A Breed of Heroes

6

The company’s spirits remained relatively high for some days after the arms finds. The shooting of Chatsworth also contributed to good morale. Everyone was amused because it was Chatsworth, and the story was put about, to his annoyance, that he really had been shot by a monk. Soldiers made jests to him about what clerical gentlemen carried beneath their vestments, and how the real meaning of Holy Orders was ‘Aim — steady — fire’. Spirits were lifted by the mere fact of a shooting, since something happening was always more exciting than nothing.

The worst times for everyone were periods of inactivity during which the boredom and the drudgery of military life wore on remorselessly. Like everyone else, Charles was short on sleep and temper and was, indeed, more tired than during active periods because then the excitement was stimulating and the tiredness healthy. Living conditions in the all-male military community were cheerless and sordid; patrolling, guarding, cleaning and watchkeeping formed a grinding and unending routine.

Underlying everything in his life was the feeling that no one in the world cared for him. He suspected that everyone felt this. It was evident in occasional surliness and in the deliberate, hearty display of lack of emotion. The positive side of this was that he found he worried less about his own concerns but at the same time he cared less for other people, and noticed them less.

Each man developed a front of unconcern, which in some was ingrained, to the extent that the more he hardened himself the more he relied upon the corporate identity to take the place of his own. This corporate identity could be seen and felt: each man borrowed from it and lent to it; it embraced all and excluded none, to such an extent that all seemed merely to be aspects of it. It was difficult to say how much these conditions contributed to the suicide of Lance-Corporal Winn but, whether or not they acknowledged it, everyone felt that the contribution must have been substantial.

Lance-Corporal Winn was a small, chunky soldier from Birmingham, a man of few words but reliable and conscientious. He appeared to have little or no ambition to distinguish himself but simply jogged along and ‘kept his nose clean’, as the Army would have it. Charles knew him by sight but had never spoken to him, except to give orders when mounting guard in Aldershot. In time he would probably have made sergeant. The day before his death he had been told by another soldier, who had had a letter from his own wife, that back in Aldershot his wife had been carrying on with someone from one of the other regiments there. He had not said much about this at the time. In fact, his informant had had the impression that he didn’t much care. He had been on guard duty that night and had shot himself just after six, when he had come off duty. He had walked over to where the Pigs were parked in the Factory yard and had gone behind one of them. His relief, who had not spoken to him except to remark upon the cold, had assumed that he had gone to pee against the wall. When the shot came, he and one of the other guards had run to the Pig and found Winn on the ground behind it, but with the back half of his head splattered over the wall. He had apparently rested his rifle butt on the ground, bent over and put his mouth round the barrel.

Winn was in Tim’s platoon and Tim had been roused immediately. Henry Sandy was sent for and the body taken away in his Land-Rover ambulance. The padre came and Tim was unnecessarily rude to him. Arrangements were made to inform Winn’s widow through the Families officer in Aldershot. The CO appeared during the morning and talked to Edward, Tim and the soldier who had received the letter. The effect on the company — and, to a lesser extent, on the rest of the battalion — was to lower morale for a few days. Everyone was quieter and more serious, there was none of the normal banter and boisterousness amongst the soldiers nor any of the perennial grumbling that was so necessary to them. However, things were done quietly and conscientiously, and there was less fuss. But days pass in the Army as they do everywhere else and normality reasserts itself with the willing assistance of everyone, perhaps more quickly than in civilian life because of the consciousness of common purpose. Layer upon layer of daily and nightly routine soon smothered any exceptional event.

Charles was not sorry, though, when a telephone call summoned him with all his kit to battalion headquarters. There had been another shooting: Philip Lamb had inadvertently shot himself in the foot and Charles had to take his place as PRO. He was glad to leave the company and the Factory. The people and the place had become depressingly familiar, like a tedious argument for ever repeated and never resolved. There was a dreary intimacy about it all from which he was glad to free himself. The police station occupied by battalion HQ, though far from comfortable, could not fail to be an improvement upon the Factory, and dealing with the press would be a welcome change from the sordid concerns of his platoon, where kit inspections and deficiencies seemed to be the paramount concern in his life. Sergeant Wheeler was to look after the platoon until a new subaltern arrived from the Depot. Charles bade him goodbye in the Factory yard with what seemed even to himself an absurd formality considering he was moving half a mile or so.

‘’Spect we’ll see you back with all them press poofters, sir,’ Sergeant Wheeler said as they shook hands.

‘No doubt, and I shall expect your help.’

‘You’ll be too good for us then, sir. You won’t want to know us.’

‘Goodbye, Sergeant Wheeler. Good luck.’

‘Goodbye, sir, and you, sir.’

Despite the relief at leaving the Factory there were disadvantages about going to battalion HQ. It was renowned throughout the battalion as a place of madness and fear. In addition to the loathing which most soldiers have for the headquarters of higher formations, even their own, the personality of the CO pervaded the building and induced in all who entered it a sense of urgency bordering on panic and the feeling that heads were about to roll. As Charles’s Land-Rover entered the gates into the yard around which the police station was built he already began to feel that there had, after all, been something homely and reassuring about company life. Battalion HQ contained much that was unknown and hence dangerous for second lieutenants. No move in the Army was entirely for the better.

‘Going to be murder with the CO breathing down your neck all the time,’ Edward had said. ‘Rather you than me, old son. Still, it’s more your sort of line, I suppose, all this press rubbish. You read books. Apparently, the new chap we’re getting is very good. Bit of life and a drop of new blood won’t do the company any harm. Drop in and see us sometime when you’re swanning around. Don’t forget to hand your kit in to the company stores. And your rifle.’

‘No more action for you,’ Chatsworth had said. ‘You’re being more or less pensioned off. There might be some women amongst these journalists, so bear me in mind. You know, the sort who have to do it to prove to themselves how liberated they are. With a chauvinistic Ackie shit like me they can feel they’re even more liberated than they thought by embracing the opposition, so to speak. Poor fools. Bring ’em round for an interview.’

It turned out that Philip Lamb had shot his foot whilst entering B company’s location with a TV team. While unloading his pistol for the sentry’s inspection, as was compulsory when entering any defended area, he had carelessly cocked it with the full magazine still in and, pointing towards the ground, had squeezed the trigger to clear it. The TV team had filmed his subsequent writhings. It was the first negligent discharge in the battalion and the CO, who was furious, had fined him heavily. He had brought public disgrace to the regiment and the CO was determined not to have him back.

Charles reported to the adjutant, Colin Wood. Colin, who had left the Army to go into business and had rejoined it after marrying, looked as weary and long-suffering as might be expected of anyone who worked closely with the CO. But he had a reputation for competence and sanity, and his face was kindly. Having been outside the Army, he did not regard all civilians as odd nor all subalterns as criminally irresponsible. ‘Nice to have you with us, Charles,’ he said, balancing on the rear legs of his chair and clasping his hands behind his head. ‘We could do with a new face round here. You’ve got a pretty cushy job, but apart from that it’s all bad news. You’re sharing a bedroom with Tony Watch and an office with me. You’re on the list for watchkeeping in the ops room, which means three eight-hour shifts a week — six till two, two till ten, ten till six. You also have to help me deal with complaints from the locals, of which there are many, and you have some sort of responsibility under Anthony Hamilton-Smith for community relations. Though I don’t think there’s too much of that going on. There’s a telly in the Mess, which sometimes works, the food’s awful and we’re still not allowed gravy. You have to wear a pistol and carry ammunition at all times, including in the bath if you can find one, so better draw one from the armoury. We’re not allowed out, of course, except on duty, and the press, I’m told, can be very difficult. If anyone in the battalion cocks it up the CO will hold you responsible. Apart from all that it’s heaven.’

Colin’s office was on the first floor of the building above the entrance, overlooking the street. The police station had been built during the late 1950s and, like many of Ulster’s police stations, was halfway towards being a fortified barracks from its very inception. There were steel shutters on all the windows through which the defenders could fire, if necessary, by sliding little peep-holes to one side. The office floor, Charles was told, was eighteen inches of reinforced concrete and supposed to be blast-proof. Surprisingly, though, the entrance to the police reception area was unguarded — on orders from some civilian official, who was anxious that members of the public should not feel intimidated in coming to police stations. There was an Army guard inside, however. It did not take Charles long to settle in, if dumping his kit on a bed in the corner of a disused office could be called settling in. At least this time the bed was a real one, with blankets and sheets.

Charles was then sent down to the military hospital to be ‘put in the picture’ — a very common phrase — about his new duties by Philip Lamb. Philip was in a junior officers’ ward for not too serious cases, a quiet and lightly populated place. His right foot was bandaged and supported. He was propped up on pillows, reading David Stirling’s account of the formation of the Long Range Desert Patrol Group, later to become the Special Air Service. Philip was one of the few officers Charles had met who seemed to take a serious interest in war. His neat, precise face looked as worried and anxious as usual but he smiled when he saw Charles. ‘I’m so glad it’s you,’ he said. ‘Do sit down. The CO was going to appoint Chatsworth, of all people. Can you imagine? He’d kill somebody, he’s so tactless. I sent a message to him through Colin saying that you were the only officer in the battalion who could read English, let alone write it. He must have listened to me for once. Because, of course, it is a job that requires a certain amount of judgment, as you’ll have gathered, and you have to be able to see things from the point of view of a civilian. It’s ridiculous to suppose that most of our comrades-in-arms could ever do that. You were the obvious choice. Of course, your problem’s the other way round, if anything. You’ll have no problem about not being too military but you mustn’t let them forget that you are in the Army. Hope you don’t mind being pushed into it like this?’

‘It didn’t take much pushing. I was only too pleased to get out of the Factory.’

‘Of course, yes. Must’ve been rather grim there. I’m sorry to leave the job, to be honest. I didn’t want to. I could’ve come back when I’m better but the CO didn’t seem to want me. I think he’s rather angry about what I did, though it could have happened to anyone, as far as I can see. Just one of those things.’ He closed his book and changed his position carefully. ‘There are a few perks to the job, you know, apart from meeting the journalists, who are very nice. You can occasionally put on civilian clothes and visit their offices, and you don’t have to do watchkeeping.’

‘I do.’

‘Do you really?’ Philip looked puzzled. ‘I never did. Perhaps they didn’t trust me. Anyway, you’ll find all the necessary files in my office, as well as a kind of Who’s Who of the press in Northern Ireland. The PR desk at HQ are also very helpful. That’s another little swan you can arrange for yourself — visits to them. Not that they’re a waste of time, far from it. But it’s just very good to get out of battalion HQ now and again. Clears the cobwebs of the mind a little and even breathes hope of life into the soul. Perhaps that’s going a bit far, but you know what I mean. It’s good to get out.’

‘Thanks. What about the press themselves?’

‘Very charming on the whole. I think so, anyway. Of course, you have to protect them from the CO. He can be quite beastly and ruin in a minute all the good-will you’ve built up over a month. Actually, I think he’s terrified of them, though there are a couple you have to be careful with, I must admit. There’s one called Brian Beazely who’s the most awful incompetent, drunken bore, to be avoided because he’s a nuisance rather than malicious — has been known to misquote rather embarrassingly. And then no one ever believes your side of it. They all think you must have said whatever it was because it’s there in print. Such is the power of Master Caxton. And the other one to watch for is Colm McColm of the Gazette, the Southern Irish Gazette. He’s very anti, and the trouble with him is he’ll quote you exactly, which is almost as bad. Very pro-IRA. Probably in it, for all I know. He can hear a whisper from two streets away, so watch him. Always asks awkward questions in public.’

‘Where do you meet them?’

‘Oh, they’ll come to you. You’ll get to know them soon enough.’ He fidgeted a little with the bedclothes and Charles was about to ask him about his foot, which he would have done before had Philip not been so eager to talk about the job, when he continued morosely: ‘I suppose you’ll have my pistol. I’m sure there’s something wrong with it, you know. I wish they’d let me just have another look at it. I took it on the range four times and it misfired on three. Then it fires when it shouldn’t. The armourer examined it and said it was just me but I don’t think he was interested, so do be careful, Charles. As it was, I was rather lucky. Apparently, I’ll be all right, but I’ll have to learn to walk again, they tell me. It was the first time I’d ever hit anything with it.’

Charles tried to be cheerful. ‘Perhaps you’ll get compensation. Terrorists do, don’t they? So there’s no reason why you shouldn’t.’

‘If I did it might go some way towards paying the fine, but I don’t suppose I shall. I mean, they look at it differently if you do it yourself. I’ve found my insurance doesn’t cover it either. D’you know, the CO was going to charge me with self-inflicted injury, a court-martial offence, I think? I had to fill in no end of forms to prove it wasn’t deliberate, though how they prove anything, I don’t know.’

Philip was looking increasingly miserable. Charles made another effort. ‘What are the other people in here like?’

‘Oh, all right, I s’pose. Usual sorts, you know. Trouble is, they were all shot by someone else. It makes a difference. That I wasn’t and that I am the education officer has become something of a joke. The whole hospital knows about it and all the visitors. Some of them even come to see me and laugh. I think it’s all a little insensitive to be honest.’

Philip had been a joke in the battalion ever since joining it, and his manner of leaving delighted nearly everyone. However, he was soon forgotten about by all except Charles, who was really no more at home with a pistol than Philip had been and who feared daily to share his predecessor’s fate. Though less cumbersome and heavy than the rifle he had been used to, the disadvantage of the Browning was that it had to be carried at all times, with two full magazines of ammunition, on pain of a heavy fine. It was so odd to be taking a pistol to the bath, or tucking it under the pillow, that it was not difficult to remember it on these occasions. The difficulty was to remember it at the meal-table or at the desk. When indoors Charles generally wore it tied around his waist or in his pocket and when out he wore it in its holster in the cross-draw position, mainly because it was more comfortable to sit in the Land-Rover with it that way round. Either way, it was a mental as well as a physical burden, and he felt some rare sympathy for the gun-toting boys who were supposed to be trying to kill him. At least he did not have to hide it as well as remember it.

The CO’s briefing for his new job took place over dinner that night. The Mess was a small room adjacent to the ops room, from which the mush and crackle of the radios never ceased. Meals were eaten at a table behind a partition and were served from a hot-plate, as the cookhouse was at the far end of the building.

‘Good to have you with us, Thoroughgood,’ the CO said as they helped themselves to soup. ‘Makes a change from the Factory, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘If only the public knew what a pittance we pay our soldiers and what these blasted car-workers and miners and what have you get for kicking their heels and complaining because they have to work at all. Eh?’

‘Yes, sir.’

They sat and the CO called for some wine ‘Must have some plonk to wash it down with. We take it in turns to buy every night. Your turn tomorrow, Charles.’ He laughed and the others at the table laughed with him, except Colin Wood, who raised his eyebrows at Charles and shrugged discreetly. When he had finished laughing the CO continued. ‘Reason I picked you for this job — which is a vitally important one and is becoming more so every day’ — his stomach hardened and he held his chest for a moment’s indigestion, before continuing to pour out the wine — ‘God, it’s an important job. This PR business is taking us all over, you know. We’re fighting a politician’s war now, not a soldier’s war, as I keep saying till I’m blue in the face. Not even a decent shooting war, nothing to get stuck into. Aden and Borneo were different, of course, farther away, much easier. Government doesn’t like shit on its own doorstep but that’s its problem, not ours. We’ve got them over a barrel this time. They can’t pull out of this one. But we must keep our noses clean, which is why I chose you, Charles. Bit of tact. The soft touch. Besides which, you’re the only one of my subalterns whom I was sure could read and write. No names, no pack drill, but some of them graze their knuckles on the ground when they walk — not that they won’t make good officers, mind, in time. First-rate some of them, what the regiment needs. And I imagine you must have met some of these journalist types at university, or something like them anyway. Same sort of animal. What’s-his-name — old doings — Philip Lamb — gave you a decent briefing, did he? Good. Well, you’ll have your own vehicle, one of my escorts, so you can swan around and deal with these people when you’re not out with me. Keep them off my back and off the backs of my soldiers, that’s the main thing. No one in the battalion, including myself, will talk to any member of the press unless you are present. Got that? You will make sure that no one says anything bloody stupid and that nothing’s wheedled out of them. You can’t be too careful with some of these bloody journalists. You will also keep a sharp eye out for any of these directional microphones I keep hearing about and make sure no one says anything they shouldn’t when they’re around. And, of course, you’d better watch your own step when you’re talking to these chaps. Remember that the American Army’s effort in Vietnam was ruined because they had to cope with the press as well. Point is, Charles, if anything goes wrong I’ll know who to blame. Okay? Good. You’re responsible for community relations, under the 2IC. He’ll brief you on that separately.’ The CO raised his glass. ‘Best of luck, and don’t blow your foot off.’

Tony Watch, the signals officer with whom Charles shared his bedroom, was a brisk, chubby, cheerful man with a moustache. He seemed to be energetically efficient, enjoyed his signals and enjoyed his pipe, which he smoked nearly all the time. He was married but it was some weeks before Charles discovered that. Tony was not a man to talk about himself. Indeed, he had little to say about most things, though he was prepared to comment briefly on anything. His views on most subjects boiled down to a simple choice of either/or; you could always have one thing or another but you could never have both, and you were darned lucky if you could even choose which; on the whole, you just had to like it and lump it, whatever it was.

Tony was already in bed when Charles decided to turn in. He was reading a car magazine and smoking his pipe. ‘Hope you don’t mind the pipe,’ he said. ‘Say if you do. Can’t sleep without a pipe before bed. Can’t open the windows because of these shutters. Though yours hasn’t got one, has it? So you could. Might get shot, I s’pose.’

There was a window above each bed, and Tony’s, as with every other window in the building, had a steel shutter over it which had to be shut whenever there was a light in the room. Charles’s was the exception: no shutter and no sign of there ever having been one.

‘Don’t understand that,’ said Tony, taking his pipe out of his mouth and craning his neck. ‘Only thing you can do is stuff your kitbag in it. Not that that would stop a peashooter, but it’ll make you feel better. You’ll just have to be a bit careful how you get in and out of bed and not hang around with the light on.’

The bed was parallel with the wall, and the window was about halfway along it. The room was so small that there was nowhere else to put the bed. That night, and for the rest of his time there, Charles entered his bed from the bottom, sliding on his belly like a snake. He left it each morning by lowering himself off the side.

Tony followed the first of these performances with interest. ‘That’s the stuff. Keep your arse down. You won’t be spending much time there anyway, so it shouldn’t be much of a problem. This is the first time I’ve been in bed before two since we got here. CO must be tired.’

Routine at battalion HQ turned out to be even more tiring than that in the companies. The hours were much the same but there was no patrolling to break the monotony. Because it was battalion HQ no one felt he could do anything safely, even though everyone would have benefited from more sleep, and so people sat at their desks or radios long after there was any need. The CO drove himself mercilessly and none of the officers felt justified in going to bed before he did. Just as he would probably not have noticed if they had, and would probably not have criticised them for doing so, so he did not notice that they were waiting upon him.

Sharing the adjutant’s office gave Charles a different view of the workings of the battalion to that which he had seen so far. People in the companies tended to feel, consciously or not, that battalion HQ existed in order to support them. How well or badly they thought it did this varied from day to day, though at its best it was never regarded as being any better than it ought to be and usually it fell far short. The point was, they were in the front line, hence they were the centre of the world and everything else was eccentric. In battalion HQ, however, everyone was quite clear that this was where the war was really being waged, and that the companies were, at their best, merely an extension of battalion HQ’s will and at other times selfish, myopic irritants who had to be coped with along with the lunacies of battalion HQ’s other major problem. Brigade. At their worst the companies were thought to be a greater nuisance than the enemy, whoever he might be. Brigade was seen as a support organisation, usually inadequate and interfering, overstaffed and safe from all danger.

Fortunately, Colin Wood was an easy man to get on with. He had a quiet, wry humour and time for everyone. The only signs of the pressure he worked under — much of it caused by the administrative quirks of the CO — was that he smoked about sixty cigarettes a day and looked unnaturally pale. Charles, if he were free from his own work, would often help him out. After a while Colin became quite forthcoming about the CO, the company commanders, battalion rivalries and Brigade matters, but more often than not he had little time for small-talk. One evening the telephone they shared went out of order and Charles speculated that, with luck, it had succumbed to a telephonic disease that might spread to all the other phones in the building and give everyone a peaceful night. ‘It might even drive the CO to drink and despair,’ he said.

Colin shook his head. ‘It might drive him to all sorts of places but not to drink. He never gets drunk. He gets merry, tipsy now and again, but he never has that much and he never gets really drunk. He likes the good cheer, but that’s all.’

‘I’ve never noticed,’ said Charles. ‘I mean, he often has a glass in his hand and you can see it in his eyes when he’s had a few. I admit I’ve never seen him properly drunk.’

Colin leant back in his chair, balancing on the two rear legs with the back of his head against the wall. He lit a cigarette. ‘His father was a doctor in Leeds, an alcoholic, and I think he gave the family a hard time. Eventually he left — ran off with another woman, I think — and died in Newcastle. The CO was brought up by his mother in much reduced circumstances and he was put through school by an uncle. He had a younger brother who died when he was very young — about four or five — and for some reason he always seemed to blame his father for that. After he’d joined the Army he paid back his uncle every penny of his education. He wanted to go to art school really but couldn’t afford it, and his mother, who was a very strict Methodist, for some reason didn’t approve anyway. She died last year.’

‘How d’you know all this?’ asked Charles.

‘His wife told me. He never talks about it himself. You know one of their children is a spastic?’

Charles shook his head.

‘Named Raymond after the brother who died. Children are the CO’s soft spot. Any soldier who says his wife’s having a baby can get all the leave he wants.’

‘It’s hard to imagine him at art school,’ said Charles.

‘I suppose it is now. You don’t know what he was like then, of course. He has four pet hates now — adulterers, or anyone who’s even reasonably promiscuous, drunkards, people who don’t pay their debts and anyone who’s unkind to children. He thinks journalists are the first three anyway so don’t whatever you do introduce him to a child-beating one.’

‘I’ll look out for that,’ said Charles.

In fact, his first substantial contact with the press was with the man called Beazely, against whom Philip Lamb had specifically warned him. Beazely rang, identified himself and invited Charles to dinner in his hotel that evening. Philip Lamb had not led him to expect such treatment as this, and he did not know whether he was allowed to accept. The adjutant referred him to the CO who agreed, saying, ‘On condition you carry.’

‘Sir?’

‘Bertie.’

‘Bertie, sir?’

‘Bertie Browning, for God’s sake. Where’ve you just come from, Charles, the nursery? You’re not at university now, you know. Carry your Browning nine-millimetre pistol. Wear a shoulder-holster. You’ve worn one before. I don’t want my officers shot in the back over dinner.’

Beazely was in the Europa, the large modern hotel in the city centre. It paid no protection money to the IRA and so was elaborately fortified by wire, lights and security guards. It had been the target of several bombing attempts, one or two partially successful, but was still used by many of the press. Charles was dropped outside by Land-Rover, which made him feel unpleasantly conspicuous, and at first he could not see his way through the defences to the entrance. When with Janet he had not even attempted them. In fact, an uninformed observer would have been hard put to tell whether the wire and corrugated iron were meant to keep intruders out or guests in. However, this time Charles was elated to be in civilian clothes. He felt quite different — not normal, but at least he could begin to remember what it might be like to feel normal. Of course, the discomfort of his shoulder-holster would have prevented him from going too far in that direction. Instead of nestling snugly under his arm, as they appeared to do in all the films, the bulky Browning pressed heavily against his ribs and bulged awkwardly beneath his jacket. For all the defences around the hotel, the body search was cursory and he did not have to explain anything.

Beazely was bloated, bespectacled and friendly. He had a red face and a mop of brown hair which straggled over his ears and collar. A large signet ring was squeezed on to his podgy third finger and the half-smoked cigarette in his other hand looked just as permanent. His manner was both impersonal and intimate. His handshake was limp and wet. ‘Glad to meet you, Charlie. What’ll it be?’

‘Lager, please.’

Beazely ordered two double whiskies. ‘What’s happened to the other bloke — Phil thingie?’

‘He was shot.’

‘Christ, that’s going a bit far. Badly?’

‘No, in the foot.’ Charles had decided to spare the details partly for Philip’s sake and partly out of latent regimental pride.

‘He should’ve rung me. He promised he would if anything happened in your area. I could’ve done a piece on it. He could’ve been a hero. I hope you won’t forget if you get mixed up in anything interesting. Cheers.’

‘The incident was filmed. There was a camera crew there.’

‘Was there? Can’t compete with that. The old steam press has its limitations, you know. At least where that sort of thing is concerned. Same again?’

Beazely either ignored or genuinely did not hear Charles’s protest. ‘We’ll be seeing a lot of each other, Charlie, because I do a lot of Army stuff, you see. You scratch my back and I scratch yours. We can be very useful to each other. That’s the way me and Phil worked it, anyway. Cheers.’ Beazely swallowed with a practised gulp. Charles edged his barely-sipped first drink out of sight with his elbow and raised his second. Twenty minutes later there were four more lined up on the bar, filled to varying levels. Charles was vividly aware of details of his surroundings, such as the closeness of Beazely’s sweating red face and the prodding of Beazely’s fat forefinger, but felt pleasantly detached and remote.

Beazely was swaying backwards and forwards very slightly and talking all the time, his words accompanied by a liberal sprinkling of saliva. ‘The root of the problem is sex, of course. That’s the answer to the Irish question, only no one ever asked it properly. The men booze and so the women don’t bother. The women are hags and so the men booze. It’s the same throughout working-class Belfast, East or West, Loyalist or Republican. Beating each other up on a Friday night is about the closest they ever get to communicating, some of them. Nothing for them at home or in bed and so they go outside for their kicks, and there’s your violent society. If the men knew how to make love and the women had enough self-respect to make themselves desirable it would be a different place, believe me. Balanced, fulfilled, sane, you know. As it is, the divisions in the society as a whole reflect the brutalities and animosities at home. You’ve only got to look at the kids. Old faces on young bodies. They scare me as much as anything.’ The sweat on Beazely’s face was mingling with tears. He put his hand on Charles’s shoulder and drew closer still. Charles was distantly aware of laying his hand on Beazely’s arm in comradely fashion. He was not aware of speaking.

‘Be honest with you, Charlie, straight up. It bloody terrifies me. All of it. I’d rather go back to London and do accidents or gardening or any damn thing but they won’t let me. Keep on about what a great job I’m doing. Great job, my arse. They can’t get anyone else to do it, that’s all. Won’t ever let me write what I want, you know, what I’ve just been talking about. They want hard news all the time. There’s enough hard news in the world without all this. Christ, I’d rather do the chess reports.’

He took off his glasses and, blinking, wiped his eyes upon his sleeve. ‘Main reason I do a lot with the Army is because I’d rather talk to them than to the terrorists. Gives me the creeps just to go in the bad areas. All right for the likes of Jason Kyle and his rag, hobnobbing with the IRA all the time and proud of it. Me, I’m not proud of anything. Not ashamed either. What’s more, I like the Army. Good blokes, know what I mean? Not always too bright, but you can trust ’em. Straight up, like yourself. No messing about. And they don’t chuck bombs around. You and me will make a great team, Charlie, I can see it coming. Two more, please.’

Dinner passed. Charles was not sure how. He remembered going into the dining room and ordering. He knew he had eaten but could not recall whether it was a good meal or whether he just remembered someone — himself or Beazely — saying that it was. There had been an awful lot of talk, mostly, he thought, from Beazely. He clearly remembered leaving the hotel because Beazely had fallen in the reception area after shaking hands. He was glassy-eyed and feeling slightly sick when he returned to battalion HQ. There had been wine with the meal and something afterwards. Even on quiet nights no one in battalion HQ went to bed before two but, finding that neither his absence was commented upon nor his presence noticed, Charles crept away. He undressed slowly and made careful note of where he put everything. He did not put on the light. There was a moment of sheer panic, a draining, despairing, almost tearful moment, when he thought he had lost his pistol; but then he found it in the place in the bed where one would normally put a hot-water bottle. He passed an uncomfortable night.

Sitting at his desk in Colin Wood’s office the next morning Charles feebly pretended to be busy. He copied Philip Lamb’s list of names and telephone numbers from one book to another, then kept both. Philip had also established a card index and Charles sorted it twice without altering it. He drank several cups of instant coffee, without tasting any of it, which was probably an advantage. Fortunately, the adjutant really was busy and had no time to notice anyone else. There were, however, two telephone calls for him. The first was from an unknown major at the PR desk at Headquarters, telling him that he should come up for a briefing, saying that they would all be delighted to see him and adding that, before they ‘went firm’ on anything, could he help out a TV team that afternoon. They wanted to do a feature on how soldiers spent their off-duty time. Charles asked the CO, who said, ‘All right, so long as they don’t take up more than half an hour of the Ackies’ kipping time and so long as they don’t interview anyone. I hold you responsible.’ Charles then rang Edward, who said that the Factory was full enough already without half of Hollywood swarming all over it, but agreed to put a dozen soldiers at the film crew’s disposal when Charles implied that the CO was keen on the idea.

The second call sounded at first like savage interference on a waterlogged line. After a while it became clear that a human being was responsible for the noise and a little while after that Charles distinguished the word Beazely. He greeted him with barely more enthusiasm than he felt. There was more crackling, during which he distinguished the word helicopter. A minute or so of questions and answers established that Beazely believed he had been promised a ride over Belfast in a helicopter. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t any helicopters,’ said Charles.

‘Not you, Charlie, the Army. They’ve got plenty. Use one of theirs.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

Charles snatched at the nearest reason. ‘They don’t do low-level flights over the city.’

‘One went right past my window this morning. Woke me up.’

‘They must have been looking for a car or something. They only do it then.’ It did not sound very convincing. Weariness lessened Charles’s scruples. ‘Anyway, all the helicopters are on border patrol duty today.’

‘What about the one outside my window?’

‘Except for those with urgent operational tasks.’

There was a pause. He could imagine Beazely lighting a cigarette. ‘Get me on one of those then. The border’s better than nothing.’

‘But there’s nothing to see.’

‘That’s the point. There’s a story in that.’

‘Well, I can’t do it. It’s out of our area. Ring Headquarters. They’ll fix it for you.’

‘They won’t. They know me. Come on, Charlie, you must have something. I mean, a report on the incidence of flat feet would do. My news editor’s going crazy. If I don’t feed him something for tomorrow he’ll kill me.’

Beazely sounded seriously distressed. One or two of Charles’s stray scruples came wandering back. After all, he might have referred to the possibility of helicopter rides, in a general sort of way. ‘How about a feature on soldiers’ leisure activities?’

Beazely snorted, causing the telephone to crackle horribly. ‘I did that last week. They didn’t print it.’

‘Well, do a follow-up. Jazz it up a bit. There might be a new angle.’

‘What sort of new angle?’

‘I don’t know. You’re the journalist. I’ll take you to a terrible place where they live, if you like. Something worse than you’ve ever seen. Bring a camera.’

Beazely eventually agreed. He could think of nothing better to do, that was all. It was better to be doing something than sitting around in the hotel getting drunk and frightened.

When Charles arrived at the Factory that afternoon there was a large hire-car parked by the gates. Standing with their hands above their heads and their faces to the wall were three men. A rifle was trained on them from the sentry sangar opposite. Charles got out of his Land-Rover and approached the sangar with a growing unease.

‘Can you identify these men, sir?’ said the sentry’s voice. From close to, his face was just visible.

‘No, I can’t,’ said Charles. ‘At least, not at the moment. Who do they say they are?’

‘They said they’re television blokes.’

‘Well, that’s who they are, then. They’re expected. Did no one tell you?’

Even in the darkness of the sangar the sentry’s expression could be seen to be disgruntled. ‘No one told me, sir.’

‘Did you ask for any identification — press cards or anything?’

‘No, sir.’

Charles started to walk towards the men. ‘You can lower your rifle now.’ The sentry reluctantly withdrew the barrel. Charles introduced himself and apologised. They seemed to take it in good part and even smiled when he asked if they’d been there long. Long enough, it seemed, for their arms to ache. One man, large and bearded, soon produced a camera from his car and another, short and balding, produced recording equipment. The third man was beautiful. He was of medium height, slightly built, with wavy blond hair, strikingly blue eyes, a tanned complexion and a very friendly smile that displayed small even teeth. He wore an expensive light raincoat with wide lapels, belted tightly at the waist. He was the only one of the three unencumbered by equipment. He was Jonathan Kingsley, a name well known from television documentaries. ‘It’s quite all right,’ he said to Charles as they shook hands. ‘You really must not worry.’

‘Thought the car might have a bomb in it,’ said the sentry as he opened the gates. ‘Stop all cars. Major Lumley’s orders.’

Jonathan Kingsley smiled disarmingly at him. ‘A bomb? With us in it?’

‘Edward Lumley is rather enthusiastic,’ said Charles. ‘He’s the company commander.’

Jonathan Kingsley smiled again, looked straight into Charles’s eyes, his head bent to one side. ‘Sounds exciting. Hope we can meet him.’

Charles escorted them into the Factory and upstairs whilst they explained what they wanted to do. He had to leave them outside the ops room as the CO had said that no journalists were to be allowed in any ops room anywhere. He found Edward sitting on the map-table, eating an apple and discussing rugby with the CSM. His face fell when he saw Charles. ‘Oh Christ, you here? You haven’t brought them with you, have you?’

‘They’re just outside the door.’

‘I don’t have to meet them, do I?’

‘It might look odd if you don’t. You don’t have to say anything, except hallo. They’re not going to interview anyone.’

‘Thank Christ for that.’ Edward jumped off the table and bounced his apple off the wall into the waste-paper bin. ‘What do they want, then?’

‘Just a couple of minutes’ film, that’s all. They’ve done the rest of the programme. This is just background for the commentary.’

When introduced to Jonathan Kingsley, Edward behaved like a bashful and tongue-tied schoolboy. He had to be prompted into revealing the whereabouts of the leisure activities they were to film.

‘He’s sweet,’ said Jonathan Kingsley, whilst Edward was off finding his beret. ‘I expected something far more butch from the AAC (A).’

As they were climbing the stairs to the next floor Edward tugged at Charles’s elbow. ‘What’s his name again?’

‘Jonathan Kingsley.’

‘Christ, yes. Seen him on the box. You want to watch him.’

‘Why?’

‘Queer. You can tell by the way he shakes your hand. He squeezes it first then goes all limp, waiting for you to squeeze.’

‘Is that what queers do?’ asked Charles.

Edward frowned. ‘What? No. How would I know? Thought you’d know all about it — Oxford and all that. It’s just what I’ve heard, that’s all.’

They found a dozen soldiers sitting in the canteen with their weapons, helmets, flak jackets and respirators. They stared sullenly at the new arrivals. Jonathan Kingsley turned to Charles. ‘Surely this isn’t how they spend their leisure time?’

Charles turned to Edward. ‘Why are they in battle order?’

‘They always parade with their kit and their weapons.’

‘Parade?’ The most delicate of frowns creased the smooth skin of Jonathan Kingsley’s forehead. ‘Have they paraded for us?’

Edward looked exasperated and his face puckered. Things always seemed to go wrong. ‘Well, you wanted to film them, didn’t you? Here they are.’

‘We wanted to film them doing whatever they do when they’re off duty. We didn’t want them to do anything special for us.’

‘They’re usually asleep when they’re off duty.’

‘They sometimes play volleyball,’ said Charles.

Jonathan Kingsley’s frown faded. ‘Oh, that would be lovely. Volleyball would be very nice.’

Edward turned to the soldiers. ‘Take your kit off and go to bed. Pretend to be asleep. Stay there till you’re called. Then get up and play volleyball.’ The disgruntled soldiers filed out. ‘Saves disturbing the ones who are really sleeping,’ Edward added.

As they were preparing to film, Edward tugged again at Charles’s sleeve. ‘A word of advice, Charles.’ Charles was unsure at first whether Edward wanted to give it or receive it. ‘These press people, you must be firmer with them. No good being vague. They don’t know their arses from their elbows most of the time. Must get a grip.’

The soldiers were duly filmed in feigned slumber in unfeignedly crowded conditions. While they changed for volleyball Edward excused himself, claiming he was busy. A desultory game was then filmed in the Factory yard, partly from the roof and partly from ground level. Jonathan Kingsley was pleased. It had the right flavour, he thought. The lacklustre nature of the game could be explained by the tiredness that came from the night vigils. Charles was summoned away at one point by a corporal who said that a man had presented himself at the gate, claiming to be a journalist there by invitation. When he went to the gate, Charles was told by the sentry that the man had been invited in by Edward some fifteen minutes before. Charles again climbed the stairs to the ops room, this time with a sense of foreboding. He was aware of the change in atmosphere in the ops room even before he entered. There was the same old radio mush and cackle but something livelier and jollier had been added. There was even laughter. The first thing he noticed was that everyone had a can of beer. Then he saw Edward sitting on the map-table, swinging his legs and talking to Beazely. Beazely was also sitting on the map-table, as tousled and red-faced as the night before, with his glasses askew. He threw Charles a can of beer as he entered. ‘Have some, Charlie. It’s on the rag.’

Edward jumped off the table. ‘Charles, old man, you should’ve said there was someone else coming. Poor bugger was nearly turned away at the gate, beer and all. Must say, he’s a great improvement on that other bloody pansy.’

Beazely grinned, with just a trace of awkwardness. ‘Thought the boys might like a drink, Charlie.’

‘Don’t worry about him being in the ops room,’ Edward continued. ‘He’s too short-sighted to see anything. He said so.’

‘True.’ Beazely nodded impartially. ‘This is a great place, Charlie. Terrific atmosphere, if only I can get it over. Troops living in worse conditions than IRA prisoners. It’ll go down a treat back home. Something to kick the government with. Might even lead to improvements, you never know.’

‘They can move the prisoners in here and us into the Maze any time they like,’ said Edward. ‘Nice cosy little cell would just do me.’

‘Edward’s been telling me about the screwing through the gate. Can I interview the man concerned?’

‘No,’ said Charles. ‘The CO would go up the wall.’

‘Oh, come on, it’s great human interest stuff. Something for the technically-minded too, from what I saw of that gate.’

‘It would compromise the girls. Soldier-lovers. We’d have tarrings and featherings. Bad for community relations.’

‘Can I take a picture of Edward, then?’

‘If you like, but what for? It’s not quite the same thing, is it?’

‘What d’you mean by that?’ asked Edward.

‘No particular reason,’ said Beazely, fortunately preventing Charles from having to reply to Edward. ‘Might want to use it some time, that’s all. I’d clear it with you first, of course.’

‘All right.’

Edward made a show of reluctance. ‘Well, if the PR officer says so I suppose I’ll have to. Queen and country and all that.’ He straightened his jersey and put his beret back on. ‘Bloody funny thing for a professional soldier to have to do, all the same. Shall I put my camouflage smock on? Looks a bit more warry.’

Charles was still uneasy at the thought of Edward and Beazely doing anything together. It seemed to be a recipe for trouble. ‘Why not do it when there’s more sun?’ he said. ‘The picture will come out better.’

‘No time like the present,’ said Edward briskly.

‘You’re still living in the age of box cameras,’ said Beazely.

A few minutes later Jonathan Kingsley appeared at the door with his crew. ‘Thank you, Charles, that was fine. I think it’ll look good. The right ambience, you know?’ His blue eyes flickered from Charles to Beazely, who was still sitting on the map-table.

‘He’s got special clearance from Headquarters,’ said Charles. ‘He’s doing a feature.’

‘Really? Dreadful man, isn’t he? Charles, may I have your number? We’d like to use you again, if that’s all right.’

Charles gave him the number. ‘I’m sorry there was so little scope today. If I had more notice I could arrange something better.’

Jonathan Kingsley smiled directly into Charles’s eyes and touched him lightly on the elbow. ‘Don’t worry. It was fine. Be seeing you again.’

The following day Beazely’s paper carried a long article headed, ‘Cool Major Who Lives With Bomb’. The centrepiece was a fuzzy photograph of Edward looking tough and determined, an effect heightened by the fact that his beret was crooked. The article described how Major Edward ‘Buster’ Lumley and the men of his company calmly lived above a huge landmine, which was concealed in a tunnel beneath the Factory. ‘Top-grade Intelligence sources’ had apparently described it as ‘the largest IRA bomb ever — three tons or more of explosive’. Edward was the quiet, gentle, intelligent, perceptive, tough man who had been especially selected to take over one of the worst areas of Belfast. He had won not only the esteem of his own — also especially selected — men but also the confidence and friendship of the locals, who sensed in him an understanding, fair-minded, no-nonsense community leader. The article was attributed to Beazely.

Charles’s day had started well, in that he had been able to have a bath. The fried breakfast was hot for once and the tinned tomatoes were quite soft. The discovery of this article spoiled everything.

‘You’ve started with a bang,’ observed Tony Watch. ‘Surprised the PR people allowed it, let alone the CO.’

‘They weren’t asked,’ said Charles. ‘They don’t know anything about it.’

‘You took a chance, then.’

‘I wasn’t asked either.’

‘This bloke Beazely did it off his own bat?’ Tony whistled. ‘Shit’ll really hit the fan now. Better put your helmet on.’

When Charles reached his office the adjutant said, ‘The CO wants you.’

‘Reference the article?’

Colin nodded. ‘Not pleased. Someone let you down?’

‘Looks like it.’

The CO was the only person to have a room to himself, though Anthony Hamilton-Smith was rumoured to have one somewhere. When Charles entered the CO was sitting at his desk, writing. ‘You’ve been a bloody stupid officer,’ he said. He continued writing. Charles was trying to think of an appropriate reply when the CO stopped writing and looked up again. ‘Just had breakfast, have you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Think yourself lucky you’re not on the boat home. If it weren’t for me you would be. I had my breakfast hours ago.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Don’t keep yes-sirring me, I’m telling you. Know where I’ve been since I had my breakfast?’

‘No, sir.’

‘I’ve been up at Headquarters, fighting for your life with the general. He wanted your guts on a plate. Know why?’

‘The article, sir.’

‘’Course you do. Unbelievably crass though the whole thing is, I couldn’t believe that you wouldn’t realise it yourself when you saw the thing in print. That’s how I saved you from being sacked, sent home in disgrace. I said you were new to the Army and to PR, that this was your first mistake and will definitely be your last. I stuck my neck out for you. Which is more than the Guards CO did for his PR officer. D’you know about that?’

‘No, sir.’

‘This man Beazely visited two units yesterday — us and the Guards. He obviously wrote his story out of what he gleaned from each. The Guards PR officer is on his way home at this instant. It’s thanks to me that you’re still here. What’ve you got to say for yourself?’

‘As far as I’m aware, sir, I didn’t —’

‘I know, I know, Edward Lumley’s almost as much to blame as you. But that’s not the point. You’re there to make sure he doesn’t shoot his mouth off. And that includes your own. As it is, you broke every PR rule in the book. You talked in general terms about the situation here, you emphasised personalities, you spouted all this rubbish about special selection — which will be believed, you know, despite denials, and could do enormous political damage — and you made the most elementary and crass security blunders. The information about that tunnel came from a high-grade Intelligence source that is now prejudiced by your foolish disclosures. I can see you weren’t responsible for the nonsense about the Guards battalion being equipped with special mining tools for digging us out of the debris, but that’s about all. The general’s furious, you know. He was told about all this by London at five o’clock this morning and he had me up there within an hour. You can thank God I’m a lenient man.’

Charles knew that none of the offending comments had come from him and he gave a truthful account of Beazely’s visit, but it sounded unconvincing even to his own ears. He was sure that Edward had not mentioned the tunnel to Beazely but could not account for how Beazely had known about it, nor for all the stuff about special selection. He did not feel it would be politic to call to his aid the fact that Beazely’s main interest had been in the screwing through the gate episode. Besides, he could not be certain that that might not appear in another edition. He was unable to offer the CO a more convincing explanation than that provided by the assumption of his guilt, and so was dismissed with further admonitions. ‘Frankly, I would have expected more from a university man,’ was the CO’s final, and rather surprising word.

Charles rang Beazely’s hotel several times that morning but was unable to get through to him. He left messages for Beazely to ring him, but nothing happened. Finally, late in the afternoon, he changed into civilian clothes and got the CO’s escort vehicle to take him to the hotel, having told the CO that he had an appointment with Beazely. When he got there he found Beazely in the bar, talking to a loud and drunken group of men who could have been either local journalists or local politicians. Beazely left them and came over to Charles. ‘Have a drink,’ he said.

‘No thanks.’

‘I suppose you’ve come about my little piece this morning?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Anything happen about it?’

‘I was very nearly sacked.’

‘Ah. I can explain, you know.’

‘Good.’

‘But please have a drink.’

They sat down. ‘Wasn’t my fault,’ said Beazely. ‘Wasn’t yours, of course. Wasn’t that other chap’s either, that Guards bloke. Though I didn’t go much on him, to be honest. Toffee-nosed, you know? Not like you.’

‘He was sacked. He’s on his way home.’

It was to Beazely’s credit that he seemed somewhat shaken by this. ‘Christ, they don’t waste much time in the Army, do they? Any good me going to see them or writing to the general or anything?’

‘The general will probably kill you.’

‘See what you mean.’ Beazely pushed his slipping spectacles back up on the bridge of his nose. ‘It was all the news editor’s fault really. Bit of a cock-up, to be honest, Charlie, from my point of view as well as yours. I mean, I’m not exactly persona grata with the Army now, am I? Not that I was before, I s’pose. I mean, they’ll still see me. They can’t not see me because of the rag I work for, can they?’

‘Just tell me where you got the information about the tunnel.’

‘The Officers’ Mess bar at Headquarters. They were all talking about it. I went up there after I’d seen you and the Guards bloke to talk to the PR desk. Fat lot of use they were. You see, I’d already sent this photograph of Edward along with a little write-up about what a good bloke he is because I’d thought of doing a big feature on your lot one day — with you in it — and I wanted them to keep all these little titbits as background. Well, in the meantime London had got this agency report about tunnels, and they’d come up asking me if I knew anything about it, which I didn’t until I went to the bar at Headquarters. Lot of loose talk there, Charlie. Always has been. A serious temptation to people like myself.’

‘To which you yielded.’

‘Yes and no. I reported what I’d heard, but I didn’t realise London were going for it in such a big way. I especially didn’t realise they’d link what I’d done about Edward with all the tunnel stuff. I mean, they were quite separate as far as I was concerned. That’s news editors for you. No souls, no tact, no sense, no scruples. Didn’t tell me what they were doing. First I knew of it was when I saw it this morning, just like you. Is your CO very angry?’

‘Demented.’

‘Oh Christ. I do all my work through the Army, as you know. If they make things difficult I’ll be joining that Guards bloke. Might not be such a bad thing, in a way.’ He mused for a few moments. ‘Would a bottle of whisky help?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Not for you, for your CO. I could send him one.’

‘No.’ It occurred to Charles that this might be the opportunity to get rid of Beazely once and for all. ‘The CO has no tact and no scruples, just like your news editor. He’d probably kill you even quicker than the general. Best thing to do is lie low and wait for me to contact you.’ Beazely’s bloated face nodded mournfully. ‘The only way you might be able to clear your name is if you’re prepared to tell him what you’ve just told me — if he wants you to, that is.’

‘Any time, Charlie. Just say.’

‘I’ll be in touch if he does. Remember — don’t come near us until you hear from me that it’s all right.’

When Charles told the CO what Beazely had said, the CO grunted and remarked: ‘Just shows you can’t trust these bloody pressmen. Always listening to other people’s conversations. Watch your step in future.’ Charles waited to hear that the Guards officer had been recalled, and his own name cleared. But he waited in vain. A few days later he asked the CO if the general was now aware of the source of the story, and added that Beazely was willing to testify to it. ‘The matter’s closed,’ said the CO. ‘No point in digging it up. You’ve learnt your lesson, I hope. Now shut up.’

7

Somewhat to his surprise, Charles found that he was writing two or three times a week to Janet. They were long outpourings, produced at speed and of a length and passion that he knew was not justified by the relationship. They were a self-indulgent rehearsal of all the things that preoccupied him, predominant among which was the question of how long he thought he could last in the Army. Sometimes he felt he could not last another day, at others that he could go on for ever. This latter mood was not the result of sudden enthusiasm so much as a growing inability to imagine himself doing anything else. Most of the people around him appeared to like what they were doing, and this imposed upon him a burden of silence, the only relief for which was letters to Janet. What made it worse was that he did not on the whole dislike the people he was with but did not know them well enough to discover whether the accumulation of sordid particulars and the inflexible but necessary attitudes of military life were as horrifying for them as for him. There were signs that the adjutant, in his weary cynicism, did not fully enjoy what he was doing; but never a word to say so. There were occasions when Anthony Hamilton-Smith showed a certain pained sensitivity. After spending nearly a whole day closeted with the quartermaster in an attempt to straighten out some arcane aspect of HQ company’s ration issue — an affair which had also engrossed the CO, the adjutant, the RSM and the paymaster — Anthony had yawned behind the back of the disgruntled quartermaster and remarked in an undertone to Charles, ‘That man, with all he stands for, shows us the essential horror of Army life. I sometimes wonder why I love it so dearly.’

All this, he realised, was a little unfair on Janet. Long though they were, his letters were not very explicit, and from her replies it was clear that either she saw what he was doing as something comparable with the battles of the Somme or she failed, not unreasonably, to see what he was complaining about. Since their meeting he felt more distant from her, and at the same time a desire to communicate with her more. Her letters were brisk, cheerful and hurried. She seemed to be enjoying herself in London. He telephoned her a few times, when the adjutant was out of the room, but found that that device did more to emphasise distance than to decrease it. After a while he confined his letters to accounts of the books he was reading and to descriptions of Belfast, making much of the dirt, and especially much of the fact that a jug of milk left by an open window would be speckled black in an hour.

His books were his real solace and fully justified his overweight kit. The more vividly colourful and imaginative they were and the more remote from his drab environment, the better. As a student he had always resisted Tolkien, as he had resisted most cults, but he felt free to read and enjoy him now. Even better was Mervyn Peake’s grotesque and sinister fantasy. He started reading those Shakespeare plays he did not know but then found that he was largely ignorant of those few he thought he did know, and so went to those instead. His one disappointment was Madame Bovary; perhaps because style, like poetry, was what was lost in translation or perhaps because he read it only on duty in the deadest part of the night. So far as he could see, none of his brother officers read anything except newspapers.

Belfast was relatively peaceful during those few weeks. This was a time when a few shootings and a bomb or two comprised what the newspapers called ‘a quiet night in Belfast’. To the CO it was ‘this unbelievable lull’; he could not conceal his disappointment that nothing much was happening in the battalion area and frequently speculated aloud as to what ‘they’ were up to under cover of the lull. The sum of the CO’s speculations was that whatever was going to happen was going to be worse than anything so far and woe betide those who were unprepared. Irritably, he toured the companies shouting ‘Hard targets!’ at all and sundry, and demanding to know of nervous officers what they would do if he were shot dead now, at this instant, talking to them in the false security of the company location.

Routine in battalion HQ was hardly enjoyable, but it was a framework upon which an existence could be based. The two essential elements were the eight-hour watchkeeping stints in the ops room, which occurred three times a week, and the daily O Groups at 1700 hours, known as ‘prayers’. The CO insisted upon these whether there was need or no, convinced that they benefited the morale of the battalion. All the company commanders attended and all the officers in battalion HQ, plus the RSM who took notes of everything that was said, regardless of relevance. Edward, too, was a prolific scribe and Charles was able to confirm what he had long suspected — that Edward’s company briefings contained practically none of his own words. Even certain mannerisms which Charles had thought were peculiar to Edward were now seen to originate from the CO.

Henry Sandy had also to attend, usually pale and tired after his nightly debauch. Even the paymaster was brought in from some mysterious and, everyone suspected, comfortable place known as ‘the rear echelon’, which he shared with the quartermaster. On one memorable occasion Henry Sandy had to be woken, publicly, by the RSM. What little charm the proceedings had was graciously given by Anthony Hamilton-Smith, who had frequent baths and seemed never to be depressed, tired or irritable like other people. He usually arrived at the meetings last, with the CO, and often had to slip out early for reasons which were never explained. He sometimes made a few light-hearted comments but rarely addressed himself seriously to the business of the day, so that his presence was a welcome balance to the CO’s intense seriousness and the RSM’s and Edward’s furious scribblings.

The CO invariably sat at the front facing everyone else across a large desk, with a wall-map of the battalion area behind him. He had a long stick which was meant for pointing out things on the map but which he smashed against the map or down upon the desk in order to emphasise firmness of resolve, swiftness of action, or the importance of soldier-like behaviour. He usually began by expressing amazement that the lull had continued for another twenty-four hours, and then issued dire warnings for the next twenty-four. Mysterious A1 sources were said to have indicated that the time would be soon.

Nigel Beale would then have to stand and, with the aid of a much shorter stick, give the daily Intelligence summary. This comprised a description of what had happened in the past twenty-four hours, which everyone knew, and speculation as to what was in store for the next twenty-four, which no one believed. It frequently happened that Nigel had nothing to report and no reason to expect anything, but he was still expected to speak for ten minutes. Sometimes he announced that there would be searches, again on the basis of A1 information, but usually nothing was found. Had Nigel been less zealous and intense he might have had a more sympathetic audience; as it was, his awareness that he was preaching to the godless heathen made him more intense still. His one believer was the CO, and the CO would brook no criticism of Nigel’s daily chore, no matter how kindly meant. Occasionally, though, the predictable pattern of the O Groups was shaken when the CO would suddenly formulate a new rule about dress or procedure and then castigate everyone present for not having adhered to it.

With regard to the watchkeeping periods, Charles found it strangely relaxing to know that whatever happened he would be keeping his watch at certain hours, riot or revolution notwithstanding. When it was quiet there was time for reading and letter-writing, and during the long watches of the night he would sometimes have conversations with the radio operator, which would later seem bizarre and implausible. Times such as these, when both fell silent, were the nearest that anyone ever got to privacy. It was the watchkeeper’s job to respond to anything that came up on either of the radio nets — the battalion and the brigade. Every message in or out had to be logged, and it was Charles’s fear that he would have to deal simultaneously with one of Brigade’s abstruse queries and some emergency, real or imagined, within the battalion area. His voice procedure had never been good, though it was usually adequate. Brigade were particularly hot on offenders, although the greatest offender was the Brigade commander himself. His voice procedure was a disconcerting mixture of ordinary conversation and incomprehensible telegraphese, which he would suddenly adopt for a few sentences when he remembered that he was on the air. He was the only man who ever came up without giving a call-sign, but this itself, combined with his drawling tones and extraordinary phraseology, made call-signs redundant. He was immediately recognisable to every listener. It was more of a problem to know when he had finished: he would sometimes say ‘Out’ crisply, sometimes not at all and at others would cut back in on other conversations.

Charles’s time of greatest privacy and pleasure was after the 2200–0600 watch, which occurred once a week. After his relief had arrived he would go upstairs on to the flat roof of the police station. There was a sentry up there in a sangar but he could wander about freely without going near him. He did not worry about snipers since the IRA were not at their most active early in the morning. There was a view over a large part of West Belfast leading up to the Black Mountain, the only visible bit of greenery. The cold was enlivening and bracing and the air clear. Above all, though, the city looked clean and almost innocent in its freshness. Later, the industrial haze would settle and turn the sun, if it appeared, into something the colour of rancid butter and the rain into a dull, dirty smear on the windows. But at six in the morning the homely little rooftops and the quiet little streets looked pathetically human. It was possible then to feel some hope for the place. Then the traffic would begin and the people would appear, bringing with them the noise, dirt, slovenliness and ordinary harshness of everyday life. Children with hard, old faces would start their paper rounds, and Charles would go back down to breakfast.

Every night the CO visited the companies. His trip round usually started at about ten, but could be earlier if he were bored. It would last from two to six hours. Charles usually accompanied him in case, as the CO put it, he had to arrest any rascally journalists on the way. For Charles it was a good opportunity to get out of battalion HQ. Unfortunately, the RSM was of the same opinion, and he also regarded himself as being in charge of the CO’s escort party. Frequently there was a silent and private feud between him and Charles to see who should sit in the front of the escort vehicle, the RSM regarding it as being beneath his dignity to give place to a mere second lieutenant, while Charles was happy to give up the seat but not to have it taken from him.

It was well known that the CO was looking for trouble when he went out at night, and he would even poach on a neighbouring battalion’s area if there was no life in his own. In the worst parts of his own area he would often leave the vehicles under guard and mount an extempore foot patrol under his own command, normally the job of a corporal. He would stop and search people who struck him as suspicious — nearly everyone did so strike him — and would mount sudden road blocks in the hope of catching stolen cars. Since most cars used in shootings and bombings were stolen, the search for such vehicles formed an important part of military life in Belfast, and everyone soon acquired something of the mentality of a traffic warden. There was an intense programme of VCPs and thousands of vehicles were stopped every week, occasionally with some result. Brigade were always worried about Ford Cortinas, which were said to be easy to steal and, certainly, were frequently used by terrorists. A representative for Ford, interviewed on the radio, denied that they were easier to steal than other comparable cars and suggested that their popularity was due to their reliability and speed. On some nights the CO would stop every Ford Cortina he saw. For about a fortnight Brigade issued numerous reports about blue Cortinas and the adjutant said that one of the RUC men had told him that if all the reports were true, every blue Cortina in Belfast had been stolen twice.

Anthony Hamilton-Smith sometimes did the rounds of the companies instead of the CO, with noticeably less drama. No one in battalion HQ knew how he passed his time, and no one thought it appropriate to ask. He was always fresh and immaculate, polite and charming whatever was happening. His persistent anachronisms earned him some good-natured ridicule, yet tinged with admiration. It was an army which admired bluff, which recognised its importance and which could forgive most sins provided they were done with a certain style. There were, of course, those — one or two of the more ambitious company commanders — whose sense of military virtue was outraged by Anthony’s continuing lament over the demise of the horse in modern warfare. They regarded him as an ineffectual dilettante, but his own unfailing politeness and good humour prevented them from demonstrating their disapproval. There was, indeed, something in his playfully old-fashioned manner that indicated a mind at rest, but not asleep. The CO seemed only intermittently aware that he had a second-in-command and showed no curiosity as to what his second-in-command did with his time. His style of leadership rendered subordinate commanders unnecessary, and an amiable, unprotesting 2IC fitted perfectly. Anthony’s responsibility for community relations remained almost entirely theoretical. It would have been completely theoretical had he not had to chair a weekly meeting of the RUC community relations representative and the company representatives. Charles was made responsible for the minutes. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss and, where necessary, allocate funds for community relations projects. Such few projects as there were had been inherited from the previous unit, though B company’s representative, a rather keen captain, wanted to build an adventure playground on some wasteland. The CO, though, was known not to favour community relations, and Anthony was not one to exert himself unnecessarily. The result was that the previous unit’s projects dwindled and the adventure playground, though paid lip-service to by all, was talked about in such a way that everyone, except the keen captain, was able to feel reassured that it would still be under discussion when the battalion left Belfast. At best, community relations secured the friendship of the friendly, while the unfriendly remained unchanged. Anthony introduced each meeting, was not always able to stay to the end, but occasionally handed round some cigars.

One evening came the first serious riot in which the battalion was involved. There had been no indication of trouble at the five o’clock ‘prayers’ — indeed, Nigel Beale had forecast a quiet period during which the IRA were ‘regrouping’ — and there was no apparent reason for it, though it was later said to have been a test of the battalion’s reaction. ‘They wanted to know whether they were dealing with soft nuts or hard nuts,’ the CO said afterwards. ‘Well, now they know.’

It began during dinner, which was an event in itself that night. Most mealtimes were a forum for the CO to pronounce upon anything in the world, military or civil. Usually, he chose those aspects of the world that disagreed with him, and so there was never any shortage of subjects. His audience was mainly passive and respectful, which he interpreted as meaning agreement, though a few competed with each other in their efforts to heap fuel on the fire of his opinion. Anthony was the only one who would ever disagree, usually on some point of regimental history or etiquette or in some arcane area where he alone seemed to possess certain knowledge. In particular, he always seemed to know of some tribe somewhere whose habits contradicted any generalisation made about human behaviour. On matters of political or military moment, however, he remained silent.

On this occasion the CO was giving his opinion on an article by the Sunday Truth’s Hindsight team, which was about Army searches of Catholic houses. It said that nothing had been found in a large number of houses, that many families had been deeply upset and frightened, that several who were interviewed had alleged brutality and violence and that many felt the houses had been selected on a purely sectarian basis. There were accounts of two women receiving treatment for nervous afflictions and a few paragraphs about the effect upon children. The article ended by quoting a bland statement from Headquarters which denied sectarian discrimination and unprovoked violence and maintained that the Army had a duty to search houses if they believed there might be weapons hidden in them.

The CO dealt with the matter over his soup. ‘Muck-raking, that’s what it is. They’re simply trying to stir things up. Some of these bloody journalists are no more than left-wing communist agitators.’ He looked at Charles, whom he viewed as being in some way responsible for whatever appeared in the papers or on radio or television. If by nothing else, Charles was guilty by association. ‘Isn’t that true, Charles?’

‘I’ve not met the Hindsight people, sir.’

‘Don’t be diplomatic with me. They’re subversive. They’re trying to destroy the fabric of our society. They’re on the other side. No matter what we do they criticise it. And they’re getting control of the media, which is why they’re so dangerous. Not that all of them are downright evil, mind you’ — the company waited in respectful silence whilst he sipped a spoonful of soup, some of which dribbled off the edge of the spoon and plopped back into the bowl — ‘not all of them. Some of them are dupes. Well-meaning, academic, intellectual, left-wing dupes. The universities and the press are full of them. One thing they don’t know is who’s paying them, where the money’s coming from. Whose dupes they are. That’s why they’re dangerous.’

There was a general nodding of heads. Charles concentrated on his soup, but the adjutant ventured calmly: ‘All the same, there’s probably a degree of truth in some of what they say. The Ackies can be rough if something’s upset them and whatever reason we have for searching these people it must look to them as if we do it simply because they live where they do, especially when we don’t find anything. I think a lot of these large-scale searches do more harm than good. We’ve been lucky with ours so far. They’ve been small-scale and we’ve usually found something. And I don’t know that there’s really any organised political conspiracy in the media.’

The CO banged his spoon down. ‘There you are. Just what I’ve been saying.’ There was an embarrassed silence for a few moments and then he laughed. ‘They’ve even turned my own adjutant against me!’ A ripple of relieved mirth ran round the table and the CO smiled indulgently at the adjutant. ‘It’s not an organised political conspiracy that I’m talking about, Colin, it’s the coercion of opinion. They create a climate of acceptability in which everything is acceptable so long as you accept what they choose for you. It’s a kind of political pornography they’re trying to force down our throats. You’ll just have to take my word for it, I’m afraid. When you get to my position and see some of the confidential documents that I see you’ll know what I mean. You’ll see these people in their true colours, which is more than they do themselves, I can assure you.’

The adjutant seemed content to have made his point. There was no arguing with the CO. Charles, whose turn it was to buy the wine that evening, occupied the ensuing pause by filling their glasses. The conversation then turned, as it frequently did, to the iniquities of the neighbouring unit, a regiment of gunners from Germany. The CO prefaced his remarks by saying that one shouldn’t make disparaging remarks about other regiments, and that one should always bear in mind that these chaps were trained to fire missiles from thirty miles behind the lines; they were not the sort of chaps who could be expected to come to grips with the enemy. Anthony Hamilton-Smith thought they were all right at polishing their cannonballs and keeping their powder dry, but not very fleet of foot when it came to dodging round street corners. There then followed a catalogue of their misdeeds and inadequacies. Right or wrong, the CO was a prisoner of his own prejudices. There could be no serious opposition to anything he said, and so his own opinions were mirrored back to him, reinforcing the original, showing only himself, and himself as right. There was no chance of change or advance where there was no chance of contradiction, no limitation at all.

For some minutes all except the CO, who was talking, had been aware that the radio operator in the ops room next door was acknowledging more signals than usual. Tony Watch was the duty watchkeeper. After more radio chatter he hurried into the Mess and bent over the CO’s shoulder, a little too confidentially. ‘From Alpha One, sir, a crowd of youths in the Falls Road, stoning vehicles. Twenty so far and increasing.’

The CO swallowed his mouthful and gave himself a moment’s indigestion. He put his hand on his chest until it had passed. ‘The Falls is turning nasty, is it? We’ll have our punch-up yet. Where on the Falls?’

‘Junction with Leeson Street, sir. Border between us and the Gunners.’

‘Right on the border?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Damn.’ The CO put his hand to his chest again and there was another moment’s silence. ‘Inform Brigade and keep me posted, will you?’

Tony Watch returned to the ops room and could soon be heard calling up Brigade. ‘Would be right on the border,’ the CO continued. ‘The Gunners’ll probably have the most God-awful riot on their hands and not have a clue how to handle it, while we sit here and twiddle our thumbs and watch. Our boys could do with a riot, too. They’re getting bored, idle and troublesome. Twice as many on Orders this week as when we arrived. Just shows you can’t keep highly-trained infantrymen sitting around on their arses all day and all night.’

Charles resumed his argument with the piece of steak that was the officers’ dinner that night — the soldiers, because there were more of them, had a choice. It seemed likely that dinner would be disturbed, and so Charles determined to eat as much as possible. The Falls Road and its neighbourhood was the traditional home of Belfast Republicanism, and although at one point it was no more than a few hundred yards from the Protestant Shankhill Road, the two were different worlds. Many of the inhabitants of each never had and never would venture on to the other. (Charles had heard that during a bombing raid in the Second World War some of the people on the Falls had lit bonfires to guide the German bombers, until they found that the bombers aimed for the fires.) Within a few minutes there were two RUC reports of large numbers of youths moving along the Falls. Someone said that an informer had informed to the effect that ‘the word was out’.

There was a loud ‘Roger. Wait out,’ and Tony Watch strode purposefully back into the Mess. ‘Alpha One report petrol bombing and heavy stoning, sir. They’ve deployed two platoons but they can’t act effectively without going into the Gunners’ patch.’

The CO grinned and drained his glass. ‘Well, gentlemen, I think we’d better get down there and sort it out. Call out the Rover Group.’

‘It’s been done, sir.’

Charles hastily swallowed his last mouthful and followed the CO out of the Mess. He found his flak jacket, combat jacket and webbing but could not remember where he had put his tin helmet. He eventually found it under his bed and hurried down into the enclosed yard where the Land-Rovers were already revving. There was a lot of movement and shouting. The CO was already in his Land-Rover and yelled to Charles to buck up. He then shouted at someone else and it was soon clear that he was shouting at everyone he saw. Charles scrambled into the back of the vehicle, helped roughly by the signals sergeant who always travelled with the CO. He accidentally kicked Nigel Beale, who was too busy with his folder to do more than glare angrily. The iron gates swung open and the Land-Rovers lurched noisily out, to the accompaniment of the signals sergeant’s crisp ‘Hallo Alpha Zero. This is Alpha Nine leaving your location now, over,’ and battalion HQ’s equally crisp, ‘Alpha Zero, roger out.’

It was dusk and there was a lot of traffic. They went down the middle of the road as though there was none at all, before turning with an unnecessary squealing of tyres into the Falls. This was a broad (by Belfast standards), drab, winding road lined by small houses in bad repair and with many mean, narrow little roads opening off it. There was ominously little traffic here, and the CO pulled the heavy iron grille up over the windscreen. The escort vehicles behind them did the same. Charles touched his tin helmet on the floor with his foot, to make sure it was still there, and looked at everyone else’s respirators, hoping fervently that there would be no need for them. His own was still missing, and he was far more concerned about the CO’s reaction to this fact than he was about his own reaction to CS gas. Fortunately, it was a weapon the CO did not favour, being too indiscriminate, and so it was unlikely that they would use it.

Most other sounds were drowned by the high-pitched whine of the Land-Rover’s differentials and tyres. They bumped uncomfortably along the road at an alarming speed. Two soldiers held macralon shields across the back, and through them Charles could just see the houses, which appeared to sway and jerk as much as the Land-Rover. He sat back against the side of the vehicle, only to find that the canvas was reinforced only by plywood and not by the macralon he had expected. Macralon was occasionally bullet-proof but the wood was not even properly brick-proof. He leant forward again, his stomach feeling light and empty. He drew some unjustifiable comfort from the presence of others and even some from the noise of the vehicle.

Very soon the ride became bumpier and Charles noticed a lot of broken bricks and bits of metal scattered across the road behind them. The driver suddenly braked hard and Charles and Nigel Beale were flung to the floor. They sorted themselves out with some loss of temper but they were both so anxious to find out what was happening that they immediately forgot their disagreements. The Land-Rover was stopped and by peering between the bulky radios Charles could see through the front windscreen and grille. The street ahead was grey in the sinister twilight. It was littered with debris, and some hundred yards ahead was blocked by a large mob of youths. There was some shouting but only occasionally did a brick or bottle hurtle down and smash on the road, sending bits skidding across the surface. At this stage it still seemed gratuitous, even laconic. Some soldiers from the two A company platoons were crouched in doorways on both sides of the street and Ian Macdonald, their company commander, was talking to the CO through the Land-Rover window. His precise Scottish tones were calm and unhurried.

‘They’re just inside the Gunners’ patch,’ he said. ‘What we can see is the back of them. Albert Street is the next on your right, and our boundary stops just this side of it.’

The CO was following with his finger on the map. ‘What are the Gunners doing about it?’

‘Nothing, so far as I can see. They’re receiving a lot more stick than we are and they’re just standing behind their shields and taking it. You can see them if you walk up closer to the mob.’

‘Typical. No imagination, no flair. What do they intend to do — stand there all night, I suppose? Meanwhile, the mob is facing both ways.’

‘What’s more, the mob apparently have a petrol tanker,’ continued Macdonald. ‘I spoke to a Gunner officer earlier who’d come into our patch by mistake. He said they think it’s round the corner at the bottom of Albert Street, out of sight. It was hijacked in North Belfast this afternoon.’

The muscles in one of the CO’s cheeks twitched slightly as he compressed his lips hard. ‘You’re telling me that this mob has a petrol tanker hidden away, laden with fuel, that they’ve had it since this afternoon and this herd of Gunners are standing round like a lot of spare what’s-its at a party doing sod-all about it?’

‘That’s what it looks like, sir.’

‘And this lot of yobbos in front are creating a diversion while the real villains are down there syphoning off enough petrol to keep them in bombs till the unicorns return. You would not credit it. You would simply not credit it.’ He looked down at his map. ‘Where are your Pigs, Ian?’

‘Round the corner, out of sight.’

‘I don’t anticipate much resistance from those louts. They’ll simply fall back into Albert Street when we hit them and form a hard core round the tanker. Ian, one of your platoons is on foot and the other’s in the Pigs, right? Keep the one on foot here for the time being to hold this stretch of the road. The one in Pigs should follow me at about thirty seconds’ interval. I’m going to get Brigade’s permission to trespass. I and my two escort vehicles will charge the mob and drive right through it. We’ll then form a blockade across the road on the Gunners’ side of the mob. Your platoon in Pigs will come thundering up behind them whilst they’re chucking their all at us, will debus and make arrests. Prisoners to go back in the Pigs to battalion HQ. I think the mob will then scatter down the side streets, mainly into Albert Street, leaving us in control of the junction. We can see where we go from there.’

‘Right, sir.’

Ian’s grizzled head disappeared and the CO called up Brigade. He reported that he was under attack from petrol and nail bombs which were being thrown from the Gunners’ area, and asked permission to enter and make arrests. He mentioned the tanker, for good measure. It was the Brigade commander who replied. As usual, his voice procedure was non-existent and his tone vague, even lethargic, but his message was clear. ‘Thank you,’ he drawled. ‘I know about the tanker. I’ve known about it for some hours. I’m delighted that someone proposes to do something about it. Please go ahead. Let me know when you’ve done it.’

The CO grinned. ‘That’s a slap in the face for those bloody Gunners,’ he said. ‘Now let’s sort out this mob.’ He summoned Ian Macdonald again and issued final orders.

For once, Nigel Beale appeared to have a crisis of faith. He leaned across to Charles. ‘Are we really going to charge them in the Land-Rovers?’

Charles nodded and Nigel leant back, looking thoughtful. Charles groped on the floor for his helmet, found it but then hesitated to put it on. No one else was wearing one. Even the men in the doorways were not wearing helmets. The black beret was a symbol that was not lightly discarded and Charles, against what he considered all reason, still hesitated to be the first man in the battalion that day to allow an operational situation precedence over regimental tradition.

His dilemma was resolved for him when the driver let out the clutch with a jolt and the Land-Rover jerked forward, shooting Charles’s helmet out of his hands. With a whining and roaring of overstrained engines and gearboxes, and with the two escort vehicles on either side, they accelerated towards the mob. They bumped and crashed over the debris, flinging those in the back alternately on to their backsides, heads, backs and knees. The CO clung to his door, guffawed and shouted ‘Geronimo!’ at the top of his voice. A few bricks landed on the road on either side of them and then one crashed on to the bonnet and bounced on to the windscreen grille with a juddering thump. Seconds later the whole vehicle shook and jumped as they ran into a deluge of bricks and bits of metal. It was as though they were driving through a wall that was falling continuously upon them. Twenty yards ahead Charles could see the mob dancing like demented demons in the headlights, throwing everything they could find. They showed no sign of giving way and the driver involuntarily slowed a little. ‘Step on it!’ bellowed the CO, and the driver accelerated again.

For one moment it looked as though they were going to crush dozens of demons, but then the crowd suddenly scattered like minnows, leaving an empty road. ‘Keep those shields up!’ Nigel shouted at the two soldiers in the back, who had been thrown about so much that their shields had slipped out of place. The Land-Rovers had stopped a few yards past the junction. The only people in sight were some startled Gunners, crouched in doorways behind shields. Sensibly, they were wearing helmets. The CO whooped delightedly. ‘Swing around and block the road,’ he said. ‘We’ll show the buggers.’ The three Land-Rovers lurched round, narrowly avoiding each other, and parked sideways across the road. Behind them, where the mob had been, the A company platoon went in fast and hard. Rioters were fleeing in any direction they could find, mostly into Albert Street. Several had been caught and were being dragged back to the waiting Pigs. Most became very docile once they had been caught and even appeared physically to shrink. On closer examination they appeared to be puny and dirty teenagers, disappointingly ordinary. Charles saw one offer violence to his captor, which was accepted and repaid in kind, with interest.

The CO was out of his vehicle and striding gleefully round the captured junction. When he saw Charles he beckoned him over. ‘A company have arrested some of your pressmen somewhere back along the Falls. Go and sort it out. We don’t want to ruffle their feathers unnecessarily. In fact, I shouldn’t be telling you this. You should be telling me. Why didn’t you know about it?’

‘No one told me, sir.’

‘That’s no excuse. It’s your job to find out. I’m not going to keep doing it for you. Get on and sort it out. Don’t stand around here.’

It took some time to find the captured pressmen. None of the soldiers whom Charles asked knew anything about them. He eventually found them in the boarded-up entrance of a disused shop, where a stocky little corporal stood guard over them. They looked tired but patient. One had a camera. They identified themselves as belonging to a local Belfast newspaper, and were obviously familiar with the routine. It was not clear why they had been arrested, but Charles presumed it was for not being members of A company. ‘It’s all right, they really are press,’ he said to the corporal.

‘Been told not to let civilians loose on the streets, sir,’ said the corporal.

‘Except the press. They can. Any more you find bring them straight to me.’

The corporal reluctantly released his charges and went off to rejoin his platoon. The one without the camera looked towards Albert Street. ‘Looks nasty,’ he said. ‘Especially with that tanker in there. It’s going to be an all-nighter.’

‘D’you think so?’

‘No doubt about it.’ He looked at Charles. ‘You’re new. First riot?’

‘First big one.’

‘You can tell after a while. You get a feeling for it. This one is bad. There’ll be deaths, I don’t doubt. I wish they’d have them earlier, I do. Get them over by midnight so we could all go home.’ It was getting colder and he turned up the collar of his anorak. ‘What’s this about your CO personally leading the charge that broke up the riot at the junction? Is that true?’

Charles imagined the headlines, and the CO’s reaction. ‘No. There was a group of youths at the junction and when we approached they ran down into Albert Street. There was no riot.’

‘Any arrests?’

‘One or two.’

‘Was your CO present?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did they know it was him?’

‘He was in a vehicle.’

‘So he didn’t lead a charge?’

‘No.’

‘Bit odd, isn’t it, the CO getting involved like that? Who controls things back in Headquarters?’

‘He just happened to be passing.’ Charles did not want to get further involved. He suggested they let him escort them up to near the junction where they could see what was going on.

‘I could write it for you now,’ said the reporter. ‘When you’ve seen as many as we have you get to know the pattern.’

It was now quite dark, except for a lurid, flickering glow that came from the bottom of Albert Street. Charles was told that the CO and his Rover Group had moved on foot to a point a few yards down the street. As he approached he could see the crouched figures of soldiers on each corner and identified the nearest group as the CO’s. They were not, after all, quite in the street. The CO was talking urgently to the RSM about a charge. Charles slipped past them and put his head round the corner, to see what was causing the glow. Less than fifty yards away there was a burning bus wedged broadside across the road. It had been put in position earlier and set alight only in the past few minutes. It burned fiercely, with flames leaping high into the night and dancing on the walls on either side of the street. Already the metal frame of the bus showed through and soon it was silhouetted starkly against the flames. It burned with a continuous crackling roar and it was impossible to see past it. For a few moments Charles stared at the myriad reflections of flame in the broken glass that lay scattered all over the road, until he sensed something pass very near his head. A brick smashed on to the road, closely followed by two more. Whether they were being thrown over the bus or from behind the adjacent walls, it was not possible to say. The way they crashed unseen out of the night seemed expressive of a blind, indiscriminate violence that had nothing to do with anybody. Charles withdrew his head and was then startled by being gripped firmly on the shoulder. For one moment he thought he was being arrested.

It was the CO, his teeth bared in what Charles decided was a grin. Charles could just see his eyes by the light of the fire. ‘Glad to see my PRO up in the front line. That’s where all good soldiers should be. Want to see some fun, eh?’

The grip tightened and the CO grinned more broadly. Charles could think of no reply that would be both honest and acceptable, but the CO did not need one. He shook Charles good-naturedly. ‘’Course you do. That’s why you’re out tonight. That’s why we’re all out, including the hooligans who set light to that bus. I’ll tell you what we’re going to do about that. It’s protecting their tanker, isn’t it? That’s obvious. They’ve got it tucked away in a courtyard behind there and they want to keep us out till they’ve finished with it. They’ll be syphoning off the petrol and then maybe wiring it up as a booby-trap. But they’re not bloody going to. We’re going to take it before they start throwing bombs and getting really nasty. And we’re going to do it with a good old-fashioned cavalry charge on shanks’s pony, straight at ’em between the bus and the walls. We’ll jump right down their throats. You and me, Thoroughgood. Chance of a lifetime for you.’ After another affectionate shake he released Charles and shouted across the road at the RSM, who had crossed to the other corner with his party by doubling back round over the Falls, out of sight and out of range of the bricks. The RSM shouted that he was ready and the CO turned to his own party, which now included Charles. ‘Okay?’ he asked. Then, with a boyish grin, ‘Go!’

There was no time for Charles to consider running away, or not moving, which was his most natural inclination. It was clearly a lunatic escapade but he felt himself in the grip of a collective madness. The CO had already started to run and Charles could not afford to be seen by the others to hesitate. He sprinted along the rubble-strewn pavement towards the conflagration, keeping as close to the wall as possible. It was a hectic, unthinking dash, though at one point when he realised that he was ahead of the others he had the presence of mind to slow down. He kept stumbling on the rubble and several times lurched against the wall, once grazing his cheek. Very soon he was upon the burning bus and the heat hit his face like a prolonged slap. He had no idea what he would do when he got there. The flames had blackened the wall at each side and, though they were not constantly on it, they were continually licking it as though the fire at the centre of the bus were breathing rapidly. Charles hesitated and was pushed roughly aside by the CO who bellowed ‘Charge!’ and ran into the flames by the wall. He disappeared and Charles followed blindly. There was a moment of intense heat and then he was through. Facing him was a narrow crossroads and a lot of people, who began to run away as soon as they saw the CO. The CO, still yelling, ran after them. Charles followed and even heard himself yelling something incoherent. At the same time a small part of himself felt sufficiently detached to consider the spectacle of the rest of himself following an apparently demented, bellowing middle-aged man after a crowd of people along an Irish street. Fortunately, the CO stopped on the far side of the junction to grapple with a struggling youth, whom he held by the hair. After a couple of seconds he pushed him into Charles, shouting, ‘Arrest him!’ and ran on. Charles and the youth looked at each other, both panting, before the youth ran off.

For a while there was confusion, with people running in all directions across the junction. There was a lot of shouting. Two youths had been arrested by the RSM’s group and were being frogmarched back towards the burning bus. Very soon there were more soldiers than civilians visible, and the mob retreated down the side roads, leaving the junction to the Army. It took Charles some minutes to realise that they were being stoned from somewhere in the darkness, and he ran, ducking, to a large gate in the wall where there were several other soldiers. Inside was a large yard and parked in it was the petrol tanker. Beside it were a lot of milk bottles, some empty and some half filled with petrol and with rags hanging out of them. The CO and his Rover Group were examining them.

‘Caught ’em at it,’ the CO was saying. ‘They were still filling the things when I got here. Got away over the wall, the little buggers. At least they haven’t made a bomb out of the lorry yet.’

The burning bus was perilously close and the heat could be felt in the yard, so it was decided that moving the bus was the first priority. Charles was trying to hear how this was to be done when he was accosted by the RSM, who was flustered and breathless. ‘Journalists in the Falls. Will you get up and deal with them?’

His tone could hardly have been more urgent if he had been announcing the presence of Russian tanks, nor less respectful if he were talking to a newly-joined private. Charles looked at him before replying, as though to see if there was something he had misunderstood. ‘Thank you, Mr Bone.’

‘Can you get up there right away? They could be dangerous.’

‘Don’t worry about them, Mr Bone. They’ll be all right.’ The RSM looked at Charles as though he thought him mad, then turned away without a word. Charles delayed his departure from the yard for a while, and then sauntered out with careful nonchalance. He then ran across the junction towards the bus, which was no longer burning as fiercely. He had almost reached it when there was the sound of breaking glass behind him, followed by a sudden whoosh and a scorching heat up the side of his right leg. He crouched against the nearest wall, clutching his leg, which he found not to be burnt, and looked round to see a pool of fire flaring in the middle of the junction. The flames quickly died, revealing more broken glass, and he realised it had been a petrol bomb. A couple of yards from him a soldier pointed his rubber-bullet gun down one of the side streets and fired. For a moment the flash and the bang were even more alarming than the petrol bomb. Charles could not see what he had fired at, nor whether there was any result. ‘Did you hit him?’ he asked.

The soldier shook his head. ‘Just making sure they keep their distance,’ he said.

It was now possible to get between the bus and the wall without danger. On the other side the sense of urgency and danger diminished sharply. Two of A company’s Land-Rovers were parked on the pavement and several soldiers stood leaning against them, talking and gazing reflectively at the almost-gutted bus. An armoured water-cannon — a great lumbering vehicle that Charles had heard about but not seen — began dowsing the flames. Up on the Falls there were more soldiers, including two of B company’s platoons, but little activity. One of the A company Pigs had taken prisoners back to battalion HG and three more prisoners were being loaded into another one. Beside it, a fourth figure was spread-eagled against the wall and was being searched by two soldiers. Charles was about to pass by when he recognised the figure as Beazely’s. For a brief moment he considered passing by none the less but something got the better of him. ‘What have you done?’ he asked.

Beazely turned his head cautiously, just enough to see over his shoulder. ‘Thank Christ it’s you. Tell them who I am.’

‘Haven’t you?’

‘Yes, but I’ve lost my bloody card. My press card. My lifeline. I know I had it on me when I came out. They won’t believe me.’

‘We found him in the alley,’ said one of the soldiers. ‘It looked like he was hiding. He was behaving suspiciously. We thought he might be a petrol bomber.’

‘I was hiding,’ said Beazely, without a trace of petulance. ‘I was hiding from the petrol bombs.’

‘There weren’t any up here.’

‘Well, how was I to know that?’

‘What made you think there were?’

‘I heard an explosion.’

‘Rubber-bullet gun.’

Charles was enjoying himself but felt he shouldn’t be. Beazely was still spread-eagled against the wall, his head bowed. ‘Is he all right then, sir?’ asked one of the soldiers. ‘Can we leave him with you?’

Charles continued to look thoughtfully at Beazely.

‘We did search him, sir. He was clean.’

‘All right. Leave him with me.’ The two soldiers left. ‘You can move now if you like,’ added Charles, after a while.

Beazely straightened himself, though not without looking cautiously around, and rubbed his hands slowly. He looked towards Albert Street, from which bangs and shouts were becoming more frequent. ‘I thought I’d had it when they got me. I thought that was it. Up against a wall and shot as a spy. What’s going on down there?’

‘Just a riot.’

‘Oh Christ.’ Beazely’s fat red face wrinkled in distress and he took off his glasses and wiped them. ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ he murmured, sounding near to tears. ‘What the hell is anyone doing here? Why don’t they all go home so we could just do local boy stories and council meetings? What’s all this fighting going to do for anyone?’

He replaced his glasses awkwardly and they both stared at a sudden increase of activity on the Falls. A huge digger, or lifter or crusher — it was not clear what it was — was making for the bus in Albert Street. It was a famous and much-loved vehicle known throughout the Army in West Belfast as Scoopy-do. It had vast wheels, jaws at each end and made an impressive noise. It was driven by a diminutive, pale-faced Sapper armed with a Sterling, looking for all the world like a chirpy sparrow on the back of a dinosaur. Charles and Beazely followed it to the top of Albert Street. The burning bus had been extinguished. Its charred and twisted skeleton smoked and hissed. The nearby walls were thoroughly blackened and the roads were very wet. With a great revving in its belly and a lowering of one set of jaws, Scoopy-do charged the bus. It hit it at one end and pushed it round in the street with a maddening screech and scream of protesting metal until there was a large enough gap for a waiting Pig to pass through. But the Pig continued to wait, respectfully it seemed, until Scoopy-do had disengaged from its victim and then itself proceeded through the gap. On the other side of the junction below the bus figures could be seen moving against the light of petrol bombs. A bevy of photographers, cameramen and reporters was following the Pig and Scoopy-do down the street. ‘I’d better go down there,’ Charles said.

Beazely was aghast. ‘What about me?’

‘You can come if you like.’

Beazely’s face was screwed up in anguish. ‘I can’t go down there. You know I can’t.’

There were renewed bangs and shouting. ‘Up to you,’ said Charles with a nonchalance he was far from feeling. A prisoner, yelling and kicking, was dragged past the bus by two soldiers and bundled into the back of a Pig. The incident was avidly filmed by the waiting cameramen.

Beazely grabbed Charles’s arm. ‘Look, we’ll do a deal. I’ll wait here and you go there — which you’ve got to do anyway — only you can take my camera, take a few action snaps, and come back and tell me what happened. Firsthand account, you know. You’d do it much better than me anyway because you know what everything’s called. And I’ll pay. I’ll pay well.’

Having Beazely out of the way was a chance not to be missed. Charles quickly overcame his instinct to refuse. ‘Okay, but no photos. I can’t do that. No money either. It’s not allowed.’

‘Why not?’

‘Regulations.’

‘No, all right, but why no photos? It’s too easy. It’s got a built-in flash, look. You just click it and bob’s-your-uncle.’

‘Not allowed. Regulations.’ Military law was bound to be beyond the comprehension of a mere civilian, requiring, as it did, no obvious reason or justification. Beazely was in no state to argue. He slunk thankfully back round the corner and lit a cigarette. Charles headed down past the bus, surreptitiously fingering for the umpteenth time the butt of his pistol to check that he had remembered to load it. His boots crunched glass as he passed the blackened and water-soaked area of the bus. There were more soldiers at the junction than when he had left it but no journalists. A Pig stood in the middle of the crossroads pointing down a dark side street from which came noise and missiles enough to indicate a sizeable crowd. The Pig acted as a focus of attention, and stones, bricks, bits of drain and guttering rained steadily upon it. The soldiers were crouched at the sides of the roads, some carrying shields but none wearing helmets.

Charles discovered the entire press corps in the yard with the tanker. The CO and his party were still there, and all were watching Scoopy-do as it sniffed around the tanker. Its headlights were on, as were those of the tanker, and this made it look even more like some prehistoric creature sizing up its prey as it lurched from spot to spot. The tanker was still almost full and the brakes were seized on. Eventually, after an energetic altercation between the Sapper driver and some soldiers, a wire was connected to the front of the tanker and, with a great growling but no more apparent effort, Scoopy-do began dragging it out of the yard. Its jammed tyres left a lot of rubber on the ground. After considerable shunting and manoeuvring, including renewed altercations, it was got out of the yard and into Albert Street, up which it was dragged like a great yellow carcass towards the Falls. Photographers and cameramen followed it all the way, holding lights for filming as they ran along.

The CO was pleased. ‘Press all right? Not giving you any trouble?’

‘No, sir.’ Charles was conscious of not having spoken to them yet but they seemed happily occupied.

‘Good. Fascinating business, isn’t it? Now back to the war, I suppose. Make sure all the press stay together if you can. Don’t want them getting in the way of anything or getting hurt. Enough to worry about as it is. There’s going to be a fair bit of stuff flying about down there before we sort this lot out.’

Charles caught up with the press and introduced himself. There were about twenty of them and he was surprised at how pleased they seemed to see him. He soon discovered, though, it was not his own charm or personality; after some minutes of questions about times, street-names, numbers, units and incidents he realised that he was their only source of even remotely reliable information. Nevertheless, it was a little perturbing to see his own hazy estimates noted so assiduously, and later to see them quoted as official calculation or even as commonly acknowledged fact. The journalists said they wanted to be nearer the scene of what they obviously thought was going to be a battle worth recording, and so Charles led them back down towards the Pig at the junction. He had no authority to direct or stop any journalist anywhere but he had been told several times by Philip Lamb that the more help he gave them as an organised group under his own direction the less likely they were to be a hindrance to others or a danger to themselves. ‘It’s the art of the possible,’ Philip had said, with the grand manner of one who is asked to comment on a life’s work. ‘Grant as many of their desires as are compatible without crawling up the CO’s backside. And keep him on your side at all costs. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.’

They were a varied lot. Most of the nationals were represented, there were three television teams, including one American, one man from the radio, two Frenchmen and a Swede who was gathering material for a magazine article on the evils of British oppression. Charles led them down one side of the street and had almost reached the Pig when there was a flash and a loud explosion very near him. He threw himself on to the ground behind the Pig. He was later told that he had acted with impressive speed. He lay for what seemed a long time with his arms round his head and his knees drawn up in to his chest. His shoulder was pressing against the wheel of the Pig and so he knew his head must be beneath it and therefore reasonably well protected. There were a lot of flashes but no more bangs. He cringed, waiting for pain, his backside feeling very vulnerable. Something touched it and he shuddered, thinking of shrapnel. Again it was touched, this time more vigorously, and on the third occasion he felt what could only have been a kick. A voice was calling him ‘sir’.

He moved one hand slightly and then opened his eyes, closing them immediately because of the dazzling brilliance in which he was bathed. For a moment he thought he must be in an operating theatre. He reopened them cautiously, squinting and still not moving. He then went through surprise, wilful disbelief and final realisation in an ascending scale of unpleasantness. He was surrounded, he found, not by debris and bodies, nor by surgeons, but by whirring cameras and their hand-held lights and popping flashbulbs. A soldier he vaguely recognised was bending over him speaking quietly.

‘It’s all right, sir, you can get up now, it’s all over. You’re all right. Come on, now, be a good sir.’

Charles crawled from beneath the Pig but remained in the very depths of humiliation. He stood, swathed in embarrassment. Fortunately, though, at the sight of him standing uninjured and with all limbs present the press lost interest. The lights and cameras stopped, and they moved as one body into the darkness of the side street on the other side of the Pig, from where there were sounds of renewed fighting. Charles looked at the soldier, whom he now recognised as Lance-Corporal Van Horne, the battalion photographer. ‘What happened?’ He had not wanted to ask the question but Van Horne was volunteering nothing.

‘It was the RSM sir. He’s a bit trigger-happy with his rubber-bullet gun. You were a bit close.’ There was no trace of a smile. ‘I must say, sir, you got down very quickly. Even the RSM was impressed.’

Charles looked around but there was no sign of the RSM, nor of any other likely witnesses. The story would be round the battalion in no time. Perhaps in the press, too, and on television.

‘I don’t think the journalists knew that’s what it was,’ said Van Horne. ‘They thought you’d been shot at. That’s what I told them.’

Charles glanced rather than spoke his thanks. Van Horne, he recalled, was unfailingly polite and unreadable. Of Dutch extraction, better educated than most soldiers, one of those voluntary misfits you sometimes come across in the AAC(A). There could be worse accomplices. Charles adjusted his belt and flak jacket and checked his pistol yet again. ‘It’s very kind of you to have helped,’ he said finally.

‘The CO sent me to find you, sir. I’ve been working in the Intelligence Section because Captain Beale didn’t realise I was supposed to be with you. Neither did I, I’m afraid to say, sir, or I’d have been here before.’

‘How long are you with me for?’

‘Permanently, sir. I’m your assistant.’ Van Horne smiled politely. Throughout their acquaintanceship Charles never knew him simply smile. If it was not a polite smile it was usually enigmatic, or ironic or, occasionally, triumphant. He rarely allowed himself the luxury of an uninhibited smile. He had even features and intelligent green eyes that gave away nothing. He also had an easy assumption of familiarity that almost, but never quite, went beyond the bounds. ‘Our position is rather exposed, sir,’ he said.

‘What?’ Charles dragged his thoughts away from contemplation of his recent buffoonery. ‘Yes, of course. We’ll join the others.’ They made their way to the side street where the rioters now were, a seething mass somewhere further down in the darkness. Soldiers were crouched at the sides of the streets, while the press wandered nonchalantly about waiting for something to happen. ‘Have you got a camera?’ Charles asked Van Horne.

‘Yes, sir. With a built-in flash.’

‘Take some pictures if anything happens.’ Charles thought he could ensure that at least one paper would not be carrying pictures of himself cowering. Beazely would be grateful for anything. He and Van Horne strolled amongst the press, he with his hands clasped behind his back in the usual manner of officers conscious of their position but not knowing what to do with it. The problem was that officers did not need hands and, pockets being forbidden, there was nowhere else they could go without looking untidy. To his relief, none of the press mentioned his recent humiliation. He decided it must have been a judgment for having relished Beazely’s plight.

Once again, Van Horne was perturbingly perceptive. ‘The press were very impressed by your evasive actions, sir. I was myself, if I may say so. In fact, you were so fast, sir, that it was some seconds before I realised what you were evading.’

8

During the next twenty minutes or so nothing dramatic happened but the trouble continued in a haphazard sort of way, sustained by its own momentum and by the fact that everyone involved was still there. It was expected that worse was to come but no one had any idea what it would be.

Presently two Ferret scout cars were ordered down because of the spotlights they carried. They came from a Brigade armoured unit, part of which had been made available to the CO, and arrived with a fiendish whine and a screech of brakes. They stopped a short way past the leading soldiers with their Brownings, which they were forbidden to use except on single shot, pointing at the mob. One of them switched on its lights and the street ahead was bathed in a hard glare. It was only seventy yards or so long and ended in a T junction formed by a row of squat houses and another, even narrower, street. A mob of not more than fifty people stood at the far end, doing nothing very much and obviously startled by the lights, against which many of them were shielding their eyes. The CO stood just behind the leading Ferret and spoke through his megaphone. ‘Go home. I am warning you to go home immediately. If you do not clear the area voluntarily it will be my duty to clear it. I shall say it once more — go home.’

The megaphone distorted his voice slightly but it was slow and loud and clear. There was a cluster of microphones around the CO as he spoke and he looked flustered. Charles and Van Horne moved them back a little. One journalist, a well-dressed young man with an Irish accent, pushed past Charles and asked the CO how he was going to clear the area. ‘Wait and see,’ snapped the CO. ‘Speak to my PRO.’

Charles moved him away and answered, ‘I’m waiting to see, too.’

‘Is he going to shoot these people?’ Charles could not see the man’s face properly. His voice was hard and aggressive.

‘It depends on what they do. You know the rules of the Yellow Card.’

The man pointed to the Brownings on the Ferrets. ‘Is he going to use those things on them?’

‘They’re only allowed to fire single shots in this sort of area.’

‘So he’s not?’

‘Not on automatic, no.’ Charles felt less certain than he sounded. If the CO were again gripped by his Light Brigade fever it could well lead to the deployment of RAF Strike Command. Further conversation was prevented when the mob responded to the indignity of being lit up. A shower of petrol bombs arc-ed through the air and smashed on to the road, making a dozen instant fires. The flames spread in sheets around the point of impact and burnt fiercely for a few seconds, often an inch or so above the surface, depending on the vapour. One landed amongst the journalists, scattering them, and another slightly burned a soldier near Charles. A third crashed on to the front of the leading Ferret and the vehicle was instantly engulfed in flame as the petrol coursed over it. Charles could see the commander struggling in his hatch. He thought the vehicle would either blow up or the crew would be starved of oxygen by the flames. For a few seconds he had no idea what to do and stood watching with everyone else. Fortunately, a sergeant with more presence of mind ran forward, pulled an extinguisher off the back of the Ferret, and applied it to the flames, which quickly died. There was some shouting as the Ferret reversed sharply, its lights having gone out. The second one immediately put on its lights and moved forward to take its place. Though the crew was unharmed the incident dramatically heightened the tension. Everyone suddenly became more purposeful and businesslike, including those who, like Charles, had at that moment nothing in particular to do. It was as though all that had happened up till then had been part of a ritual, but now someone had broken the rules.

A couple more petrol bombs provoked a fusillade of rubber bullets in reply, though the range was too great for them to be very effective. Nevertheless, the noise was impressive and sent several bombers scurrying away behind corners. The mob had now thinned down to a hard core of probably no more than twenty or thirty at the very bottom of the street. The Ferret’s lights were not powerful enough to show them clearly at that distance and they could only be glimpsed as vague forms against the houses as they ran from cover to cover, or stepped out momentarily from behind corners to hurl a fizzing petrol bomb. Then there were three very loud explosions which ripped viciously through the narrow street, leaving a deafening silence. Someone said they were nail bombs — six-inch nails embedded in lumps of gelignite with a hand-lit fuse. They fell well short of the nearest soldiers since the bombers did not venture into the light.

Charles and Van Horne crouched together in a conveniently large doorway, a couple of yards back from the leading soldiers who were on the opposite side of the road. Several of the more adventurous cameramen were also in the forefront of things, and Charles had to prevent them from using their flashes or lights because these illuminated the soldiers’ positions. The CO had several times shouted warnings about the possibility of gunmen and the need to keep heads down. Filming had therefore to be done by the lights of the Ferret and the occasional flaring petrol bomb. The cameramen wandered about the street with impressive unconcern, always looking for the best angle. Charles would have been content to admire had he not every so often had to go and retrieve one who had wandered too far forward. Sometimes he left it to Van Horne, but he seemed equally unconcerned and Charles felt he had to do more than his share so that he would not appear to be as frightened as he felt. The cameramen were nervous but it was a different kind of nervousness. They flitted about like anxious birds, always wanting more light, more movement and more action, never satisfied. They were thin, sharp-faced, agile, worried-looking men, completely absorbed in their work. They rarely had time for a word with anyone. The soldiers, on the other hand, though also sharp in their movements, kept up an unceasing back-chatting humour which consisted largely of expletives. They were perky, bouncy and keen, but cautious.

The more bombing there was, the more elated Charles found he became. He also experienced a growing sense of unreality, almost of untouchability. The discomfort in his bent legs, the shapes of flame, the half-glimpsed outlines of the bombers and the sound of breaking glass were all-absorbing, while the fact that he could be engulfed by flame, torn by shrapnel or shattered by blast was something he could appreciate only as a possibility, like a statistic of road accidents. In the face of violence the idea of violence, sometimes so seemingly awful, lost all its potency; indeed, it hardly existed. It was replaced by details, many and incidental, haphazard and individual, a bomb bursting here, a soldier ducking there, a gun firing from somewhere. It was becoming as enjoyable as childhood games of cowboys and Indians.

Soon he noticed that several soldiers had taken up sniping positions under cover of doorways and corners. Their rifles were equipped with starlight scopes — night sights that gathered all available light and showed up targets as darker or lighter greens against green background. Occasionally the soldiers would take aim at figures Charles could not see, but without firing. The rubber-bullet guns, though, continued to belch forth, but with no visible result. Presumably they kept the bombers at a distance. There were no signs of the people who lived in the street. The doors of the houses were locked and the windows had no lights. It was likely that people were in, huddled fearfully on the floor. The snipers continued to raise, aim and lower in dumb rehearsal.

Charles received word that the CO wished to speak to him. Leaving Van Horne in the doorway, he stole back up the road and crossed it under cover of two Pigs which were now parked there. The CO had established his headquarters behind them and as Charles approached he could feel the barely-suppressed frenzy which gripped everyone near the CO when he was in action. Macdonald, the A company commander whose responsibilities had now been taken over by his own commanding officer, was shouting unnecessarily at one of his NCOs.

The CO beckoned impatiently to Charles the moment he saw him. ‘Where’ve you been? I wanted you twenty minutes ago. I’ve had that blasted Irish reporter at me again. Sent him away with a flea in his ear this time so it’ll be all over the headlines tomorrow, I don’t doubt. Now listen’ — he put his hand on Charles’s shoulder and gripped tightly — ‘if these bastards don’t stop this soon I’m going to give the order to open fire. What’s held me back so far is that there are people in those houses at the bottom of the street and I don’t want half a dozen innocent corpses upon my hands. And if I don’t stop it now it’s going to go on all night until one of my soldiers gets his head or his foot blown off, and I certainly will not stand by and watch that happen. I will not have a bunch of thugs and murderers throwing bombs where and when they like on the Queen’s highway.’ Charles had learned to look at the CO’s lips rather than his eyes, as this gave the impression he was looking at the latter. He did so now at the cost of receiving a fine spray of saliva in his face. ‘What I want you to do,’ continued the CO with great deliberation, ‘is to keep these bloody cameramen out of the firing line. Not that I would break my heart if we shot a few, but they are in the way, d’you understand? And that’s not what we’re here for. So before I open fire I’m going to warn them, the — er — thugs, the bombers — I’m going to warn them to pack it in. I’m going to give them a chance. Which they don’t deserve, I might add, and which is more than they would give to you or I. What I want you to do is to ensure that all the world’s press get themselves out of the way and understand that I am warning these people and that I am ordering the snipers to aim low to avoid anyone who might be in those houses. Got that?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I want no bad publicity, no allegations. I shall hold you personally responsible. Go and fix it.’

With the help of Van Horne, Charles was able to round up all the press in sight and move them back up to near the Pigs. This was not easy since although some were only too ready to be organised at the mention of shooting, there were others who considered that their neutrality was being threatened. They saw themselves as having a special position in relation to any conflict and resented attempts to direct or control them. Van Horne suggested that it should be left for the bullets to decide. By exposing himself to what he considered dangerous risk, Charles was able to round up all the remaining obstinate cameramen save one. He had not seen this man but was told he had wedged himself between the leading Ferret and the wall of a house. He was a particularly adept and justly renowned BBC man. From his position he was able to use the lights of the Ferret for filming and he could see all of what was being thrown, especially as much of it was aimed at the scout car. Charles was about to dash across the road to him when the CO’s voice boomed over the megaphone: ‘Stop bombing. If you do not stop bombing we shall open fire. I repeat: if you do not stop we shall open fire.’ The response was a shower of nail bombs which seemed to shake the street, and then a lull.

Charles ran across the road behind the Ferret and worked his way forward along the wall. The part of the street that was shown in the glare of the lights seemed to be strewn with enough rubble to build a house. Out of the range of the lights it was just possible to see figures moving. The cameraman really was wedged between the Ferret and the wall. Charles had to move sideways to get up to him. If the Ferret were to move they would both be crushed. The crew probably did not know they were there. The CO repeated his announcement as Charles tugged at the man’s jacket. The man looked round and Charles beckoned to him. To his relief, he started to edge his way back.

‘What is it?’

‘Shooting. They’re going to open fire.’ They had to raise their voices above the noise of the Ferret’s engine. Once out from behind it they began to move back up the street, keeping close to the wall. On the other side of the street a sniper had moved forward to a new position. He crouched, nursing his rifle and gazing quietly before him. The cameraman stopped to film him but Charles pushed him on. There was a flash and a crashing explosion that, despite its loudness, seemed more of a crump than a bang. It left Charles’s ears ringing. The cameraman had stopped but Charles pushed him on again. There was another flash and crump, followed this time by a fiendish whining sound. The whole street seemed to be ringing. As though from a great distance Charles heard the CO’s megaphone repeating, ‘Aim low. Aim low.’ He clutched the cameraman by the jacket again and they both crouched where they were.

The marksman opposite went about his work with patience and concentration. He raised his rifle and aimed for what seemed a long time before the barrel jerked sharply upwards and there was a crack, a sharper and more incisive sound than the bangs made by the rubber-bullet guns. The marksman fired three times, the empty cases pinging on to the pavement after each shot. Other marksmen had also fired but there were less than ten shots in all. The bombing had stopped but the CO’s voice was still saying, ‘Aim low. Aim low.’

They waited for some time but nothing happened. The cameraman, indefatigable as ever, had tried to film the marksman but there was not enough light. Charles rested his hand on the butt of his pistol, which was still in its holster. All the tension had gone from the street. They could sense that the other end, dark and quiet, was deserted. Nothing moved in the floodlit middle but at the top both soldiers and press were impatient to be allowed forward, waiting for the CO to give the word. Charles reflected that the whole scene would have made more impact on film than in the flesh, as it now seemed mundane and even a little tedious — though that could have been a reaction to previous nervousness. Both he and his charge then moved carefully up to the top of the street. The CO and his group were still behind the Pigs. A company’s commander held something in the palm of his hand which they were all looking at and which several of the press had photographed. When he saw Charles the CO took the object, a lump of metal, and showed it to him. ‘See that? Know what it is?’

Charles looked at it, convinced that he ought to know but utterly at a loss. ‘No, sir.’

‘Well, you bloody well should do. It’s the base plug from a number thirty-six hand-grenade, as any private soldier will tell you. It missed your head by about half an inch. These things can kill at great distances on concrete. Two of them were thrown at you when you were chasing some bloody fool pressman who should’ve known better round and round the Ferret. It’s a miracle you’re alive. It’s a miracle no one else was injured. I can’t understand why you aren’t dead. Didn’t you realise what was happening?’

Charles took the proffered lump of metal. It was heavier than it looked. ‘I heard the bangs, sir,’ he said lamely.

‘You should be dead. You ought to be dead. Anyone else would be.’ The CO sounded annoyed but as he turned away he gripped Charles’s arm in a comradely fashion and said in an undertone, ‘You did a brave thing, foolish or not. Well done. It won’t be forgotten.’

Charles pocketed the little lump of metal. He was not sure what it was that he was supposed to have done but he rather hoped that it would be forgotten, in case he were called upon to do it again.

The reason for not advancing down the street immediately was apparently to give the bombers time to retreat. The CO did not want a shoot-out in front of the houses. It would also give time for the Knights of Malta, the voluntary ambulance service which assisted the IRA, to take the wounded away, if there were any, but that could not be helped. Eventually the CO allowed the Ferret to creep forward, which it did with its Browning swinging ominously from side to side. Its mobile spotlight flickered along the walls, reflected dazzlingly by those windows that were still whole. Parts of the walls and the road were blackened by flame and its wheels crushed the glass that lay everywhere with a continuous crackle. The CO and his party followed on foot behind it, Charles with them. He had been told to keep the press back, which task he had delegated to Van Horne while he went forward to check that the area was clear before they were allowed down. Soon the Ferret’s lights lit up the end of the street. It was as littered as the rest but the row of houses across the bottom looked undamaged. The spotlight danced into the corners on either side but there was no movement. The Ferret suddenly accelerated and stopped as it reached the end, but all was deserted. The only sounds were the purring of the Ferret’s engine and the gentle crushing of glass beneath the boots of those following it. The road forming the T of the junction dwindled into alleyways on each side and in both there was a number of unbroken bottles intended as petrol bombs. Charles noticed that the CO had drawn and cocked his pistol and so he drew his own, but did not trust himself to cock it. The chances of an accidental discharge were, he felt, greater now than the chances of being shot, and the results would be almost as unpleasant. For a few moments everyone paused and there was almost a sense of peace. It began to rain again.

‘Someone died here,’ said the CO, shining his torch into a puddle. ‘We hit three for certain. This was probably the one who lost the top of his head.’

It was a large pool of blood, dark and still. It was three feet or more across. For a moment Charles could think of nothing but Lady Macbeth’s, ‘Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?’ Then, following the light of the CO’s torch, he saw there were six pools in all as well as trails of blood leading into the alleyways. Soldiers were sent to search the alleyways but nothing was found.

More blood was splashed on the window-sill of one of the houses, and there was what looked like a bullet-hole in its front door. ‘Exactly what I was worried about,’ said the CO, pointing to the hole and turning to lecture his audience. ‘This very thing. These poor people have their houses used as firing butts. God, I hope we haven’t hit anyone. They do it deliberately, you know, these thugs, because they think we won’t open fire. Not that it worries them if we do. They don’t care if we kill fifty innocent people. In fact, they prefer it. It’s good publicity for them. Words fail me, gentlemen.’ He turned to the RSM. ‘Knock them up, Mr Bone. It’s the very least we can do.’

The RSM began a prolonged and loud knocking on the door, a task in which he clearly found fulfilment, and it was eventually opened by a hard-faced but frightened-looking woman of about thirty. She had mouse-brown hair, at which she kept tugging, and staring brown eyes which she at first shielded against the glare of the lights. The CO introduced himself with a formal and old-world courtesy, which obviously baffled her, and apologised for the disturbance. He even saluted and Charles thought for one brief moment that he was going to order everyone to salute. ‘Is everyone in your house all right?’ he asked. She nodded. ‘No one is injured?’

‘No.’

Her manner was sullen and resentful but the CO’s courtesy, once decided upon, was invincible. ‘The reason I ask, madam, is that a bullet probably fired by one of my soldiers, on my orders, looks as though it has gone through your door here. I was worried in case anyone had been injured and I may say I’m profoundly relieved to hear that no one has. The order to open fire is not one that comes lightly or easily in such a situation, believe me. I hope you understand that.’ She tugged at her hair and said nothing. ‘There is the question of compensation. If you will permit us to enter and trace the path of the bullet we will make a note of the damage and I personally will see that you are properly compensated.’

The mention of compensation cheered her up and during the search for the bullet’s path she became almost loquacious on the matter of damage. The bullet had passed through the door and then through the living-room wall behind it and then into the kitchen wall, where it was embedded. The woman and her three young children had been hiding in an upstairs back bedroom. She was asked several times where her husband was but she just shook her head and said, ‘Dunno.’

When the inspection was complete, the CO grabbed Charles by the shoulder again. ‘This young officer is Charles Thoroughgood. He is my public relations officer and my community relations officer, which means he deals with complaints. If you make a list of damage similar to the one we have made and bring it with you to our headquarters, along with an estimate for repairs, Charles Thoroughgood will see that you get it. All right?’ The woman nodded and glanced mistrustfully at Charles. ‘His telephone number is — what’s your telephone number?’ Charles told her. ‘You can ring or come and see him at any hour of the day or night and he will help you. That’s what he’s there for. He sits on the end of the telephone waiting to help people. Any time you want anything at all just ask for Lieutenant Thoroughgood.’

Three days earlier, at prayers, the CO had warned everyone against revealing their names, telephone numbers or any other details to people who might pass them on to the IRA. As they left the house he turned to Charles and said, ‘My heart goes out to these poor people, you know. They’ve got no choice, you see. They live here and they can’t afford to stand up against the thugs, especially if they’ve got children. It’s more than their lives are worth. We should always bear that in mind when dealing with them.’

After Charles had reminded the CO of their existence, the press were allowed down to the bottom of the street. For two or three minutes they filmed and photographed the blood enthusiastically, illuminating it with flashbulbs and very bright hand-held lights. There was speculation about the number hit but all Charles was able to tell them was what the CO had told him. After he had done this he realised he had been standing in a puddle of blood that had started to go sticky, as he could feel it on the soles of his boots. There were more requests to interview the CO. Charles found him searching for more bullet-holes. ‘They want to interview you, sir.’

‘I’ve got better things to do. Keep them out of my hair. That’s what you’re supposed to be here for. Let them interview you.’

‘They want you, sir, because it was you that gave the order to open fire.’

‘What do they want, blood?’ The CO seemed genuinely angry and then sighed. ‘All right, I suppose I’d better. It’s all part of the job these days. God, how I hate a press war. Bring ’em round.’

Charles feared that in his present state any remotely hostile questioning might produce an angry reaction from the CO. ‘It would be better to do it back at battalion HQ, sir.’

‘Why? Why not here? Scene of the action and all that stuff, that’s what they like, isn’t it?’

Charles thought quickly. ‘It’s much better back there for all their equipment — for the filming. They can set their lights and things up properly.’

‘All right. You’re the expert.’

Charles announced that there would be a press conference back at battalion HQ and most of the press headed gratefully off, though some left to meet deadlines for the early editions. Farther up the street Scoopy-do was at work again, dragging the carcass of the bus off to some wasteland on the other side of the Falls where the carcasses of all sorts of vehicles rotted after previous riots. The metal squealed as it scraped against tarmac and brick; otherwise, the city seemed dead. The CO and his Rover Group left with an unnecessary revving of engines but Charles, having arranged a lift with one of the other vehicles, lingered on for a few minutes. It was raining steadily now, big drops that splashed in the puddles, diluting and washing away the blood. A few soldiers were left to finish the search and the street glistened in the lights of the waiting Pig. The only sounds now were of occasional vehicles in the distance and the steady, soothing patter of the rain. After the excitement and noise the calm seemed correspondingly deeper. Everyone moved carefully and talked in undertones, as though in the presence of the dead. When someone kicked a brick which bounced with a clang off the side of the Pig the corporal in charge swore angrily at the offending soldier.

Charles and Van Horne walked slowly up the street together. Charles had forgotten Beazely and groped ineffectually for his pistol as the portly figure lurched from the darkness of an alley.

‘All right, it’s me, it’s me,’ said Beazely in a hoarse whisper.

Charles pretended to have been fastening the flap on his holster and Van Horne, who had been rather quicker on the draw, replaced his pistol. ‘I’d forgotten you,’ said Charles.

‘Thought you had. You’ve been a bloody long time down there. Is it all over?’

‘Everyone’s gone home.’

‘Thank Christ for that.’ Beazely’s sheepskin jacket was wet and dirty, his face red and flustered as always but adorned by raindrops. He touched his glasses nervously. ‘Sounded bloody awful down there. Hell of a noise. Must’ve been a real battle. You’re all right, are you? Not blown up or anything?’

‘No, we’re all right. Why, were you worried you wouldn’t get your story?’ Charles regretted the remark as he said it.

Fortunately Beazely never took offence quickly. ‘Well, I won’t deny that crossed my mind,’ he said. ‘But, you know, when two blokes you know and like disappear off into the dark and there’s a lot of banging and shooting and shouting it’s natural to wonder if they’re all right. Nice to have you back, that’s all. Must’ve been a real battle.’

Charles found that he didn’t want to talk about it now that the time had come. Anyway, there wasn’t much to say. ‘Not really. We shot two or three bombers and the others went home. There were no bodies and no prisoners. One soldier was slightly injured by burns and another by a brick.’

‘What about details? I must have details. Eye-witness accounts, you know.’

‘There’s a press conference back at battalion headquarters. Come to that.’

‘That’s no good, you know it isn’t, that’s all the official stuff. I can’t use that for my I-was-in-the-front-line-trapped-between-both-sides, can I? Come on, Charlie, give me the story. You said you would.’

‘I’ll give it to you there.’

Beazely grabbed Charles’s arm imploringly. ‘For Jesus Christ’s sake, Charlie, look, I have a deadline to meet in twenty-five minutes for the early editions and if I don’t meet it I’m finished — you know, cut throat finished. The press conference stuff is for the later editions. Everyone else has filed theirs and I still haven’t even got mine and then I’ve got to find a phone that works in this God-awful place. Come on, Charlie, please, you said you would.’

Charles turned to Van Horne, who had maintained an air of polite disinterest. ‘Did you notice anything suitable?’

‘Blood all over the place,’ Van Horne replied promptly. ‘Lying in puddles in the road, spattered over the walls of the houses, brains in the gutter. Grenade-thrower’s head taken off in the act of throwing. Mothers and children cowering in the houses, priests in attendance —’

‘Priests?’ asked Charles. Beazely was avidly noting everything Van Horne said.

‘There must’ve been at least one, sir. There always is.’ Beazely shot him a quick glance of grateful appreciation. ‘Vicious attack with nail bombs and grenades in narrow streets, designed to kill. Army opened fire only after repeated warnings. Minimum force but enough to be effective. Armoured car ablaze, crew saved by brave sergeant. Dramatic rescue of petrol tanker bomb horror that could’ve blasted entire neighbourhood. Army tempted to blow it up where it was and save themselves trouble —’

‘Not that,’ said Charles.

Beazely’s pencil hovered. ‘How about Army defuse massive tanker bomb and save families?’

‘If you like.’

‘You’ll be rewarded handsomely for this, gentlemen,’ added Beazely.

‘No need,’ said Charles.

‘We’ve got photos too,’ said Van Horne.

‘Great. Thanks a lot. I should be able to do something with this.’

‘How long will it take you to write it?’ Charles asked, more because he felt a little guilty at having been so unhelpful than because he really wanted to know.

‘Whatever time I’ve got. Ten minutes maybe, then I’ll probably alter it as I ring it in. Less than that if I don’t get to a phone quickly. Thanks for your help. Hope you have a quiet night, what’s left of it.’

Beazely did not get to the conference because he was still telephoning his story. Given a few of the right phrases and a few facts, true or false, he seemed to be able to knock one into shape very quickly. There was no doubting his proficiency in this respect. The story, when Charles saw it the next day, was a convincing and exciting account of a riot and its aftermath which could be faulted only in its not resembling the riot he had attended. Though perhaps, on reflection, that would not have been regarded as a very serious fault.

The journalists were crowded into the Mess, with all the wires, lighting and cameras needed by the TV people. It was not difficult to sense a degree of impatience with all this on the part of the steam press, as they called themselves. These men needed only notebooks and access to a telephone to make their news. The cumbersome, time-consuming technical demands of their more glamorous TV counterparts were exasperating and the result, in their eyes, was not worth it. The radio reporters, able to offer the most immediate news of all, were only slightly encumbered by their equipment and had more in common with the steam press. A space was cleared at the far end of the Mess for a table and two chairs. Pleading that the CO would not answer questions he was not prepared for and was required by the Army to stick strictly to facts, Charles ascertained that they wanted comment on why the CO had decided to open fire, what effect he thought it had had, the dangers arising from the hijacking of the petrol tanker and whether or not the CO had himself led the charge on the bus.

The CO was upstairs in his room and Charles went up to brief him. Looking tired and drawn, he was sitting at his desk with an untouched glass of whisky before him. He heard Charles out and then passed his hand wearily across his eyes. ‘Dammit, how I hate having to talk to these wretched people,’ he said. ‘It’s not their fault, of course. They’ve got a job to do just as I have, but it’s all this going back over it, having to say the right thing, resurrecting the whole terrible business. It’s worse than actually doing it, you know. When I think of those poor, stupid, foolish, ignorant, tragically misguided young men whom we probably killed tonight it makes me want to weep, you know, it really does. They could’ve been my sons, or yours if you were older. They were somebody’s. It certainly would have been at least one of my soldiers if we hadn’t done what we did. Those are the people the press should be talking to, the bloody Provisional IRA, not me. They should be saying to them, “Look, for God’s sake stop this bloody lunacy, this violence, because it’ll get out of control and kill all of you and a great many more besides.” Don’t you think, eh?’

Charles nodded. When the CO needed someone to talk to he did not need them to say very many words, although he paid full attention to any they did say. At such times Charles felt close to him despite himself, and at the same time awkward, as though he were there under false pretences.

The CO held out his hand, as if to show something in his palm, and kept his dark eyes fixed upon Charles. ‘If only these people could be made to see that if they consistently break the law, if they consistently use violence they will meet with violence, and if it comes to a showdown the side with superior force wins. And that’s us, they must know that. And to keep up a war of attrition is simply to prolong the agony, their own as well as everyone else’s, without getting anywhere because no British government, of any complexion, is going to pull out of Northern Ireland against the wishes of the majority of people as expressed in the ballot box. They must see that, they must. They can’t surely be so stupid as not to, can they? And to go on as they are, where does it get them? How are they one jot the better? How is their cause advanced one inch further? If anything, it goes backwards. There’s nothing to be gained by violence of this kind and everything to be lost, and they’re losing it.’ His tired face was now tense and his eyes hard with passion. He gripped his glass of whisky tightly and raised it but put it down again without tasting. ‘Don’t you think that’s what the press should be doing, telling them that, eh? Trying to stop it instead of asking me damn fool questions about why I opened fire when there were grenades rattling around in the street?’

Charles nodded again but still said nothing. After gazing thoughtfully at his whisky for a few moments, the CO knocked it back in one and stood up, smoothing down his jersey and stamping his feet so that his anklets fitted snugly over the tops of his boots. He clapped Charles on the back and grinned. ‘Hang it all, I nearly lost my PRO to those grenades, and then where would I be? The only one I’ve got. I hope they realise that.’

They went downstairs and made their way through the crush, the smoke, the wires and the hubbub to the table by the wall. The CO appeared calm, grave and self-possessed. As he took his seat the hubbub ceased. Charles sat next to him.

At first, all went well. The questions were much as anticipated, with the rival TV interviewers irritating everyone by each asking the same questions and requiring the same answers to be delivered to them individually. They for their part were irritated by what they regarded as unnecessary and inarticulate interruptions from the steam press. The CO’s replies were stiff and rather lengthy but the points were answered. He used a lot of phrases that were typical of him and of no one else that Charles had met, such as ‘denying the Queen’s highway’, ‘the Queen’s writ will not be flouted’, ‘the un-Christian monsters who so tragically misguide these young men’, ‘the honour and integrity of the British Army’, ‘my soldiers will not stand by while the Queen is insulted’ and ‘the appalling dilemma confronting every commander which only God can resolve’.

Charles knew that such phrases and concepts were not only part of the CO’s everyday conversation but were central to how he saw himself and the world, but he did not know how the press would react. He feared mockery or disdain but saw neither, only attentiveness. Whether they sympathised with the CO’s all too obvious sincerity or whether such remarks made good press, he could only guess. Trouble came from the well-dressed, thin-faced young man who had earlier displayed his potential animosity. It turned out he was Colm McColm of the Gazette. He did not speak until the conference was about to finish and the TV people had begun to dismantle their equipment. When he spoke it was with a quietness born of confidence.

‘Colonel, on your own admission you ordered the shooting of several people this evening, of whom at least one is probably dead.’

The room quietened and the TV men stopped their dismantling. The CO had his elbows on the table and his hands firmly clasped. ‘I said that we opened fire and we think we hit at least three bombers.’

‘Colonel, could you tell me what kind of weapon your men were using?’

‘They were using the 7.62 millimetre self-loading rifle. It’s the standard weapon in this and other NATO countries.’

‘I see. Correct me if I’m wrong, but is it true to say that it is a high-velocity weapon that is lethal at ranges of well above five hundred yards?’

‘It is, depending on the accuracy of the man using it.’

‘What was the range at which your men opened fire this evening?’

‘About sixty or seventy yards.’

‘About sixty or seventy yards. And will a human body stop a 7.62 bullet at this range?’

‘Not usually, no.’

‘Not usually. So the bullet goes straight through. And what about the thing behind the body — a wall, for example. Will it go through that?’

‘It depends on the wall.’

‘Let us say, an ordinary terrace-house wall like those we all saw this evening. Would that stop the bullet?’

‘Probably not.’

McColm was very relaxed, with one arm along the back of the seat next to his and a notebook balanced on his knee. The TV cameras were going again and the CO was staring at his questioner, his lined face held in a brittle composure. ‘Are we to understand, then,’ continued McColm, ‘that you knowingly and deliberately opened fire with high-velocity weapons in a built-up area at human targets not more than seventy yards distant?’

Charles could see the veins on the CO’s hands as he gripped tightly, as though in fervent prayer. He looked down at the table and then said in a quiet, taut voice, ‘I ordered my soldiers to open fire at identifiable targets who were throwing lethal bombs and hand-grenades on one of Her Majesty’s highways. I ordered them to aim low in order to avoid injury to anyone in the houses behind.’

‘But you admit that you opened fire with high-velocity weapons at short ranges, Colonel, and you admit that the bullets could have gone through the walls of houses in which innocent people were living, but you don’t admit to the terrible danger to anyone in that area nor to this obvious flouting of the Army’s so-called minimum force policy. I ask you, Colonel, a 7.62 bullet at seventy yards, what does it do to a man? Takes his head off, I’m told. And perhaps the head of the man behind him. How can you justify such tactics? How can you sit there and justify them?’

The CO’s tightly-compressed lips and his prolonged downward glance betrayed a rising tension which threatened his self-control. He still spoke very slowly, staring straight at the reporter. ‘I took what action was necessary to prevent the murder of one of my soldiers. As well as to protect the lives and property of the surrounding population from destruction by the bombers. I ordered my soldiers to aim low in order to minimise the risk to the inhabitants of those houses. And I have since inspected the damage myself and arranged for compensation. There were no injuries.’

‘And we have only your word for this?’

Something seemed to snap inside the CO and he got to his feet, his voice rising as he spoke. ‘Young man, I don’t know who you are or what paper you represent and I frankly don’t care. But I’ll tell you one thing. If you’d stood in my shoes on that street this evening for just two minutes — that’s all, two minutes — you wouldn’t come in here looking for a bloody autopsy. You have not the remotest idea what it means to take the kind of decision I had to take this evening, not the remotest. God forbid that I ever thought the day would come when I had to order a platoon in battle-order down a British street and tell them to open fire. But it has. And God knows it’s not easy but as God is my witness it has to be done. So you’re not going to find any bodies here. Go to Dublin and ask some of your friends down there. Go and ask them!’

The CO was pointing at McColm by the time he had finished, his teeth clenched, his face red and his finger shaking. The cameras were still going and a couple of microphones were discreetly held at table-level. McColm was still lounging in his chair but his face had paled and hardened with self-consciousness. Seeing that he was about to speak, Charles got to his feet. Everyone looked at him and for what seemed a long moment he could think of nothing to say. He thought of Manningtree, his tutor, who had a habit of ending more than usually boring tutorials somewhat abruptly. ‘Gentlemen, we called this conference in order to discuss matters of fact, not the ethics of violence. If you have no more questions we shall consider it closed.’

To his great relief there was a general scraping and shuffling of chairs and a growing murmur. People started to move towards the door and the TV men again began packing up their equipment. McColm was one of the first out, saying nothing to anyone. As the London Times man — a kindly-looking, avuncular figure — left he raised his bushy eyebrows at the CO and Charles. ‘Still get complaints if they issued you with peashooters,’ he grunted.

When they had gone the CO sat down, resting his head in one hand. When he looked up at Charles his face was very weary and his eyes dull. ‘Sorry, Charles, I blew my top,’ he said quietly. ‘Let you down. Let us all down. A CO should never do that in public.’ He stood and stamped his feet, with an effort at cheerfulness. ‘Glad you stopped it when you did. You were splendid. God only knows what I’d have said if I’d gone on. Has it done any harm, d’you think?’

Charles was embarrassed by the CO’s humility, as though by his mere presence he was taking advantage of it. ‘I don’t think so, sir. There was nothing politically unwise. I don’t see why it should.’

‘Good. Well, we’ll see. Bloody press. Get me a whisky, will you?’ Charles went to the drinks tray, poured a large whisky and gave it to him. He took it rather gruffly. ‘You know I don’t drink alone. Get one yourself. Fine state of affairs when a CO has to order his own officers to drink with him.’

Later, Charles found Van Horne in his office. He had attended the conference, standing at the back, and had shown all the press out. The corners of his mouth showed the merest beginnings of a smile. ‘That bloke dropped a right bollock in front of the CO, didn’t he, sir?’

‘Something like that.’

‘If he hadn’t been a civvy the CO would’ve had his guts for garters.’

‘I thought for a moment he was going to, anyway.’

Beazely telephoned, asking what had happened at the conference. Charles resisted his first impulse and gave him a boring and doctored account, to make sure that at least one daily did not splash the CO’s anger all over the front page. He then rang the PR desk at Headquarters to tell them what had happened but instead spent most of his time trying to convince them that the major they had sent to assist him at nine o’clock this evening, without telling anyone, had never arrived. With the facetiousness that sometimes comes with tiredness, Charles suggested that he might have found a better story on the way but the suggestion was taken literally and without humour. It was one of a number of options. Others were that he had either been killed or kidnapped. An enquiry was to be started. To those on the streets Headquarters was a remote world and what happened there was a matter of indifference or at best ridicule, unless it directly affected them. It was gone four in the morning and Charles felt no compunction about leaving them to it.

9

The post did not arrive in battalion HQ until late afternoon as it had to be collected from Headquarters by the diminutive post corporal and his escort of two Land-Rovers. It had been late the previous day and by the time it came Charles had no time to collect his because of the trouble. He got it before breakfast the following morning. Those mornings were the most leisurely part of the day because the rioters and terrorists had little enthusiasm for rising early. The CO had remarked several times that it would be the best time to carry out a shooting attack on the Army because people were least on their guard then. The mornings were also the time when it was possible to get within sight of that lost world in Army life, privacy. There were no rules about breakfast, and anyone could simply get up and eat roughly six hours after whatever time he had been lucky enough to get to bed, and at the appropriate time breakfast merged painlessly into lunch. There were no papers that morning, which was not unusual because they sometimes arrived late. It was something to be thankful for, in that the CO could not have seen them either. In the meantime, the reading of letters would provide an effective barrier against Nigel Beale, who was sometimes inclined to talk over breakfast.

However, Charles did not need the barrier that morning. In fact, he did not get a chance to use it. Nigel and Tony Watch were at breakfast when he arrived and, there being no papers, Nigel was particularly chirpy. He was claiming to have predicted the previous day’s trouble.

‘Well, I didn’t hear you,’ said Tony.

‘Pay attention in the briefings.’

‘I do. You never said there was going to be trouble yesterday.’

‘Maybe I didn’t say it was going to be yesterday in the briefing. You don’t hear everything there, you know. There’s a lot of need-to-know stuff that I brief the CO on personally.’

‘How come he didn’t know about it, then?’

‘What makes you think he didn’t?’ Nigel shoved a forkful of egg, bacon, fried bread and tinned tomato into his mouth and munched aggressively. Charles was helping himself from the hot-plates when Anthony Hamilton-Smith arrived and did the same. Anthony never spoke to anyone at breakfast. He always read The Times, beginning with the back page, and when there was no paper he simply ate and stared as though there was no one else in the room. He gave the impression of a great solitude, as of one who had renounced the world, and if he were ever forced to acknowledge other people — such as by having to ask for the marmalade — he did so in a way that made them feel he had never seen them before and had no wish to again. He usually began to be more sociable within about an hour of breakfast, and by the time of his lunchtime gin and tonic he was spritely and cheerful. On this morning he and Charles executed a kind of ritual dance around the hot-plates, based on unspoken principles of fairness, temporal priority and the respect due to rank and age. Each came away with what he required and sat down with the other two without speaking. Unfortunately, the table was small.

‘Anyway,’ continued Tony Watch. ‘What makes you think it was the Provisionals that organised it? How d’you know it wasn’t the Stickies?’

‘The who?’ Nigel’s mouth was still full and his cheeks bulged.

‘The Stickies,’ repeated Tony irritably.

Nigel swallowed. ‘Who the hell are they when they’re at home?’

‘The Stickies? Don’t you know who the Stickies are?’ Tony’s plump face showed a mixture of triumph and genuine surprise. ‘The Stickies are the official IRA. I thought everyone knew that. It’s common knowledge.’

‘Not to me it isn’t.’

‘The CO knows.’

‘I’ve never heard of it.’

‘Well, don’t look at me. You’re supposed to be the Intelligence officer. Go and ask the first Ackie you meet. He’ll tell you who the Stickies are.’

‘Sounds bloody unlikely to me,’ said Nigel. He looked disgruntled and uncertain.

Without a word to anyone, Anthony got up from the table, walked over to the hat rack, put on a black beret, taking care to adjust it neatly with the badge in line with the left eye and the brim an inch above the eyebrow, returned to the table, sat down and continued calmly with his breakfast. Nigel and Tony forgot their argument for a while and stared at him, but neither ventured to say anything. Charles was careful not to stare but could not help glancing several times, surreptitiously. Anthony ate solemnly and silently, as though wearing a beret was as much a part of the breakfast ritual as food. He supposed it was Anthony’s way of indicating his disapproval of the conversation and admired him for it, though without following the logic of the act. He decided to postpone opening his letters until he had finished eating. He did not want Anthony to feel obliged to get up and put on his overcoat.

Nigel Beale was less sensitive, being one of those people who do not seek to enquire after the causes of odd behaviour in others. What interested him was the problem in hand. He put his knife and fork down and pushed his plate away. ‘So why are they called Stickies?’ he asked Tony. ‘If they are, that is.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Tony. ‘Go and ask them. Or get Charles here to ask the press for you. They’ll know.’

Anthony put his cup into his saucer with a noise as decisive as an auctioneer’s hammer. ‘Stickies,’ he said with chilling precision, ‘is the name by which the official IRA have been known since one Easter a few years ago when they departed from Republican tradition by sticking their Easter lilies to themselves rather than pinning them. As an Intelligence officer you should know the regimental history and traditions of your enemy.’ He sipped his tea, almost demurely, and then looked again at Nigel. ‘And as an officer you should also know that talking at breakfast is not a habit that is encouraged in the British Army, especially talking shop. It’s unfortunate that it’s allowed at all. In some regiments it is not, while in my father’s regiment, the wearing of head-dress at a meal indicated that the wearer did not wish to be spoken to. Indeed, it was considered polite not to speak in his presence. That is a custom we would do well to adopt.’ Anthony then got up and took his tea to an armchair, where he sat and sipped calmly, still wearing his beret.

Tony Watch raised his eyebrows and smiled at Charles. Nigel Beale looked as though he were about to reply, played for a few moments with his teaspoon, then got up and walked out without looking at anyone. Tony soon left and Charles went and sat with his coffee and letters in the armchair opposite Anthony. The silence continued for some moments until Anthony looked up. ‘Charles.’

To his surprise, a slight smile played upon Anthony’s features. ‘Yes, Anthony?’

‘I think I may have started a regimental tradition.’

‘I hope you have, Anthony,’ said Charles, sincerely.

Still smiling, Anthony took off his beret. His triumph seemed to have made him light-hearted and almost loquacious, for the time of day. ‘Should shut young Beale up for a bit,’ he said. ‘I’m very pleased he left when he did, though. This beret ain’t mine. Tight at the band. Must belong to some pin-head. Thought I was in danger of passing out and spoiling the effect. Mine’s upstairs.’

Charles laughed. ‘It did the job anyway.’

Anthony stood and stretched. ‘Just goes to show,’ he said, mysteriously. He put the beret back on its peg on his way out of the Mess. ‘Have a good day, old boy.’

‘And you, Anthony.’ Charles turned at last to his letters. There was a postcard from Janet, posted in York, where she had been for the weekend. She did not say with whom. One of the other letters was from Regimental Headquarters asking for subscriptions and the other was from the Retirements Board saying that he could be released from the Army on repayment of one thousand pounds. The earliest date was the day after the battalion’s return from Ireland, by which time he would have to have paid the money. He was not entitled to terminal leave nor to the normal gratuity. A copy of the letter was being sent to the CO.

Charles had had no idea that it could be so easy. Pessimism had set in after he had sent his letter and the recent busyness had pushed to the back of his mind all thoughts about resignation, but now the knowledge that he could be out of the Army in two months shook the sleep out of him and made even his present surroundings seem almost pleasant. He rose from the table and poured himself another coffee with the delight in detail of one who sees for the first time. His boots, his beret, his heavy wool jersey could all be viewed now with affection, rather than sickening familiarity, because he would be leaving them. It was clear that his main task now was to stay alive, complete and uninjured. He thought about this as though it were a holy vow and resolved to consider how best to eliminate those activities that offered the most danger.

There was, of course, a problem about the money. The very most he could raise by selling everything saleable, including the old Rover (if it still was saleable) and his mess kit and blues (if Regimental Headquarters still bought such things), was a little over five hundred pounds. He could think of no job he wanted and would be in no position to borrow from the bank. He thought briefly of Janet, who had money of her own, but felt this would be ignoble. He was then a little annoyed because he had considered himself above thinking such things were ignoble — it was the kind of reaction he associated more with the CO than with himself — but he then had to admit that the real reason was that he did not like to commit himself to her any more than he had.

These intriguing speculations were ended by the arrival of the CO. Charles nervously expected a reaction to the letter from the Retirements Board but the CO ate his breakfast quickly, saying nothing to anyone, called sharply for his vehicles and drove off to the Brigade O Group. When he had gone one of the mess orderlies brought in the newspapers, from the state of which it was clear that someone had read them hurriedly. It appeared that the CO had had them sent up to his room the moment they appeared. Charles was apprehensive but they turned out on the whole not to be as bad as he had feared. The riot and subsequent shootings were headlined throughout and there were lots of fuzzy, confusing pictures. There were a few quotations from the CO’s outburst, which came over surprisingly well, and no one had taken up McColm’s point about high-powered weapons except the Irish Times man. The Gazette carried essentially the same stories as the others but with the addition of extensive coverage of the views of local residents. It claimed that soldiers had broken into houses on the pretext of searching for wanted men but that their real purpose had been to vandalise. The damage in the house that the CO had inspected was accurately listed, although McColm had neglected to mention that the holes in the walls had been caused by a bullet and not by the soldiers. Inside there was a short feature entitled, ‘The Man who lets God decide’. It said that the CO had been beside himself with rage at the press conference and asked whether such a man could be trusted to remain cool in more dangerous situations. It questioned the use of high-powered weapons in built-up areas and cited the CO as one who shifted the responsibility for such decisions to a suspiciously Unionist God, using the Queen of England as his authority. Surprisingly, none of the papers speculated about the cause of the riot, which remained unknown.

Charles read Beazely’s paper last. He was reassured by the report on the front page and Beazely was on the way to having some of his lost credibility restored to him when Charles reached the centre-page spread. There was a large photograph of himself cowering beneath the Pig at the crossroads, captioned, ‘Lieutenant Charles Thoroughgood, 41, takes no chances as grenades pepper the streets’. It was a press agency photograph and had beneath it an article by ‘Our Special Correspondent’ in which Charles read some of his own and many of Van Horne’s words, fortunately without their being attributed to either. Beazely had added the punctuation and a few imaginative flights of his own.

The only other surprise was a leader in a staunchly Unionist paper calling for more shooting, more units like AAC(A) and, strangely, for stricter enforcement of the law relating to road fund licences. It was the adjutant who later pointed out that cars in Republican areas were never taxed.

There was more trouble that afternoon up in the new estate. The fact that it began about an hour after lunch, as convenient a time as any, was due to the CO’s having started it. That morning he had returned from his O Group later than usual, and had stomped straight up to his room, still without speaking to anyone. The adjutant was summoned a while later and Charles feared that it might have something to do with himself, especially as the adjutant was tight-lipped afterwards. Later, though, the ops officer and Nigel Beale were summoned and Charles began to relax. Over lunch there was a great deal of important secretiveness amongst those in the know, except for the adjutant who looked as disinterested and weary as usual by then. Anthony Hamilton-Smith was either oblivious to any secret or was particularly good at keeping it, whilst Tony Watch was aggressively but unsuccessfully curious. Nigel Beale exuded a passionate furtiveness and communicated with the ops officer in cryptic monosyllables. It was all spoilt by the CO who was brisk and talkative when he came to lunch and informed everyone that he had got clearance from Brigade to do a search of selected houses in the new estate before dusk. There was information — doubtful, according to Brigade, who couldn’t see beyond the ends of their noses, but white-hot, according to the CO — that a large quantity of gelignite had been moved in to the area in preparation for a series of bombings. Swearing all present to eternal secrecy, he said that this was the result of a decision taken by the Provisional IRA leadership at a conference in a Dublin hotel to increase terrorism and to decrease rioting. Apparently they thought that terrorism was more likely to drive the British from Ulster and would convince the Ulster people that to live in an Ireland united by the Provisional IRA was what they really wanted. Eternal secrecy was vital in order that the Eire government should not be embarrassed by the suspicion that it harboured terrorists.

Elements from throughout the battalion were involved in the search and they entered the new estate in an impressive convoy, to the accompaniment of banging dustbins. There was also the usual shouting and jeering. It was some time since Charles had been into the estate and he would not have thought deterioration possible, but before his eyes the worst had clearly got worse. Unbroken windows and unsmashed paving stones were now so unusual that they caught the eye and prompted speculation. Garden fences had long been pulled down but a few tatty privet hedges remained. Many of the houses had tiles missing and cracks in their walls. Dirty, unhappy-looking children swarmed like flies and mangy dogs started up everywhere. Because of the very high unemployment a large number of men were at home and, it being afternoon, most of them were up.

Grilles were up on the Land-Rovers. The CO sat in the front with his map-case open. ‘There is nothing that pleases me more,’ he said, ‘than to ride at the head of a convoy of military vehicles. If only we were going to war instead of searching these wretched people’s homes. My God, we’d better find something, you know, or we’ll look pretty stupid.’

‘It’s bound to stir them up if we don’t,’ said Nigel Beale.

‘It’ll stir them up if we do. Anything we do annoys them. If you were to walk round here tonight and give every man a pound he’d go and drink it and then throw the empty bottle at you. And if we didn’t do anything they’d hoard enough explosive to blow themselves and the rest of Belfast sky-high. Maybe that’s the answer, I don’t know.’

Once well into the estate the convoy split up and different bits went to different houses. Charles went with the CO to one of the white-hot certainties, the home of a well-known Republican family. The thought that because he was leaving the Army he would never come back to Belfast, made him pay more attention to what he saw. It might, after all, be the last search they would do. He hoped it would. He was too English not to feel apologetic about such an invasion of privacy. The house in this case was a tattered semi-detached with a larger than usual garden, which was no more than a patch of earth and scrub excreted upon by dogs and children. They surrounded the house and entered by the front door, which had had a hole kicked in the bottom and didn’t close properly. There were at least a dozen occupants of all ages and both sexes. Some protested vigorously and loudly to the pale young soldiers who concentrated on their first duty of entering every room and counting the people, before trying to get them all into one room downstairs. Meanwhile, a shouting and chanting crowd had gathered outside but were kept at a distance by the escort. The accompanying RUC men were older and more accustomed to abuse, and they went about their work with none of the nervous hurry of the young soldiers. An indefinable stench, a combination of many smells, old and new, pervaded the house. On entering, the CO turned to Nigel Beale and said in an undertone, ‘This is where the stuff is, you know. I’m sure of it. If it’s anywhere in this estate, it’s here.’

Soldiers with mine-detectors were ordered to search the garden. After taking a couple of steps into the hall Charles had attempted to linger on the doorstep, but was summoned inside by the CO to deal with complaints. The house had been searched many times before and after their initial hostility most of the people settled into a sullen resentment. Their names were taken and it turned out that they were all family, or so they said. There was a likeness running through them all, but it was more a likeness of expression and manner than of anything physical. A plump, unhealthily pale and prematurely old man who sat quietly in the corner said, when his name was taken, ‘Youse searched this house seventeen times since 1969 and never found nothing. When youse gonna stop?’

‘When you tell us where the gear is,’ said the soldier.

‘There’s no gear here. I don’t know where no gear is.’

‘Then we won’t be long, will we?’

Charles knew better than to invite complaints, since everyone would have complained at the house being searched at all. However, he was picked upon by two teenage girls with lank dark hair and hard, expressionless faces. They had probably chosen him because he was the only one standing around doing nothing. ‘Some of your soldiers have made a mess of our toilet,’ one of them said.

‘What have they done?’

‘Come up and see.’

He followed them upstairs and they showed him into the bathroom. There were smears and deposits around the toilet in such positions as to suggest wild, uncontrolled and aerobatic excretions. It was only his involuntary recoil on entering that saved him from the indignity of being locked in, as they tried to push him forward and close the door behind him. He pushed back and they ran downstairs, laughing loudly and humourlessly. He followed them, conscious of the stares of the soldiers who wondered what had happened. For some time he hung around awkwardly in the hall as searchers came and went. Then the obese lady of the house offered cups of tea to him and several others. It was a suspicious gesture but they felt obliged to accept it. The cups were presented to them on a tin tray with a packet of biscuits. As they raised their cups to their lips each one gave off a powerful smell of urine. Charles replaced his without a word, but he heard later from two soldiers who had eaten them that the biscuits were all right.

Charles then followed the CO out into the garden where a tunnel had been discovered, starting with a manhole cover near the wall of the house and ending in the bank of a ditch near the bottom of the garden. The man of the house said that it was the drains and that there was nothing in it except rats.

‘We’ll see for ourselves,’ said the CO. He looked around. ‘Who’s going down? Any volunteers? Somebody small.’ Charles drew himself up to his full height and could see others doing the same. ‘Nigel, you’re a little chap. You’ll do.’

Nigel Beale never liked to be reminded of his height, but he always liked to feel useful. He was clearly torn now between pleasure and humiliation. The manhole cover was pushed to one side, showing the hole to be deep, dark and stinking. Nigel began taking off his webbing while everyone else looked on with relieved curiosity — except for the CO, who said, ‘Come on, you’re not doing a striptease. Get it off.’

Charles held Nigel’s webbing and equipment, thereby, he hoped, giving the CO an impression of willing participation whilst making it slightly less likely that he would be the one sent to follow Nigel, if anyone was. It had begun to rain again. Nigel handed over his kit with an air of puzzled martyrdom and lowered himself gently into the hole. A renewed stench wafted up. ‘Don’t be too long down there,’ said the CO. ‘We’ve got a lot of work to do. And watch out for booby-traps.’

Nigel’s anxious face popped up again. ‘Anyone got a torch?’ A torch was handed to him. ‘It’s very low, sir. I’ll have to go on my belly to get along it.’

‘Well, don’t sit there talking about it. Do it.’

They saw Nigel huddle up at the bottom and then disappear head first in the direction of the ditch. There was a lot of grunting and squeezing as though he were being dragged by a rope. His lower legs and boots were still visible when there was a muffled shout and a young rat ran along his calf, jumped up out of the hole and made for the next-door garden. It was ineffectually chased by the RSM, who aimed several clumsy kicks at it and tried to hit it with his truncheon. When Nigel’s boots had vanished the watchers went to the ditch to see him come out. All they saw was two more rats, one a very large one, before Nigel clambered from the manhole he had entered. He was red-faced and puffed and covered in sludge. ‘Couldn’t get right down, sir,’ he said. ‘It gets narrower as it goes on. Thought I’d got stuck, actually.’

‘Did you find anything?’

‘No, sir, it’s clean.’ Everyone laughed, except Nigel and the CO.

‘Pity. Well done, anyway. At least you frightened the rats. Good effort.’

The CO went back into the house and Nigel began brushing himself down briskly, with little result. ‘Bloody filthy down there, you know. Really gungy. There’d better be some hot water when we get back.’

Charles handed him his kit, his pistol and his beret at arm’s length. ‘D’you think you’ll be able to clean yourself before you get back into the Land-Rover?’

Nigel pulled at some sludge that was clinging to his hair. ‘Doubt it. Don’t s’pose these bastards’ll let me use their water, if they have any. They must’ve been chuffed to blazes when they saw me go down there. Anyway, if I have to put up with that I don’t see why the rest of you buggers shouldn’t put up with me in the Land-Rover.’ He bent forward and shook himself, holding his collar back. ‘At least we know there’s nothing down there.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that’s something, isn’t it?’

‘Did you think there would be?’

‘You never know. It’s as good a place as any. There still might be, of course, in the narrow bit. But the only way to search that is to tie a rope to one of their kids and use him as a pull-through.’

The search of the house was fruitless and they moved on to a local school, where the largest search operation was still going on. A disgruntled mob was gathered outside and there was sporadic stone-throwing which worsened while they waited for the search teams to finish. The mob grew larger and the stoning became suddenly and persistently worse, obviously a result of organisation. One soldier had his face opened up from the mouth to the ear and snatch squads were deployed. They caught two boys in their teens and brought them back behind the barricade of Pigs and Land-Rovers. One of them came from the group that had stoned the soldier and Charles saw a knee go into the boy’s groin as he was pushed into the Pig. His head came forward on to a convenient elbow and he was bundled inside. Like most arrested rioters they did not seriously struggle once arrested. They seemed overawed by the very semblance of organisation. Henry and his ambulance Pig were called to treat the injured soldier.

One rubber bullet was fired and, although the stoning continued, the crowd was kept at too great a distance to be a serious menace. They turned then to building a barricade of cars across the road out, rocking them from side to side and then turning them over. Most were old wrecks anyway but one or two were probably stolen. By this time a number of the press had arrived and hovered uncertainly between the Army and the mob, before making hurriedly for the Army as the stone barrage worsened. Charles was always surprised at the speed with which a relatively minor disturbance could become a dangerous confrontation. It needed no more than a drop of bitterness, mixed with the odd injury or two, to turn the whole thing. Charles resumed one or two acquaintances of the previous night and learned from them that trouble was breaking out throughout Belfast. There were Republican demonstrations against the shootings and Loyalist demonstrations in support of them. Londonderry was quiet and somebody pointed out that the two cities were never aflame together. The arrival of the TV men seemed once again to constitute an important part of the ritual without which no riot seemed real. The press symbolised both crowd and referee at a football match but it was a match in which the referee’s decisions were long delayed, and in which one side was able to conduct itself with regard to them alone while the other was hampered also by a set of rules known to all but applied to itself. Once the cameras were in place the game could begin in earnest.

However, it was not to be. The search teams in the school finished, with nothing found, and the CO decided to pull out. ‘You can tell your press friends we’re going home now,’ he said to Charles. ‘We’re going to walk right through their barricades, and first thing tomorrow morning when there are no press around and all these buggers are in bed I’m going to get Scoopy-do down here and dump all these old cars slap bang across their front doors. If they want to build barricades in my patch they’d better understand they’re going to get their own back. So you can tell the press it’s all over bar the shouting for tonight, once we’ve pushed that lot to one side. These people aren’t going to cause more trouble in case we search the whole area. I’m certain the bloody stuff’s here somewhere though, absolutely certain. Still, it’ll wait.’

The barricades, which were still being built, were to be taken simply by driving the Pigs through them. This pleased the press because it would be dramatic, pictorial and, above all, quick — there were other, potentially more interesting incidents in other parts of the city. The search teams were still clearing up and the Pigs were revving their engines in hungry anticipation when Van Horne told Charles that he was wanted.

‘By whom?’

‘Dunno, sir, but they’ve been calling for you for about five minutes now.’

‘Where?’

‘Out there.’ Van Horne pointed down the street at the mob.

‘They want me?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, I’m not going. How do they know me anyway?’

Van Horne smiled patiently. ‘No sir, not them. The soldiers, sir. Our side. Down by the telephone box — look.’

Some thirty yards away between the Army and the mob there stood a telephone box. Some soldiers were crouched behind cars and low walls nearby. They were a snatch squad deployed to keep the mob back out of stone-throwing range. One of them was beckoning to Charles and pointing at the telephone box. ‘What does he want?’

‘Maybe someone’s telephoning you, sir.’

There was no trace of a smile on Van Horne’s face. ‘You can come with me,’ said Charles. There was no great danger in reaching the telephone box, as the occasional brick could be easily avoided, but it was against Charles’s principle of minimum involvement. Running, with so little obvious need and in front of so many people, would have appeared unofficer-like, and so he was obliged to walk in the normal officer fashion, his hands behind his back. Van Horne mysteriously got there ahead of him and crouched on the pavement behind the box because something had provoked the mob suddenly to bombard it with stones. Charles joined him, having run the last few yards despite his feelings about appearance. One of the soldiers lying in a garden nearby said that there was a journalist in the telephone box who wanted to speak to him. Charles did not need to ask who it was. Propped up against the back of the box, he carefully poked his head round the side and then withdrew it sharply as a lump of iron whistled past. ‘Beazely!’ he shouted. There was a pause and then he heard Beazely’s voice shouting something indecipherable. ‘What are you doing in there?’ Charles shouted again.

‘I can’t get out. Every time I open the door they stone me.’ Beazely sounded frightened and distressed.

Charles leant back against the box, safe from the stones. The nearby soldiers laughed. ‘Ring for the police!’ Charles shouted.

‘Bloody funny, ha ha. Now what about getting me out?’

‘Make a dash for it and come round here.’

‘I can’t. There’s some kids behind the houses just waiting. They’ll get me.’

‘Try it.’ Charles poked his head carefully round the other side. Like all telephone boxes in the area, and like most throughout Belfast, this one lacked glass and a telephone. He could just see Beazely’s baggy trousers and dirty sheepskin jacket. ‘Come on, try it!’

Beazely began to edge open the door with his foot and immediately a shower of stones and debris came crashing down. Some very small children, less than twelve years old, were throwing them and laughing before running back behind a house. Beazely let the door close. Charles again withdrew his head as a stone made sparks on the road a few inches from his eyebrow.

‘Want us to move up and take ’em out, sir?’ called the soldier from the garden.

‘No. The CO’s going to move up on the barricades in a couple of minutes.’ Beazely was shouting something again. ‘Speak up!’ shouted Charles.

‘I said, is anyone coming to rescue me?’

‘In a couple of minutes. We’re just organising it. Hold your ground.’

‘For Christ’s sake.’ Beazely sounded desperate.

There was a pause while nothing seemed to be happening anywhere. It was impossible not to relish Beazely’s predicament. Charles raised his voice again. ‘How old do you think I am?’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’ The reply was muffled, as though Beazely had pulled his jacket over his head.

‘You said I was forty-one in your paper.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘You did.’

‘Slip of the pen. Sub-editor. Jesus Christ, Charles, get me out of here, can’t you? They’re going to kill me soon.’

Charles could see that the Pigs were about to move. ‘I’m just about to get it rolling.’

‘Speed it up. Please. Before they get me. Look, we can do a deal. I’ve been thinking about it.’

‘What kind of deal?’

Beazely’s reply was drowned by the roar of the oncoming Pigs. Two abreast, they rumbled down the street and ploughed into the flimsy barricade with a great rending of metal. The mob fled like minnows before a perch. With their engines revving high so as to give an impression of much greater speed than they had attained, the Pigs nosed and shrugged the cars aside. The CO and his party walked down the road behind them, chatting amicably. A few more stones came from behind the houses but they were no more than a parting gesture. The trouble was over.

Charles walked round to the front of the telephone box and opened the door for Beazely. Seeing Charles he straightened himself, touched his glasses nervously and stepped out. ‘I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my life,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d had it in there. It would only take one of those lumps of metal on the head and that’d be it. Look at it all. Don’t know where they find it all from.’

Charles looked at the debris around the telephone box. It wouldn’t have been difficult for Beazely to have been killed or seriously injured. ‘Just as well we came when we did,’ he said. He felt slightly guilty at having made fun of Beazely now. ‘You sure you’re all right?’ he asked.

Beazely smiled a grateful smile. ‘Shaken and stirred but still in me glass,’ he said. He blew his nose and then looked at the bent cars askew across the pavements. ‘I’d better take some piccies of this lot.’

‘I’ll do it for you if you lend me your camera,’ offered Van Horne. ‘That all right, sir?’

Charles nodded. Beazely was only too pleased. ‘That was a great picture of Charles they used in this morning’s. Blood and thunder. Fear and danger. You could see it all.’ He gave his camera to Van Horne, who went off and happily clicked away. He pulled a crumpled packet of cigarettes from his pocket. ‘I thought I’d had my lot then, I really did. Very impressive rescue operation you laid on there, Charles, very impressive.’ Beazely was obviously beginning to feel he could cope again with the world. Charles decided he preferred him when he was frightened. He was more likeable and natural. ‘Little bastards,’ Beazely continued. ‘They had me in there for about twenty minutes, you know. Every time I poked my nose out they chucked half a house at me. Killing themselves laughing too. I’d kill ’em, I tell you, kids or not, if I had your job. ’Course, it would’ve been different if I’d had a gun.’ He pulled on his cigarette, his confidence returning with each puff. ‘Listen, about this deal. What do you say to fifty-fifty?’

‘Fifty what?’

‘Don’t be thick, it doesn’t suit you. Fifty-fifty. We’ll go halves. Half my salary while I’m out here for you and your oppo with the camera. I can live on expenses, see, no trouble. In return for which you and him do my reports. Nothing I wouldn’t be reporting anyway, nothing confidential, just what everyone else is writing about except that you’re there and they’re there and I’m not. I can sit in my hotel snug as a bug. You know what all this aggro does to me. I just can’t do it, I can’t function. But you’ve got to be there anyway, haven’t you? You’ve got no choice, so you might as well do my job at the same time and get paid for it. And you hear about things that happen in other areas so you can tell me about those. See, you’re in the thick of it in a place like this. This is what you like, isn’t it? What you join for. I don’t, see. It’s not what I joined for. And if you don’t know something you can ring the PROs in other areas and get the story from them. See what I mean, Charlie?’ He tapped on Charles’s flak jacket with the two fingers that held his cigarette, his confidential saloon-bar manner now fully in order. ‘You could do it, you know. That stuff you and Van what’s-it told me last night, it was bloody good. Crisp, to the point, an eye for detail, I didn’t have to add much to it. Superb. You could both be great journalists, you know. In fact, this could be good practice. And it don’t matter if it’s not always like that. So long as I can get the bones of it I can hack the meat about, see. I just stay in the hotel and you ring in when you’ve got something. Fifty-fifty. What d’you reckon? Couldn’t be fairer.’

Charles strove to see a flaw in the idea. He needed the money to leave the Army and it sounded so simple. It was not, after all, giving Beazely any more than he would have got anyway, nor more than any other journalist would have got. Also, where something like this was concerned, he felt he could trust Beazely. He sounded as though he knew what he was talking about. Certainly, there was no other way of getting out of the Army soon. But for the present the very novelty and simplicity of the idea baffled him.

‘Come on, you idle bugger, it’s easy. Just give me two or three stories a week, that’s all. For Christ’s sakes, your own PR desk at HQ could give you that. Then you just phone ’em through to me. No one will know. I did it with a Yank when they sent me to Vietnam and it worked like a bomb till he got zapped. And with one of the delegates at the Labour Party Conference till the drink got him. You can’t lose, Charlie. Hundred a week minimum, no tax, guaranteed, plus bonuses of course. How you split it with your oppo is your business but I’d suggest fifty-fifty. Keeps people happy. Anything else and they either think they’re hard done by or they think you must be getting a rake-off that they don’t know about. How about it?’

Speedily, furtively, the deal was done. Van Horne was brought in, listened to the explanation and simply nodded at the end of it. Involving a soldier was the only aspect about which Charles felt uneasy, but Van Horne was no ordinary soldier and his immediate acceptance of the deal suggested that he would have thought any other course mere foolishness. Perhaps he, too, wanted to buy himself out of the Army.

‘Great stuff.’ Beazely pulled out another mangled cigarette. ‘I’ll do this afternoon’s story as I happened to be here. I wouldn’t have hung around of course if I hadn’t wanted to talk to you. You can start tomorrow.’

All the other journalists had gone off to the Ardoyne where there was more trouble, according to Van Horne. Most of the Land-Rovers and Pigs were pulling out.

Beazely put his cigarette back into his pocket. ‘I’m not staying here without the Army. No disrespect to you two, but I have faith only in numbers in these situations. I’ll go back to the hotel. Can you fill me in on the Ardoyne business? Before ten if you can. Basic facts plus a few details. Children and injured soldiers, that sort of thing. Make them up if you like.’ He buttoned up his coat as he left, as though to keep out the danger.

It turned out that the CO had got Brigade to send Scoopy-do that night rather than the following morning. There were no journalists around, no rioters and just a few soldiers. Scoopy-do lumbered down the road like a hungry beast let out for feeding and paused in front of the CO, who stood with his hands on his hips looking very pleased with himself. It was a different Scoopy from the night before and a different Sapper. The CO explained that he wanted the cars dumped in people’s gardens as close as possible to the front doors. ‘If these people are prepared to steal them, make barricades out of them and then no doubt burn them, they can bloody well have them in their living rooms.’

Everyone, including the startled residents, watched Scoopy-do go about its business. It would move itself alongside its victim, so that it was in a killing position, and then raise one huge paw and with ponderous but unerring accuracy smash it on the head. It would then back off a few yards, as though to survey its crushed victim for signs of life, before raising its gaping bucket-jaws, lowering them gently on to the victim and fastening with an appetising crunch. Next it would pick up the car by the neck, like a dog with a rat, exposing the wheels like legs, and would trundle off to someone’s front garden and lower it carefully on to its side across the front door. The occupants were confined, for once, to hurling abuse from the upstairs window.

‘The only drawback,’ said the CO, ‘is that we don’t know for certain that it was people from these houses that actually caused the trouble. It could have been people from the next street. But they all hate us anyway and this might persuade them to try to restrain their friends next time. Though I doubt it.’

‘We will not tell Beazely about this,’ said Charles to Van Horne.

‘There’ll be complaints. He’ll get to hear of it.’

‘But not from us. Not this.’

They pulled out when the cars were positioned to the CO’s liking, leaving the onlookers scratching their heads and swearing. The rain was falling more steadily now and dusk was approaching. It was one of those afternoons that are never really light and that slip with relief into night. They had reached the outer ring of the estate when there was a loud explosion from somewhere back within it and a small plume of dark smoke rose rapidly behind them. The CO was as aware as everyone else that this could be a come-on, a bait to lure them back into an ambush, but he was never a man to wait and see. ‘Turn about!’ he shouted. His Land-Rover and its two escorts lurched round and headed back down different roads towards the Bull Ring. They had not gone far when they saw that the smoke, which was all but finished, seemed to have come from a scrubby bit of no-man’s land at the side of a house. Several women and a couple of men were looking at something on the ground, and more were joining them every moment. As usual after an explosion, other sounds seemed cowed into silence. When they got out of the Land-Rovers the engines on tick-over were the only noticeable noise. Several of the escort party ran doubled up across the road and took up fire positions facing the surrounding houses. The CO’s party, with the CO inevitably to the fore, ran over to the sullen little group. As they reached them the group turned and tried to stop them seeing what it was they were surrounding. For a moment the resistance was real enough but the RSM and Nigel Beale put their heads down as though in a rugby maul and the people were pushed aside. Even then, though, they did not go away but still kept shoving and pulling resentfully. A fat woman grabbed hold of Charles’s sleeve above the elbow with both hands and for a few moments he struggled with her in silence before elbowing her in the belly and winding her. Throughout all the tussling no one spoke and no one shouted. It was conducted in an eerie, bitter silence and seemed all the worse for it. When they finally broke through they saw that the object of the crowd’s attention was a small, dark-haired boy of about eight or nine. He was lying on the ground in a curiously twisted attitude. His head was resting on his right shoulder, his eyes were closed and his face was calm as though in peaceful sleep. His right arm was stretched out beside him with the palm upturned. His left arm appeared to go straight down the side of his body but it was difficult to see where it ended because from the elbow all the way down to his knee was blood and mangled red flesh. No hand or fingers were visible. The right side of his body looked complete and normal.

It was Nigel Beale who acted most promptly. He got down on his knees beside the boy and pulled the shell dressing from his belt, tearing it open with both hands. No one from the crowd tried to help. Charles got down beside Nigel and pulled off his own shell dressing. The boy was still breathing but there was a lot of blood on the ground and it was still oozing out of his body from the great wound down one side. Charles pressed his shell dressing on the reddest and most exposed bit he could see and stuck it down. He did not like to press too hard. He felt very calm but noticed with a rather remote curiosity that his hands were bloody and shaking. He heard the CO’s wireless operator calling for Starlight — Henry Sandy — and being told that he was on his way. The crowd had grown considerably and there was now a lot of shouting. A space had been cleared round the boy but not without some scuffling. The CO was calling for his parents and eventually a fat, dark and dirty little man stepped forward. He demanded to know what the CO was doing with the boy.

‘We’re taking him to hospital, what do you think?’ snapped the CO.

‘You’re not takin’ him nowhere, you’re not takin’ him from me.’ The little man stared in wide-eyed appeal at the crowd. ‘Holy Mother, they’re taking me dying child!’ There was uproar at this and renewed struggling. Henry Sandy and his team arrived in the ambulance Pig and forced their way through the crowd with a stretcher. Henry looked very quickly at the boy, feeling the wound, eyes and heart. It was the first time Charles had seen him without any facetiousness. He spoke and moved simply and directly, treating all alike. ‘Help me get him on the stretcher,’ he said.

Charles helped with the feet. The boy was very light. Then the stretcher-bearers lifted him and made back towards the Pig. The crowd had gathered round that now and tried to stop the boy being loaded into it. They fought and shouted as though to stop him being dragged off to prison. A couple of them had chalked slogans about the Queen, including the abbreviation ‘FTQ’ — the Republican answer to the Protestant ‘FTP’ — on the side of the Pig. For one moment they succeeded in bringing the stretcher party to a standstill and it looked as though they were going to snatch the boy back. Charles grappled with a yelling woman who had grabbed hold of the stretcher. He pulled her off it but she then turned her attentions to him, pulling his hair and hitting. She fought with a ferocity which for a moment shocked him but even so he could not bring himself to hit her with his fist. He kept trying to catch her arms and, due to some deeply-instilled sense of military propriety, let go of her with one hand in order to catch his beret and prevent it falling to the ground. Then the awareness of lost dignity took over and, still holding and being held by her, he kicked her hard on the shins, twice. She let go with a howling scream and was immediately surrounded by sympathetic companions.

By this time the Pig was moving off with the boy and his father, whom the CO had allowed on board. Even so, a couple of other men tried to climb on to it before being roughly repelled. Charles saw one of the CO’s bodyguards lay his baton across the front of one man’s face with a calculated precision that a few months, or even weeks, before would have seemed shocking. The man dropped to his knees and bent right over, clutching his face. Van Horne appeared at Charles’s side, unruffled and apparently untouched by the struggle. ‘I can’t help noticing you have a way with women, sir.’

Once the Pig was gone they pulled out. Charles got back into the CO’s Land-Rover with Nigel Beale, who had a bloody nose. They were still surrounded by clamouring people claiming to represent citizens’ action committees and various residents’ associations. The word ‘kidnap’ was being thrown around a lot. ‘Accelerate forward and don’t stop or swerve for anyone,’ the CO told his driver. ‘If we run over one or two of the bastards so much the better.’ However, the protesters showed a nimble concern for their own safety and the Land-Rovers left the estate without further incident. It was said that the boy had been injured by a pipe bomb; he had been playing with some other boys and had picked up a piece of pipe about a foot long which had exploded as he threw it.

The CO spoke to no one on the way back except to order the driver to stop off at C company’s headquarters in the Factory. Edward and the others were all there. An unease had developed between Charles and them since he had gone to battalion HQ, almost as though he had changed sides. Their greetings now were rather formal, except for the company sergeant major who was as friendly and jokey as ever. But the CO did not want to listen to anyone else’s words. He wanted to unburden himself. ‘Those bloody people down there are not people,’ he announced to everyone in the ops room. ‘No animal would do what they did. Animals look after their own. These people are not fit to have children. They’re not fit to be people. First of all they make a lethal gelignite bomb, then they leave it lying around where kids can find it. Then when some poor little sod loses his hand and half his arm as well as very nearly his leg they just stand around like a lot of stuffed dummies and stare at him. That’s what they were doing when we arrived, wasn’t it, eh? Just standing and staring watching him bleed to death on the pavement. And not one of them lifted a finger, not one little finger. I didn’t see them do anything. Did you? Eh? Did anyone see them do anything?’ He looked at everyone in turn. People nodded or lowered their eyes as though they themselves were guilty. The CO so often launched into tirades that Charles had not realised at first how moved and upset he was now. His teeth were clenched and his eyes hard. ‘And as though that’s not enough, watching him die, they actually tried to stop us helping, didn’t they? Tried quite hard too. If they’d tried a little harder I’d have happily left one or two more in the gutter for good. What kind of people are they, for God’s sake? Psychopaths? Ghouls? And they won’t thank us, you know. It won’t do us any good. I know we’re not in a place where we can do any good. I know that. But I don’t care what they think of me, or what they think of my men, or what they think about anything. I am going to make them behave like human beings even if they are ghouls. From now on it’s war as far as I’m concerned.’ His cheeks were taut with emotion and he stared at everyone for a few moments as though they were all his enemies. Then he suddenly relaxed and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. ‘All right, let’s be off,’ he said quietly.

Out in the yard they were getting back into the vehicles when the CO paused with his hand on the iron grille over the windscreen. He turned to Charles and said, ‘You’re leaving us, are you?’

Caught off guard, it was a moment before Charles could reply. ‘Yes, sir.’

The CO looked at him and then got into the vehicle without saying anything. Charles climbed in the back, sandwiched between the signals sergeant and Van Horne. He felt as though he had been caught out at something and was angry with himself for feeling like that. After all, he knew he needed no convincing that he would be glad to leave the Army.

On the way back the CO said to Nigel Beale that if the boy’s father turned out to have a sense of gratitude after all he might be prepared to talk about the local Provisional IRA men. It was a very long shot, but worth trying.

10

The deal with Beazely worked well. There were a few teething troubles, due mainly to busy telephones and inflexible deadlines, but after a while a system of information-gathering and transmission was established that worked at least as well as those of the Army and the press. This was a source of pride for Charles and Van Horne, though it should not have been because their system was no more than a combination of the resources of the other two. Beazely was given no more than he could have got for himself, and did not ask for more, while they accepted without question whatever price he paid. The extra five hundred pounds that Charles needed to get himself out of the Army did not include living expenses for any time thereafter. It did not even include his post-resignation train fare from Aldershot to London, though as he was entitled to a number of concessionary leave warrants a year he might not have to pay that anyway. In which case, he reasoned, he might just as well go from Aldershot to Edinburgh, a city he had long wanted to see. He did not think very much about what he might do after leaving the Army, but carefully nursed an inner conviction that he would not know until he had left. This was, perhaps, yet another symptom of his growing tendency not to think about whatever might be problematic or unpleasant.

Sharing the money with Van Horne was the worst aspect of the deal with Beazely — not the fact of sharing but the physical act of counting and handing over the cash. Handling the money was necessarily conspiratorial and Charles felt shabby and corrupt at such moments. Neither of his associates showed anything but a matter-of-fact, businesslike approach to the transactions, handing over and pocketing the notes as though they had not the slightest interest in them. There was the further problem of what to do with the cash. Charles never went near a bank and he did not care to entrust it to the paymaster, since that would be official. When his wallet would hold no more he took to stuffing it into a sock in the bottom of his kitbag. One night he dreamt of being raided by the Inland Revenue whilst the CO argued passionately on his behalf, believing him to be innocent.

However, there was no trouble with the arrangement itself. The advantage, so far as Charles was concerned, was that he knew what the Army did and did not want publicised and, through Beazely, what alternatives might appeal to the editorial mind. Events in the battalion area were usually witnessed by either himself and Van Horne or by people they both knew; details of those outside could be got from the PR desk or from other PROs. Van Horne was invaluable. Not only was he sensible and discreet but he had a genius for sniffing out stories around the battalion during inactive periods which resulted in so much favourable publicity — often of the much-desired ‘human interest’ sort — that the battalion came to be used as a show-piece by the PR desk. The CO, despite his aversion for journalism, was delighted.

‘A small war is the best recruiting sergeant,’ he said, after reading an article on the rigour of Assault Commando training, ‘but this is the next thing to it. It’s not all accurate, though. It’s up to you to make sure they get that sort of thing right, Charles.’

During busy periods, when Charles could not get to a phone, Van Horne relayed the information. He also took photographs and was said by Beazely to have an ‘eye’. Charles concentrated on building up a good relationship with the regular journalists, who were on the whole competent and agreeable. Though careful not to poach their stories or angles, he was able to judge from them how to select his own. Their questions displayed the direction of their interests. It was a matter of pride to himself and Van Horne that they fabricated nothing, though it would have been easy to do so. The trouble was, they would both get so involved in their stories that they were hurt and irritated by editorial and Beazely-inspired cuts.

‘I keep on telling you,’ Beazely would say, ‘that sub-editors have no souls. They care only for column inches and circulation figures, not for truth, realism, intelligence and virtue, like you and I. You are casting pearls before swine. Take it from one who knows. I’d be a wealthy man if I’d had a penny for each word I’ve had to keep back from these barbarians.’ He was, in fact, a good teacher. He insisted on reports being short and to the point and usually would alter them only if they were not or as a result of fresh information gleaned from other items of furniture at the bar of his hotel. Sometimes, though, he would cut a passage because his sub-editor would recognise it as not his own. Such passages were invariably Charles’s little essays into social comment. One such began, ‘The children of West Belfast are familiar with colour TVs but cannot name the colours.’ A paragraph of political assessment started, ‘It must be clear to any but the most partisan observer of the Northern Ireland scene that the events of last weekend marked a worsening of the perceived situation for all those involved.’ While there was his exposition of military tactics which needed a footnote to the effect that, ‘39 Airportable Brigade differs from most infantry brigades not only in its role and deployment but also in its provision of equipment and its numbers.’

Beazely would put a line through these forays without removing the cigarette from his mouth, like Wilfrid Owen when writing to the next-of-kin of his dead soldiers. ‘When the Kingdom of the Word takes its rightful place,’ he would say, ‘and the Killers of the Word are burned by flaming adjectives and tied to the stake by unending sentences, then, Charlie, you shall take your rightful place and these fine phrases of yours will be remembered annually. Instead of fighting we’ll all talk, talk, talk. It will be beautiful. But until then keep to the point and save the rest for your prayers.’

Charles once asked him if he had been to university. ‘Yes,’ Beazely replied, with a confident nod. ‘Very much so. Several times, different places, you know. Nowhere very long. You?’

‘Yes. Only one, though.’

‘That’s odd. Van Horne said you hadn’t. Said you went straight to Sandhurst from school.’

‘He’s wrong. I don’t know why he said that.’ He had never discussed his past with Van Horne.

‘Just guessing, I s’pose.’

It was not easy to get the Army to overcome its deep-seated mistrust of the press, but Charles and Van Horne soon found that an air of reluctance and apology, suggestive of irresistible pressure from authority, was the best way of getting things done — better, certainly, than argument. It was best to preface requests for film-crew visits or yet more local-boy stories with the phrase, ‘The CO was wondering whether. .’

Very occasionally the CO did wonder, and then surprisingly. He had grown quieter and more moody and seemed to spend much of his time scheming how to discredit the Provisional IRA. He turned to Charles one day and said, ‘That boy who lost his hand last week, the one whose life we saved. What are you doing about him?’

‘Sir?’

‘Don’t answer questions with questions. Tell me what you’re doing.’

‘Nothing, sir.’

‘Well, you should be. It’s your job, not mine, to think of these things. It’s good publicity for us; we saved his life. Bad publicity for them because they left the bomb lying around. What about getting some of your press friends to do a photograph and a story?’

It was, perhaps, one of Charles’s faults as a PRO that he had still not fully grasped the way that news is made rather than happens. The idea had occurred to him, vaguely, but some shreds of an outmoded notion of fair play still clung to him and it seemed unfair to take advantage of the boy’s condition. Also, he had recently discovered in himself a reluctance to deal with press matters that would not result in profit. He could see no way of working Beazely into this one and his policy in such cases was to keep what the Army loved to call a ‘low profile’. He sought to narrow his life so that all unnecessary initiatives and responses were cut out. ‘Might he not be a bit of a mess, sir?’ he asked.

‘The messier the better. They made him like it, not us. Go and fix it. It’s unpleasant, I know, but we’re at war. Or some of us are.’

The issue presented no problems for Van Horne, who would happily have publicised piles of intestines. They contacted one of the tabloid newspapers which usually had good photographs and which, like the other papers of its kind, excelled in the simple and effective presentation of human interest stories. They arranged to meet a reporter and photographer at the Royal Victoria Hospital.

‘You should give the lad a present,’ said the CO. ‘Go and buy something out of the community relations fund. How do we stand with that?’

‘It’s unused, sir.’

‘Good. Waste of public money otherwise.’

The expedition to buy a present was a major undertaking. It involved changing into civilian clothes and going into the centre of Belfast where a similarly-dressed soldier had been murdered the week before. Being quite unused to mixing with normal people going about their normal business of shopping, Charles could not rid himself of the notion that he was the centre of attention and that every coat concealed an Armalite. He spent a nervous twenty minutes in a bookshop, imagining bombs as well as bullets and paying more attention to cover positions, escape-routes, probable direction of blast and of flying glass than to what he was supposed to be buying. The fact that the main shopping centre was ringed by barriers through which no cars could pass and at which everyone was supposed to be searched did not reassure him. Two girls in front of him had not had their handbags searched and for his part the bulky shoulder-holster containing his Browning had not been discovered. If it had he would have had to produce his ID card, thereby identifying himself as a soldier to everyone around him. He again wore it at the CO’s insistence and felt lopsided and misshapen rather than deadly and confident. He eventually slunk out of the shop with an illustrated sporting encyclopaedia of a kind he remembered having as a child.

When he and Van Horne met the reporter and photographer they were questioned about the incident in detail. On hearing that Charles had put a shell dressing on the boy, the reporter said, ‘That’s great. We’ll have one of you sitting next to him on the bed — the soldier who saved his life. What’s your name and rank?’ Charles told him and he then said, ‘Sorry, no good. It’s no good with an officer. Doesn’t work. Not the same impact. What about a soldier?’

Charles, relieved, did not hesitate to volunteer Van Horne. ‘He’s a lance-corporal.’

‘A private would be better.’

‘I could take my stripe off,’ said Van Horne.

There stirred within Charles a faint but developing instinct for where the Army line would lie in such matters. ‘No, he can’t do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Queen’s Regs. Regulations.’

‘All right. Did he put his shell dressing on the boy too?’

‘No.’

‘Was he there, in the vicinity?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’ll do, then.’

An officious, plump little nurse took them through a children’s ward, where Charles felt gigantic and self-conscious, and into a small room opening off it. There was a bed with what appeared to be a mound of bandages in it. The nurse bent over the bed and said in a sing-song voice, ‘Hallo, Terry, how are we then, eh? Here’s some gentlemen come to see you. And they’ve bought you a lovely present.’ The mound moved and they could see a hole in the bandages enough to show most of the boy’s face. His eyes moved and registered the visitors.

‘Is that him?’ asked Charles.

‘Who else d’you think?’ said the nurse sharply. She did not seem to like the Army.

‘But his head was all right. Why is it bandaged up?’

‘His head was most certainly not all right. There were bits of metal in it, especially the back. Now do what you want to do and be quick about it. I don’t want to disturb him for long.’ She bent over the boy again. ‘Lots and lots of nasty cuts soon be better, better, better, eh, Terry? Nasty men go away soon and we’ll be better, won’t we? Ever so better.’

The photographer looked on gloomily. ‘Can’t do anything with this. Whatever angle I do it’s going to look a bit sick, isn’t it? I mean, handing a book to a lump of bandage.’

Van Horne looked on impassively. ‘Where’s his hand?’ he asked the nurse.

She sssh’d him and whispered, ‘He’s lost it. He doesn’t really know yet.’

‘But where is it?’

‘What do you mean, where is it? It’s gone.’

‘You haven’t got it?’

‘Certainly not.’

Van Horne lost interest.

‘Is he going to be all right?’ asked Charles.

‘Yes. Anything else?’

They said goodbye awkwardly and left the uncomprehending child. The reporter said he might do a little piece on it anyway, just a paragraph. Charles realised he still had the book and so Van Horne was sent back with it. When they got back the CO’s reaction was as surprising as had been his original suggestion. ‘Good. I don’t really like publicity for the sake of it. It would have been distasteful even if the poor little blighter hadn’t had a mark on him. And our soldiers don’t like being photographed like that, you know. It’s not what they joined for. Very sensible of you to call it off. Well done.’

A few days later they conducted another search in the new estate, this time of a Gaelic football ground. The search went in at about eleven in the morning without previous notice as the CO and Nigel Beale had applied the need-to-know principle so rigidly that many of those who needed to know in order to take part were away doing other things. Several vehicles were away being serviced or repaired and others were out on patrol. Charles was told by Van Horne about the search at six minutes to eleven and was just able to scramble aboard the last Land-Rover as it was leaving. He left Van Horne behind to deal with any telephone enquiries.

It was a fine sunny morning with a fresh breeze. The green turf of the field was refreshing after the dirty bricks and concrete which was all they had seen for weeks on end. There were three platoons plus search teams, about a hundred men all told, and no trouble was expected as no houses were to be searched. The platoons dug into the grass banks surrounding the pitch, directed by NCOs trained in searching, but there was to be no excavation of the pitch on orders from Brigade, who did not want to inflame local feeling. There had already been complaints that the Army was seeking to intimidate and terrorise the Catholic population. The sun, the grass and the fact that many of the men were stripped to the waist gave to the sports-ground a holiday atmosphere that enlivened everyone. Even the sporadic stones lobbed over the banks by children from the surrounding streets did not detract from the previous euphoria.

Charles strode about the field with the CO and his gang, all in the hands-behind-the-backs position. The CO talked good humouredly about tanks. Because of the banks around the field the roofs of the houses could not be seen and it was possible for a while to imagine that they were in England. Charles kept an eye on the entrance to see if any journalists turned up. He more than half expected Van Horne to appear, having found some quite unanswerable reason for deserting his post. He was aware of Van Horne as an interesting man about whom he had no more curiosity than was strictly necessary for them to perform their tasks together. Had Van Horne not been a soldier, or had they not been involved in their scheme with Beazely, he might have tried to get to know him better. He sensed, and sensed that Van Horne sensed, that they had something in common but he was suspicious of what it might be and felt it was better left unexplored. It was perhaps a common assumption of being an outsider, with possibly an added, secret something that was best summed up by the word ‘uncare’.

Whatever it was, it was better not to admit it. Sometimes he could fancy Van Horne as a kind of Mephistopheles or perhaps a Mosca, though he could never even at his most fanciful see himself as Faust or Volpone. Yet at the same time Van Horne was like many other soldiers in that he shirked irksome duties whenever he could, lied glibly and was reluctant to accept any responsibility unless he had someone over him who was more responsible.

But for a long time that morning no one came and Charles was able to enjoy the field and the sun. He was warmed, too, by the thought of his approaching freedom. It was something he could allow himself to think about more and more as the money paid by Beazely mounted up. He was still not sure what he would do next, but there was a pleasant sense of possibility about the future, which remained intact so long as nothing too explicit was demanded of it.

The first find was made within twenty minutes on the outer slope of the first bank. It consisted of an old Lee-Enfield.303 rifle, a newish Russian twelve-bore shotgun and two rusty Webley.38 revolvers, all carefully wrapped in polythene. ‘This is excellent,’ said the CO, ‘we’re on to them now. This entire stadium is an arsenal. I only wish we could plough up that damn pitch. It’s probably a magazine. Everybody look for discolourations in the turf. Charles, fetch the press.’

‘They’re on their way, sir,’ Charles lied, hopefully.

‘Well done. Good timing. Make sure they see all this.’

Shortly afterwards a soldier on the north-east corner of the bank noticed a strip of old polythene protruding from the earth. He dug carefully round it and found that there was a dustbin in a large polythene bag. He took the lid off the bin and found it was filled with decaying, unstable gelignite. The search team commander estimated that there was between fifty and seventy pounds of explosive. It was so unstable that a child jumping on the ground nearby could have detonated it. It was too dangerous to move and the bomb disposal team was called to burn it off.

The effect of the find was to invigorate the searchers. Only the CO looked troubled. ‘You see what these people are,’ he said. ‘No concern for their own. Burying it here where people stand to watch football and where children play all day. It could’ve killed dozens. It ought to be on film so that the world can see what bloody lunatics these people are. Charles, where are those pressmen? They’re swarming over you like flies when you don’t want them and nowhere to be found when you do.’

‘They’re on their way, sir. Just coming.’

‘You said that twenty minutes ago. Where are they?’

‘I’ll go and get them, sir.’ Charles strode purposefully back towards the entrance. There was nothing whatever that he could do but the CO liked to see action in response to his demands. He had expected that the press would have arrived by now since the jungle telegraph was so efficient that they often arrived almost simultaneously with the search parties. On occasions like this the CO expected his PRO to be able to summon up squads of press as he himself would summon up a fresh platoon. This, however, was not the time when Charles had to disabuse him of this error, for as he neared the gate he saw an ITV television crew arguing with the guard over the question of admittance. He saw that they were allowed in and behind them another crew from Spain. Several other journalists arrived and so he was soon able to lead a flock across to the two finds. A knowledgeable colour sergeant was recorded giving an enthusiastic description of the state of decay, composition and probable damage that could be caused by the explosive.

After this they dispersed over the ground. The TV teams filmed their interviewers giving accounts and asking questions of which they had already filmed the answers. Another journalist arrived, a woman in her late twenties. She had dark hair straddled over her shoulders, a suede jacket with matching suede boots that just failed to conceal the size of her calves, a bag slung over one shoulder and a king-sized cigarette in one hand. She was quite short and had a wide gash of a mouth which widened with easy confidence as she introduced herself as Moira Conn, one of the Sunday Truth’s Hindsight team. ‘Some guy called John at your headquarters told me your name and said I’d find you down here. He said he worked with you.’

‘Ah yes, Van Horne, Lance-Corporal Van Horne.’

‘Pretty smooth guy. Are all your soldiers like that?’

‘No.’

‘Pity. I usually find I prefer soldiers to officers, though. They’re somehow more real. I mean, the officers are always a bit inauthentic. They’re trying to be something they’re not but the soldiers just are. They just stand there and they are. You can feel it. Whereas the officers are always chasing some ideal of themselves that doesn’t exist and they end up not being anything at all.’

It was clear that this was not one for the CO. The Sergeants’ Mess, perhaps, but more likely the Junior Ranks club. She had obviously been to an English public school and was trying to lose it by lengthening some of her vowels and flattening them all to a mid-Atlantic monotone. ‘Would you like to see some explosives?’ asked Charles.

‘You found some? That’s great. I didn’t think you would. I’ve never seen explosives before. How’re the locals reacting?’

‘They’re not yet.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s a bit early in the day.’ They climbed on to the bank and walked along it. The digging soldiers eyed her as they passed.

She lit another cigarette and offered one to Charles. ‘Not when in uniform, I s’pose? That’s what gets me about you officers. You’re so bloody hidebound and self-conscious.’

‘I don’t smoke.’

‘Not you in particular but the officer class in general. All stiff upper lip and understatement. They look as if they never shit, some of them.’

‘But some do, from a great height.’

‘You don’t rile easily, do you? I think I’m going to like you. How come you’re in the Army?’ Her mouth widened into a slow, confident smile.

‘I just joined.’

‘But why?’

Charles still felt cheerful because of the greenness of the grass. He looked her in the eye. ‘I wanted to kill people.’

She blew out a lot of smoke. ‘Holy shit, that’s bad. That’s mean. At least you’re honest, though.’

‘Yes.’

‘The name O’Hare mean anything to you?’ She had kept the smile going.

‘No.’ It did, though. O’Hare had been a soldier in the battalion two years previously and was now reputed to be a leading Provisional IRA gunman in the Ardoyne area. The CO had told them about this at a briefing which he had labelled ‘Top Secret’, but he made such promiscuous use of this category that it was not always easy to know what was secret and what was not. However, Charles felt fairly certain that this, for some reason, was. ‘It’s Irish, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘You see, there’s an IRA marksman of that name who used to be in your regiment. At least, we’re pretty certain he did. We know he left the Army and why he left and what he’s done since. Only we’re not positive that that’s his real name and we’re not one hundred per cent sure it was your regiment. Obviously it’s a good story if it was. We just need confirmation, that’s all. Passive confirmation.’

‘First I’ve heard of it.’

‘He’s deeply involved, this guy. He’s into everything they’re doing. We’ve got the story all ready. We just need the confirmation.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘Can’t you find out?’

‘No one would tell me even if they knew. Ask the IRA.’

‘They don’t name their people on operational duty in the North.’ She stopped walking and turned to face him, lowering her voice. Charles felt she was becoming more attractive. ‘Look, just the name, that’s all. You don’t even have to say it. Just nod if it’s him. I mean, no one will know it’s you because if you can confirm it I can check back through other sources and make it look as though it came from them. In fact, it will have. It’s just that it will have come from you first, that’s all. No one will ever know, I promise you, Charles.’ She was not smiling now, but was looking at him sincerely.

Charles put his hand on his heart. ‘Believe me, if I knew you could tempt me.’

‘Will you keep your ears open for me? Some of your friends must know.’

They neared the dustbin of explosives and Charles persuaded her to put out her cigarette. The knowledgeable colour sergeant repeated his exposition. She tried to touch the weeping gelignite and was prevented. They moved on to where the weapons were exhibited and she lit up again. ‘I don’t know much about weapons. It’s something I ought to learn, though on Hindsight of course we do more in-depth investigation of the people behind the action. Still, weapons are good local colour.’

‘Aren’t they quite important for your investigation?’

‘Quite. Quite. Great word, that. Very British. No — but the really important thing for me is not the technology of urban guerrilla warfare so much as the thought behind the bullets, you know. I’m more interested in why they’re doing what they’re doing than in how. But I ought to know all the same.’

She took herself very seriously. Charles could think of nothing to say but found that nodding was all that was expected of him. They came to where the weapons were displayed on a polythene sheet on the grass. She exhaled two parallel jets of smoke through her nostrils. ‘That’s not much.’

‘Well, it’s a pretty representative sample of the technology of urban guerrilla warfare.’

‘Is that a machine-gun?’

‘No, it’s a rifle.’

‘You haven’t got a machine-gun?’

‘Sorry.’

‘The IRA do have them, you know. M60s they’re called. I’ve seen one. One of their Northern commanders showed me.’ She pushed back the hair which had fallen across her eyes. The bright sun illuminated the pallor of her skin. Charles no longer fancied her, though he kept trying. Her wide mouth was appealing but her eyes were small, hard brown stones set in puffed white flesh. Still, it was a long time since he had been near a woman. ‘You should be talking to these people,’ she continued. ‘You should be trying to understand the people you’re fighting. They’re interesting guys. That’s why the press is so important to you. We can look at things objectively without taking sides, whereas you’re involved and you’re bound to be biased. It’s like this man was telling me, the whole weight of the broadcasting media is on your side by nature so we have to make a conscious effort to present their point of view. Which is quite legitimate, you know. I regard the IRA as expressing a point of view with as much right to be considered as anything you say. You see, we’re the guardians of democracy. Army officers seem to think that democracy is an upper middle-class thing that no one else should be allowed to join unless they’ve been to the right school or regiment or whatever. Our job is to protect the majority from exploiting minorities like yours. If you see what I mean. Being exploited by, that is.’

It was not what she said that bothered Charles but what to do with her. The nearest soldiers were leaning on the spades and listening. Judging by their expressions they were about to break out into the vociferous ribaldry at which they so excelled. If they did he would have to discipline them, a task which never came easily to him. Moira Conn would like neither the ribaldry, which she would take to be an attempt to reduce her to a sex-object, nor his defence of her, which she would take to be an attempt to patronise. ‘Would you like to see the rest of the site?’ he asked.

‘In the short term any tactics are justifiable in an urban guerrilla war so long as they help to bring about an equal and classless society in the long term.’

However, further conversation was averted by the arrival of some stones. One landed near enough to make her jump. ‘What was that?’

‘A stone thrown by some children behind the houses. Here come some more.’ They were thrown by half a dozen children who ran out from behind a house. No one was hit and the soldiers carried on working, as though the stones were no more than rain.

‘Do they often do this?’ asked Moira.

‘Only when they can see us.’

‘They must hate you.’

‘They enjoy it.’

Some more stones whistled over and thudded into the turf a few feet away. A corporal and two men went down the bank and across the fence to drive the children back out of range. A tiny, grubby, blond child of about two feet six had wandered forward almost to the bank. As the soldiers walked past him he looked up at them seriously, his soiled mouth working a few times before the word would come out. ‘B-b-bastards,’ he said.

‘Perhaps we’d better get down out of the way,’ said Charles, as a few more stones came from another direction.

Moira hitched her bag further on to her shoulder. ‘I’m not scared. You needn’t worry about me.’

Charles thought of pleading that it was he that was scared, but instead said, ‘It’s only that if you’re seen and recognised with us they might not trust you and might think you’re not being objective. There’s bound to be someone taking note of who’s here, and we’re very exposed on the bank. It’s happened before that journalists seen with us are never spoken to again.’ They moved back on to the pitch where a snatch squad was being organised by a wizened and popular colour sergeant. He swore at one of his squad, a negro, and then the whole squad laughed at his surprise at seeing Moira behind him. He asked to be excused for his French.

‘Is there much of that sort of thing?’ Moira asked as they moved away.

‘There’s quite a bit of swearing, yes.’

‘No, not that. The way he picked on that black guy. Racial prejudice.’

‘No, there isn’t any.’

‘But did you hear what he said to him? He called him an idle black bastard.’

‘That’s because there isn’t any racial prejudice.’

‘Personally I can’t stand men who feel they have to apologise for swearing in front of a woman. It’s so bloody patronising, you know. It pisses me off.’

Unfortunately, they bumped into the CO near the grandstand. He had been standing amongst the seats, surveying the ground, and came down the stairs three at a time and leapt the fence as Charles and Moira walked past. He was making for his Land-Rover by the entrance and was in high good humour. ‘Charles — everything all right? Good. Womanising, eh? Why don’t you introduce me to this charming young lady?’ Charles introduced them and they shook hands. ‘I can’t say I like your paper, Miss Conn, but I trust that when you write about what you’ve seen today you’ll redress the balance a bit. Have you shown her the weeping jelly?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘There you are, then. That shows you the sort of people we’re up against.’

Moira Conn dropped her cigarette on to the ground and extinguished it. ‘I know the sort of people you’re up against — better than you do, I should think. I’ve spoken to their brigade commanders myself. And I don’t think operations of the kind you’ve mounted here today prove anything or do any good to anyone. They just turn people against you.’

The CO shot a quick glance at Charles, as though he were at least partially responsible. ‘If you’ll take my advice, young lady, which I don’t s’pose you will for a moment, you’ll be very careful in the company you keep in future. You’ve been had, you’ve been done. These men are dangerous, clever, cruel and fanatical. They’re just using you, that’s all, and you don’t even know it.’

Moira Conn grasped the strap of her bag firmly. ‘On the contrary, Colonel, I get the impression they’re not as fanatical and dangerous as many so-called real officers I’ve come across. But some of them are a bit more clever.’

Charles gazed in the direction of the north bank, hoping for an explosion from that direction, but the CO remained calm. ‘I’m not going to argue with you,’ he said slowly, as though to a child. ‘You know you’re wrong, and if you don’t you very soon will. I hope you’re intelligent enough not to be deluded all your life. If security permitted I could prove to you the error of your ways, but it doesn’t and so that’s that. You’ve got my word for it. One thing I will say, though, is that you’ll be doing all decent people a service if you stop crediting these mindless, bitter thugs and villains with the rank and status of an official army. That’s exactly what they want, you see. It makes them feel good. They think they’re getting somewhere then. In fact, they’re no more brigade commanders and such like than you are, or Charles here. Just because some wretched plumber calls himself a brigadier and intimidates a few criminals and harebrained youngsters you go ahead and call him a brigadier. You give him everything he’s asking for — recognition, power, fame. As it is, they’re simply imitating us, you see. There’s nothing original about it. They’re just corner boys. Rank structure, titles, so-called military courts and all that — that — that balls, if you’ll excuse my French, Miss Conn. I feel very strongly about it. I hope I haven’t taken up too much of your time. Good day to you.’ He stood to attention and saluted her, then turned on his heel and walked away.

Moira Conn was pale and seething. ‘Is he real? Is he really like that? Did you see what he did? He saluted.’

‘You touched him on a tender spot.’

‘He’s one big bloody tender spot if you ask me. Jesus Christ, I didn’t know such people existed. Where’s he think he’s at, you know? Give me the IRA any time.’

‘He’s very good-hearted.’ Charles was not used to defending the CO and was having to feel his way.

‘Crap. Are you telling me you’re content to let your life be ruled by a man like that?’

‘I’m leaving soon.’

‘And he apologised for swearing. That’s two this morning.’

‘I’m very sorry about that.’ They wandered without further speech back towards the entrance. Charles was wondering how to get rid of her when she saw Father Murphy, the local priest, arguing with the soldier on the gate.

‘Is he the one who’s been organising the local citizens’ action committees?’

‘Yes.’

‘How does your colonel get on with him?’

‘He doesn’t.’

‘I’m going to interview him.’ She rummaged in her bag for pen and paper. ‘Can you give me John’s number?’

‘Whose?’

‘John Van-what’s-its. That guy I told you about.’

‘Van Horne. He doesn’t have a number of his own.’

‘Well, it must be possible to contact him if he helps with the press. Where does he hang out?’

‘In my office, mainly.’

‘So I can use your number?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And you can take messages if he’s not around?’

‘I suppose I can, yes.’

‘Great. Thanks. And thanks for showing me that stuff. It was very useful. Let me know if you hear anything about O’Hare. Bye.’

Charles saw no more of her. She rang Van Horne a couple of times but there was no question of his having an evening off to see her. No one had that much time off. Instead, he arranged to see her in London at the end of the tour. ‘I’ve got her flat number in case you’re ever interested, sir,’ he said, with no trace of a smile.

This conversation had taken place in the office Charles shared with Colin Wood, Colin being out at the time. Charles took the opportunity to slip Van Horne his share of the latest payment from Beazely. As he was handing over the money Nigel Beale poked his head round the door. ‘Where’s Colin?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Charles, feeling he must have started guiltily. He saw Nigel’s eye alight upon the money. ‘He may be upstairs with the CO.’

‘Thanks.’ Nigel went and Van Horne raised his eyebrows slightly as he put the money in his pocket before following Nigel out.

Later, in the Mess, Nigel said to Charles, ‘You seem to be rolling in it. Why were you giving it all to Van Horne? You paying him yourself or something?’

Several others were present, though not the CO. ‘Taxpayers’ money,’ said Charles promptly. ‘Community relations fund. Let me know if you want a hand-out.’

‘Great. What do I have to do?’

‘Build a community hall, then wait for the Provisional IRA to burn it down and claim the insurance.’ It came very pat off his tongue without the slightest hesitation. His sense of guilt had evaporated quickly under the threat of discovery. The twin evils of exposure and of being unable to save enough to leave the Army soon had made him hard and determined. He felt that he was fast losing all compunction about almost everything.

11

Nothing much happened during the next few weeks. The meals, the remarks, the routine, the pettiness of battalion headquarters continued without hope of alleviation until the tour ended. During the long watches of the night it was difficult to believe in any other existence. Quiet conversations in the early hours revealed surprising aspects of people, sensitivities and feelings deeply hidden during the day, but repetition soon robbed them of their impact. The only real privacy to be had was in bed, in the few delicious moments before sleep. Life seemed to revolve around the tribal map of Belfast, the humming radio and the cheerless obscenities of the soldiers. The battalion was becoming lethargic and restless. Every day the number of soldiers on CO’s Orders seemed to grow.

The CO himself continued to become moodier and quieter. Although he never mentioned it, it was clear to those who studied him most closely — which were those whose lives were most subject to his whims — that the affair of the boy and the pipe bomb had made a deep impression on him. In conversation he referred to the IRA only as monsters or brutes. The nearest he came to acknowledging them as people was when he called them psychopaths or thugs.

‘The CO’s idea of people,’ the adjutant said to Charles one day, ‘is a moral one. He can’t accept the idea of immoral people. For him it’s a contradiction in terms.’

‘He can’t accept as a person anyone who differs from himself.’

‘That’s not fair. You’re judging too harshly. He accepts idiots and geniuses and other regiments. It’s just villains he can’t accept.’

Between his moods the CO would have enthusiasms. Several days would be spent in cabals with Nigel Beale, then he would give up Intelligence and take to lecturing the O Groups on what was going on in other battalion areas. There was a noticeable switch from rioting to terrorism. Shootings, claymore mines and bombings became more common. Fire bombs in city centre shops were a great favourite. But nothing happened in their area. ‘It’s because we’re sitting on them,’ he said. ‘It’s because we harass them day and night. I want company commanders to do it even more often from now on. Knock on the doors of all known leaders — politely though. Just let them know you’re around and watching them. Give them the impression you know everything about them, right down to what toothpaste they’re using and how often. If they use it.’

On other occasions he would say that the quiet was simply the lull before the storm and would urge all ranks to keep on their toes, with their noses to the grindstone, the same to the coalface, their ears to the ground, their eyes peeled and their socks from slipping.

‘Bloody funny position you’d end up in,’ said Henry Sandy after one O Group, during which he’d been awake throughout. He normally fell asleep because of his nightly debaucheries at the hospital, and had to find out from other people afterwards whether anything had been said that applied to him. One day, though, he announced to Charles that he had become impotent, and he continued in that state for some weeks despite valiant efforts by a series of bewildered and disappointed ladies. He said he didn’t mind so long as he didn’t go on wanting to do it when he couldn’t and after a while he stopped wanting to. Chatsworth would ring from the Factory every day to get an account of Henry’s doings and was unashamedly cheered by his decline, which he saw as a judgment upon him for having indulged in a surfeit. But a more than usually tired-looking Henry announced one day that the judgment had been lifted. ‘It was Olympian,’ he said quietly and sincerely. ‘An anaesthetist from Londonderry. I knew it when I saw her in the theatre. We were doing an appendix. There weren’t even any preliminaries. I just asked her up to my room and we undressed without speaking. We shagged each other silly all night. It was beautifully clean and anonymous. I think it would be wrong to see her again, though, except by accident. It would spoil it. I shall try someone else tonight.’

‘Chatsworth will be sorry.’

‘I’ll tell him myself. Make him suffer.’

But for the CO the war continued. He was convinced that something was going to happen and was quick to punish slackness, especially what he thought were violations of the hard target principle. Within a period of three days he fined six soldiers twenty pounds each because he was able to see them as he approached their sentry positions. ‘If I were a gunman I would have shot you,’ he said. ‘Regard yourself as dead. Take his name, Mr Bone.’

All times were busy for Nigel Beale, as he regarded all information as Intelligence. What he regarded as a major coup, and which sent him into a passion of intense secrecy for several days, occurred with the arrest of a squalid, middle-aged, incoherent man smelling of whisky, who had returned from the United States in order to avenge the murder of his brother, the victim of an IRA feud. He had in his jacket pocket a loaded Colt.45 and over two hundred and fifty Green Shield stamps. He kept saying that he was going to wipe out the Provisional leadership. ‘Why did you arrest him?’ Charles asked Nigel.

Nigel was immediately on guard. ‘What makes you think we have?’

‘I saw him, like everyone else. I spoke to him on the way in. He seemed keen to talk. He was drunk.’

‘You’re not supposed to know. Keep it quiet.’

‘Why don’t you let him go so that he could kill them? We could give him their addresses.’

‘There’s more to this than meets the eye.’

‘What?’

‘Need to know.’

But nothing happened. The man went to prison for possession of a firearm and was not heard of again. The leaders of the Provisionals continued to come and go as they pleased.

Meanwhile the deal with Beazely continued to work well. Charles and Van Horne regularly wrote his reports and he paid just as regularly. They did not even have to see him very often as most business was conducted over the phone. This suited Beazely particularly well as he became ever more reluctant to leave his hotel. ‘They’re going to get me,’ he said in his cups one day. ‘I know they are. I can feel it in my bones, or wherever you’re supposed to feel these things. They’re coming for me.’

‘Why you? They don’t even know you.’

‘Why not? They don’t need to. It happens to other people. A bloke walks to work and a tile falls off a roof and kills him. Why him? you say. Why not? I say. It has to be someone. And I’m in a city where people are actually trying to kill each other and succeeding too bloody well for my liking. Well, one fine day it’s going to be me. I just have this feeling it’s going to happen.’

‘It needn’t be you. It could be me or Van Horne.’

‘It’s a comforting thought, Charlie, and kind of you to say so, and if it had to be one or the other I’d be a little happier. But it’s more likely to be as well as, you see. You and me and Van Horne, but most likely just me.’

Meanwhile, the money mounted up, and Charles, with three weeks left in Northern Ireland, was within one hundred and thirty of his five hundred pounds. He needed a couple of big stories to supplement the continuing trickle of small ones.

One evening he was writing the minutes of the latest community relations committee meeting, which had lasted twelve minutes and had been chaired as usual by Anthony Hamilton-Smith, who had had to leave early, when he was summoned downstairs to deal with a complaint. The complaints desk was on the ground floor of the police station, just off the entrance hall. It was a chore which he shared with the adjutant. Complaints were either vivid and obviously false, or exaggerated and based on an uncheckable truth, or true and checkable but impossible to do anything about. There had been two cases where soldiers had been reprimanded, once for damage to property and once for brutality, and the victims had been compensated; but the issues were rarely clear-cut, and the truth of the matter was invariably unclear. On this occasion the complainant was Mary Magdalene, a girl from the Falls area whose nickname, origin unknown, had been passed on by the previous unit. She was unusual in that she was young, attractive and a graduate of Queen’s University. Her complaints were detailed, literate and always minor, but nevertheless demanding extensive and time-consuming investigation. Despite this Charles and Colin Wood competed for her, a battle which Colin was winning as he held the complaints file to which, with her, reference always had to be made. The affair of the V-sign and the invitation allegedly delivered to her by a soldier from the back of a Land-Rover had provoked a lengthy and dignified correspondence between her and Colin which was the outstanding feature of the file. It finally petered out because of an inability to agree whether the intention behind such gestures and invitations was to flatter and compliment or to shock, degrade and terrorise.

She was already seated at the desk when Charles got there. There was no need to go through the preliminaries with her and so he pushed an empty form across. Though it was one of the unwritten rules with her that neither side ever smiled or indicated friendship, it was clear that she enjoyed the process, and manners were kept at all times. ‘Would you please get me a pen,’ she said.

‘Of course.’ This was a new development. He had left his upstairs and looked about for one, noticing her long, carelessly crossed legs and trying not to stare at them.

‘On second thoughts, I believe I’m permitted to dictate my complaint, am I not?’

‘You are, yes, but I still need a pen.’ In the end he borrowed one from the RUC man at the desk in the entrance hall. Mary Magdalene got a light for her cigarette from a grinning corporal of the regimental police. She uncrossed and recrossed her legs. She had Irish looks of the best sort — dark hair, blue eyes, pale complexion and a gentle directness of expression that, for dealings with the Army, hardened into a provocative determination. ‘Are you ready?’ she asked.

Charles held his pen poised. ‘Carry on.’ She set off at great speed and he had to ask her to slow down, which was one up to her. The complaint concerned the searching of a car in which she and her parents were travelling. They had signed the clearance certificate to say that nothing had been damaged but when they had asked the soldiers under what authority they were acting they had been foully abused. Worse, her father had been propped up against the car and searched, his feet kicked apart, and he had then been pushed roughly back into the car when he protested. She dictated fluently and several times spelt words aloud, unnecessarily. Charles was able to get even on this by asking her to repeat them. When every last detail had been completed to her satisfaction, and she had read it, she signed and Charles took the form back upstairs. A telephone call would confirm whether or not there had been a VCP at the time and place she had said.

The adjutant had turned his back on his overflowing in tray and was leaning against the window, smoking. He was gazing at the shattered lamp-post on the other side of the road, another victim of urban guerrilla warfare. About half a pound of gelignite had been strapped to it one night the previous week, for no apparent purpose. A few yards away stood the telephone junction box which controlled all the police station’s telecommunications.

‘Mary Magdalene,’ said Charles. ‘All legs this evening.’

‘Bitch.’

‘She claims that she and her mummy and daddy were abused at a VCP last night.’

Colin grinned. ‘Ah. We’ve got her this time. I know about it. The soldiers concerned were bright enough to report it and C company rang through this morning. They must’ve known who she was. Their version is that the old man took a swing at one of them. I think it’s probably true otherwise they’d have kept quiet about it.’ He stubbed out his cigarette and picked up the rest of the packet. ‘Give me the form and I’ll go and suggest that her statement be broadened to include all the facts. She must’ve had enough of you, anyway. She’ll be wanting the real thing now.’

He went out with the form and Charles sat down at his desk. It occurred to him that no one would notice if he fabricated the minutes of the community relations committee. He balanced on the rear two legs of his chair, resting the back of his head against the wall. Someone shouted something from the ground floor. He decided to do a trial run. He would invent a project which had come to nothing and see if it was commented on. If it were he could always say it was a hangover from the previous unit. He would start with a detailed description of what it was and then go on to show why it was impossible for it ever to have worked and record the committee’s unanimous decision. He sat the chair down on four legs again and bent forward over his desk, his elbows resting upon it. His pen had almost completed the T of ‘also’ when a sheet of redness leapt up from the floor in front of his desk. Simultaneously, a tremendous shock whipped up through the seat of his chair and the soles of his feet, stinging his calves and thighs. He felt himself rising, along with his desk and chair, and suddenly was near the ceiling. He brought his hands up to protect his face and then toppled backwards and half right. He landed on his right side in a foetal position, his knees up to his chest and his head in his arms. He felt he was enveloped in a continuous roar as in a great sea. After he hit the ground there was the sound of things falling and smashing all around him.

He lay still for what seemed a very short time, but afterwards he worked out that it must have been several minutes. Perhaps his internal clock had stopped. He did not move at first, waiting to see if there was any pain. Then he could not move because of a great weight upon his thighs, which he realised was the desk. His first clear thought was that he might be paralysed. He feared that above all else. He wriggled his toes inside his boots and felt them move. He flexed his feet. Though pinned down by the desk, he could move his legs. His head was still in his hands, and the left side felt wet. Something trickled across his eyes. He moved his hand in front of his face and saw it wet with red and blue liquids. He stared uncomprehendingly for some time whilst more liquid ran across his eyes. He could not think what it might be. Then he struggled out from beneath the desk and stood, unsteadily at first as his feet slipped on the books, paper, glass, plaster and rubble that covered the floor. He could not see the other half of the room where the door was because of a dense and continuously revolving cloud of dust. His Browning was attached to his shoulder by his lanyard and dangled by his thigh. The CO had insisted that it should always be so attached. He had the notion that the bomb would be followed by an attack on the building and so he pulled a magazine from his pocket and loaded and cocked the pistol.

He then walked, still unsteadily, to the great jagged holes in the walls where the windows had been. There was debris all over the street, the shops opposite looked as though they had been shelled, with parts of their walls and roofs blown away, and there were upturned cars on the far pavement. A figure was running across the road towards him. Holding the Browning in both hands, elbows locked, eyes open, Charles moved down through the target to the centre of the body, where two or three inches out in any direction would still be a stopping hit. He looked straight at the man so as to line up the mid-line of his body. As he took up the first slight pressure on the trigger it was borne in upon him very slowly, from somewhere far back in his mind, that the man was wearing a uniform. He was a military policeman, a Redcap. Charles lowered the pistol and uncocked it with hands that did not shake. His legs and his stomach felt empty but he was calm. He put the pistol in his pocket with the magazine still in, just in case.

The dust in the room had thinned and he could see the telephone on the floor where Colin’s desk had been. To his surprise, it worked. He dialled 999 and was told by the operator that they already knew about the bomb. Of course they knew. He must think more clearly. He next noticed a large blue stain on the ceiling above where he had been sitting, with bits of his inkwell embedded. The ink was dripping off the ceiling on to his upturned desk. He put his hand to his face and head and found that he was wet with ink and blood. The blood came from a couple of tender places on the side of his neck and on his left eyebrow. At his first attempt to leave the room he was forced back by the dust which made him cough and stagger clumsily. However, he got through the door at the second attempt and found himself on the landing. Soldiers were running purposefully to and fro. No one seemed to notice him. He went to lean on the stair rail but found that it swayed. The stairs were littered with bits of wood, concrete, plaster and glass. An upturned helmet rocked gently by itself in the exact centre of the centre stair. There were a few small splashes of blood.

He stood in the door of the ops room where everyone was active and everything seemed to be working. Again, no one noticed him. He made his way down the stairs, where a lot of people were moving about. Two soldiers came running up the stairs three at a time. One stopped. ‘You all right, sir?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Want me to get a medic for you?’

‘No thanks, I’m all right.’ His own repetition of the soldier’s ‘all right’ echoed in his skull, along with the ‘all rights’ of a hundred other voices. He thought, with the clarity born of supreme detachment, of how this was an Army stock phrase, an all-purpose measure of spiritual welfare, military competence and personal affability. He seemed able to think only of irrelevancies.

The soldier was still staring at him. ‘There’s one in the cookhouse. I’d go along there if I was you.’

‘Thank you.’

He lost his bearings for a moment at the bottom of the stairs because several walls had disappeared, there was daylight in unexpected places and the floor was covered by concrete rubble. Some soldiers were bending over something on the floor. They straightened and Charles saw that they were carrying a door, upon which was Colin. His head lolled oddly to one side. The empty feeling in Charles’s stomach increased so much that he put his hand to it. As he watched the door go past he felt a deep and secret elation because he was alive and whole. They carried the adjutant out through a hole in the wall and put him on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance. Charles followed them out into the street. A group of squat women were standing on the corner jeering and laughing. There were several youths on the other side of the road. One shouted, ‘Let’s get their guns!’ and started forward but was pushed roughly back by some soldiers from A company who had just arrived in their Pigs.

Charles was facing a TV camera and a reporter he knew. He was being asked what had happened. ‘There has been an explosion,’ he said. More people were asking him and he repeated it several times. He was asked how it happened and how many injuries there were. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, again many times.

Then he was looking at the CO, whose face was drawn and grim. ‘Charles, are you all right?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You’re not.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Go to hospital and get cleaned up.’

There were more questions from the press. Then he was standing inside amongst the rubble, again facing the CO. ‘I thought I told you to go to hospital.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, go on then.’

‘Yes, sir.’ He made his way to the cookhouse where he found Henry Sandy’s medical sergeant, grinning. ‘They told me you was dead, sir. I was all ready to go on telly meself. Sit down here and let’s have a butchers. Blue blood, eh? Always knew you were different. Red stuff too. At least you’re human. More blood than cuts, I reckon. You got some glass in there. Where does it hurt? Sorry. Where else? Won’t even need stitching, this won’t.’

A normally reluctant and surly cook produced gallons of tea in a very short time and with no visible equipment. As Charles drank his he began to feel a little more in touch with the world. The cut above his eye was throbbing. When he got outside a troop of Sappers had arrived with lorries to clear away the debris. One half of the ground floor of the building was completely wrecked and the upper two storeys remained only because the pre-stressed concrete structure was designed so that the pillars stood firm even if the walls blew out. The quarter-inch steel shutters on the windows on the ground floor had disappeared, as had those in Charles’s and Colin’s office, which had been directly above the blast. One pair of shutters had been blown across the road, through the front of the house opposite and into the kitchen at the back. There were press swarming everywhere and, after many enquiries, Charles was able to establish that about thirty people had been taken to hospital. A baby, the adjutant and one other not yet identified were seriously injured. The rest were civilians who had chanced to be in the area. It was believed that the bomb had been in a suitcase brought into the police station by a young man, who had run out. Someone had shouted, ‘Bomb!’ which was the shout Charles had heard.

He answered queries for about an hour, repeating himself often. Later he saw himself on the television news saying, ‘There has been an explosion,’ with the devastated building in the background and blood down one side of his face. Then there was a close-up of his cuts, robbing them of their impressiveness, to the commentary, ‘Officers refused to have their wounds treated until all the injured had been accounted for.’

Chatsworth and his platoon turned up to help clear the rubble. ‘If it had gone off ten minutes later I’d have been here anyway,’ he said.

‘Then you might not have been here now.’

‘True.’ He enjoyed the scene but was obviously disappointed. ‘I don’t think much of your wounds. They won’t last. Mine will last longer. Even though it’s hidden by clothes most of the time it’ll still be there. The one on your neck is quite near the jugular, though.’

‘Did you hear about the adjutant?’

‘He’s bad, isn’t he? That’s a bit serious. Brings it home to you. All because they won’t let us shoot the bastards unless they’re doing something. I wish I’d seen it, all the same.’

Arc lights were set up as it became dark. It was impressive how quickly and easily the necessary equipment and personnel were mobilised. The artificial glare made the scene of toiling men look slightly unreal. Some of the local women protested about the noise. They stood on the spot where the complaints desk had been and shouted in their harsh Belfast accents about civil rights. The operations officer also had a complaint for Charles: ‘Some bloody oppo of yours called Beedley or something keeps ringing up on the ops room phone to know what’s happened. I keep telling him to come down and see for himself or piss off but he won’t. Screw him or something, will you?’

It proved to be Van Horne’s hour of triumph. Uninjured, apart from an already picturesque scar on the cheek that excited Chatsworth’s envy, he composed and phoned through Beazely’s copy whilst Charles dealt with the more adventurous press. Later Charles was called back up to his office by the CO, who was examining it. The room was a shambles. There were gaping holes where the windows had been, cracks in the other walls and everything movable was smashed or twisted. Even the floor was unevenly shaped, with a great cracked hump in the middle where Charles had seen the sheet of redness leap up. ‘You ought to be dead,’ said the CO. Charles remembered having been told this before and wondered whether, if he were to be killed, the CO would then say, ‘It ought to have happened some time ago, of course. I’ve told him twice before.’ The CO paused and then began again, as though the point needed emphasis. ‘By all that’s reasonable you ought to be dead. This floor is reinforced and blast-proof and it’s still come through it. If it had been a normal floor you wouldn’t be here. Nor if you’d been sitting in a different position. I can’t understand why you weren’t cut to pieces. How’s your eye?’

‘Fine, sir, thank you.’

‘Well done. You did well to escape.’

When they got outside again there was alarm because a car had been spotted parked around the corner against another wall of the building. It was thought it might be another bomb. A warrant officer from the bomb disposal team was summoned and the street cleared. From the safety of the corner they watched him advance alone to the car and examine it. He got down on his knees and peered beneath the boot. Charles was indulging in the warm pleasure of relative safety when the CO, after peering impatiently round the corner, said, ‘Go down and see if he wants a hand, Thoroughgood.’

Charles walked down the street as slowly as he dared. It was pointless to hazard two lives instead of one and he knew nothing about bomb disposal. It was probably even contrary to Army procedure but he did not have the nerve to disobey the CO. Even if he had, the habit of obedience would probably have sent him down there. He felt calmly fatalistic as he stood by the car. ‘D’you want a hand?’ he asked the warrant officer.

The man was half under the car. ‘There’s a wire here I can’t identify.’ He wriggled out. ‘We’ll go in from the top. You can hold those for me.’ He handed Charles some tools, selected a strange-looking drill and cut a hole about four inches in diameter in the top of the boot. ‘All clear,’ he said after a minute or so.

Charles was very relieved, despite his calmly fatalistic feelings of a few minutes before. He offered the man a cup of tea, which was all he could think of to say. ‘No time,’ he said as he collected his tools. ‘Got another one in the city centre. They’re popping up like mushrooms tonight. This is my third. Mostly hoaxes.’

Much later Henry Sandy returned from the hospital. He looked very tired. ‘Colin’s dead,’ he said.

Again, the secret thrill of being alive. It was a shameful thrill though his heart leapt within him to hear Henry’s words. Yet it was still a shock to hear it said. He knew there was no reply, as Henry knew, but there was a desire to say something. ‘Blast?’

‘No. A severely fractured skull. The whole of the right side was smashed in. He must’ve hit something or something hit him. He never had a chance. His brains were coming out of his mouth in the ambulance. They did everything possible at the hospital. They had two surgeons working on him for an hour and a half.’ He pulled slowly on his cigarette, talking quietly. His face was expressionless. ‘And there’s a baby with a part of his brain outside his skull. He’ll live. They’ve saved him, as a vegetable. He was in one of the cars, apparently. And some bird who’s lost both legs. She was in the building, I think.’

‘Mary Magdalene.’

‘What?’

‘Local girl.’

‘Ah.’

The Army had a way of dealing with death that took the edge off the acute sense of futility and helplessness that afflicts most people. Woven into its collective subconscious was an expectation of death and even a vague sense that it was apt. It was a part of the contract. Besides, the war had to go on and there were things to do — repairs, new defences, reports to write, kin to be informed, precautions to be taken. Two clerks packed Colin’s kit that night. They stripped his bed, collected his clothes, gathered the family photographs, the cigarettes and personal oddments from his locker. His money was counted and recorded. Charles pointed to a family photograph that included Colin in uniform. ‘I’d better have that for the press,’ he said. The two clerks hesitated, sullenly. ‘Otherwise they’ll be bothering his wife and family for one. It’s better if they get it from this end.’ He signed for it and within an hour the only trace of the adjutant was a pile of kit stacked and labelled in a green metal cupboard in the orderly room, waiting to be shipped off. So long as the procedure was followed, the now-living and meaningful book which was so often abused, everything would be all right. Slow and unwieldy as it was in normal times, the Army was one great system designed for disaster and, so long as enough of it survived to work the system, that was when it worked best. It was believed in. Tony Watch took over as adjutant that night.

By four in the morning there seemed nothing left to do but go to bed. Charles was present when the CO gave an interview to a young radio reporter, one of the few journalists he liked. The man had flown over from London on the last plane on hearing of the bomb and was rewarded by a simple and touching piece for the seven o’clock news, with details of Colin Wood’s death which were released only that morning, too late for the dailies. When the reporter had gone, the CO rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘It’s terrible, simply terrible,’ he said slowly. ‘One simply doesn’t know what to say. I’ve known Colin since he was a young subaltern, and to see him killed like that — there simply aren’t words. I don’t know a better young officer, you know, I really don’t. D’you know Diana his wife?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Lovely girl. God knows how she’s going to take this. Two young children, you know. And for you, sharing his office like that. You must have got to know him. How terrible for you, how simply terrible. Of course, it could have been any of us, and we’re extremely lucky it was only him. We could’ve lost half a dozen soldiers down there tonight. The press will no doubt say he was trying to save that poor girl, but I don’t know, I just don’t know. It’s the sort of thing he would do, but one will never really know. I don’t suppose the girl herself will know.’ He stood and began walking round the room. ‘And that wretched baby. What will become of it? These are things, you see, that are forgotten about, these trivial, incidental little details, the suffering of people who don’t matter. These people will be forgotten while those who maimed them will go prattling on about the cause and all that other rubbish. We should remind people everyday about this sort of thing but it’s no good, they don’t listen. And even if they did they’d get used to it and stop noticing. It almost makes one despair of people entirely, doesn’t it, Thoroughgood, eh?’

‘It does, sir, yes.’

‘I mean, they must be warped, they must be only half there, they can’t have all the normal human responses. But I’ll tell you one thing, within these four walls. I promise you, as God is my witness, if I get half a chance to bury some of these people before I go, I’ll do it. I know it’s not ethical, I know it’s not moral, I know one shouldn’t feel like this, but half a chance, that’s all. Half.’ He was pale with emotion and gripped the back of his chair so hard that his knuckles whitened. His eyes were hard on Charles and his teeth set firmly against each other.

He wanted a response but Charles sought a way out for himself. ‘Some of the press have been asking why it was so easy.’

‘I’ll tell you why. Because we weren’t allowed to put a proper guard on the door because some misguided do-gooder in the powers-that-be decided it might inhibit people from coming to complain about us. That’s why. If you think I’m crazy, take a look at them. It’ll be different now, of course. It’ll be sandbagged and bunkered and netted and God knows what else. We just had to wait for someone to be killed, that’s all. Tell that to your press friends. Only you’d better make it a bit more diplomatic.’

Charles was about to go to bed, not because he felt tired but because he was afraid of feeling tired if he didn’t, when Beazely rang. He was suddenly irritated. ‘What do you want?’

‘I just wanted to talk, that’s all.’ Beazely sounded hurt.

‘What about?’

There was a long pause. ‘I think I’m going to die.’

‘So you are. So are the rest of us.’

‘But I don’t want to die.’ He sounded tearfully drunk.

‘Tough.’

‘You don’t understand. It’s going to be soon. I thought you would understand, Charlie. You of all people. Can I talk to Van Horne?’

‘He’s not around.’

‘What shall I do?’

‘Go to bed.’

‘I suppose you’re right. What are you going to do?’

‘Go to bed.’

‘Good night then.’

‘Good night.’ He rang off, and Charles, instead of going to bed, went up on the roof where the night air was cool and clear and there were only the silent sentries to be seen. He felt anything but tired. He was sustained by a pure, selfish joy at being alive. He could not feel sorry for Colin. Things happened, they just happened. There was no more to be said. He could go through the motions but essentially he was untouched and he could not deceive himself. He recalled the CO’s words, ‘How terrible for you, how simply terrible,’ as though they were said about someone else. They didn’t fit him.