Stand By, Stand By

by Ryan, Chris

  I took a deep breath to get hold of myself, then stood up and nodded to the adjutant. John put a hand on my shoulder and steered me towards the door. Outside, he said, ‘Will I take you back?’ I nodded again, and walked blindly to his car. As he drove I noticed how tanned he was and asked where he’d been. ‘Africa,’ was the answer. ‘Just come back from an exercise in Botswana.’

  ‘What was it like?’

  He began to answer, but I could hardly listen. I realized I’d only asked the question in an attempt to keep my mind off my private horror. I seemed to be short of breath, and had to inhale deeply to steady myself.

  At the cottage John came into the kitchen with me and said loudly, ‘Let’s have a brew. Where’s the kettle?’

  ‘There.’ I pointed. ‘There’s milk in the fridge.’ Then I sat down at the table, staring out of the window, straight into the vegetable garden, mind in a whirl of guilt and remorse. The kettle began to sing, and presently I heard John say something.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I see you’ve got a bottle of Scotch. Would a quick one help?’

  ‘No, no. Tea’ll be fine.’

  I shivered with cold. When John handed me a mug, I piled three spoonfuls of sugar into it, and as I drank it, I felt a hot flush rising through me.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ I said. ‘Why her? Why did it have to be her?’

  John shook his head and looked down into his tea. Then, noticing the strange kit in one corner, he said, ‘Whose is that?’

  ‘It belongs to Tony Lopez, the SEAL guy who’s trying to join the squadron. He’s been staying here.’

  ‘Oh – that’s the guy who was in the nick with you?’

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘How’s he doing?’

  ‘Terrific. One of the best.’

  ‘Will he pass selection?’

  ‘He’ll walk it. He’s fitter than the rest put together, and he’s got most of the necessary skills already. Been in the jungle, for instance.’

  ‘He must be crazy to leave the SEALs. Train in the sun . . . all the assets you want . . . Does he realize what hard work he’s letting himself in for?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s only for a couple of years.’

  ‘Rather him than me. I dread the thought of walking over those hills with a fifty-five-pound bergen.’ John looked at me and said, ‘You’d better phone Kath’s parents.’

  ‘In a minute.’

  My mind flew to the spacious house in Helen’s Bay – a safe and smart residental resort a few miles north-east of Belfast, on the shore of Belfast Lough – with its big gardens and handsome trees and stunning views of the sea. Kath’s mother always kept the family home immaculate: never a speck of dust, never a cushion out of place. I’d always supposed that this obsession with cleanliness had something to do with the fact that Kath’s father, Den, had been a doctor. Often in the past few weeks I’d wondered what Tim had made of it, dropping bits of food and scattering his toys about the fitted Wilton carpets.

  I nerved myself to make the call. Then I said, ‘Better do it,’ and went to the telephone.

  A strange voice answered: a man, with a strong Belfast accent.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Sergeant Harris, RUC.’

  ‘Can I speak to Mrs O’Brien?’

  ‘I’m sorry. She’s not very well just now.’

  ‘Doctor O’Brien, then.’

  ‘Who’s calling?’

  ‘His son-in-law.’

  There was a pause before Den came on, sounding very shaken. ‘We can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘We just can’t take it in.’

  ‘Me neither. How’s Mum?’

  ‘She’s in shock. We’ve given her some sedation.’

  ‘Look, I’ll come over as soon as I can. Tomorrow, probably.’

  ‘Thanks, Geordie.’

  ‘Den – where is she?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Kath.’

  ‘Browns are collecting her from the hospital.’

  ‘Browns?’

  ‘The funeral directors.’

  ‘Have you seen her?’

  ‘No. She was . . . she was . . . . The damage was pretty bad. They identified her from her credit cards and driving licence.’

  ‘Oh God! What about Tim?’

  ‘He doesn’t know yet. Geordie, are you all right?’

  ‘More or less. I’ve a friend with me here at the cottage. I’ll be there tomorrow. Give my love to Mum.’

  ‘So I will.’

  I rang off.

  Little by little I felt anger starting to burn inside me. Once again I heard old Morrison, the RUC chief, saying, ‘I hate those bastards. I truly do,’ and suddenly I too felt hatred for the IRA, furious personal hatred for the man who had sent the bomber on his murderous errand.

  ‘Fuck them!’ I said, so loudly that it made John start.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The IRA. Whoever killed her. I’ll get that bastard somehow, if it’s the last thing I do.’

  The next two days were a nightmare, and I stumbled through them as though I was half awake. The only mercy was that delayed shock seemed to be numbing my sensibilities and keeping grief at bay.

  Early on the Tuesday morning I drove up the M5 to Birmingham Airport, exactly as I had on the day I sent Kath off. The head-shed had fixed me up with an open return to Belfast, but I had yet to collect the ticket. Moving on autopilot, I put the car in the long-term park, walked to the terminal building, found the ticket desk and checked in, all in a mechanical, unfeeling way. It was only when I reached the security check and some dickhead challenged me about where I was going that I really came round. There must have been something about my face that made him pick me out. Suddenly he was demanding to know my name and address in Belfast. When he asked the purpose of my visit, I gave it to him straight, in the most hostile voice I could manage: ‘I’m . . . going . . . to . . . bury . . . my . . . wife.’ That stopped him in his tracks – but he was such a turd that he didn’t have the grace to apologize. He just said, ‘All right,’ and motioned me on.

  The plane was only half full, and the flight seemed incredibly short. Nevertheless, it gave me time to think through the security implications of my visit. Kath and I were married in Hereford; the wedding had never been reported in the Northern Ireland papers, and nobody over there knew that she had been associated with the British forces. In the list of bomb victims, her name had been given as Mrs Sharp, a Belfast housewife – again, there had been no mention of her husband. If anyone asked my profession, I would tell them I was an aircraft fitter, working in Bristol. Provided I didn’t stray into the hard areas of West Belfast there should be no trouble.

  In forty minutes we had landed at Belfast City Airport, and I was walking out through the funny, old-fashioned building which looked as though it dated from the fifties. I grabbed a taxi and gave the driver the address, dreading the moment of arrival and yet wanting to be there quickly.

  It was Tim who saved the day from being a disaster. Too young to know what had happened, he was carrying on as normal. When he saw me come in the door, he took one look and ran at me with a yell of ‘Dad!’ I held him up against me – a hefty, warm, live bundle, bigger than I remembered – and found that dealing with him defused the tension of seeing Kath’s parents again. All the same, I was upset by their appearance. They had both put on ten years. Meg in particular looked very frail, and when I went to kiss her on the cheek, she was all bones. She was still limping a little, but in a different way from before her operation, and claimed that her hip was now fine; it was just the leg muscles that needed strengthening.

  Tim apart, the best thing was their attitude to me. They could easily have blamed me for the tragedy. In fact they went out of their way to show that they understood the problems our marriage had been through, and that they didn’t hold it against me for behaving as I had. Whenever I made attempts to apologize they brushed them gently aside.

  In the evening, after tea, Den asked abo
ut Kath’s financial arrangements – whether she’d made a will or had any life insurance. I couldn’t answer his questions, because she had always been the family banker – and I’d been so stunned by the news of her death that I hadn’t had time to check.

  That afternoon he and I went to Browns, the undertakers, to make arrangements. The middle-aged man on duty did his best to put us at our ease, but he threw me completely when he asked how we proposed to carry Kath’s coffin out of the church after the service. ‘I take it you’ll be one of the bearer party,’ he said.

  ‘What? Me? I thought your people took care of that.’

  ‘No, sir. It’s the custom here for the family to provide the bearers.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Den gently. ‘Most people do that.’

  ‘Well . . .’ I was left struggling. I couldn’t face the thought of being so close to her, of carrying her remains. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I can do that.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ Den raised a hand as if signalling to the undertaker that he would deal with the point in a moment, and went on to ask about the service at the crematorium. I felt terrible, burning with shame that I couldn’t do the decent, normal thing.

  Then I heard the kindly voice asking if I would like to have a tree for her.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the cemetery at Roselawn. Many people do have trees as memorials, rather than a stone. We can arrange to have one for you.’

  I thought for a moment. I’d never liked big, heavy gravestones. A living memorial seemed a better idea. So I said, ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘What kind of tree? We have beech and ash saplings newly planted.’

  I was going to ask for an ash, but at the last moment I remembered the trees that she had loved in the spinney behind KC. ‘Could it be a rowan, a mountain ash?’

  ‘Yes, of course. We can arrange a rowan. And would you like to have a plaque at the foot?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘What wording would you like on the plaque?’

  I closed my eyes to concentrate, and cleared my throat. ‘In loving memory of Kathleen Sharp. From George.’ Then I added hurriedly, ‘No: “From George and Tim.” ’

  The day of the funeral was as tough as any I could remember. After breakfast I drove Meg and Tim to the playschool he’d been attending, and we dropped him there. All he’d been told about his mum, so far, was that she had gone away for a few days. At some point we would have to break the news to him, but it seemed better to wait until we had all had a chance to get hold of ourselves.

  The church service was set for 11.30 in the morning, but members of the family began arriving at the house an hour before that. Meg and Kath’s younger sister Angela were busy in the kitchen, preparing sandwiches and rolls for the wake; and as they wouldn’t let other mourners come in there, I had to hold the fort with Den in the living room. Some of the people I knew, some I didn’t. I forced myself to make small talk with all of them. The saving grace was the picture window which took up most of one wall and looked straight down over the sea. Birds were busy about the rocks, and every now and then a boat would come into sight, providing a blessed distraction and a new subject for conversation. For a few wonderful moments a fishing trawler, on its way out, appeared to have caught fire. Black smoke poured from its funnel, and the little ship steamed round in a circle, and everyone became quite excited by its apparent distress; but then suddenly the smoke was doused and the boat went on its way.

  At last it was time to go. Two big, black Daimlers took the main family party, with the rest following in vehicles of their own. At the church the coffin, covered with flowers, was already in place on trestles at the head of the aisle. I found myself consciously trying not to think of what lay inside it. Suddenly I saw the bodies of the pilot and co-pilot of the helicopter that came down in the Iraqi desert, their limbs twisted and ripped off. I told myself to remember what she’d been like, but I found that small things were irritating me: the church was much too big for a congregation this size, we filled only the middle of the first few pews; the minister was young and nervous and kept stumbling over his words; the first hymn was one I’d never heard of. But then, in what seemed like no time at all we’d sung ‘Oh God Our Help In Ages Past’, and the bearers were lifting the coffin on to their shoulders, to carry it down the aisle. To my shame, I didn’t even know them. Cousins? Friends of the family? Whoever they were, Den had recruited them, and they all looked fairly young. Along with everyone else, I stood and waited till they had cleared the church door. Then we were back into the funeral car and following the hearse out of the city, up to the Roselawn cemetery, high on a rounded hill. We drove through an impressive pair of gates and into the biggest graveyard I’d ever seen – hundreds upon hundreds of tombstones and other memorials, set in straight lines over the hillsides, with neatly mown grass all round, and the road sweeping back and forth between. There were also thousands of trees, mostly young, planted in copses and bigger stands, the ground beneath them covered in wood-chips to keep down the weeds. I saw several places where I would like Kath’s rowan to be.

  At the top of the hill we came to the crematorium, a low, brick building set among sculpted grass banks and beds of flowers. The fact that everything was so perfectly kept seemed to make it more of an ordeal, rather than lessen it. There was a short delay while we waited for the party ahead of us to clear. Then it was our turn to file into the plain little chapel. As if from a great distance, I heard the priest say, ‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.’ It was all I could do to endure until the end, the dreadful moment when the coffin descended through a hole in the floor and Kath was gone.

  Outside again, looking down, I realized that the cemetery had a huge view over Belfast, lying below us to the north-west. At the back of my mind I felt it was wrong that my thoughts should be turning so swiftly from the past to the future, but that is what they were doing. ‘Whoever he is, he’s down there somewhere,’ I told myself. ‘And wherever he is, I’ll get him.’

  FOUR

  There was no question of my quitting the course. On the contrary, I couldn’t wait to rejoin it. Early on Friday morning I nipped into camp and left a message for the adjutant saying I was back on side, then got myself straight down to LATA, determined to make up whatever ground I had lost through being away.

  For the first couple of days the guys treated me rather strangely. There was none of the usual banter and piss-taking; instead, their attitude was respectful. Were they anxious not to hurt my feelings? Looking back, I can see that they expected me to be in pieces and were trying to handle me gently. But at the time I found it annoying. Outside the course I had one or two close mates – Tony and John Stone – who knew how hard I had been hit, and I was glad of their help; Pat Martin was another bulwark for me. The rest of the course may well have thought I was an unfeeling bastard, and didn’t care much about what had happened. If that was the score, all the better, because I didn’t want anyone to know what I had in mind. What nobody realized was that the agony of losing Kath had transformed itself into a ferocious desire for revenge. Grief had turned into anger, despair into steely determination. Far from being in distress, I came back on fire with new motivation.

  I’d read in some newspaper that the own-goal bomber had been given a full-scale military funeral in West Belfast. Never mind that his incompetence had led to the deaths of five innocent civilians, or that a Protestant riot had broken out while he was being buried, with thousands of pounds’ worth of damage caused. In the twisted minds of the IRA he had died in active service, and was a martyr, a hero. Brilliant!

  To focus my animosity, I had given my target a name. Because he was obviously a leading player, I had called him Gary, after Gary Player, the golfer. In my mind’s eye Gary had reddish hair and beard, and sly, pig-like eyes. He was of medium height, and sloppil
y dressed – altogether a scruffy individual, dirty and slovenly – but cunning, and bigoted as hell, a dirty fighter and a dangerous customer. Trying to work out the position he might occupy in the IRA hierarchy, I had done my best to reconstruct events. The bomber had been an unemployed twenty-two-year-old. No doubt he had been a member of some ASU, which also included a shooter and a driver. Probably the bomber had been given orders to pick up from Point A the device which was to kill him, and deposit it at Point B. But who had given the orders? That was the key question. According to our instructor Reg Brown, who’d already done a tour in Northern Ireland, it would almost certainly have been an ops officer or a quartermaster in the Belfast brigade.

  Maybe I was deluding myself, but I felt sure that fate was pointing me in the direction of my enemy. Already we were into August. Provided I got through the rest of the course OK, I would be posted to Belfast in October, only two months off; and then, for a year, I would be on the man’s doorstep, trained, armed, and furnished with every pretext for taking terrorists out. When, in the middle of August, Loyalist gunmen killed seven people in eight days, and the IRA responded in kind, I persuaded myself that nobody would notice one more apparently sectarian killing.

  On the domestic front, things were under control, if not great. After a family discussion we had agreed that it would be best for me to leave Tim with his Gran. Meg had pulled up again after her operation, and said she could manage. When I came across in the autumn, at least I’d be able to see something of the kid. In England there was no one to look after him.

  At Keeper’s Cottage I’d left Kath’s things exactly as they were – clothes, shoes, hats, a few bits of jewellery. I could have given everything to Oxfam but somehow I didn’t want to, so I shut the wardrobe doors, left her dressing table as it was, and deferred action indefinitely.

  At the end of August a 1,0001b bomb went off outside the RUC station at Markethill in County Armagh. Miraculously, no one was hurt, but the explosion further sharpened our eagerness to get across the water. Down at LATA we were into the most fascinating part of the course: surveillance, or the art of following a target, either on foot or by car, without being seen. In this, for the first time, we became fully aware of the role that was going to be played in our lives by the shadowy organization known as the ‘Det’. Short for ‘Detachment’, the name referred to the undercover intelligence-gathering unit that worked alongside our guys across the water. Whereas our role was reactive, theirs was passive: watching, spotting faces, gathering information, learning about the enemy.