Border Crossing

by Pat Barker

  ‘You didn’t say anything at the time.’

  ‘What was the point? You did the best you could for the kid, under very nasty hostile cross-examination. Smithers went right over the top that day. A lot of people more experienced than you would’ve been wilting by the end. I thought it was disgraceful. You’re not supposed to treat an expert witness as hostile, and he came very, very close. I remember Duncan sitting back in his chair at one point, and saying, “Well, that’s it, then. We can all go home.” And he threw his pencil down on the pad.’

  Duncan had been the defence counsel. ‘As bad as that?’

  ‘I don’t know about bad. The fact is the little bugger ended up inside. Which was the right outcome.’

  ‘I didn’t see it like that. I didn’t think my evidence had any particular impact.’

  ‘Oh, it did. But there’s always a moment in a long trial when the thing swings. Juries aren’t rational, the seats are too hard, the room’s too hot, it goes on for days and days and bloody days. Weeks. Do you know the average person’s attention span is twenty minutes? And they’d listened to Danny for hours. I think they rather admired him in a funny sort of way. I know I did. But you could see them thinking, I don’t know, he seems all right… And then you came along, and you supplied them with another perspective.’

  ‘I didn’t change a single fact.’

  ‘No, but you changed the way they saw him. You scuppered him. And I can tell you the exact moment it happened. Smithers was asking you whether Danny understood that death was a permanent state. Do you remember? And you quoted Danny’s exact words. “If you wring a chicken’s neck, you don’t expect to see it running round the yard next morning.”‘

  ‘But he was talking about chickens. He lived on a chicken farm, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. And everybody went…’ He mimicked the intake of breath, exactly as Danny had done.

  ‘Danny remembers that.’

  ‘Does he?’ Nigel said. ‘That’s interesting.’

  Tom was thinking. ‘I suppose I’ve never been easy about it, because Smithers got me on the ropes. I know he did. There was no hope of qualifying anything – he just swept it aside.’

  Nigel grunted. ‘I wouldn’t blame yourself too much. All you did was quote his own words.’

  ‘He wasn’t referring to Lizzie.’

  ‘It was the attitude. All that about it didn’t really matter because she was old, she’d had her life. You ripped the mask off, and okay, you lost me the case.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m glad somebody did, because if he hadn’t been caught he’d have done it again.’

  ‘Do you really believe that?’

  ‘Of course. He was on to a good thing, wasn’t he? Befriending old ladies, robbing them, and if they got in the way – splat! I think you should pat yourself on the back. And if you have any bother at all with him, tell the police.’

  Tom sat lost; in thought, until a discreet movement from Nigel drew his attention to their empty glasses. He roused himself to go to the bar, where he ordered another pint for Nigel and a half for himself.

  He got back to the table to find Nigel chatting to two barristers, and the conversation necessarily changed to other topics.

  Half an hour later, as they were leaving the pub, Nigel fell deliberately behind and drew Tom aside. ‘Look, don’t let him get to you. You told the truth. And as far as I’m concerned the only mistake’s the Home Office letting the little bugger out.’

  He nodded, and hurried to catch up with his colleagues, a shoal of dark fish weaving in amongst the brightly dressed crowd.

  TEN

  Danny replaced the burnt matchstick carefully in the box.

  Tom said, I’ve been thinking about that English teacher of yours. What was his name again?’

  Danny looked wary. ‘Angus MacDonald.’

  ‘You were close?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose. Ish.’ He tapped ash offhis cigarette. ‘It was a long time ago.’

  Silence, except for the pop-pop of the gas fire, and the wind slamming against the windows.

  ‘You know,’ Danny said suddenly, ‘all day I’ve been thinking I can’t go through with this, and now I think I can.’ He glanced at the red-shaded lamp on Tom’s desk. ‘I don’t know where to start.’

  ‘You said with Angus you started with little things. About the farm.’

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘Worked, then.’

  ‘Yeah, all right. The first thing I ever wrote for him started with me in bed on a winter’s night watching reflections on the wall, hearing people outside in the yard, shouting, calling. Feeling, you know, exiled – the way kids do when they’re in bed and everything’s still going on downstairs.’

  ‘Whose voices are they?’

  ‘My mother’s. Fiona’s – that’s the girl who used to work for us. Sometimes my father’s – not often. He was generally in the pub by then.’

  ‘And what are they doing?’

  ‘Putting the hens away for the night. We had some free-range hens. It wasn’t free, exactly, but it was better than the batteries. I used to go into the batteries with my mother, and there were all these heads poking out, bright eyes, these jerky little movements, coxcombs jiggling. I’d be walking along the aisle like this.’ He hunched his arms together across his chest. ‘I was afraid of being pecked. I don’t know why, because I’d been pecked dozens of times. They didn’t live long. When they got past the point of no return, Dad used to wring their necks. Sometimes he’d swing them so they hit me in the face.’

  ‘Why do you think he did that?’

  ‘Oh, I’d be pulling faces. I didn’t like it. We used to have pullets in runs in one of the fields, and there was this little skinny white pullet and the others started pecking it. All the feathers had come out, its skin was red raw, and Dad said he’d have to kill it. I didn’t want him to. I said, “Can’t we put it in another run by itself until it gets bigger?”‘ A deep breath. ‘So he made me do it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘How did he make me? I don’t know. I knew I had to. You know, you just pull and twist and Small, foetal movements of the hands. ‘The eyes cloud over.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Six.’ He caught Tom’s expression. ‘Yeah, well, he was on this great toughen-up-the~lad campaign. Perhaps he was right, perhaps I needed it.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Until I was five, there was Mum and me and her parents. Dad was in the army.’

  ‘Why didn’t you live on the base?’

  ‘We did, to begin with. I was born in Germany, but Mum got depressed after the birth. Apparently he used to come home, and I’d be screaming in one room and she’d be slumped in a chair. More or less in the same position she’d been in when he left. I think she just about fed me and kept me clean, but that was it. And then he had to go to Northern Ireland, and of course the families can’t go with them there. So she came home to her parents. I think it was meant to be temporary, but once she got away from the base there was no way she was going back.’

  ‘So you didn’t see very much of him?’

  ‘He used to come home on leave. I was always glad when he went back. Then he was in the Falklands,then Northern Ireland again, and then suddenly he was home.’

  Tor good?’

  Danny laughed. ‘Or evil. Permanently, anyway.’

  ‘What was that like?’

  ‘A cataclysm. For me. I’ve got two photographs of me round about four, five. One’s of me sitting on Mum’s knee in a Paddington Bear t-shirt. And the other – this is only two months later – I’m wearing a flak jacket and carrying a gun.’

  ‘Toy gun?’

  ‘No, his. He let me hold it.’

  ‘And you liked that?’

  ‘Yeah, I thought it was great.’

  ‘So there was a change of allegiance?’

  ‘Hmm. Yes, that’s exactly the right word.’

  Tom thought for a moment. ‘What were some of the changes?�
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  ‘Well – I’m trying to be fair here – there was a lot of rough and tumble, a lot of* charging about and shouting, and… I’d never had that, you see. Because although we lived with my grandparents at the time, Granddad was .… he was almost more of an old woman than Gran.’

  ‘And you liked the games?’

  ‘Most of the time, yes. But he had a very short fuse. We were playing French cricket once and I got hit on the leg and started bawling and he threw the bat at me. And, you know… at me. I was taken to casualty. And… I don’t know why things got worse, but they did.’ He was massaging his forehead as he spoke. ‘I wasn’t the kid he wanted, I think I have to accept that, but I think there was an element of… I don’t think he was in a terrific state when he got back from the Falklands, and within a month, literally within a month, he was in Northern Ireland.’

  ‘And drinking heavily.’

  ‘Yes. How did you know that?’

  ‘Something you said before. Go on. You said things got worse. How?’

  ‘I started getting the shit beat out of me. He had this big thick black belt. He used to keep it on the table by the television, and… If you hadn’t done anything too bad, you got the leather end.’

  ‘But not always.’

  ‘No, not always.’

  A long silence. Somewhere outside, in a different world, footsteps hurried past.

  ‘I’ve thought about this a lot. I honestly do believe he thought he was doing the right thing. But he had a temper, and you’ve got to remember in his mind he was very hard done by. Loved the army, stupid bitch can’t cope, sends her home, still can’t cope. He comes out of the army – and she still can’t cope.’

  ‘So your mother was still depressed?’

  ‘Not while we were living with her parents, I don’t think. Later, on the farm, she was. But that would’ve depressed anybody.’

  ‘And he blamed your mother?’

  ‘For him having to leave the army? Yes.’

  ‘Who did she blame?’

  ‘Herself. I think. That was… That was the myth, I suppose. He was doing well in the army, he had to come out because of her, and that was the end of a brilliant career. She believed it, I’m sure she did – I don’t think she ever doubted it was all her fault.’

  ‘Was it true?’

  A flicker of impatience. ‘God knows. I think when it comes to your parents you might as well stick with the myths, because you’re never going to get at the truth. It’s just not possible. And anyway, it’s the myths that form you.’

  ‘I’d still like to hear what you think now.’

  A deep sigh. ‘Well, before he went into the army he couldn’t settle to anything.’

  ‘Sorry. Can I stop you there? Who’s this coming from?’

  ‘My grandmother. Who didn’t like him, so the source is prejudiced.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  ‘Never said a word against him – ever.’

  ‘Okay, go on.’

  ‘What I think – and this is only suspicion, I don’t know – I think he came back from the Falklands in a far worse state than he let on. And perhaps it wasn’t altogether unwelcome to have an honourable way of getting out of it. Or perhaps I’m just making excuses and he was a violent bastard who’d have beaten the shit out of me anyway.’

  ‘Did he ever talk about the army?’

  ‘Oh, all the time.’

  ‘With regret?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I think the first year on the farm he was quite happy. There was a lot of building, draining fields, that kind of thing, and he liked all that. There was a cowshed, and he turned it into a workshop. Mum never went in there, so it was a sort of den.’

  ‘Did you go?’

  ‘Yes. They were some of the best times. There was one window, so grimed up hardly any light got through, and I’d sit on a bale of straw – it was scratchy on the backs of my legs, still remember it – and watch him hammering away, smoking, always smoking. And his hair was curly, and there’d be a sort of fuzz of sunlight and cigarette smoke round him, and he’d talk about the army. This guy he killed in Belfast. They were clearing houses, and he shot him, and he sort of slid down the wall, very slowly, leaving this broad band of red all the way down the wallpaper. And there was another story from the Falklands – chasing somebody, and when the guy turned round it was a child. Early teens, I suppose, but he didn’t look it. He looked about twelve.’

  Tom was startled. Danny had slipped into being his father. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Killed him. Nothing else to do.’

  ‘Do you remember how he said that?’

  ‘No. I know what you mean.I don’t remember. I’ve asked myself that many a time. You know, was he traumatized? Was he talking to me like he’d have talked to a –’ He stopped and shook his head.

  ‘A tape recorder?’

  ‘Dog, I was going to say. But we had a dog, so perhaps you’re right.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think it’s too easy for sensitive types’ – Danny’s voice oozed contempt – ‘to assume that everybody who kills is traumatized by it. I think there’s a lot of evidence that the majority of people get used to it quite quickly. And… yes, I do think it bothered him that he’d killed a child. But not very much. The kid was in uniform, he had a gun, and the responsibility for his death belongs with the people who put him there. I’m pretty certain that’s the way Dad saw it.’

  ‘And what do you think about that?’

  ‘I think he was right.’

  ‘So why did he tell you these stories?’

  ‘Reliving good times? He always… you know, although a lot of things happened in the Falklands that disturbed him, he never stopped seeing it as an enormous stroke of luck. In the army, you’re mainly rehearsing for something you never do. And he did it. He was grateful for that.’

  A pause. Tom said, ‘Why did you get beaten? I mean, what sort of things did you do?’

  ‘Breathe.’

  ‘As bad as that?’

  ‘Yes. In the end I couldn’t do anything right. I mean, he used to take me rabbiting. I did like it, I liked the occasion, going off with him and Duke. But I didn’t like the dead rabbits. “But you’ll eat it, won’t you?” he used to say, and then he’d shove it in my face. I remember walking back with him once, trailing along behind. Cold, frosty day and these rabbits dangling from his bag. Glazed eyes, blood in their mouths. Feet swinging.’

  ‘What are you feeling?’

  ‘Feeble. No use.’ A pause. ‘I’m afraid I’ve lost the thread a bit. I can’t remember why I was telling you that. Oh, I know, I couldn’t eat the stew, so I got belted for that.’

  ‘What were the best times?’

  ‘Watching videos. He’d have his fags and his cans of beer, and I’d creep closer to him on the sofa. I was always watching him out of the corner of my eye and whatever expression was on his face, I’d try to imitate it.’

  ‘What sort of things did you watch?’

  ‘War movies.’ He laughed. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Which one do you remember best?’

  ‘Apocalypse Now, Saw that three or four times.’

  ‘Isn’t that an anti-war movie?’

  ‘Didn’t bother him. He just screened out the anti. And he liked some horror films. Good ones. We watched An American Werewolf and I was so fidghtened I hid behind the sofa, and afterwards, days afterwards, I was writing these little notes. You know, block capitals, NOT A REAL WOLF.’

  ‘What do you remember about it? The film.’

  ‘The transformation scene. And… oh, it’s ages since I’ve seen it. Umm… There’s a scene where he’s in a cinema, and all along the row there’re decomposing corpses. People he’s killed, or perhaps other werewolves, I don’t know. ‘He paused. ‘I used to have the poster of Apocalypse Now in my room at Long Garth. The huge red sun and the choppers. In fact, I’m not sure he didn’t buy it for me.’

  ‘Any other good times?’

&
nbsp; ‘Being in the shed watching him make things. Mainly fences, that sort of thing. He used to go out in all weathers, My mother used to say, “You’re never going out in that, are you?” And he’d be standing in the kitchen door, and he’d say,” When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”‘ Danny laughed. ‘When the going got tough, the tough pissed off.’

  Tom let a silence open up, before slipping in, casually, ‘Were you an abused child?’

  Danny looked startled. ‘No. Well, the beatings, I suppose

  ‘Were they frequent?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Severe?’

  ‘Depends what you mean by severe.’

  ‘Did they leave marks?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bruises?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Weals?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘So. Were you abused?’

  ‘I don’t know. Do you think I was?’

  Tom smiled. ‘It doesn’t work like that, Danny.’

  ‘Was I abused?’ He was massaging his forehead again, this time with his hand hiding most of his face. ‘Oh God. I suppose by modern standards, in comparison with most kids, yes. Slightly.’

  ‘That’s an incredibly qualified answer.’

  ‘Yes, well, I think it has to be. If it’d been the 1880s – you know, be a man, my son, send forth the best ye breed, and all that – everybody would’ve thought he was doing a splendid job.’

  ‘But it wasn’t.’

  ‘I know, that’s what I’ve just said. By modern standards, probably, yes.’

  Tom waited.

  ‘Slightly.’

  ‘Slightly?’

  ‘Yes, slightly. I wasn’t neglected, sexually abused, starved, tortured, left on my own morning, noon and night, scalded, burnt… All of which happens.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He was misguided, but he did honestly think he was doing the right thing.’

  ‘What was the worst thing?’

  ‘The worst beating?’

  ‘No, the worst thing. The worst time.’

  ‘Being hung up on a peg. Hung up. Not hanged.’

  ‘Why did he do that?’