by Alan Judd
‘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.
Part Three
The Factory Again
12
Charles slept little during the next few days. He did not need sleep. There seemed to be enough adrenalin coursing through his veins to keep him going almost indefinitely. He felt untouched by the normal adversities and perversities of life and took a positive pleasure in the ordinary. There was even joy in sipping Army tea. Behind his every thought and word, like some film in his mind, was the memory of the blast as it flashed through the floor. Whenever he looked at a building he had an involuntary picture of it exploding.
Two weeks previously the battalion had had to watch an IRA funeral on its way to the Milltown cemetery. They had had to stand at a discreet distance whilst the tricolour-draped coffin was marched past, escorted by self-conscious marching men in berets. D company, with Pigs and Ferrets, had waited behind the sliding doors of the bus garage opposite the cemetery with orders to intervene and make arrests if volleys were fired at the graveside. This was because the Loyalists would have been so angered by yet another demonstration of IRA violence that they would have reacted. They, with their industrial muscle, were the only force capable of bringing the province to real chaos. Even the CO had admitted that it would have been carnage at the funeral if D company had had to intervene. ‘But now we will take a leaf out of their book,’ he said. ‘We’ll have our own funeral, only we’ll do it better. We’ll give Colin a send-off the like of which they’ve never seen since the bloody place was converted to paganism.’
It was arranged that night. A gunner regiment which the CO had not offended lent one of their gun-carriages which it had brought with it to Ireland so that the Gunners would not forget how to clean them. It was polished throughout the night. Buglers were obtained and companies allotted their places along the route, which ran by design along the Falls and through the new estate. ‘The cortège will be escorted by a Pig and two Ferrets,’ ordered the CO. ‘It will stop at battalion HQ for two minutes’ silence and the Last Post. The coffin will be covered by the largest and brightest Union Jack in existence. All traffic will be stopped for half an hour from 0845, and I don’t care if that causes a traffic jam all the way to Dublin. In fact I hope it does. The people who cheered at Colin’s body that night are now going to have to stop for him and pay their respects. Drivers will switch off their engines and pedestrians will stand still with their mouths shut and their hands out of their pockets. Anyone who doesn’t will be lifted and brought down here, and if we can’t charge him he’ll at least be held as long as possible and have to walk home in the rain. Any troublemaker will be sat on.’
In the event there was no trouble. The people were taken too much by surprise and, anyway, the CO had underestimated their real enjoyment of funerals, parades and processions. There was no trouble with Headquarters, either, who were told when it was too late for them to be obstructive. Nevertheless, such an event was unprecedented in the Republican areas of Belfast, and Headquarters were worried that it might be seen as provocation. ‘That’s exactly what it is,’ the CO said to everyone around him, several times. ‘And I told them that if anything raises its ugly head to cause trouble it will be firmly smashed, and in any case things don’t raise their heads when they’re being firmly sat on. Even Headquarters should know that.’
On the CO’s orders, Charles told the press and, not on the CO’s orders, arranged for Van Horne to take the necessary photographs for Beazely. It was an impressive spectacle and it achieved national coverage. One platoon from each company was drawn up in ranks outside battalion HQ. Though unrehearsed, the drill was adequate and the cortège gleamed in the cold morning sunlight. The only sound during the silence was the rapping of the rope against the flagpole in the breeze. From the roof of the building the Last Post was sounded and it echoed unchallenged across the streets of South-West Belfast. The television cameras whirred gently as the cortège creaked forward and Colin Wood began his journey to the airport. All along the route bystanders stared sullenly, though with more bewilderment than resentment. Snatch squads with batons surrounded those who tried to move away. People watched in silence from the windows. There were no repercussions, then or later. ‘Good for the morale of the Ackies,’ said the CO. ‘Gives them a bit of self-respect.’
Later in the day they were visited by the general who, it was rumoured, privately congratulated the CO. Charles was among those introduced, with a description of what had happened to him during the explosion. The general gripped his hand firmly and said, ‘Well done.’
Chatsworth was out with a foot patrol when the CO drove past with the general, and did not salute. He was operational and thought he was in a place where he was quite likely to be shot at and so thought there was no need. The CO disagreed, and so every day for the next week Chatsworth was drilled by Mr Bone, the RSM, for thirty minutes on the roof of battalion HQ. Mr Bone, though not his pupil, took to this task with a relish that was almost obscene and which took no regard of the prospect of being sniped at. Henry Sandy also got into trouble when some of his medical section, drunk, tried to break into a nurses’ hostel at the hospital. They were turned away by a female warden but returned a while later with the most drunken of their number stripped naked and bound with masking tape as a peace offering for the warden to play with whilst they ravished her charges. The military police were called and there was a
fight. Henry was found alone in his room, too drunk to be able to do anything, though later that same night he apparently assisted with an operation and passed out afterwards. The next day he was let off after being shouted at by the CO for ten to fifteen minutes. Drill seemed somehow inappropriate for a doctor, and there was in any case a suspicion that he did not really know how to do it.
During the days following the explosion a new coat of normality was painted upon life at battalion headquarters. It covered the cracks well enough and, in fact, the headquarters functioned more efficiently than before. There were, though, one or two little blisters, invisible air-bubbles that worked away secretly and then suddenly broke through, taking everyone by surprise. Most of these minor blemishes were due to changes in the CO’s behaviour. Charles, had he had energy to spare from wondering whether he would survive the next few weeks and what he would do after that, would have concluded that nothing the CO might say or do would now seem odd. He would then have had to accept that he had been wrong. At first the CO went into a period of withdrawal, almost to the point where he stopped being CO. He spent a lot of time alone in his room but would occasionally sally forth at any hour of the day or night in full kit and demand to go on a tour of the area immediately. People were sometimes summoned to his room only to hear him reminiscing about his early days in the Army, and then be subjected to a lecture about their own future prospects. He never mentioned Colin to anyone. He became forgetful about little things, referring to conversations he had intended to have as though they were yesterday, having tea made for him in a hurry and then ignoring it. One memorable day he forgot to shave. No one dared say anything, though there was a story that he went upstairs so abruptly during dinner and reappeared clean-shaven because Anthony Hamilton-Smith had fondled his own moustache and asked the CO whether he preferred dung or fertilisers.
Anthony Hamilton-Smith became more in evidence during this period, not because he did any more than usual but because people turned to him in the absence of the CO. His advice and instructions were usually brief and sensible, given with a lightness of touch that could have been due either to an innate dislike of the dramatic or to a genuine unconcern. Responsibility did not so much sit easily upon him as sprawl playfully at his feet. Another effect of the CO’s withdrawal was that the RSM began to play a greater part in everyone’s lives. Mr Bone was not a man to be either brief or sensible, but the way he extended the area in which he was able to exercise his peculiar brand of bureaucratic stupidity and spite argued a cunning tenacity. Reflecting later upon Mr Bone’s rise to power Charles was reminded of Yeats’s lines, ‘What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?’ It was because Tony Watch, the signals officer who had taken Colin’s place, was new to the job and had to rely heavily upon the RSM’s advice that Mr Bone was able to triumph over Charles by having him evicted from battalion HQ.
He did this by securing for himself control over nearly all routine administrative matters and presenting it as helpfulness. The explosion had destroyed one corner of the building and had affected the rest in surprising ways. Of a pair of glass doors on a top-floor corridor one was torn off its hinges and the other untouched. In another corridor every door handle had been chopped off cleanly as though with a butcher’s axe. All the nails in a wooden partition wall in the ops room had been driven through until they poked out the other side by nearly an inch. Some windows were smashed and some were whole. The room in which Charles and Tony Watch slept was above the damaged corner but did not appear to be harmed.
By a reasoning that no one ever understood, if only because it was never explained, the Department of the Environment was responsible for the building in just the same way as they were for paper and clothing stores and government buildings in other parts of the United Kingdom. It was up to them to decide what should be done about the damaged building and to say which bits could continue in use. With the same sense of urgency as in the rest of the United Kingdom, they arrived from their office in East Belfast a week or so after the explosion. They were four stout, genial, self-important men in raincoats. Mr Bone took it upon himself to show them round and then took them to the Sergeants’ Mess, after which they were seen no more. Charles ran into the flushed and cheerful-looking Mr Bone later. Mr Bone smiled, never a good sign. ‘Very grateful if you could have your kit packed and stacked in the yard by 1700 hours, Mr Thoroughgood. There’s a Land-Rover going over with the post then. You can get a lift with it.’
‘What do you mean, Mr Bone?’
‘What I say, Mr Thoroughgood. If you don’t catch that one you won’t get over in time for dinner and you’re off ration strength here with effect from this morning.’
‘Get over where? Where am I going?’
‘Back to the Factory, sir. C company. Captain Watch not tell you?’ Mr Bone’s round eyes bulged with feigned surprise and concern. ‘Very sorry, Mr Thoroughgood. Thought you knew by now. DOE survey. Your room’s not safe. You and Captain Watch have got to move out. We’ve cleared a storeroom for him but there’s nowhere left for you, so you’ll have to live in the Factory. They’ve got plenty of room there, as you know.’
The thought of going back to the Factory, combined with Mr Bone’s offensive and unctuous satisfaction, was sufficient to pierce Charles’s post-explosion euphoria. He argued, though he knew it was useless. Mr Bone would not have made such a move without preparation.
‘DOE say-so I’m afraid, sir. I’ve got it here in black and white.’ He tapped the file he was carrying. ‘Room not safe for human habitation. Structural defects. All mumbo-jumbo to me, but to an educated man like yourself it might mean more. D’you want to see the report?’
‘No thank you, Mr Bone. I’ll see Captain Watch.’
‘Good idea, Mr Thoroughgood. You’ll find him in his office. Unfortunately he agrees with me that there’s no other room available for you. I’ve searched high and low. 1700, don’t forget.’ He saluted smartly and turned away.
Had Colin still been alive Charles felt he could have got things changed even at that late date, but with Colin around Mr Bone could never have pulled off such a coup in the first place. To Tony Watch Charles’s fate was an unimportant detail amidst the welter of administrative matters in which he now gloried. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll still be able to deal with the press and whatever,’ he said. ‘You can meet them in the Factory, if you like, and anyway there are vehicles going backwards and forwards umpteen times a day. And you’ve got Van Horne here still. He can answer the phone and all that sort of thing. Only bloody problem is it leaves us one short on the watch-keeping list. Unless you come back for a night shift once or twice a week. Don’t see why you shouldn’t. You wouldn’t need a bed. Trouble is, Edward Lumley will probably want you to do the same over there. We can sort that out later. Pity about our room, wasn’t it? I was almost getting to like it. At least I’ve got one to myself now anyway. Cheers. Look in next time you’re in.’
Before he left that afternoon Charles was summoned by the CO. He assumed it had something to do with his move. They talked for a while about press reactions to the explosion and then the CO said, ‘When do you leave us?’
‘1700, sir. With the post.’
‘What?’ The misunderstanding was cleared up. The CO had been referring to Charles’s leaving the Army. He had not known about the move to the Factory and was not interested. ‘As long as it doesn’t prevent you from doing your job, which it shouldn’t. You must have got the hang of it well enough by now.’ Charles told him that he was due to leave the Army when the battalion returned to England. The CO nodded. ‘The important thing in life is always to make a positive contribution. You have done that. I’m very grateful.’ There was an embarrassing silence which the CO, who was staring out of the window, appeared not to notice. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t yet know, sir.’
‘Any ideas?’
‘No, sir, not really. Unless I go back to university and do research.’
>
The CO appeared not to take this as a serious suggestion. ‘You’ll have to do something. You can’t do nothing.’ There was another pause. It was impossible to tell whether the interview was at an end or whether the CO was collecting his thoughts, or had perhaps forgotten that Charles was there. He looked tired, drawn and remote. ‘I have to go to England myself for a few days,’ he said eventually. ‘Senior officers’ seminar, of all the daft things to have to do when you’re supposed to be operational. Daresay it’s a concealed way of making me take a break which I haven’t asked for. Also to talk about my next posting. I haven’t got long left with the battalion, you know. God, they’ve gone quickly, these last two years.’ He was silent again and Charles sensed that the interview was at last finished. He left feeling that he must have been summoned for an altogether different reason that had not been revealed, and that the failure was partially his.
He met Anthony Hamilton-Smith immediately afterwards. ‘CO in, is he? Awake? Good. Didn’t want to disturb his shut-eye. He’s been sleeping a lot recently. Tired, I daresay. What did he want you for?’
‘I don’t know. Nothing in particular, I think.’
‘Overdoing it, you see. Can’t afford to let that happen. We must look after our CO. Perhaps I’ll leave him be after all. He might want to drop off again. Very few things in life that can’t wait till the morrow. You’re changing accommodation, I hear? What d’you want to go there for? Dreadful place. Much better to stay here.’
