouble, nodding and staring at the table. The CO put his hand on Edward’s shoulder. ‘Not that I’m blaming you entirely, Edward, but I can’t help thinking that they take their example from the top, so look to it. I shall send the padre round to talk to the company tomorrow.’

While dealing with the offender Edward wore his beret and assumed an expression of grave indignation. Afterwards he said to Charles: ‘The CO wanted him to go up on battalion orders and be formally charged but I said I’d clobber him here. I fined him twenty quid for the company fund. You don’t think that was too much, do you?’

‘I don’t know. Is there a precedent?’

‘No. The sergeant major couldn’t remember one so there can’t be. Apparently they get one leg through.’

‘What?’

‘The gate, you know. They get one leg through and sort of twist their hip through the bars. I felt I should’ve been paying him twenty quid prize money instead of fining him. I s’pose he could’ve been shot, though. The CO’s ordered us to put barbed wire on the gate now. Speak to the sergeant major about it when you see him.’

The battalion area was quiet for the first fortnight. Wherever the Assault Commandos went their reputation for aggression preceded them, and the CO’s somewhat brisk policy did what little was needed to confirm it. Regular stoning soon stopped and the children were reduced to sporadic hit-and-run sorties, usually after dark. What might have become a serious spate of petrol bombing was nipped in the bud when Tim’s platoon sergeant, with two men, caught three of the bombers. Mobile, as opposed to foot, patrols were the usual targets for such attacks and the sergeant, anticipating trouble at one particular corner, sent both his vehicles ahead whilst doubling round the back of the houses on foot. The bombers threw their bombs whilst the vehicles were still out of range and were caught as they ran away. They were teenagers and there was little fight in them. Belfast being a small city, and being divided into smaller tribal areas, even insignificant arrests like these had a quietening effect on the area in which they occurred.

Mobile patrols normally consisted of two Land-Rovers or one Pig. Charles disliked them because he felt more vulnerable in a vehicle than on foot, but of the two he felt safer in a Pig, and therefore nearly always found himself in a Land-Rover. One evening he was on a mobile patrol in the new estate when his corporal in the second Land-Rover recognised a car they had been told to look out for. It was parked in a cul-de-sac on the other side of a main road that formed the boundary of the estate. There had been a shooting earlier a few streets beyond that, outside the battalion area, in which a policeman had been wounded in the foot. This was thought to have been the getaway car. They cruised past the cul-de-sac at their usual patrolling speed, slightly faster than walking pace, and radioed back. After a pause they were told to stay with the vehicle as it was wanted for fingerprinting but not to go near in case it was booby-trapped. ATO was called and they were to guard it until he came. At the same time they were to look out for snipers in the area.

The car was a newish Cortina, evidently stolen for the job. Charles had the Land-Rovers parked across the road before and behind it and then dispersed his seven soldiers into the doorways and alleyways of the cul-de-sac. Though separated only by the main road, the people there were quite different to those in the estate. Their houses were well kept and they were friendly. Within ten minutes two had brought out trays of tea for the soldiers.

The first sign of trouble was when four women crossed the road and stood at the bottom of the cul-de-sac singing Republican songs. They were short, hard-faced, fat and ugly, either middle-aged or coarsened before their time, a kind that flourished on the estate. After a while they sat on the kerb, passing a bottle between them and still singing in unnervingly discordant unison. They could just be made out by the orange light of a distant and solitary street-light on the main road, but it was not possible to make out the words of their songs. Soon Charles realised that others were joining them — squat, waddling shapes — and the volume of singing swelled. The songs were now recognisably anti-Brit, as was to be expected, and aggressively obscene, as might have been predicted. Charles, more intent upon observing the situation than in calculating what it might mean, reflected that the image of their kind knitting at the foot of the guillotine was too passive to do them justice.

His attention was focused more sharply upon possible consequences when the original four women left the others — and their bottle — to begin a slow perambulation around the cul-de-sac. They walked arm-in-arm, still singing, peering into the doorways and alleyways. Even so, it was not until they were halfway round that Charles realised they were reconnoitring the number and positions of his soldiers. He wondered what he could do about it. Presumably, they had every right to walk the streets counting soldiers and singing; at least, he was not sure that he had any right to stop them. Nor did he know what they intended to do when they had counted. The people in the cul-de-sac had retreated behind locked doors and put out their lights when the singing first started. The tea-trays were not returned to their owners for fear of identifying them. Their recce completed, the four women joined the by now even larger group at the bottom. The singing stopped.

Of Charles’s seven men, five had rifles, one (his radio operator) a pistol and one a pistol and a rubber-bullet gun. This latter was a converted signals pistol which made a very loud bang and could do a lot of damage at close range if fired directly at someone, which was forbidden. The projectile was meant to be bounced off the ground. Charles had a rifle. The simplest way to protect the three vehicles would have been to form a line across the cul-de-sac, but that would have made an easy target for a gunman and he could imagine only too vividly the subsequent enquiry into how he came to lose a soldier. It did not occur to him that it could have been him that was shot. He therefore kept five of his men dispersed among the alleyways with orders to look out for snipers and placed himself, his wireless operator, and Corporal Stagg, who had the rubber-bullet gun, between the vehicles and the crowd.

This had grown swiftly so that it was now forty or fifty strong and included a number of young children. There were no men. He reported the situation over the radio and was told by Edward that an escort vehicle had gone to meet ATO and that both would be with him as soon as possible. For a few minutes more nothing much happened; the crowd talked amongst themselves, shouted the odd slogan or obscenity and in general seemed quite good humoured. Then a black taxi, one of the many old London cabs that had found their way to Belfast, drew up on the main road behind the crowd and four men got out. The taxi drove away and the crowd immediately became more vociferous. It surged slowly forward towards the vehicles with the harridans shouting at the front and holding their children before them. The four men stayed at the back, urging the others on.

As he watched the crowd advance several scenes from his Oxford life flashed through Charles’s mind, vivid and uncontrollable, and for a few seconds the scenes seemed to get between him and what was happening, as though the two worlds were jostling for reality. The present world won when he realised that the front women were within three feet of him, jumping up and down like wizened and frantic baboons. Though the noise was overwhelming he shouted that there was a bomb in the car. To his surprise, the crowd fell back and there was relative quiet; but still the feeling of unreality. He looked at Corporal Stagg’s white and nervous young face and then glanced behind him at the other soldiers crouching with their rifles in the alleys. He felt that all eyes were upon him. He grabbed the headphones from the wireless operator and called for immediate assistance but before he could get a response the crowd began to rumble forward again, only quieter this time and more sinister. They didn’t seem to believe, any more than he did, that the car was booby-trapped.

Charles was aware that Corporal Stagg at his elbow had raised and cocked the rubber-bullet gun, but he did not give the order to fire. No one in the battalion had yet had to fire a rubber bullet; they were accountable; there had to be definite provocation, an aggressive act. The crowd pressed closer, murmuring, the children held in front and no one so much as raising a hand or even shouting any more.

Charles realised that he was separated from his wireless operator by the Cortina. The operator was shouting that the CO was on the air and wanted a detailed sit-rep. ‘Just tell them to get here!’ shouted Charles. He turned round and bellowed for the other soldiers to join him. Corporal Stagg was still by his side. The front women were now within reach again, and Charles stepped forward and pushed one firmly back. Again, to his surprise, they fell back quickly. The rest of the soldiers arrived and they were able to clear a two-yard space between the crowd and the vehicles, but it was clear that it would not last for long. The crowd had increased again, and the same four men were busy at the back. What most inhibited him now about firing a rubber bullet was that it would be at point-blank range. It would frighten or anger the crowd. If the latter they could well charge before the gun could be reloaded, and the only way to stop them then would be to shoot them with real guns. As the crowd now completely surrounded the soldiers and the vehicles, shooting them would be the only way to protect their own lives and weapons. Technically, according to the Yellow Card they all carried, Charles would be justified in opening fire, but he could imagine the resultant publicity if unarmed women and children were shot dead in the street by ‘heavily armed’ Commandos. There would be an enquiry, if not a court case. Half hoping that they would do something to provoke retaliation, and half frightened that they might, Charles walked slowly up and down between the crowd and the vehicles, his knees trembling and with a great emptiness in his stomach. His soldiers were watching him, and so was the mob. He walked with his hands behind his back, trying to look as though he were deep in thought and entirely at peace. For some minutes nothing happened.

Then, with a kind of slow rush, a few of the crowd pushed past and got to the Cortina. The women started to rub it with their headscarves and cardigan sleeves — to remove fingerprints, Charles realised suddenly. He and Corporal Stagg managed to push them back but one of them threw a burning newspaper through the open window on to the back seat. Charles got inside the car and threw the newspaper out, but whilst he was doing so they surged forward again and pushed the car several feet back down the road into an invalid carriage. They were shouting and excited. Needlessly jamming on the handbrake, Charles tried to get out but found several of the women were pushing on the door. Seriously alarmed, and for the first time angry, he shoved the door open with his feet and jumped out, shouting, ‘Prepare to fire!’ Corporal Stagg, after hitting one of the women on the shoulder with the barrel of his gun, aimed it straight into the face of her neighbour, who screamed and ducked back. The women who had been struggling with the other soldiers also fell back for a moment. Both sides waited, neither sure what to do next. It was clear that the crowd still felt sure that the initiative was with them.

Charles felt his heart pounding. He looked at the excited faces in front of him, ugly with hatred, and still only a couple of yards away. Neither he nor his soldiers would have any choice but to shoot if they were rushed: if they had time for that. He pulled and cocked his pistol. If they were rushed after firing the rubber bullet he would do less damage shooting them with that than if he ordered the soldiers to use their rifles, which would go through three or four at that range. He would aim for the legs. As vividly as he saw the mob before him, he heard again some remark made in Killagh to the effect that a bullet from the nine-millimetre Browning would simply bounce off their bra straps. At such close range, though, it would be another matter. He imagined the carnage with disturbing clarity.

Charles was spared the decision by the arrival of the CO with his two long-wheel-base Land-Rovers and his oversize escort. He was not at first aware that help had arrived, only of a sudden commotion and sounds of pain and distress from the back of the crowd. Then he saw the CO’s tall figure, his face set hard and his beret firmly down on his forehead. The CO, accompanied by the RSM and his escort, walked as though there was no one between himself and Charles, and very soon there wasn’t. The escort drove a wedge two yards wide while the snatch squad, whose sole job was to make arrests, remained by the CO’s Land-Rover, fingering their batons. One of the women who swore was grabbed by the RSM and marched briskly back to the vehicle. A shrill chorus of protest by the rest of her tribe was drowned by the CO’s shouting through a loud-hailer: ‘Right, you’ve had your fun, now you’re going home. Anyone still in this street thirty seconds from now will be arrested and charged with riotous assembly. Good night!’

The snatch squad began to move with slow purpose into the mob, which drained away into the night quickly and quietly. Soon there was only Army left in the street. The adrenalin coursing through Charles’s body did not drain away so rapidly. He was too relieved to feel elated. He told the CO what had happened with what sounded even to himself like schoolboy-ish urgency. He had never thought he would be glad to see the CO.

Having heard him out, the CO stared disconcertingly at him for several seconds before saying, ‘I shall fine you twenty pounds, Charles. The alternative is to send you home in disgrace, but you’re young, inexperienced and this is your first mistake. And your last. Two reasons: A, bad reporting — you gave us no idea of the gravity of the situation and your voice procedure was appalling; B, you jeopardised the lives of your soldiers and MOD property — not to mention your own life, which I shan’t — by not taking a firm line before the situation got a chance to develop. You should’ve got a grip early on. You should’ve fired a rubber bullet the moment they started to come at you, after warning them, of course, but even without if you thought it was necessary. You need not have feared the consequences. I would have backed you up to the hilt. Minimum force is all very well as a political policy but in tactical situations I will not have the lives of my soldiers needlessly put at risk. A rubber bullet would have been minimum force but you used less than that. In fact you didn’t use any force at all. In future, act firmly in the early stages and nip it in the bud. Got that? Good. Time you got rid of this airy-fairy university stuff and realised you’re commanding the best soldiers in the British Army.’ He looked at the Cortina, which was resting against the crumpled invalid carriage. ‘Well, there can’t be a bomb in it, anyway. How did that happen?’

‘The mob pushed it there, sir.’

‘Where were you?’

‘I was inside it trying to stop it catching alight.’

‘They should never have got that close. Go and find the owner of the invalid carriage, explain how it happened and write me a full report. Someone’s bound to claim that you did it.’

Charles and his crew drove back to the Factory in the companionable silence of shared fear. The only remark came from the driver, who said, ‘I was a bit worried there, sir.’

‘It was a bit nasty, wasn’t it?’

Back at the Factory Chatsworth confessed his jealousy. ‘It was quite funny, though. You made the most awful cock-up on the radio. You sounded so vague and academic that everyone sort of lost interest, till your wireless operator came on. He sounded panic-stricken. Not very coherent. Rather let you down. Pity you didn’t shoot any of them. I’d like to see what an SLR would do to a face at close range. And if you could’ve screwed one of the women at the same time the fine would probably have been forty quid. Would’ve made a great headline — “Assault Commando officer rapes and kills women. Many dead.” Daresay they’d be queuing at the gates.’

Tim remarked that the whole thing sounded rather unprofessional but Edward said, ‘Twenty quid, what a coincidence. Funny the way the CO’s mind works. If you’d knocked off one of the women he’d probably have made it forty. Nasty situation, though. Nasty women, too. Rather you than me, old son.’

Charles’s meeting with Janet took place only three days after the incident with the mob. The arrangements were made — mostly at the top of his voice — over the coin-box telephone installed in the part of the Factory used as the soldiers’ canteen. As he had expected, he was not allowed to have a night off — Edward was not prepared even to put that to the CO — but he was permitted to take two hours off in order to have tea in the centre of Belfast. Because of the way the battalion worked, and expected to work, this did not seem to him ungenerous. He had to wear civilian clothes and to carry a Browning in a shoulder-holster. Janet spent the night of the wedding in Dublin and was given a lift to Belfast the following day by some people who lived in nearby Holywood.

They met outside a cinema showing a war film, one of the most popular forms of escapism in Belfast. They kissed briefly and self-consciously. Janet seemed prettier and more elegant than he remembered, an impression perhaps strengthened by contrast with the natives of Belfast who were, on the whole, squat and ill-favoured. She was tall and slim, with curly hair that was darker than it had been. She still had about her the brittle sheen of London social life, but there was a new promptness and decisiveness, an obvious confidence, that made him wonder whether she had a new man, or whether it was simply that life was treating her well. It was not a question that he cared to go into then. It was better left until after Ireland, if there was to be such a time.

‘What’s that?’ she said after she had pressed against him. ‘You’re not carrying a gun, are you?’

‘Yes, I have to. Only a pistol.’

‘Oh my God, Charles, whatever’s happening to you? Only a pistol, for God’s sake. What a thing to say.’

He did not want to stand in the street talking about it. He felt conspicuous and awkward in civilian clothes in any case and felt as though the Browning might make him walk lopsided or with one shoulder held higher than the other. They went to the nearest café where a very young waitress served them tea at a dirty table, slopping it into their saucers. Charles would have preferred to go to the Europa Hotel but was unsure of his ability to explain away the Browning to the searchers at the entrance without drawing attention to himself. Janet talked about the Dublin wedding, which had been a very social affair. The people who had given her a lift had lent her their car for the afternoon and were to give her a lift to the airport that night if Charles could not.

‘I’ve only got two hours,’ he said. ‘One and three-quarters now.’

‘That’s ridiculous. Why can’t they let you have longer?’

‘Because they won’t.’

‘But why not?’

‘They just won’t. I was lucky to get this. We don’t have time off. Everyone else is working. We’re supposed to be fighting a war.’

‘It’s your own stupid fault for joining.’

The conversation was becoming familiar, and he had neither the desire nor the time to rework old ground. He wanted to go to bed with her and had hoped she might have somewhere to stay where they could have done it. ‘I could’ve booked a room in an hotel but I didn’t know how long I was going to have, nor how long you were going to have,’ he said.

She shrugged. ‘Well, it wouldn’t be worth it for two hours, would it?’

He smiled. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Unless you just want a quick screw and then back to barracks. That’s what soldiers do when they’re fighting a war, isn’t it?’

‘It wasn’t just that.’ He had to acknowledge, but had not time to ponder upon, the eternal duplicity of the male. He asked her about her work among the deprived families of Wandsworth, questioning her in a detail that extended far beyond his real interest. She spoke enthusiastically about it and soon became more relaxed and friendly.

‘It’s such a pity you’ve only got two hours,’ she said, taking his hand upon the table. ‘I do miss you.’

‘I miss you,’ he said, and again postponed thought.

They walked around the centre of Belfast, holding hands and dawdling in the drizzle. He felt less conspicuous as part of a couple. ‘It all looks so ordinary,’ she said. ‘Just as though it’s had a few fires, that’s all. It’s difficult to believe what you hear about it.’

He found that introducing the city to a newcomer was a wholly unexpected pleasure. ‘The difficulty is that the extraordinary happens in the context of the ordinary. If it were a foreign city with foreign road signs and everything it would all be much easier to cope with and probably less of a strain. But the fact that it’s so ordinarily and shabbily British makes it that much more difficult and sinister. And the people who live in it love it. It’s got real heart for them. If they leave it they nearly aways come back.’

‘I can understand all that, but I can’t believe it’s really necessary for you to walk around with a gun under your jacket like some sort of amateur James Bond.’

‘But that’s just what I’m saying. It’s because it seems ordinary that you don’t believe it’s necessary. You need to see the other side of the city before you can understand that.’

‘Are you sure you’re not deluding yourselves and creating the very thing you claim to be opposing?’

‘As sure as I can be.’ He looked at her calmly confident gaze as they passed through the crowds, and despaired of being able to convey the horrible unease which the apparent ordinariness of it all gave him. The week before, a policeman in plain clothes had been shot dead in his car in the Crumlin Road as he waited at the traffic lights. His fiancée was seriously injured. Charles despaired, too, of ever being able adequately to describe to her what had happened in the cul-de-sac the other evening. ‘We live in different worlds,’ he added uselessly.

She took her hand away from his. ‘You didn’t have to choose this one.’

Her car was in one of the city centre car parks and he accepted her offer of a lift back to the Factory because time was pressing. He didn’t want her to drive into any of the dangerous areas but since she had said she would anyway — to see how people lived — he thought it better to let her drop him off and then drive back than to go wandering off alone in some such place as the new estate where strange cars driven by unknown English women were likely to attract hostile attention.

They took the borrowed Mini along the Falls Road and he pointed out well-known trouble spots. Signs of recent rioting were gratifyingly visible. She was impressed, though still would not admit the need for him to carry a pistol. ‘I mean, it’s like carrying a pistol in Dublin,’ she said. ‘It would be absurd.’

‘Dublin is not like Belfast.’

‘You’ve never been there.’

‘That makes no difference.’

‘Of course it does.’

He pointed to a corner shop. ‘A man was murdered in there four weeks ago.’

‘What happened?’

‘Some Protestant extremists walked in and shot him.’

‘What did you do about it?’

‘We weren’t here then.’

They were waiting to turn right into one of the narrow streets that led eventually to the Factory, but their way was blocked by a group of women standing talking in the entrance to the street. Charles was so struck by their likeness to the harridans in the cul-de-sac that for some moments he relived his experiences of that evening, caught and frozen in a flash-back. He did not notice Janet’s growing impatience until she hooted indignantly. The women turned and looked down on them. A couple began swearing at them and very quickly several more people, including two men, came out of the corner shop to see what the trouble was. The next few seconds were a maze of vivid impressions for Charles in which the past was indistinguishable from the present. The ugly, hateful, contorted faces, the raised voices and harsh accents, the suddenness of it all and the ten-fold leap in tension brought him as near to blind panic as he had ever been. He did not know what was happening nor even whether he was doing anything about it. He sat in a kind of heavy, cold numbness, unable to respond. He was distantly aware of Janet shouting something through her open window and then the car jerked forward, the women parted and the narrow street was clear before them.

Janet accelerated angrily. ‘Really,’ she said, sounding, Charles thought afterwards, very like her mother, ‘anyone would think they owned the road, carrying on like that. Who on earth do they think they are? Stupid old bags. And one of them was holding a baby, did you see? She called me an English bitch. I told her she wasn’t fit to be a mother, standing in the middle of the road like that with a baby in her arms. If it hadn’t been for the baby I’d have run her over, the old cow. That’s just what she reminded me of, you know, a great, bellowing, stupid, ugly old cow.’

Charles said nothing at first. Very slowly, so that she would not notice, he took his hand away from the butt of his pistol, which he had grasped under his jacket. He did not remember gripping it. His mouth was dry, his throat tight and the palm of his hand tingling hot. He swallowed with some difficulty. ‘They are pretty awful, some of these people,’ he said.

‘I’m afraid my giving them a piece of my mind won’t have done much good for neighbourhood community relations. But, there you are, if they behave like that they must expect it. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Serves them right if they’re unhappy.’ She changed gear and turned corners with unnecessary speed as he directed her towards the Factory. She pulled up abruptly outside the main gates, watched by the sentries. ‘God, what an awful place. D’you really have to live in there? I don’t know how you stand it.’

They kissed goodbye, a little awkwardly. ‘Write soon,’ she said.

‘I will.’

‘You’re all hot. Are you all right?’

‘Yes. It’s just coming back, you know.’

‘Are you sure, Charles? You’re sweating. You haven’t got ’flu or something, have you?’

‘Perhaps that’s it. I’ll let you know.’

‘I hope you’re all right. Look after yourself.’

‘And you.’

‘Bye.’

‘Bye.’ He got out and she drove off with a wave, obviously buoyed up by her confrontation with the women. He walked slowly in through the gate.

‘Some ’ave all the luck, sir,’ said one of the sentries, with a grin.

Seconds after he had reported back into the ops room Chatsworth pounced upon him. ‘Did you screw her?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘There was nowhere to do it.’ It was a truthful response, but truthful in a trivial way. It was untruthful in that it allowed Chatsworth to assume that Charles shared his view of the relationship. Perhaps he did, ultimately, but the truth at that time was that he did not know how he viewed it.

‘Very unenterprising of you,’ said Chatsworth, disappointed. ‘There must be an empty sangar somewhere on the Peace Line. You’d have been all right as long as there wasn’t a riot.’

Charles was on duty until four the following morning, but when he finally crawled into his bed he was still preoccupied with his reaction to the women in the street that afternoon. Janet had reacted decisively and effectively. What she had done could even be called healthy and normal. He felt that his own reaction had been more than simple indecision. It had amounted to a paralysis of the conscious powers. Perhaps there was some excuse after the events in the cul-de-sac the other evening, or perhaps less because he should have learnt. He imagined that Janet would have coped with the cul-de-sac better than he had. She would certainly have fired the rubber-bullet gun, for all her stated dislike of violence. He, on the other hand, could well have shot someone dead that afternoon, acting unconsciously and unnecessarily out of fear. Fear, after all, was what it seemed to come down to.

5

Life in the Factory was monotonous but, paradoxically, the time seemed to pass quickly. Charles often had the feeling that there was much he should remember, perhaps even record in a diary, yet successive days and nights were so much alike that he could not sort one from the other. Features of military life that seemed at first to be undyingly memorable soon became so obvious and mundane that they were no longer noticed and were soon forgotten. Overall, it was the drudgery and the pettiness that were ingrained most deeply into his soul. Incidental details, such as what should be worn with what and when, had an importance which sometimes overshadowed even operational matters. At their worst these could give to Army life a horror unimagined by mere civilians, as Charles now realised. It was no one’s fault that the horror was so little known. The experience could not be conveyed to those who had not had it. It was like fear and suffering, an experience so particular to each man as to be ultimately untranslatable, except in general terms. Radio-watching during the long hours of the night, patrolling the dirty, unhappy and unfriendly streets, returning to a grim and noisy home where there was no possibility of privacy, eating, living and working with the same people amidst the sounds and smells of a hundred and twenty men cramped into poor conditions all contributed to a life which seemed literally to be monotone. The streets were no relief from the Factory nor the Factory from the streets, but it was necessary to keep changing one for the other in order to make both more bearable.

Yet the time passed quickly, perhaps because it was broken up. Even though the same activities were repeated day and night their order varied and the time of doing them varied. The working day, or night, was about seventeen hours, seven days a week; sleep was irregular and frequently disturbed; anyone who had a few minutes with nothing to do simply closed his eyes and usually experienced a rapid succession of very vivid dreams from which he could nevertheless emerge immediately because he never fully ceased to hear what was going on around him. Duties and watches were simply got through; no one thought further ahead than the end of the next one; tomorrow was irrelevant to today and yet it all would end sometime, and so the present was made endurable.

Henry Sandy came one day with a complicated form. He was supposed to compile a medical report on the working and living conditions of the soldiers. At a time when everyone looked pale and tired, he looked still worse.

‘You look like death warmed up,’ said Edward.

Henry proffered cigarettes to the smokers. ‘Shagged out,’ he explained. Henry and his medical team lived at the military hospital, where there was an abundance of nurses. The kindest interpretation of their behaviour, which he himself provided, was that his and his team’s debaucheries were a vicarious acting-out of the frustrated desires of the rest of the battalion.

‘Wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t make it sound as though you didn’t enjoy it,’ said Chatsworth. ‘You make it sound like a duty.’

‘That’s what it’s becoming,’ said Henry. ‘I’m not sure I do enjoy it. I don’t think I do really. I think I do it just to see if I’m right in thinking I’m not going to enjoy it. And I am.’

‘Why keep on doing it?’

‘In case I’m wrong, I s’pose. You never know your luck.’ He grinned and then giggled. ‘That’s not really why. I don’t know why. I just do it whenever I can. Perhaps I’m too emotionally immature to say no, though Christ knows there’s little enough emotion involved.’

‘Well, I lack emotional maturity as well,’ said Chatsworth. ‘And I also lack the opportunity to be immature. What about me and Charles coming out one evening if we could fiddle it? Reporting sick or something.’

‘Great. Whenever you like. I can easily lay on a couple of nurses. I’m not sure that Charles really wants to, though.’

‘’Course he does. He’s just so emotionally mature that he’s frightened to admit it.’

Henry spent about an hour going over the Factory, ticking boxes on his form. When he returned to the ops room he said: ‘It’s unfit for human habitation. Too little light, poor ventilation, inadequate washing and toilet facilities, too much noise, too many people and the cookhouse is illegal.’

‘Could’ve told you that on the phone,’ said Edward. ‘Fit for soldiers, not fit for civil servants. God, imagine if they tried to send some of those fat bums in the MOD somewhere like this. Wish they would. Send a few of them out here for a week and they might spend a bit more money on the poor bloody Ackies who do their fighting for them.’ Edward, mug of tea in hand, overflowed with righteous indignation. ‘So what’s the good of your form, Henry? What’s going to happen, eh? What are they going to do about it? Sod-all, I bet.’

Henry shrugged. ‘They might close the cookhouse.’

Henry then had to inspect the sentry positions along the Peace Line, and so Charles took him round with a section that was doing a routine foot patrol. Most of the positions were incorporated into barriers that cut across streets, through which only pedestrians were allowed. Thus many streets were cut in half, Protestants on one side, Catholics on the other. The houses nearest the Peace Line, where they still stood, were usually unoccupied. They were blackened and scarred by riots and pockmarked by bullets. Flush against the wire defences at one point on the Catholic side, a row of new houses had been built to replace the dozen or so that had been burnt in that area during the early riots. They stretched right across a broad street with their blank rear walls facing the Protestants. Children played against the barriers for most of the day, whether there was school or not.

‘Glasgow’s the only other place I know that could end up like this,’ said Henry. ‘Peace on condition that you annihilate the other side. Unless we get race war in our other cities.’

‘Depressing prospect.’

‘The future always is. In our time, anyway. In the last century people looked forward to this one as a time when everything would be better. I suppose many things are. But we’re not so optimistic about the next century, are we? If anything, we think of it as a time of diminishing humanity.’

They strolled along the pavement with the escorting section spread out in tactical formation on either side of the road. Henry seemed completely relaxed but for Charles the demands of the present easily outweighed those of the future. He was constantly looking for sniping positions in windows, alleyways and blocked-up doorways. ‘Perhaps we’ll be as wrong about the next century as others were about ours,’ he said. He had noticed in himself before that states of nervous watchfulness encouraged opinions that were more reassuring than realistic. It was as though he was thereby staking a claim in a future he was not sure of reaching.

Henry, though, was apparently oblivious to his surroundings. ‘I don’t believe you’re that much of an optimist, Charles. Beneath that cool exterior a cold heart freezes. Things generally get worse, don’t you agree?’

‘It depends upon the things, which means I don’t agree. Some things get worse, some get better, some don’t change. Generalisations are difficult, if you’ll forgive that one.’

‘They’re also the only things worth saying. You could record your sordid particulars for the rest of your life but it’s all pointless if you’re not prepared to generalise on the basis of it.’

Charles smiled. ‘Some philosophers argue that the general comes first and that we fit the particulars into it.’

‘Some philosophers are arse over tit,’ said Henry. ‘I was being serious.’

‘What makes you think I wasn’t?’

‘You? You never are, you bugger. You’re always on the fence. Serve you right if you get piles.’

Henry found that all the sentry positions lacked everything except ventilation. ‘Makes me appreciate living in the hospital,’ he said as they clambered down from one sandbagged, corrugated tower. ‘It has its problems, of course — too many women — but it is comfortable. It’s a funny thing about the women. I’m becoming utterly depraved and heartless. I just keep on doing it with as many as possible to see how long it’s going to last. There must come a time when I shall reach the bottom and be able to sink no lower, but each time I think I’ve got there I find I can wriggle down a bit further. D’you know what I did the other evening?’ — he giggled — ‘but I won’t tell you, I’m still ashamed about it. I’d like to find out if Chatsworth’s ever done it, though. But the trouble is, after a while, you get so that you can’t think about anything else. It infects every part of your life. Don’t you find that?’

‘It’s the other way round with me. If I’m starved of women I’m more inclined to dwell on them.’

‘If I’m starved of them I just sort of forget. I become asexual until I’m with one again, and then I just want to jump on her, stoat-like, without a word, anonymously.’

They were on the Protestant side now, where the kerbstones were painted red, white and blue and the slogans were painted neatly on the roads and walls. Union Jacks hung from some of the windows, and were occasionally strung across the street from house to house. Two very small boys with very dirty faces ran up, proffering ragged bits of tartan. ‘Have ye killed any Fenians, mister?’ asked one. ‘We’ll help ye kill ’em. We’ll help ye kill the Fenians.’

They refused the tartan, meant as a symbol of identification, and Charles watched to see that the patrolling section did the same. The soldiers were strung out along both sides of the road at five-yard intervals. It was a sunny, breezy, cheerful day but there was no grass or any other greenery to be seen. At one house they were offered tea, a regular stop in that street, and they drank it on the pavement, joking with the women and playing with the children. Henry and Charles stood a little way off. For some reason it would have seemed unofficer-like to accept tea.

‘The trouble with being an officer,’ said Charles, ‘is that it’s not possible to be anything else. Everything you do is determined by what other people expect of you. You just can’t help it. You can’t even look like anything else.’

‘Unlike your soldiers, you don’t need food and drink and you have no sexual desire.’

‘Nor emotion, fear or envy.’

‘You are indifferent to heat and cold and to any other form of physical discomfort.’

‘Wherever you are is always the best of all possible worlds.’

The tea finished, they went on their way. Without wishing to identify with the Loyalist cause, they could not but feel safer in Loyalist areas. Except in times of very bad sectarian strife they were unlikely to be shot at, whereas in Republican areas they were quite likely to be. Although they were genuinely unbiased towards one side or the other, they were less relaxed, hence more tense and watchful, in Republican areas. It was more difficult for them to be friendly even if the people had been so inclined, which they were not. The Loyalist areas were more reassuring because of their insistence upon identification with the rest of Britain, but it was a fierce and un-British insistence which made it difficult to ignore the differences. Charles felt generally comfortable but essentially fraudulent in such places.

They crossed the Peace Line and approached the monastery that dominated the Republican area, on top of which there was an Army observation post. There were the same kind of houses and the same small streets here, but the flags hanging from the windows were Republican and the slogans, instead of being anti-Catholic, were anti-Army, anti-RUC and anti-Brit. They were not anti-Protestant, as the Protestant slogans were anti-Catholic, but the Republican flags were symbols of defiance. There were fewer people in these streets, no offers of tea, no well-scrubbed doorsteps. Instead, there was an atmosphere of silent and sullen hostility. The people were quiet on the whole but they had close, hard faces and they seemed to be able to make the very brickwork seem alien. At least in the new estate the hostility was open and vociferous, but here it was suppressed and bitter. The people lived in fear of their Protestant neighbours on the other side of the wire and they relied upon the Army for protection, for which they hated the Army.

‘I had a row with the CO this morning,’ said Henry. ‘About VD. He’s got very worried about it all of a sudden. P’raps there was an article in the Telegraph. He said he’ll bust any soldier who gets it and I said that if any soldier comes to me with it the fact shall go no further.’

‘I wonder he didn’t bust you.’

‘He can’t. Deadlock. Many more words but he can’t do anything. He’s absolutely furious. I have to tell him how many are ill, who they are and what diseases there are but not who has what. He has no right to know that. It’s one of the few limitations of his power — in practice, anyway — and I told him so. He was speechless. He left the room and bawled out Philip Lamb because he didn’t like his haircut. Said it made him look like Rudolph Valentino and told him to get it changed.’

‘I should think Philip was rather flattered.’

‘Either that or he’d be hurt because he thinks he’s dated.’

‘But how many have got VD?’

‘None that I know of. That’s the curious thing. They haven’t had a chance, poor sods.’

‘Perhaps the CO’s got it.’

‘Not possible. Officers don’t get it.’

They were in the shadow now of the monastery. The largest building in the area, larger even than the Factory, it was a massive, solid self-assertion in the midst of the mean streets. The monks, apart from one or two who sulked, maintained the appearance of a calm and reasoned neutrality which most people took at face value but which the CO instantly mistrusted. Naturally, they looked after only those of their own faith, but it was unreasonable to criticise them for not doing more since it was only their own that came to them. To reach the observation post in the monastery it was necessary to climb an exposed spiral staircase on the outside of the building, on which a sniper had killed a soldier the previous year, and then climb through a trapdoor into what looked like a disused cell. From here they went along a wide wooden corridor and then up another spiral staircase to the top of the tower. Though they rarely saw the monks, they were often warned to be quiet and not to spend any longer than they needed in the building. The observation post was valuable. From it they could see about half of Belfast when the haze permitted, and they had a detailed view of the Peace Line and its environs. Like the monastery, the houses were nineteenth-century, humped back-to-back, with little slate roofs, tiny backyards and common alleyways which looked homely and quaint viewed from the monastery during the day but which were dirty and sinister at night. During the night the sentries operated powerful searchlights which illuminated vulnerable sections of the Peace Line and also the houses of local IRA leaders. This latter was the CO’s idea: at least one light was constantly on the home of one man who was well known as an organiser of bombings and shootings but against whom it had proved impossible to get a conviction. His house was bathed in harsh light throughout the night, ensuring that no one could enter or leave without being identified. It must have seemed to the occupants as though they were in the curtained centre of a circular stage, surrounded by brilliant spotlights and a silent audience. The CO was gleeful about the idea, claiming that he was duty-bound to harass the man and his family as much as possible as long as they continued threatening to kill any who might be disposed to witness against them. He was also in the habit of knocking on the man’s door and chatting to him about nothing in particular — ‘Just to let him know we’re sitting on him. Doesn’t do any harm to remind him now and again.’ Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, the man and his family seemed to live a life of irreproachable ordinariness. One or two of them would even pass the time of day with soldiers if they felt in a good enough mood, or if the sun was shining.

‘This is the only OP that’s warm, dry and comfortable,’ said Henry. ‘And lonely.’

‘’Tis all right, sir,’ said one of the two soldiers manning it, a burly Mancunian. ‘Leastways, you get a bit of peace an’ quiet up here.’

‘McCart didn’t go out to collect his brew money this morning,’ said the other soldier, referring to the local leader. ‘You know, his dole money. It’s his day, Thursdays, signs on regular as clockwork. Must be ill or something. Or maybe they send it to him now so he don’t have to get out of bed unnecessarily, like.’

As they were walking back down the stairs, Henry said suddenly, ‘D’you not like sex, Charles?’

Charles was a little taken aback, never having asked himself the question before. ‘Er — yes. I mean, it depends who with, doesn’t it?’

Henry nodded. ‘You don’t, then. Or at least we’re not talking about quite the same thing.’

Charles tried to ask the question of himself, with regard to Janet. It seemed for some reason to be inapplicable. So much depended upon so much else. He couldn’t even say whether he would have enjoyed sex with her more if he had liked her more, or less. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘The idea of it, which is what you like about it even when you’re not doing it, in my sense. It doesn’t depend so much upon who you’re doing it with because you’re trying not to let the personality enter into it. The more anonymous the better. You’re trying to reduce the other person and yourself to objects, not even feeling objects but objects who are attracted basically by an idea of their own objectivity. It’s a death-wish really, I think. Pornography is basically that. You should talk to Chatsworth about it.’ Henry spoke as though he were giving confidential medical advice, and was referring to a well-known specialist.

‘Chatsworth? Why? Is that what he thinks?’

‘No, but he would if he thought at all.’

‘Why are you asking me?’ Charles lowered his voice because they were walking along the corridor now.

‘It just struck me,’ whispered Henry. ‘You don’t talk much about it. I think you probably have a much healthier attitude but there might be scope for a little sickness. I haven’t given up hope.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Keep me informed. Frustration might corrupt you. It probably won’t, though, that’s the trouble.’

One of Charles’s duties, delegated by Edward, was to write the weekly Intelligence and Community Relations reports for the C company area. The former was comprised mainly of observations provided by the soldiers and a few generalisations of his own, which were either suggestively vague or unashamedly obvious. The soldiers on their patrols would talk to anyone who would talk to them, thus giving a fair indication of the mood of the area, and they would also record minor incidents. Charles would then compile a report out of McCart’s not having been seen on Monday or Tuesday and of a neighbour’s remark that he was resting after the weekend troubles, listing the number of stonings and arrests and adding his own comment on the mood of the area. He found it difficult to write without any clear idea of his audience and so tailored what he produced for Nigel Beale, who strove to see significance in everything. In one report he facetiously noted an increase in the number of children’s bicycles in the area, which Nigel immediately related to the use of bicycles as bombs in Vietnam, where their frames were filled with explosive. He heard later from Nigel that this part of the report had been included in the Brigade Intelligence report and that the enforced searching of bicycles was under consideration. Nigel was disappointed, and Charles relieved, when Brigade decided to await further evidence. None was forthcoming.

Similarly, Charles’s weekly Community Relations reports consisted in a little mild fantasising about the ‘CR climate in the area’ and deliberately lengthy accounts of minor good deeds done by soldiers on their rounds. There was relatively little CR work done by any part of the battalion, partly because Anthony Hamilton-Smith was supposed to be coordinating it but mainly because most attempts by the Army to establish friendly contacts in such a strongly Republican area were doomed to failure. Even those willing to risk it in the early days of the troubles had soon been intimidated out of it, and there never had been many. A number of schemes had been tried along the lines of the ‘hearts and minds’ operations which had worked well in other parts of the world, such as the building of community centres and the provision of sports equipment, but it was soon found that although the money for the projects was accepted with alacrity the work on them proceeded rather more slowly. The only completed community centre had been burned down within a week because it had received Army assistance. One of the very few successful projects was the boxing club started for the youth of the area by the C company sergeant major. Two nights a week some of the children who had previously thrown bricks into the Factory yard came into an old machine room and happily thumped each other under the sergeant major’s watchful eye. Within a few weeks they were taking their hands out of their pockets and greeting him as ‘Sergeant Major’ when they met him in the street.

One Sunday afternoon there was what was called a ‘confrontation’ on the Peace Line. It began with a Republican parade that passed close to one of the main barriers, a large metal and concrete structure which completely blocked what had been a main road. The parade was a procession of several hundred people led by the Seamus Murray Memorial Band, a smart affair of pipes and drums with young men and young women, as well as girls and boys, dressed in green and white costumes. The music was lively, simple and militant, and the stretch of the road by the Peace Line was lined three deep with spectators. It was an annual event, not sponsored by the IRA, but in a land where bands and parades were so loved they were also symbols of defiance or reminders of victory. Although before the recent troubles there had been some interchange of instruments, and even players, between the two communities, this was now impossible. The band was viewed by both sides as a Republican gesture.

Tim’s platoon was manning the barrier and patrolling the immediate area in case of trouble. Chatsworth’s was doing guard duties and resting whilst Charles’s was on standby in the Factory at two minutes’ notice to move. Charles had persuaded Edward to allow him to go to the barrier with his wireless operator, partly because he was curious and partly because he preferred getting out of the Factory into even the meanest of streets for even the shortest of periods to staying in. In order to do this he had had to work carefully upon Edward for most of the morning since Edward’s usual reaction to any suggestion was ‘no’, unless he thought that the CO might think otherwise. Charles felt it was no small triumph to have got Edward to agree that he should be on the spot in case his platoon were called out so as already to have a firm tactical grasp of the situation.

It was a sunny afternoon and the sense of carnival, with the band’s gay colours and lively tunes, was a welcome change in the drab surroundings. For a time everyone watching — the Protestants on the far side of the Peace Line, the soldiers manning it and the Catholic crowd whose band it was — was caught up in the atmosphere and made a part of it. Differences were not forgotten but for a short time did not matter. The large crowd following the band was organised in the traditional Republican way, with men and youths at the front and women and children at the back. The latter straggled along in happy confusion but the men and youths attempted to march in the normal IRA fashion of files of four stamping their feet, so that the background to the band music was the sinister clump of boots. They carried no weapons and wore neither berets nor combat jackets. Their faces were serious and meant to be expressionless but the effort of concentration produced a pained look on some. The clumping was at its most eerily effective when the band was silent.

Charles and his wireless operator stayed close to the barrier but were in a good position to see the parade. The attitude of the watching crowd with regard to the soldiers was probably intended to be one of contemptuous indifference, as one might regard an uninvited guest whose presence one disapproved of but with whom it was useless to argue because he had no conception of good manners, except that the Irish were unpractised at appearing indifferent and the effort plainly showed. Charles asked four people who Seamus Murray was and why he was remembered, but got no answer from the first three. The fourth replied curtly that Seamus had been murdered by the British in 1942. Charles, who still lacked cynicism, retreated in discreet and apologetic silence, only to discover much later that Seamus had been hanged for the murder of two policemen.

The trouble started when the main body of the procession had already passed the barrier. The first Charles knew of it was when a lot of bricks and stones dropped out of the sky. Within seconds the spectators near him had scattered and reformed, armed themselves with rubble and were hurling it mightily back over the barrier. Charles ran over to the barrier and saw a mob of youths on the Protestant side about twenty yards along the street throwing everything that came to hand. Most of Tim’s platoon had been concentrated on the parade side of the barrier and the Protestants had obviously concealed themselves and their ammunition behind the houses in their own territory. Both sides were shouting and screaming and both were increasing by the second. The television cameramen and press photographers who had been following the parade had run back with the Catholic reinforcements and were whirring and clicking enthusiastically, which inspired all the combatants to still greater efforts.

Tim was at the barrier looking pale and harassed. Quite a few bricks were falling short and bouncing and skidding off it. Charles looked at Tim and was reminded of himself when he had been guarding, or failing to guard, the getaway car. ‘What are you going to do?’ he shouted.

‘I’ve sent a sit-rep,’ shouted Tim.

‘Can’t you stop it?’

‘How the hell can I?’

‘Have you asked for reinforcements?’ He did not hear Tim’s reply because they were both ducking and weaving like hard-pressed boxers. Reminders of his night in the cul-de-sac were getting ever more vivid. He went to where his wireless operator was crouched by the sangar, called up his own platoon on the radio and, finding they had not been deployed, ordered them down. He then heard Edward on the air frantically asking Tim for more details and not getting them.

Meanwhile the stoning had worsened. There were now about fifty youths on the Protestant side and at least twice that number on the Catholic. Tim’s soldiers in between were facing both ways, taking cover by the barrier or to the flanks of it. There was no need to keep the mobs apart since their own efforts did that but neither was Tim making any attempt to quell the trouble. His NCOs were looking to him but he was huddled with his wireless operator and doing some sort of adjustments to his set. Charles felt he could not take charge of Tim’s platoon and had no clear idea what he would tell them to do if he did, except to attack the rioters. As the bricks crashed and screeched off the corrugated iron sangar he wondered how soon they would become petrol bombs. Already for each side the cowering soldiers had become targets. The press kept to the fringes on both sides of the barrier, trying to photograph every brick and exposing themselves to more risks than the soldiers.

Charles did not often feel strong emotion at the sight of Sergeant Wheeler but his appearance and that of the platoon on the Protestant side of the barrier in Land-Rovers and Pigs came as a profound relief. Sergeant Wheeler, wearing his helmet and carrying a baton, ran over to where Charles was sheltering. ‘Which side d’you want us to take, sir — both of ’em?’

Charles looked across at Tim to see whether he was doing anything and this time caught his eye. Tim’s momentary glance did not even show recognition let alone indicate any form of action. Suddenly one of the barrier sentries, who had done as he was told and remained in an exposed position facing the Protestants, keeled over clutching his face, blood streaming out between his fingers. His rifle clattered to the ground beside him. It turned out that the right side of his face had been opened up by a sharpened penny thrown by a boy of about twelve. ‘Get the Prots,’ Charles told Wheeler. ‘Drive them back. Arrest as many as you can.’

The platoon was already organised into snatch squads. With the example of the wounded soldier still on the ground behind them they debussed and attacked the mob from three directions. The action was pursued with what, in military terms, would have been described as vigour and purpose; according to the victims and some of the press it was pursued with a vicious and unmerited violence; according to other sections of the press it was firm, pre-emptive action. Whatever the opinion of it, the result most closely resembled dropping a ferret into a rabbit-pen. Most of the youths escaped but five were caught. A press photographer had his camera broken during the brawl which occurred when one of the arrested youths tried to escape by lashing out at the soldier who had arrested him. He had bloodied his captor’s nose and had partially freed himself before his captor and another soldier laid into him with their truncheons, after which he was half-dragged and half-carried to the waiting Pig. The mob was dispersed as quickly as it had formed and very soon all that was left in the street were Charles’s soldiers, a shoal of press and a great deal of rubble and broken glass.

On the other side of the barrier Tim’s platoon sergeant had wisely refrained from action and was allowing the procession’s own stewards to persuade the crowd to disperse peacefully. Tim seemed to have recovered his power to act and was moving about amongst his own men. He seemed deliberately to avoid Charles for some minutes but then approached him and said brusquely, ‘Isn’t it time you cleared your men out? It’s my patch, you know.’

‘They’re going soon,’ said Charles. ‘To take the prisoners back. It might be an idea if some of them hang around in case there’s more trouble.’

‘I can look after that, thanks.’ Tim’s manner was that of an offended minor official. He turned away as soon as he had spoken. He was still very pale.

There were now only soldiers, the inevitable bystanders and a few disconsolate press, most of whom had been unable to get near enough to the trouble when it was at its most picturesque. The procession had moved on and the streets were blessedly quiet. Then there was the familiar whine of Land-Rovers driven at high speed. Edward’s was the first in view, closely followed by one from battalion headquarters containing, it turned out, Philip Lamb. They stopped abruptly, a door was flung open and Edward ran, bent double, across the littered street to where Charles was standing by the barrier. He was wearing his helmet and had his pistol in his hand. He looked neither to his right nor to his left. The soldiers, the bystanders and the press all stared. Edward pushed Charles back into a corner of the barrier. ‘Hard targets!’ he said urgently. Charles was too surprised to speak. Edward joined Charles in the corner. Their helmets touched. ‘What’s happening? Where are they all?’

Charles tried to ease himself out of the corner. ‘Nothing’s happening. It’s all over. They’ve all gone.’

Edward turned with his back to the wall and allowed his gaze to traverse ninety degrees, which included his own Land-Rover and all of Charles’s platoon and their vehicles. He pointed his pistol at everyone as he looked. ‘Who are all these people?’

Charles looked to where Philip Lamb was talking to a group of pressmen. ‘They’re mostly press.’ Seeing that Edward still stared suspiciously at them, pistol in hand, he added, ‘I’d put it away, if I were you. It might inflame them. They could photograph you.’

Edward straightened and put the gun in its holster. ‘It sounded like the biggest Peace Line flare-up ever. What happened?’

‘The Prots started stoning the marchers and the marchers retaliated. We dispersed the Prots and arrested five.’ Charles felt quite proud and was prepared to give a detailed account.

‘Great stuff,’ said Edward. ‘Where’s Tim?’

‘The other side of the barrier, I think.’

Edward, now the confident and battle-hardened commander, adjusted his holster and strode away, casting a proprietorial glance around the area. Charles noticed Chats worth for the first time. He was standing a few yards away kicking disconsolately amongst the rubble. ‘I always miss it,’ he said petulantly. ‘My platoon’s always resting or on guard when there’s trouble. I’m not even supposed to be down here myself except that Edward’s flapping around at about forty thousand feet and hasn’t noticed. Was anyone killed?’

‘’Fraid not.’

‘So it wasn’t much then?’

‘Not by your standards.’

‘Injuries?’

‘One of Tim’s platoon had his face opened up.’

‘Weapons?’

‘Only what you’re kicking.’

‘All pretty tame then. Wish I’d been here, all the same.’

It was Philip Lamb’s job, as PRO, to deal with the press. It was something he took very seriously, not only because it gave him a role. He had been talking earnestly to a group of them for some minutes before hurrying over to Charles. ‘Charles, can you give me a quick outline of what happened? They want to interview me for ITN.’ He straightened his beret unnecessarily. ‘I gave them an idea based on what I’d heard over the radio, only I didn’t tell them that. I must say, it sounded pretty bad. I told them about a thousand.’

‘A thousand what?’

‘People. Rioters. You see, most of the press got here after the worst of it was over when there were just a few stone-throwing kids. They got some good film of the arrests, though. Good work on Tim’s part. But how did it start? What was the worst like?’

‘That was the worst.’

‘Charles, don’t be unhelpful. You know you only see a very small part of it when you’re on the ground. And don’t play things down. We must make the most of our successes. This is very good PR for the Army, not just the battalion, averting a major Peace Line clash.’ He brushed the hair back from his ears, glanced in a Land-Rover wing-mirror and brushed some forward again. ‘Don’t get me wrong. I would let you speak to them since you were here, but the CO has said that I’m the only one who’s allowed to be interviewed apart from him, and even then I’ve got to be there. Not that you watch much television, do you? How many arrests were there?’

‘Five, but no deaths.’

‘What?’

‘No one was killed.’

‘Oh, I see. Any injuries?’

‘One of the Ackies had his face very badly cut.’

‘Did they get a picture of it?’

‘I’ve no idea. One of the photographers had his camera broken.’

‘Who by? Not by us, I hope? Is he all right? Which one was it?’ In looking anxiously about, Philip noticed Edward standing in the midst of a group of pressmen, talking authoritatively into several microphones. Two cameras were whirring. ‘Oh my God!’ he exclaimed. ‘He’s not supposed to do that. He’ll probably say something awful.’ He rushed over to the group.

The event was the main story on the television news that evening. It was said that what could have been one of the most serious outbreaks of intersectarian violence since the troubles had begun was narrowly averted by the personal intervention of Major Edward Lumley and by prompt action on the part of his company. There was film of Charles’s platoon dispersing the ‘hard core of upwards of a thousand rioters’, followed by an interview with Edward in which he steadfastly refused to talk about his part in the affair but described how it had started, and reiterated the Army’s firm determination to keep the Peace Line intact at all costs. For a few seconds Philip Lamb’s excited face filled the screen, his lips moving without sound, and then there was a shot of Chatsworth kicking the rubble with a comment from the reporter about those for whom riots were all part of a day’s work. Finally there was an interview with two local politicians, one Protestant and one Catholic, in which the Army was criticised on the one hand for allowing the trouble to start and on the other for stopping it too brutally.

The CO was delighted, and on his rounds that evening said that the brigadier himself had telephoned his congratulations for the way the thing had been handled both from the tactical and from the public relations angles. ‘The trouble with this damn war is it’s a PR war,’ the CO said. ‘It’s not a soldier’s war at all, and like it or not that’s the way we’ve got to play it. But if we can keep this up we’ll be all right. Well done, Edward. You did a good job.’

Edward was buoyant and agreeable for the next few days. Nothing troubled him until Anthony Hamilton-Smith, after a briefing at battalion headquarters, casually mentioned an old plan of the area which had shown a river tunnel beneath the Factory. He couldn’t remember where he had seen it but he had thought it interesting at the time. He liked old plans and maps and things. In fact, he knew someone who had served in Italy during the war and who had been issued, just prior to the invasion of that delightful country, with a copy of an old medieval map which had ‘Here be Dragons’ inscribed across the top. He thought the plan he had seen wasn’t quite that ancient but was getting on a bit. Edward, who shared neither Anthony’s interests nor his phlegmatic calm, immediately saw a danger of a huge landmine being laid beneath the Factory. An exploration party, led by the colour sergeant, went through a trapdoor in the basement floor into a dirty little tunnel that had been pointed out by one of the Factory workers. They emerged with a bundle of old pornographic magazines and the news that the tunnel was blocked at both ends. It was about twenty yards long and there was no sign of a river. It served no obvious purpose. Nevertheless, Edward was unable to rid himself of his fear that explosives could be floated down the underground river, if it existed, and he instituted several more searches.

However, tunnels remained topical. Charles was lying on his sleeping-bag one night, having just come off radio watch, when he noticed Chatsworth eating a large slice of fruit-cake. Knowing that the composite rations on which they lived included no such delicacy, Charles asked where he had got it.

Chatsworth grinned. ‘D’you want some?’ He handed over a piece. ‘I found it.’

‘Where?’

‘In a place I know.’

‘Remarkable.’

‘In the monastery, actually. To be specific, in the kitchens. I’ve been exploring on night patrol recently, a little freelancing. Don’t go and blurt it out to Edward.’

‘You’ll be crucified if you’re caught. British troops invade Holy Places —’

Chatsworth laughed and slapped his thigh. ‘I know, it’d be great PR, wouldn’t it? Valuable fruit-cake ravaged by British child-killers.’

‘But they’d slay you, you do realise that?’

‘That’s mainly why I do it. I need the excitement, and there isn’t enough going on at the moment. And I’m very careful — I only take a slice at a time. It’s a huge cake. It’s in the kitchens, which are quite easy to find. There are millions of cockroaches. If you shine a torch the floor is black with them. Also, I think they keep arms down there. There are miles of tunnels which I’ve been exploring and I’ve found these packing-cases where there weren’t any before.’

‘They’re probably full of cassocks and candlesticks.’

‘In which case you’d store them, wouldn’t you? There’s plenty of room. You wouldn’t hide them in a grimy tunnel full of rats. They’re very heavy and they come from America. If you don’t believe me, come with me.’

‘I’m not sure I want to participate in your fantasy world.’

‘Bollocks, you’re scared. And you’re supposed to be the company Intelligence king. You might be missing the biggest arms find ever.’

‘Or a court martial.’

‘But that’s what makes it interesting, isn’t it? All generals have to take chances.’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘Everything, if you’re going to be one, as I am. I’ll put you in my memoirs if you come.’

Charles did not allow himself to be persuaded there and then, but knew he would agree. As usual with people with nice consciences, he needed a little time to introduce the appropriate excuses. Once properly prepared for digestion, however, there was usually no problem. Two nights later he went out on patrol with Chatsworth and one section of Chatsworth’s platoon. They went to the OP on top of the monastery and then, taking only two of the soldiers — who were only too happy to do a little illegal exploration, as they bore no responsibility for the consequences — they descended into the bowels of the building. Chatsworth led them by a spiral stone staircase that opened off the landing and through a series of corridors and further stairs until they were in a brick-built tunnel with an uneven stone floor. It was almost completely dark but Chatsworth led the way with confidence. Eventually they stopped and stood for some minutes, listening, before he switched on his torch. The light revealed a stack of about twenty oblong wooden boxes.

‘There are more now than there were,’ whispered Chatsworth. ‘It would make too much noise to open one, though. Could nick one.’

‘They’d be bound to notice. And we’d look pretty stupid if they weren’t weapons.’

‘They are weapons.’ Chatsworth ran his fingers over the nearest box. ‘They’re Armalites. I can tell by the boxes.’

‘How?’

‘I’ve got one.’

‘Where is it?’

‘At home. You don’t think I’d be fool enough to bring it out here, do you?’

Charles had learned not to be surprised by anything Chatsworth said. It was not worth asking him how he came to have an Armalite. They counted the boxes, twenty-two in all, and then made their way back out of the cellar. Once in the street, Chatsworth said, ‘I reckon there’s more down there. I don’t know where that tunnel ends and it’s probably not the only one. D’you fancy going back down tomorrow night to do a proper exploration?’

‘No.’

‘Chicken.’

‘Well, what could we do about it? We can’t go to Edward or the CO and say we’ve been creeping around the monastery specifically against orders and we’ve found some suspicious-looking boxes that might contain arms.’

‘They are arms.’

‘And if they are we don’t know who put them there. It could be that all the monks are in on it or it could be just two or three of them or none at all — there might be ways in to the tunnel from the outside and the monks might know nothing about them.’

‘I’m going to do something even if you’re not.’

‘But what?’

‘Bring some out.’

‘You’re mad.’

‘If we were all as sane as you, Charles, we’d never do anything. A little madness makes the world go round.’ Chatsworth laughed. They were walking slowly, side by side, along a poorly-lit street adjacent to the monastery. The little terraced houses were dark and curtained as though their eyes were tightly shut. There was a bang from somewhere behind, not very loud, and Chatsworth dropped forward on to his hands and knees. He stayed there, propped on all fours and looking straight ahead as though waiting for a child to sit astride his back and play a game of horses and riders. ‘My God, I think I’ve been hit,’ he said.

Charles’s first reaction was disbelief. The stiff-upper-lip cliché made it appear that Chatsworth was clowning. But Chatsworth remained where he was and Charles realised that he had himself taken cover in the shadow of a house, unconsciously and immediately. The rest of the patrol was also under cover. Everyone was looking about him but no one knew where the shot had come from. Helped by the wireless operator, Charles dragged Chatsworth into the shadow.

‘Christ Almighty, sir, there’s a bloody great hole in your flak jacket!’ said the wireless operator, delightedly.

Chatsworth groaned. Even in the poor light Charles could see that there was a gaping hole in the right shoulder of his flak jacket. ‘Does it hurt?’ he asked.

‘No. Yes.’ Chatsworth remained on all fours peering ahead with a preoccupied look. ‘I’ll be all right. You go on without me.’

‘For Christ’s sake! Can you sit up?’

Chatsworth sat up slowly.

‘Does it hurt now?’

‘No.’ Chatsworth sounded surprised and mistrustful. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

Charles looked again at the rest of the patrol. Nothing moved in the street or near it and the only sound was of traffic on the Falls Road a few streets away. It must have been a one-off sniper and the gunman would by now have made good his escape from wherever he had been. It was very peaceful in the street and the monastery looming above them was almost reassuring. Charles shouted to his men to remain under cover. He then tore Chatsworth’s shell dressing from where it was taped on to his belt and began feeling his chest under his flak jacket. ‘I can’t feel any exit wound. Does it hurt to breathe?’

Chatsworth took several deep breaths, which seemed to take a long time. ‘No.’

Charles then slid his hand under the back of Chatsworth’s flak jacket, beneath the hole. ‘I can’t feel any blood. There’s a lump, though. Tell me if it hurts when I press.’ He pressed lightly and from Chatsworth’s convulsion and muted cry he was able to form a judgment. ‘That must be it. It hasn’t gone into you. Just broken the skin, I think. Better not move it, though, till Henry Sandy’s had a look at it.’

Chatsworth stood up slowly. ‘He’ll be too pissed to see it. Where d’you think it came from?’

‘No idea. Could’ve been an alleyway back down by the crossroads or maybe from the monastery grounds. There’s been no movement anywhere.’

Chatsworth was suddenly indignant. ‘I haven’t been shot by a bloody monk, have I?’

They radioed the news and then waited for another patrol to join them, after which they searched the area fruitlessly. Chatsworth walked back to the Factory, which was only a few streets away, apparently fit but a little pale. There was another search the following morning, this time to locate the fire position in the hope of finding the empty cartridge case, but nothing was found. The matter was reported in terms of an FUP that was NT after an NK gunman had fired one low-velocity.45 round — in other words, after the shooting by a not-known gunman there was a follow-up but there was no trace. The bullet was thought to have come from a revolver and had been battered almost spherical on its way through Chatsworth’s flak jacket. It had broken the skin and caused slight bruising but had not penetrated fully. Informed opinion had it that it must have been a ricochet, but Chatsworth never accepted this, presumably feeling that it somehow lessened the seriousness of the event. Nevertheless, there was no doubt that his flak jacket had saved him from serious injury and he was more shaken than he cared to reveal. For several days he was quieter than usual but after that he recovered his assertiveness and became very proud of his wound. Henry Sandy was treating it and found that, instead of healing rapidly as it should have, it was getting worse from day to day. He threatened Chatsworth with lead poisoning and impotence and Chatsworth then confessed to daily acerbations of the wound in order to ensure a more dramatic scar than the faded boil mark he was likely to get. The wound then healed but Chatsworth kept his holed and slightly bloodstained shirt as a relic and refused to have his camouflage smock replaced. He repaired it himself with a conspicuous cross patch of tape on the tear but he did, nevertheless, exchange his flak jacket for an intact one.

There was a more immediate result of the incident. The CO came to the Factory that night to get a first-hand account from Chatsworth — who was able to tell him even less than anyone else since he had not even noticed the shot. None the less, the CO listened gravely, smoothing his black hair with the palm of his hand, and then said: ‘I’ve been expecting this for some time. You realise that. But I didn’t expect it here. Deliberate, calculated murder — it would have been if it hadn’t been for your flak jacket. You’re a very lucky young man, you realise that. Strange that they should have used a revolver, if that’s what it was. A high-velocity rifle would have been far more effective, as they must know only too well. Which leads me to believe that it might have been someone doing a bit of freelancing. Not a properly set-up job. It’s a pound to a penny it was someone from the new estate rather than one of the boyos from here. They don’t like shitting on their own doorsteps, these people.’ He looked at the tired, respectful faces surrounding him in the ops room. ‘But I’m glad it happened, very glad. There’s a lesson here for all of us — hard targets. If I’ve said that once I’ve said it a thousand times. Have I not, Edward?’

Edward, who had been fiddling with a government issue biro, looked up earnestly. ‘Yes, sir. More than once.’

‘Hard targets, gentlemen. I cannot emphasise that enough, though God knows I’ve been saying it since before we arrived. And yet still — still — people — or, rather, officers — walk in pairs beneath street-lamps in terrorist areas and wonder why they get shot. Think yourselves lucky, all of you, even those who weren’t there, because you could well have been. Any questions?’

The CO looked around, his jaw thrust forward as though that was where he wanted to take the questions when they came. But none came, his glance softened, he allowed his lips to relax into a wry little smile and his brown eyes twinkled. ‘Good. Take it you all understand. Now for the good news. Within the last hour a car was stopped at a VCP in the City Centre. Five men in it, three of them armed, and all five live in the new estate. The brigadier wants us to search their houses in conjunction with the RUC, and we are at this very moment waiting for confirmation from Brigade. It’ll stir up trouble, I daresay, but that’s all right with me. Good. Now, three platoons from A and Support companies will RV here in fifteen minutes. Their job is to stand by in case of trouble. Edward, I want your platoons to do the actual search because they know the estate best. I shall lead the attack but I want you on hand to deal with any trouble the way you dealt with that Peace Line business — straight in and no nonsense. Don’t give ’em a chance to get going. Okay?’

‘Right, sir.’ During the next half hour preparations were made and Edward bustled around busily, becoming the more irritable as his grasp of what was going on grew weaker. The CO was also busy being decisive but was obviously in high good humour. At one point he clapped his hand on Chatsworth’s injured shoulder and said, ‘Well done, my boy, well done. You’ve done the battalion a power of good. Keep it up.’

When the three standby platoons arrived there was more noise and confusion in the Factory than ever. The ops room became an extension of battalion headquarters, taking on its atmosphere of tension, panic, fear and frenetic activity. Very soon everyone seemed to have at least three things to do which depended upon their getting hold of someone else who either couldn’t be found or also had three things to do. The CO gave orders in a loud voice and then demanded in an even louder voice to know what had happened about them. Edward flapped and squawked like a worried hen but no one paid him any more than the most formal attention. It was a place that Charles would normally have sought to avoid with all manner of ruses and stratagems, but on this occasion he hung around trying to have a word with Nigel Beale. He and Chatsworth had decided to pass on to Beale, in a suitably disguised form, the information about the boxes in the monastery. In remaining in the ops room at such a time they risked being given unnecessary tasks or being accused of being idle, which amounted to the same thing, but they had decided the matter was of sufficient importance to justify temporary discomfort. Chatsworth was despatched to do a weapon inspection before they had a chance to get to Beale, who was busy with the CO, but Charles persisted and eventually got him alone. He told him that a man had approached them on the street, some time before the shooting, and had told them that there were boxes with weapons in them hidden in a tunnel beneath the monastery. Such incidents were not uncommon: people sometimes approached patrolling soldiers at night and volunteered information of varying importance and reliability. Often they would just say that there was a weapon in number forty-six or that there was going to be trouble on Saturday, but they would never reveal their identities or how they came by the information. Nevertheless, the soldiers who patrolled regularly knew some of them by sight.

Nigel was intensely interested. ‘He told this to you and Chatsworth? How reliable is it?’

‘No idea. Never seen him before.’

‘Sounds very plausible, though. Just the sort of place they would use if they could get access to it. Probably Armalites.’

‘That’s what we thought.’

Beale looked suspicious. ‘What made you think that?’

‘They said on television that Armalites were coming from America.’

Nigel drew closer. ‘Keep this to yourself, Charles. Even if there’s nothing in it we don’t want it getting about. It would be a dangerous rumour to have around. I’ll pass it on to the CO as soon as I can get a word in.’ He made a crabbed little note on his mill-board and nodded conspiratorily to Charles.

The search teams moved out at 2245 hours. The search was to go in at 2300. Charles had with him a corporal and three soldiers, as well as three RUC constables who were to do the actual searching. In charge of the RUC men was a Sergeant Mole, sent from the police station occupied by battalion HQ. He was a portly, silver-haired, easy-going man with a pleasantly soft accent instead of the usual Belfast one. ‘Ever done a search before, sir?’ he asked Charles.

‘No, I haven’t. I shall be looking to you for guidance, Sergeant Mole.’ It had taken Charles some time to get used to the RUC’s strict adherence to military command structures.

Sergeant Mole lit his pipe, his double chin bulging over his green collar. He looked reassuringly avuncular. ‘Nothing to worry about, sir. I’ll do the talking and you send your men clean through the house into every room straightaway in case there’s anyone who wants to try any funny business. Tell them to get everyone in the house down into the front room. Then search the garden and any sheds. When we start to search we’ll take a room each and have one of your men with each of us in case we find any villains hiding in the airing cupboard or in case anyone claims we planted a howitzer in there. Wouldn’t be the first time, I’m afraid.’

They moved in convoy to the estate and then each search party, with its escort, drove quickly to its appointed address. The estate was unlit, as usual, although many of the houses still had their lights on. It was not a cold evening, and groups of people sat drinking on some of the doorsteps. Other groups were gathered on street corners. Derisive shouts followed the convoy as it moved in and there was a desultory banging of dustbins, but the operation was mounted too quickly for the warning to be effective.

The object of Charles’s search was an end-of-terrace house with a rubbish-heap of a garden but no broken windows and a front door that still showed traces of paint. The escort party debussed and crouched by the tatty privet hedges in the street while a couple ran round to the back of the house to cut off any escape through the gardens. Sergeant Mole knocked on the door with Charles beside him and the rest of the party by the side wall out of sight. It was opened by a diminutive, middle-aged woman with grey hair, a bony, wrinkled face and glasses with very thick lenses. ‘Mrs Ray?’ asked Sergeant Mole. She stared at the uniformed men. Her lips moved once as though to speak but she said nothing. ‘We’ve arrested your son Michael and I’m afraid we’re going to have to search your house, Mrs Ray.’ She still said nothing. Sergeant Mole stepped purposefully inside and she moved back hesitantly. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Ray, but we have to search the house.’ She let go of the door handle and ran into the living room with one hand over her face. Charles stepped inside and beckoned the soldiers to follow. There was an unpleasant, airless smell, and the sounds of a television came from the living room. The corporal and one soldier ran straight upstairs, their boots thumping heavily, and the two other soldiers went quickly through the downstairs rooms. Charles followed Sergeant Mole into the living room. The woman stood by the electric fire, still with one hand over her face, holding a girl of about twelve with the other. A short, fat man with curly dark hair and wearing braces turned down the sound on the television. ‘Sorry to have to do this, Mr Ray,’ said Sergeant Mole, ‘but your son was found driving a car in which there were arms and wanted men. Could you tell me which is his room?’

‘Back room,’ said the man, in a matter-of-fact way.

‘He shares wid his brothers,’ added the woman quickly. ‘He’s no harm, they’re no harm, none of them.’ She pulled the girl closer to her. One of the soldiers came in with two boys, one in his teens and the other about nine or ten. They were tousled and frightened. The smaller one wore dirty underpants and the elder held a pair of jeans around himself. The soldier who shepherded them in looked embarrassed. ‘Found them upstairs, sir. No more.’ He went back up the stairs.

Sergeant Mole then left the room and the woman put her arm round the girl, as though to prevent her from being touched by anyone. The little boy sat on the tatty sofa and the elder one stood sullenly by the electric fire, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. The man said something which Charles had to ask him to repeat. He said it again but Charles’s ear was unaccustomed to the thick West Belfast accent. Finally, the man repeated the four words with sarcastic slowness. ‘Is-he-all-right?’

Charles was concentrating so much on understanding that he had to think for a moment who was meant. ‘Yes — yes, as far as I know,’ he said. ‘I think he’s all right. There was no trouble, I believe.’

‘Where is he?’

‘He’s in custody. I’m afraid I don’t know where. I wasn’t there.’ There was a silence. Charles felt sorry for the people and wanted to say so, but he knew that anything he said or did would be filtered through the medium of his boots, beret, flak jacket and rifle. There was no escaping his role. ‘I’ll try to find out for you,’ he said lamely in the end. Advertisements flickered soundlessly across the television screen. The man moved an ashtray from the arm of the sofa to the mantelpiece.

‘I’ll make tay,’ muttered the woman. She took her hand from her face and walked with tightly-folded arms out of the room. The girl ran after her.

‘I’ll see if I can find out where your son is,’ Charles said again, but the fat man turned his back and sat on the sofa without speaking. The two boys stared. Charles went upstairs and asked Sergeant Mole, who was turning out a cupboard in the front bedroom. ‘This hasn’t been turned out since the house was built,’ he said with genuine disgust. ‘You can smell it in the street, I reckon.’ By the time Charles got back down the woman had made the tea and was standing sipping it, holding the cup in both hands. ‘He’s in Hastings Street police station,’ he said.

The woman’s eyes, enlarged by her spectacles, looked directly at him for the first time. ‘He’s never in no trouble,’ she said. ‘He ain’t any of them. He don’t have no trouble wid him.’ Her lips trembled. ‘God strike me dead if I lie.’

Charles was called out of the room by a voice from upstairs. As he left the room he caught his rifle butt on the door-jamb. He looked back to apologise but said nothing.

His corporal was at the top of the stairs. ‘Found something, sir,’ he said in a low voice. ‘In the back room.’ The room was very small and there was hardly room to move around the double bed. It was where the three boys slept, and was filthy. The room stank. One of the policemen held up the top end of the mattress. On an old brown blanket beneath was a rusty revolver with a broken handle. It seemed a pitiful gesture. Sergeant Mole picked it up in a piece of cloth. ‘Old Webley,’ he said. ‘Very old. Loaded, too. Silly young fool. It’ll have his paw-marks all over, I don’t doubt. What a place to hide it, eh?’

Nothing more was found in the rest of the house. Sergeant Mole showed the revolver to the family in the living room. They gazed sullenly at it. The woman blinked tearfully. ‘He’s had no trouble before,’ she said. ‘He niver told us he had that. It’s no hisn, it can’t be. Someone else has put it there.’ She pressed a tightly-screwed handkerchief to her thin nose. ‘It’s never his, it can’t be his. He never told us about it. Dear God, it can’t be hisn. He would’ve said. He’s not with them. He’s not a part of it.’

Sergeant Mole wrapped the revolver preciously in a piece of cloth. The man stared at the threadbare carpet. No one looked up at them when they left.

Only one of the other houses searched yielded anything, in this case a worthwhile find. There was an old British Army.303 Lee-Enfield rifle, two hundred rounds of 7.62 ammunition, twenty pounds of home-made explosive and, under the floor of a shed, a home-made mortar. The CO was delighted and stayed in the area of the search longer than was necessary in the hope of provoking a riot which he could quell, but none came. It was likely that the trouble, if there were any, would be a planned demonstration some days later, although even this was not that likely since trouble usually followed fruitless rather than successful searches.

Back in the Factory the CO had drinks in the ops room and ordered everyone to join him. Drink and his own boisterous good humour accentuated all his normal characteristics, and he gave a lecture on the Lee-Enfield, using the captured one as a demonstration model. When he had finished, his eyes lighted upon Charles. ‘Ah, Charles, I want to speak to you.’ Still holding the rifle, he grabbed Charles by the arm and propelled him into a corner where he spoke in low, earnest, conspiratorial terms, apparently imagining that no one else was listening. ‘You’ve done well, you’ve done bloody well, but it’s not on, I’m afraid. Politicians won’t allow it. Too much of a hot potato. Sorry to disappoint you.’

‘Right, sir.’ Charles was not certain that he knew what the CO was talking about, but it was a response that worked its usual magic.

‘Good man. Knew you’d take it like that.’ He squeezed Charles’s arm hard, his dark eyes brimming with sincerity and alcohol. ‘It’s infuriating, I know. We know they’re there but we can’t touch them. Had it right from the top. They must have a source. Keep it under your hat. And to think they could be used on my soldiers, that’s what makes me want to scream blue murder. I’d raze the place to the ground if I had my way. Rid these poor people of their priests, their politicians and their paramilitary thugs — and us, mind you, and us — and give them a chance to get on with their lives in peace. The day will come, I hope. For the time being no joy, though. But you did well, Charles. Let’s have more of it.’

The CO grinned and punched Charles playfully in the stomach. His face was so close that Charles could see the back of his tongue. ‘Good man. Have another drink. Don’t argue. We’ll knock this university stuff out of you yet.’

Charles made his escape unnoticed after the CO had finished with him. He lay down in his partition but could hear the drinking going on for another couple of hours. Months later it fell to the company officers to pay for the drinks.