by Jodi Taylor
He won the first couple of tries because I had some difficulty getting my pooh sticks into the water – I think one went over my shoulder – but I soon found my rhythm and then it was a case of pooh sticks to the death.
We were still at it when some of the others caught us up and then, of course, because St Mary’s is very competitive, everyone wanted to play.
Leon and I stepped back and watched their efforts for a while until Leon suggested they might find the game easier and more interesting if they dropped their sticks from the upstream side of the bridge. There was a kind of collective ‘Ah’ of enlightenment, and then they all rushed to the other side. I’m surprised the bridge didn’t tip over.
Eventually everyone ran out of sticks and we decided to leave them to it before someone came up with the bright idea of playing pooh sticks with actual . . .
We were just moving away when there were two loud splashes and a lot of cheering and Bashford and Keller floated out from underneath the bridge, flailing and cursing, both locked in mortal combat. We discovered afterwards they’d both been volunteered to be pooh sticks by their colleagues who were taking the spirit of inter-departmental competitiveness just a little bit too far. It was fortunate for them the weather was unseasonably mild and they didn’t encounter an iceberg.
Anyway, they were beyond our reach and there wasn’t anything Leon or I could do other than abandon them to their fate and go to bed. As we left, I could hear Dieter and Kal wondering if they’d float all the way out to sea and would that be some kind of record?
They didn’t, obviously. They somehow made their way into the middle of our lake. No one’s ever worked out how they managed that because the stream actually flows out of the lake. It was really dark by that time and their pathetic cries for help went unheeded by everyone except Mr Strong, our caretaker, who was locking up for the night. He reported strange noises to the more responsible members of the Security Section who suddenly realised what – or who – it could be and wandered outside to mount a rescue.
Commandeering one of our old rowing boats, they all piled in and set off, torches flickering back and forth across the water. The search took some time and our two pooh stickers would probably never have been found if the boat hadn’t actually collided with them both before they completely disappeared beneath the storm-tossed waves, as Cox persisted in calling the lake’s placid surface.
There were already far too many of them in the boat to take on any more passengers, so singing loud-and-anatomically-impossible sea shanties, Security towed Bashford and Keller back to shore, taking the scenic route through the pond scum, weed and swan shit.
All was apparently going well until someone thought to look behind the boat and discovered they were being tracked by a dozen or so swans, drawn up in battle formation, necks extended, gliding silently and sinisterly through the darkness. Waiting to pick off the stragglers, as Evans said the next morning, shuddering at the recollection.
There’s a kind of unofficial agreement between us and our swans. During daylight hours St Mary’s can get up to more or less whatever it pleases – as long as that doesn’t include flames, explosions, dogs or music (no idea what the problem is with music – sorry) and St Mary’s doesn’t intrude on whatever it is they get up to in the hours of darkness. And now we’d broken the treaty. Things were not looking good.
Speeding up, our jolly mariners eventually collided with land and fell out of the boat. They all helped each other up because, as Evans explained afterwards, it was vital not to break ranks. The swans climbed silently out of the water and looked at them. It was at this point that the St Mary’s nerve broke and everyone ran. Evans later described it as, ‘A textbook tactical withdrawal in the face of avian incursion but with added panic,’ and Markham described it as the sort of thing that happened if he wasn’t there to keep an eye on things.
Whichever it was, they reached Hawking Hangar only just ahead of either two hundred swans – as Evans later described it – or eight swans, as the slightly less traumatised Mr Strong described it – where they were all rescued by Kal and Dieter who were in pod Number Six for reasons never satisfactorily explained.
Ian and Elspeth later said they were adding a new wing to the dining conservatory on the strength of what they’d taken at the Arms that night and that St Mary’s was welcome at any time and to bring our wallets with us.
Dr Bairstow and Mrs Partridge returned from a pleasant night out in Rushford. Neither was soaking wet or covered in swan shit.
Things were very quiet the next day which is always the sign of a very satisfactory night out and I slipped out for a quiet word with Ian.
He was waiting for me at the pub. ‘Have you had lunch?’
I shook my head.
He took me into the kitchen, made us both a round of chicken sandwiches and tipped some crisps into a bowl while I made us a pot of tea. We took the whole lot into his little office down the hall. I’d been in here once or twice before. Nothing had changed. It was a nice room with dark panelling and a cheerful log fire. Weak winter sunlight filtered in through the window.
I put a couple more logs on the fire while Ian laid everything out on his desk, saying, ‘You eat and I’ll talk.’
‘This sounds serious,’ I said, half-joking.
‘It is.’
About to sit down, I stopped. ‘Are you sure you want to tell me? Because I’m not sure I want to hear.’
He sat heavily. ‘We don’t always have a choice.’
I lowered myself into my chair. ‘Then why are you telling me now?’
‘Because I’m not at St Mary’s any longer and someone else should know.’
I put the crisp back on my plate. ‘Know what?’
He poured the tea, dropped in a slice of lemon for me and passed it over.
‘About Markham.’
It was a good job I’d already put down my tea. ‘What about Markham?’
‘He might be in trouble, Max. He may need help soon and he may need it quickly. There might not be time for him to explain so I’m telling you now. Don’t look so worried – you probably won’t ever have to do anything. Just park the information and forget it. With luck you’ll never need it. This is just in case . . .’
‘In case of what?’
He didn’t answer directly, sitting back in his chair and stirring his tea. ‘You said he’d had a letter?’
I nodded. ‘Yes. He didn’t say anything at the time, but it was very obvious he wasn’t happy about it.’
‘Then they know.’
‘Who knows? And what do they know?’
‘They know he’s disobeyed instructions.’
I was growing cold. This sounded bad. ‘What instructions?’
‘To keep his head down. To keep his mouth shut. And most importantly, to keep it in his pants.’
I swallowed. ‘You mean – not to get Hunter pregnant?’
‘I mean not to get anyone pregnant.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because of who he is.’
I was conscious of great gaping holes opening beneath my feet. Of a few of life’s certainties suddenly not being quite so certain.
‘He’s Markham. Isn’t he? For heaven’s sake, Ian . . .’
He got up, opened the door, looked up and down the corridor, closed and locked it. Then he crossed to the window, checking it was closed. That done, he returned to his desk, clasped his hands and said, without any emotion whatsoever, ‘Markham is the establishment’s dirty little secret.’
My stomach knotted. Astonishment. Yes, a lot of that. Fear. Yes, some of that. And anger. ‘Don’t say that. He’s Markham. He’s one of the best people I know. He’s not anyone’s dirty little secret.’
‘Calm down, Max. You don’t have to tell me that. He and I have been friends for a long time.’
I reached out for my tea. My hand
wasn’t quite steady and my thoughts were all over the place. I took a couple of calming sips and said, ‘Tell me.’
‘I can’t tell you much because I don’t know much.’
‘Tell me what you do know.’
‘I know he was still very young when he came to me and yet he’d managed to be in trouble nearly all his life. Whether he was the product of a broken home or the victim of a bad upbringing or anything like that, I don’t know. His file was short on personal detail but long on criminal record. He was just . . . when he came to me . . . when he was drafted into the army . . . he was so angry, Max. He was lashing out in all directions – hurting others, hurting himself.’
‘And you took him in.’
‘Yes. I wasn’t that keen, I admit. I had a pretty good set of people under me at the time and we’d worked hard together to achieve that and now they wanted me to take this bad apple. But, no one gives you any choice in the army, so grudgingly, very grudgingly, I took him on.
‘The first thing I realised was that I’d better ditch that attitude pretty quickly because I was just the latest in a long line of people who hadn’t wanted anything to do with him. He’d been shunted from pillar to post and back again. There was one year when he’d had four different homes.
‘Yes, I know,’ he said as I went to speak. ‘But, reading between the lines, he wasn’t doing himself any favours at all. People had taken him on with all sorts of good intentions but it never lasted. I decided I’d give him a month and if things didn’t get better, then I’d add my name to the long list of people who apparently couldn’t be bothered with our Mr Markham.’
He sipped his tea.
‘And then I walked around a corner one day and there was our hero having the living shit kicked out of him.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, no one ever said, but they were an unpleasant bunch of characters and I suspect, with typical disregard for the consequences, our hero had pointed this out to them and they hadn’t welcomed his constructive criticism, which was just so entirely typical of his . . . almost a death wish. Sometimes I was convinced he just wanted to cause as much trouble as possible for as many people as possible. Or, it occurred to me, as I stood wondering what the hell I was going to do with him, he was a deeply unhappy young man on a mission to make everyone else deeply unhappy too.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I yelled at them all impartially; no one was badly hurt so I sent them on their way. I gave Markham twenty-four hours to cool down and then had him in for a chat. I asked him straight out what the hell he thought he was playing at and he said he was making things easy for me.
‘That took me back a bit, I can tell you. I demanded to know what he meant and he said he liked me and was therefore making it easy for me to chuck him out. I said what did he think would happen to him if I did that and he said he didn’t know and didn’t care. It wasn’t important. Quite honestly, Max, just in that moment, I’ve never seen anyone look so lost, so unhappy, so alone, so . . . at odds with the world. It was him versus everyone else. He couldn’t possibly win and he was damaging himself in the attempt. I thought about a bird beating its wings against the bars of its cage, hurting itself, bleeding, not understanding what was happening to it . . .’
Ian tailed away.
‘Anyway, instead of giving him the traditional stiff bollocking, I actually talked to him. And I made him talk. He’s not inarticulate. I listened to what he had to say. I challenged him. I made him think. He soon lost his temper and started shouting – I think that was his favourite way of dealing with everything – but I kept plugging away. We were at it all afternoon. My clerk came in once to see if everything was all right. I don’t know what it was that I said to him – Markham – but something must have stuck because slowly, over time, I began to notice his first response to a problem wasn’t just to thump the nearest person present. He’s not stupid, our Markham. He just needed . . . I don’t know . . . I think, over the years, people’s responses to his behaviour had been to fence him in, to surround him with a list of things he couldn’t do, to make his cage smaller and smaller and I wanted him to see that suddenly, the cage door could be open for him.’
‘He started using his powers for good,’ I said, oddly touched.
He nodded. ‘Exactly.’
‘So what was his background?’
‘Well, there is virtually no information on him for the first ten or so years of his life. At that point he was farmed out to some posh family with whom he didn’t get on. I don’t know any details. They didn’t treat him very well and he went off the rails quite badly. And then from one home to the next, gradually sliding down the greasy pole of unacceptable behaviour. You name it – he was into it. Not drugs or violence or murder – but he was heading that way. And I have to say – a lot of it was his fault. We have to remember, Max, he wasn’t always as we know him today. Anyway – and he makes no secret of this – eventually he was offered the choice: the army or prison. He chose the army and came to me – trailing his extensive and imaginative criminal record behind him.’
‘I don’t understand. Why would he behave like that? Why wouldn’t he . . .’
I broke off, slightly unable to believe I’d asked such a stupid question.
Guthrie smiled and sipped his own tea. ‘Well, it’s Markham, isn’t it? I suspect he got fed up with people telling him he should be grateful to them because he was a problem and an inconvenience, so he decided to show them how much of a problem and inconvenience he could really be if he put his mind to it.’
I could identify with that. ‘But now he’s in trouble again?’
‘He was doing so well here, Max. Dr Bairstow gave him his confidence and trust and Markham’s more than repaid him. He and St Mary’s were made for each other.’ He grinned. ‘He’s a bit of a chameleon, our Markham, haven’t you noticed? Adapts himself to whatever’s happening around him.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, you’ve noticed his accent.’
‘Bristol.’
‘He’s just taking the piss. He was a Geordie in the army.’
I was gobsmacked. ‘You’re kidding. Why?’
He shrugged. ‘Because he can?’
‘But what has this to do with him and Hunter? As far as I know, even the most dangerous criminal is allowed to breed. I know governments are always a bunch of suited control freaks hell-bent on bettering their own lot at public expense, but surely even they haven’t yet got around to telling people whether they can or can’t have kids?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps he’s part of some social experiment – you know, weeding out the bad by not allowing them to breed.’
‘That’s . . . that’s . . .’ I was lost for words.
‘It is, isn’t it?’
‘Why are you telling me all this?’
‘Because, as I said, I’m not at St Mary’s any longer and I’m worried that one day he could find himself in need of help. Urgent help.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Nothing. Just keep an eye on things for me, would you?’
‘Are you expecting something to happen?’
‘I’ve no idea. He’s been keeping his head down and I was rather hoping they’d forgotten all about him. Now, of course . . .’ He sighed. ‘I’m sorry to lumber you with this, Max.’
‘No, it’s all right. I think. I’m just a little . . .’
‘Taken aback.’
‘Yes.’ I had a thought. ‘Does Dr Bairstow know?’
‘Oh yes. I showed him Markham’s file.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said it was a most unfortunate start to a young life and never mentioned it again. If it was anyone but Dr Bairstow, I’d say he’d forgotten all about it.’
He shifted in his seat. ‘If you could have seen Markham when he first came to me, Max. A
ngry. Defensive. Destructive. Self-destructive. Now look at him. A man with a child on the way who wants only to live quietly and probably isn’t going to be allowed to do so.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Nothing. Just be there. If you’re needed.’
I shifted in my seat. ‘Ian . . .’
‘I know, Max. I haven’t done you any favours today. I might have put you at risk as well. Which is why I’m saying – keep this to yourself.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I will.’ I think I was holding on to the hope that if I never ever mentioned it again then eventually it might slip from my not very capacious memory altogether. Fat chance of that.
Silence fell. I listened to the crackling fire. Felt the warmth from the flames.
‘Anyway,’ I said, more to push these recent revelations to the back of my mind than because he would have forgotten, ‘you haven’t forgotten next week?’
‘No, indeed,’ he said, picking up a sandwich. ‘Looking forward to it.’
‘You do know it’s a record-and-document-only assignment. No interaction. In fact, I forbid you – any of you – to leave the pod.’
‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Don’t know if you’ve noticed but I don’t move as fast these days.’ He gestured to his eyepatch. ‘And I walk into things a lot, as well.’
‘Yes, I know. We all think it’s hilarious.’
He scowled at me and then picked up a copy of the menu.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Preparing your bill.’
‘What?’
‘For lunch.’ He nodded at my mostly undrunk tea and uneaten sandwiches.
I drew myself up. ‘It was the Battle of Culloden, wasn’t it?’
‘Bannockburn.’
‘No, I’m pretty sure the mission folder says Culloden.’
He replied in purest Caledonian. ‘Away, ye wee hinny. Yer bum’s oot the windae. Bannockburn.’
I replied carefully and in impeccable English, ‘Shut yer yeggie. Yer aff yer heid,’ and he was so appalled at this assault on his mother tongue that I was able to escape. But not, however, to have the last word.
