by Alan Judd
When Charles had arrived back at his platoon he found that the coaches had arrived and that all the other companies were preparing to board them. He had already begun to struggle with his kit when Sergeant Wheeler said, ‘Shouldn’t bother with that for a while if I was you, sir.’
‘Why not?’
‘We ain’t going yet.’
‘But the coaches are here.’
‘For the other companies.’
‘What about ours?’
Sergeant Wheeler was quiet and prim. The burden of bad news sat well upon him. ‘The commanding officer, sir, has inspected the train and found it to be dirty. He has suggested that C company clean it up. We’re to follow on when we’ve finished.’ He leant forward confidentially. ‘That is, the whole train, sir. Not just our bit. The whole lot.’
Charles lowered his kit to the ground. ‘Where’s Major Lumley?’
‘Most probably underneath it by now.’
C company eventually boarded the ferry ten minutes before it sailed. Their weapons and kit were locked in cages below deck and Charles set off to find his cabin with a lighter heart than at any time during the day. This took some doing and he seemed to walk miles in the corridors before finding it. He was to share with the new doctor who had joined the battalion the day before and whom he had not yet met – a mysterious Captain Sandy. The battalion apparently had a long history of mad doctors, the last of whom had been sent to prison for diamond smuggling. There were medical horror stories about his predecessors which made him seem normal. Charles opened the cabin door with difficulty, and discovered that Captain Sandy’s kitbag was propped up against it. The cabin was very narrow and was made of stainless steel. There were two bunks, the lower of which was occupied by Captain Sandy. Sleeping, he looked more dead than mad. His pale cheeks drooped and his mouth hung open. There were bags under his eyes.
Charles heaved his kitbag on to the top bunk, at the same time knocking undone his webbing belt to which were attached his ammunition pouches, shoulder straps and water bottle. The whole lot fell to the floor, striking the doctor on the way. At first there was no reaction but after a few moments the doctor’s eyelids fluttered open.
‘Charles Thoroughgood. I’m sorry to wake you like that.’
The eyelids closed.
Charles undressed and went down the corridor to a shower he had noticed. It was hot and ample, an unexpected luxury. When he returned the doctor was sitting on the edge of his bunk, staring at the wall. Charles introduced himself again.
‘Henry Sandy,’ whispered the doctor, and they shook hands gently.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’ He continued staring at the wall. ‘Still a bit thick. Bad night.’ His voice was hoarse. ‘Were you there?’
‘No.’
‘D’you know who was?’
‘’Fraid not.’
‘I wish I could remember where it was. It’s very worrying. I’ve been thinking about it all day.’ He eased himself off the bunk and began rummaging through his kit.
There wasn’t room for them both to stand and so Charles climbed on to his bunk and dried himself vigorously. The effect of the shower and the sight of a man in a worse state than himself combined to heighten his sense of well-being. ‘Dinner’s in a quarter of an hour,’ he announced.
‘Dinner?’ echoed Henry Sandy faintly. An even greater weariness came over his face. He nodded slowly and a certain resolution showed through. ‘All right.’ He went off and had a shower, and afterwards felt robust enough to have a cigarette. They went along to dinner together.
Perhaps because they were all dressed alike, Army officers seemed to outnumber civilians at the bar. In view of what he had described as the ‘operational situation’ the CO had decreed that they should all wear heavy duty pullovers, denim trousers, anklets and boots for dinner. At the far end of the bar the company commanders and a few hangers-on were grouped around the CO, who was addressing them forcefully while continually smoothing back his black hair with one hand.
‘People say he’s mad,’ said Henry.
‘I think he might be.’
‘I thought the people who said that were mad, so Christ knows what he’s like. Thank you, yes, a glass of white wine. It’s usually the best thing for my condition.’
Charles had a gin and tonic – one of the few Army habits he had acquired easily – and they went and sat in a corner. Henry lit another cigarette, not very steadily. ‘It’s not so much last night,’ he explained, ‘as the trauma of the last eight weeks. I’ve just finished my parachute course which terrified me and I never want to parachute again. They said I was the worst one in living memory. Apparently I land spread-eagled like a crab, though I don’t know because I always shut my eyes. And before that was BSTC.’
Charles had no difficulty in sympathising. BSTC – Battle Selection Training Course – was the four-week selection course for the Assault Commandos with a failure rate of four-fifths. The first ten minutes of the first day were spent seal-crawling and bunny-jumping across the huge gym in Tidworth, after which they were given three minutes to go out and be sick. From then on it had got steadily worse. Looking back, Charles did not know how he had survived it. He had somehow muddled through by emptying himself of all thought or feeling for a month and never looking any further ahead than the next NAAFI break, when there was one. Officers in the Depot Mess who were doing BSTC were always conspicuous by the difficulty they had in getting up and down stairs, by their silence during meals, their occasionally alarming injuries and their practice of going to bed at about eight-thirty. Henry still had that mindless, gentle look that everyone acquired after the first week or so.
‘It was the worst thing I’ve ever done,’ he said. ‘Even worse than the parachuting and the sea-landing from submarines. I still dream I’m on it. I think I only got through because they needed another doctor so urgently. They said they were being kind to me and I think they probably were. I collapsed in tears pulling the Land-Rover up that mountain in Wales and three of the NCOs kicked me to my feet, four times. I suppose it was kind of them, really. They could have failed me. Also, I was knocked out in the boxing.’
‘So was I.’ Charles was glad to find someone who appeared to have suffered like himself. He wasn’t sure whether everyone else was bone-hard or whether it was simply not done to mention such things.
The two men became aware that the loud talk from the CO’s end of the bar was fading, and whilst they were still looking about it died altogether. This sudden loss caused other, lesser, conversations to falter and fade. The bar was silent. Soldiers and civilians alike looked awkwardly at each other; it was as though someone had died. The CO’s face wore a look of frozen disgust. For a moment Charles thought that the gaze was directed at him and then that it was directed at the doctor who at the very least must have exposed himself or been horribly sick. But the doctor had done neither of these things and looked as uncomfortably puzzled as everyone else. The only sound was the hum of the ship’s engines.
‘Get out,’ said the CO, his voice low and taut with anger. ‘Get out and get dressed.’
Charles looked over his shoulder expecting to see a naked officer but saw only John, his fellow subaltern, blushing violently. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said John, in a voice that was higher than usual. ‘I thought it was shirt-sleeve order.’
‘Get out!’ The CO’s voice made everyone stiffen and visibly startled the civilians. John left hurriedly, the CO turned back to the bar and conversation was hesitantly resumed.
‘What had he done?’ asked Henry.
‘He wasn’t wearing his pullover.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ Henry’s response was loud enough to bring all conversation to another temporary stop. He and Charles buried their faces in their drinks.
When they went in to dinner, Charles caught Edward Lumley’s eye. Edward was clearly despairing. Once again, C company had publicly sinned; once again, his career was in jeopardy. He went through several crises a day. Charles g
rinned cheerfully at him.
At dinner they shared a table with a married couple from Belfast. The couple ran a business concerned with central heating systems and the husband had served with one of the airborne divisions during the war. He was plump, jolly and balding; his wife was also plump but had dark hair and dark eyes that stared with disconcerting directness at whoever she was talking to. It was difficult to tell whether she was unaware of it or was trying rather unsubtly to be noticed. They were both very friendly and talked about Northern Ireland for most of the time that they were all waiting to be served.
‘Where exactly are you going?’ asked the man.
‘Killagh for three weeks, then on to West Belfast,’ said Charles.
‘That’s a very bad area, one of the worst, as you’ll no doubt know already.’
‘Don’t judge us all by what you meet there,’ added his wife, with a smile that made her eyes glisten.
The husband leaned forward across the table. ‘You could end the troubles tomorrow if you wanted. All you have to do is shoot two thousand Catholics. I think two thousand would be enough, don’t you, dear?’
‘That would be about right, I think, yes.’
They were joined by Anthony Hamilton-Smith, the only man on the ship to be wearing a dinner-jacket. ‘Almost missed dinner. Nodded off on me bunk, would you believe? Old habits are hard to break, even at sea on the way to the Emerald Isle. Wine for all, I take it?’ Regimental histories were one of Anthony’s interests and when he discovered the husband’s military past there was much rejoicing and more wine. After dinner he and the husband moved off to the bar and the wife excused herself, saying she was sure the men would prefer to talk men’s things. Henry took himself off and Charles went for a walk on deck.
It was cold, wet and bracing. The ship heaved and rolled as she ploughed into the night, though not enough to cause discomfort. There were a few other strollers and Charles stood behind one for some minutes in the drift of his cigar smoke, which mingled with the tang of the sea. He returned to his cabin and, on opening the door, saw Henry on his bunk with the businessman’s wife. He closed the door and went for another walk on the deck. This time he stood in the bows and felt the spray on his face and hair. When he returned to the cabin again he knocked and Henry, now alone, opened the door.
Henry’s pale face was slightly less pale and he grinned boyishly. ‘Sorry to have kept you out, Charles.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘I meant to. I was in such a hurry I forgot to lock the door.’ He sat down on his bunk and giggled. ‘I saw it was there, you see, for either of us. But you didn’t seem interested. Were you?’
‘No. Yes. I don’t know. I might have been.’ Charles paused. ‘No, I wasn’t.’
‘That’s good. I was a bit worried in case you thought I’d cut you out. Which is what I did, of course.’ He rocked backwards and forwards, giggling helplessly. ‘I don’t often do things like that, really I don’t. Just – just whenever I get the chance. I needed something, you see, to wake me up. I feel much better now. I’m sure it’s physiologically and psychologically beneficial. I haven’t offended you, have I?’
‘’Course you haven’t.’ Charles thought he must sound pompous and strained. ‘In fact, I rather envy you.’
‘You did fancy her, then?’
‘No.’
‘It must be an ego thing.’
‘I think it probably is.’
‘It’s partly that with me. I’m always afraid of not doing things that afterwards I might wish I had done, so I do all sorts of crazy things that afterwards I wish I hadn’t.’
‘D’you feel like that about this one?’
‘Oh no, not at all, it’s made me feel much better. Though I didn’t think I was going to get an erection first of all.’ He lit a cigarette and lay back on his bunk. ‘It’s funny, you know, but they all seem to like uniforms. This is the second one that’s made me do it in my shirt hairy. Do you find that?’
Charles recalled Janet’s hysterical dislike of anything rough, hairy or military. She had a particular aversion to his hairy Army shirts, worn in cold weather and referred to, in typical Army fashion, as ‘shirts hairy’. ‘Not recently. I heard of someone who used to do it wearing his webbing belt, water bottles and ammunition pouches.’
‘I’ve tried that. It’s all right so long as you remember to empty your water bottles. Otherwise you get a bruised arse.’
Charles undressed and climbed on to his bunk. The search for sex was the preoccupation of many in the Army, more so than the preparation for war. Since joining, Charles had found that he was either in a mood of frantic sexual desire, in which anything female was acceptable, or he felt curiously asexual and remote. This latter mood corresponded to a feeling of remoteness from the Army in general, whereas the former he thought of as a simpler and more aggressive form of escapism made stronger and cruder by the rough and ready nature of male companionship. Being in the Army was so enveloping an experience that it did not occur to him that anything could happen independently of it. If he had developed appendicitis he might have been inclined to think it the result of too much weapons training.
It was some time before he fell asleep. The events of the evening, the noises and motion of the boat, thoughts of what lay ahead all jostled for priority in his consciousness. Then, just as drowsiness crept over him, Henry Sandy began snoring and making odd masticating noises, as though he were chewing in his sleep. These continued, on and off, for most of the night. Eventually, Charles’s haphazard thoughts clustered loosely around the prospect of violence. The idea of suffering or committing an act of violence did not bother him at all, though he knew that for many people outside the Army – Janet especially – this was of crucial concern. Or, at least, they thought of themselves as concerned. He suspected that most of them, just like most people within the Army, would react to the fact of violence much as they reacted to the other inescapable facts of life – they would simply do what they thought had to be done. That, of course, was a thought that had its own particular horror, but it was not something that would concern many people.
Even before joining the Army he had doubted his own capacity for decisive action, and now that the time for action approached – or so he thought – he doubted it more. He feared that when the time came he would hesitate. He wondered now, as the boat took the swell of the Irish Sea, whether his real reason for joining was not, after all, an attempt to resolve this doubt about himself. Perhaps he was doing no more than experiment with himself in much the same way as Henry did through sex; only more subtly than Henry, less honestly and no doubt less enjoyably.
3
They were awoken early as the ship approached Belfast Lough. After a hurried breakfast there was the usual confusion in drawing weapons and kit and finding men. Eventually Charles stood on the crowded deck with his platoon complete except for Sergeant Wheeler. Charles made the mistake of asking his enemy, the RSM, if he had seen Wheeler.
‘He’s with you, sir.’
‘He isn’t.’
The RSM had a stupid, brutal face but was nevertheless capable of sarcasm. He looked pained. ‘Is he not, sir? I thought he was.’
‘Well, he isn’t.’
‘But he ought to be.’
‘I know that, Mr Bone. That’s why I’m asking you.’
‘Bless me, sir, where d’you think he can have got to?’ The RSM obviously hated subalterns more than he hated anyone, and he hated Charles more than he hated any of them. Added to the normal dislike that men with many years of service frequently have for newcomers was a special dislike for Charles because he had been to university. His manner was as sarcastically paternal as he could make it. ‘Well, never you mind, sir, you just hang on here and I’ll go and see if I can find him for you.’
If people annoyed Charles it was always by what they did accidentally or unselfconsciously. Deliberate attempts to annoy him or slight him left him quite unmoved. This morning, in particular, there was Belfast to con
sider. The water was calm, and in Harland and Wolff’s shipyard the two huge cranes, Samson and Goliath, towered magnificently. The harsh, disjointed cries of gulls were thrown backwards and forwards across the harbour. The air was clear but there was already a dirty haze forming above the thousands of small rooftops of the city. Beyond them the hill called the Black Mountain lived up to its name. Charles’s platoon was quiet for once. He imagined that each man was striving, like him, to see something in Belfast that differed from any other industrial British city before breakfast. They could see nothing startling, and it made their own presence seem incongruous. On the quayside was their transport – lines of lorries, as might be expected – but the sense of incongruity was heightened by the detachment of Ferret scout cars that were guarding them, their Brownings pointed at the main road. There were also soldiers from the Wessex Scouts, the regiment that No. 1 AAC(A) was relieving, waiting in armoured Land-Rovers and Pigs – ancient one-ton armoured cars which no one had seen before and which had appeared out of storage especially for Northern Ireland. They had long snouts and carried nine or ten men, lumbering along with a distinctive whine. There was little or no movement by the escorts but a good deal of wireless activity. People walked past them to work without a glance. The whole thing looked absurdly tactical.
Sergeant Wheeler appeared suddenly. ‘Sorry about the delay, sir, I got collared by the RSM. He didn’t like the way I done me kit so I had to do it again. I did tell him I was supposed to be here but you know what he is, sir, not a man of reason.’
Sergeant Wheeler was a very plausible liar, but so was the RSM. Charles could not be bothered at that moment to try to sort it out. He was reminded of the problem of his own kit. Getting it all from the ship to the lorry without humiliation or undue delay would be a serious challenge. Then there was the problem of his respirator; everyone else had theirs, he noticed, but fortunately the CO was neither to be heard nor seen.
