Civvies

by Lynda La Plante

  'Not tonight, Wally,' he said. 'This is a celebration.'

  Harry gestured around with his thumb, 'Now's the time, Frank, with all the fads arrivin' -' And just then, to add weight to it, the doorbell went again. 'We can get a dozen -'

  'Leave it out,' said Dillon shortly, and turned away to grab himself a bottle of Czech Budweiser.

  'My God, we've got enough food for an army!' Helen exclaimed, surveying the laden table.

  'You might just be seein' one,' Dillon grinned, his high spirits soon back, 'the lads from the caterin' corps did all this. Have you seen the paper?' He knew damn well she had but he wanted to chalk one up, gloat a little.

  'Well, I hope to God they like pork pies, or we'll be eatin' them for months.' Helen was having trouble finding fault, and the best she could manage was a tart, 'You're wearin' your eyes out lookin' at that newspaper…' But all she got from Dillon was another broad grin.

  Harry clapped his hands. 'Right, I done my share, I got to go an' pick up Trudie.' He went out, cuffing Wally on his bald head, who was handing bottles from the crate to Dillon, who in turn was lining them up next to the cask on the draining-board.

  'Tell everyone, coats upstairs,' Dillon called after him, the doorbell competing now with Chuck Berry who had no particular place to go. Dillon frowned at Wally. 'Trudie?'

  'She's the manageress from the travel agency.' Wally's eyes rolled. 'An' she's bringin' a few of her friends…'

  Dillon nearly said something, but Susie was at his elbow, bottle of red, bottle of white, in either hand. 'Frank, you should answer the door!' she reprimanded him, anxious to keep up the proprieties.

  Dillon kissed the tip of her nose and meekly did as he was told.

  By nine-thirty the place was jumping. Susie reckoned they had half the battalion there, plus wives, girlfriends and assorted hangers-on. Some of the men she knew by sight, from the early days in married quarters when Dillon was based at Montgomery Lines, as the barracks were known. But most of the faces were young and strange, Toms who'd joined since the Falklands and come to know Dillon as their Sergeant PJI, Parachute Jumping Instructor, during their three-week Basic Para training at Brize Norton

  Clutching a glass of wine, Susie squirmed through into the living-room. She hoped the neighbours wouldn't complain. The stereo seemed to be permanently at top whack, even though every time she went by she tweaked it down – obviously somebody immediately tweaked it up. Above the heat and noise and swirling cigarette smoke, Kenny and Phil peered through the banister rails, huddled together to make room for the constant flow of people traipsing up to the bathroom. Helen was standing on the bottom step, pointing a stern finger.

  'Bed you two – you've been told twice! Now come on…'

  Susie stepped over somebody's legs, got bumped in the rear by a jiving girl, and steadying her glass called up, 'Do as you're told, you two! You got a drink, Mum?'

  Helen pushed the boys ahead of her. She leaned over the banister, face like a thundercloud. 'I want a word with you! Come up, come on!'

  On the landing, having got the boys inside, Helen kept her hand on the doorknob, holding the door shut. She turned to her daughter with wide, outraged eyes. 'There's four women down there,' Helen hissed, 'an' if you don't know what they are, then -'

  Susie half-closed her eyes. 'Mum, just don't start… they're celebratin'. I dunno who half these people are.'

  'Tarts,' Helen said in a furious whisper. 'You got tarts down there! Never mind half a ton of pork pies…'

  And when Susie couldn't help it, burst out laughing, Helen did her Mrs Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells act and flounced into the bedroom and slammed the door. A tall, slender black girl came out of the bathroom. She gave Susie a bright smile. 'Hello, I've not been introduced, but I'm Shirley, Cliff's fiancee.'

  Susie said hello and they went down together to join the fray. Fifties rock 'n' roll was in favour at the moment, Elvis in his prime, never as good again, with My Baby Left Me, Bill Black's thudding bass making the backbone shudder.

  The two women eventually made it past the whirling bodies into the kitchen. A dozen or so ex-Paras had done a flanking move and set up base camp around the beer keg. In the middle of them was Harry, foaming pint in one hand, the other clamped to the ample waist of a blonde woman who was more than well endowed everywhere else. She clanked with jewellery, from earrings in the shape of swinging dragons down to a gold anklet laden with chunky gold star-sign charms. Probably a social worker, Susie decided charitably, which wasn't far wide of the mark.

  In expansive mode, Harry was giving with the gab to some of the younger blokes. 'We got an armour-plated security wagon. We got a stretch Merc used to belong to some Iranian, Ford Granada an' – he took a swallow, sucked his moustache ' – suite of offices. You need a job mate -' belch ' – give us a call.'

  Wally flagged Dillon over, draped his arm matily around Dillon's shoulder. 'Hey Frank, you met Kenny Hill, he was in the Gulf, he's just got out… any chance of him joinin'?'

  Fishing in the breast pocket of his shirt for a card he didn't have on him, and was too pissed to find if he had, Dillon said grandly, 'Give me a bell – you got one of our cards?' He pulled away from Wally and did a Wagons Roll wave of the arm. 'Come on, lads, move into the other room… in - the – other - room -!'

  As the group began to move, Cliff was excitedly telling them. 'We went into the bank manager, showed him our references. We got the loan an' we got more business than we can handle!'

  Helen came through, manoeuvring past them with two handfuls of dirty plates and glasses. Susie was pouring a glass of wine for Shirley. Helen stacked the plates in the dish-washer and put the upturned tumblers and wine glasses in the top tray. 'Go for one of these, love,' she advised Shirley. 'They don't half make the glasses sparkle.'

  Shirley took the wine from Susie. 'It was a toss-up whether I got one of these or a microwave,' she said, big brown eyes everywhere, taking everything in. She spotted Cliff just inside the living-room door, and at the third shout, because the music was blasting out, he got the message and came over.

  'They got a new washing machine, tumble-dryer, dishwashing machine, an' a fridge.' Practically the same height as Cliff, Shirley looked at him, quizzical, and nudged him with her elbow. 'So you tell me, how much you been given?'

  Cliff touched a finger to his lips and winked.

  Susie rushed past them, having caught a glimpse of her boss and his wife, all at sea in the crowd. Marway was smiling as she brought them through to the relative calm of the kitchen, but his wife had a wincing expression, unaccustomed to a sweltering roomful of burly sweating men, some interesting looking women, and Green Onions at sixty-five decibels.

  CHAPTER 30

  'I said, for that much, love, I'd swing from a chandelier naked! An' that's how it started, like it was just a laugh, you know…'

  Trudie threw back her blonde head and laughed, everything shaking and jiggling, including the dragons dangling from her earlobes.

  Wally was well into another of his interminable tales that never seemed to have a point or a punchline: '…an' then the C.O. caught us red-handed – what you two friggin' think you're playin' at? We're collectin' information on the opponents' military capabilities, sir!'

  'So we raided the house, small terraced job, opposite the suspect IRA house.' A Full Screw – corporal – from 3 Para was holding two young Toms enthralled. 'An' we get into the loft, then we get a slate off, use the old elastic band gig, an' we…' he crouched down, using his hands for binoculars '… were stuck in there for fourteen fuckin' days!'

  'No, listen,' Harry said, hanging onto the bloke next to him, because if he didn't he'd fall over, 'Harris – Steve -he turns to the arsehole, says to him – Sir, I wasn't doin' any field signal, I was tellin' that bugger behind me to get a friggin' move on! Laugh…!'

  Dillon, in the middle of five, had one of his best stories rolling. He'd gone from keg bitter via Newcastle Brown, with a brief detour for a Grolsch or three, to Famous Gro
use, and he was feeling on top of the world, no muzziness, no whirling pit, dandy, just great, fantastic.

  '… so Jimmy says, Sir, I know how we can get our bearings – compass was lost, see – so he takes out this razor blade, starts stroking it against the palm of his hand, an' this prat of an officer looks on. What the hell you doin', Hammond? Magnetising the razor, Sir. He ties this piece of cotton round it, and it worked. Next day there's this prat with a bandaid round his hand – an' we know…' Dillon broke off, gasping with laughter '… we know the stupid bastard's gone an' tried it!'

  From the kitchen doorway, standing with Helen and Shirley, Susie watched her husband's face. His eyes had nearly gone, that was easy to tell, but she didn't mind. It was the first time since he'd come out that he'd allowed himself to relax, really let go. She knew the strain he was under, trying to make a go of things. Things had been tough at first, no proper job to slot into (not much call in Civvy Street for Fieldcraft – weapons handling, camouflage and concealment, surveillance of enemy firebase), and on top of it, the trouble with Taffy and Steve. But now, fingers crossed, things were looking up. Not just a job, any old job, but his very own business, and money to back it, thanks to Mr Marway. Feeling a bit guilty that she was neglecting them, Susie looked round for the couple, but they seemed to have drifted off somewhere. Hardly surprising in this bedlam. Her own head was starting to throb, and a fixed look of long-suffering exhaustion was stamped on Helen's face, like one of those TV adverts for premenstrual tension.

  Tina Turner had replaced Buddy Holly, her raucous, strangulated voice belting out Simply the Best. A drunken chorus took it up, and Dillon was hauled onto a chair, glass in hand, to lead the community singing. Halfway through the mind-blowing din, Harry turned the sound low and gave Dillon a broad sweaty grin and the thumbs-up.

  'Thanks – thanks for coming…' Dillon beamed down on them, on top of the world, his voice hoarse with singing and the emotion of the moment. 'This is a big day for me, for Stag Security – so pass, it on to any of the lads comin' out into civvies – we got work for 'em!' He stuck his fist in the air, pumping it in a victory salute. 'We're simply the best!'

  Cheers and shouts turned into a chant of 'Dance! Dance! Dance!' which was all the encouragement Dillon needed, if he needed any. A space cleared, and Dillon and Tina went for it, a circle of clapping hands and stamping feet, the singing almost loud enough to drown out the stereo.

  On the fringe of the crowd, Susie shrank away, embarrassed at the spectacle Dillon was making of himself. He was gone, in a world of his own, shirt stuck to his body as he spun round and round, arms up, fingers clicking, hips swaying, performing fancy side-steps and sensuous shimmies. Then she thought, he's not at all bad. In fact he was good. Hellfire, he was brilliant!

  Helen had had enough, both of Dillon's gyrations and Tina Turner's shrill vocals. She leaned over and shouted in Susie's ear, 'Can somebody change that bloody record! You know the neighbours have been at the door – next thing they'll call in the police. Turn it down!'

  Susie nodded, put her glass down on the sideboard and slid open a drawer; she had something else in mind. Frank was enjoying himself and she wasn't going to spoil his fun, not tonight of all nights. She knew it was here somewhere, amongst their collection of EPs, some of them as old as the Ark. Rummaging through, she pounced, triumphant.

  'Found it!' She held up the record in its tattered paper sleeve for Shirley to see. 'This used to be his favourite – he's always loved dancing to it.'

  There was no way she could get near the stereo. 'Harry!' Susie waved to attract his attention, handing the record to him over the heads and crush of bodies. 'Will you put this on, it's his…' pointing to Dillon, still lost in the music '… it's his favourite.'

  Harry yelled, 'Cliff! Cliff!' and passed the record on to Cliff at the turntable, then went back to his monologue on the art of warfare that even Tina Turner couldn't disrupt: 'I mean, a stun grenade, mate, it's what – fifteen centimetres high and ten centimetres round, weighs 250 grams, you pull that ring, you get one helluva bang that ignites the magnesium – that's what creates the flash-bang effect…'

  Cliff had missed his way as a deejay. There was barely a break in the music. One moment Dillon was whirling and singing along to Simply the Best in the middle of a bopping, heaving crowd. In the very next, four heavy pounding piano chords pummelled the air.

  BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!

  You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain -

  BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!

  Too much in love drives a man insane -

  The crowd bopping and heaving around him, Dillon stood frozen to the spot, hair plastered to his scalp, sweat dripping off him. Something in his face seemed broken. His throat worked. Wild-eyed now, his expression ugly, demented, Dillon barged forward, roughly thrusting bodies out of the way. He reached out, hands like claws, swiped the playing arm, an horrendous screeeeech as the stylus skidded across the record.

  'Which bastard put this on!' Panting, staring round, eyes out of kilter, mad-looking.

  Harry was there in a trice, a bulky, comforting arm around Dillon's shoulder. 'Outside, come on, old son. Let's have a breather…'

  Numbed by the suddenness and shock of it, Susie watched her husband being led away, shoulders hunched under the protective shelter of Harry's arm. As for the third or fourth time that night Tina Turner began yet another rendition of Simply the Best.

  Some of the crowd had spilled from the flat onto the outside landing. They were getting to the silly stage, fizzing up bottles of lager and squirting one another, laughing like drains. Farther along, neighbours were poking their heads out, and when they didn't get much change, slamming back inside.

  Harry sat on the concrete steps. He offered a cigarette to Dillon and they both smoked for a while, the thump of music, shouts and screams of laughter issuing from the flat. Leaning against the brick parapet, Dillon stared off into the darkness, a million light-years away. He hardly heard Harry's angry, 'I'll whop that idiot Cliff! Guess he didn't know, Frank.'

  As if voicing a private thought, Dillon said, 'I don't understand, it's only since I been in civvies it keeps on comin' back…'

  A bottle went over and splintered in the courtyard below. From somewhere, a man's enraged shout about this time of night, pack it in or else. Dillon dragged deep, let the smoke out with a sigh. 'Yeah, I know, you think I want to get involved?' he said. The question was addressed as much to himself as to Harry. 'He says they're in London.'

  'Yeah, an' maybe Wally's contact's a load of crap,' Harry said. 'Right now, we got an opportunity to give a leg-up to our lads comin' out. They all need work.' He stood up and flicked his cigarette end away, the red ember sailing off through the dark air. 'Let's go back in, I don't want one of those buggers pullin' my blonde.'

  The music was even louder now, hysterical screams mixed in with it. Another bottle went crashing down. The men outside the flat were booming out 'Here we go here we go here we go. Here we go here we…' full-throated baritones and basses.

  Dillon made a small gesture. 'Yeah, go on, gimme a few minutes.'

  Harry moved off. He looked back over his shoulder. 'Not our war any more, Frank,' he said, and carried on, shouting at the drunken scrum outside the flat to bloody well keep the noise down.

  From the landing below a woman's voice screamed up, 'I'm gonna call the police! You hear me? I've got two kids tryin' to sleep, you got no right! Stop it!'

  She was standing in the concrete stairwell, built out from the main block, strained white face staring up. A thin woman with straggling hair, she clutched the fur-trimmed collar of a long coat to her throat, a night-dress underneath, fluffy slippers on her bare feet.

  She spotted Dillon at the parapet and shook her fist at him. 'You bastards think you own this estate! I got two kids scared out of their wits…!'

  Dillon stared back down into the venomous face, pinched with fury. He was used to faces like that, women's faces especially. And their eyes. It was their eyes that h
aunted him. Eyes that looked at him as if he'd crawled out from under a stone and left a trail of slime behind him. As if he wasn't even human. As if he wasn't any kind of life-form at all.

  Border checkpoint. County Tyrone. October 1987.

  It is dusk, the poor light made worse by the drizzle sweeping in across the fields and the isolated clusters of farm buildings, their red corrugated roofs shining slick-wet. A line of vehicles, cars and vans, most of them old and beat-up, all of them mud-spattered, wait at the striped barrier. The squaddies are in no hurry. They are here till changeover at twenty-one hundred, so it makes no difference to them. Four men form a semi-circle round the car at the barrier. They wear flak jackets over their DPM uniforms, with special non-slip shoulder pads for their rifle butts. At the hip, trained on the leading vehicle and ready to fire, they hold L1A1 rifles, fitted with thirty-round magazines. The sling of the weapon is attached to the right wrist so that it can't be snatched off in a scuffle.

  While these four keep watch, three men and a corporal search the car and its occupants. In this instance, a single occupant, a young man of about twenty, twenty-one. Suspect age group, late teens, early twenties, so he is made to stand, hands on head, just a shirt and pullover, in the grey drizzle. Two soldiers check the inside, one has a sken in the boot. As they re-group the young man mutters under his breath, 'You bastards do this, ya know it's the greyhound meetin'. You do this every meet.'

  The squaddie nearest him raises his rifle and smacks the butt into the side of his head. That shuts him up. The young man bends over, hands on head, cowering. He is bundled in the car, the door slammed shut on him, waved on. The next car takes its place at the barrier.