A Breed of Heroes (23 page)

It was the CO, his teeth bared in what Charles decided was a grin. Charles could just see his eyes by the light of the fire. ‘Glad to see my PRO up in the front line. That’s where
all good soldiers should be. Want to see some fun, eh?’

The grip tightened and the CO grinned more broadly. Charles could think of no reply that would be both honest and acceptable, but the CO did not need one. He shook Charles good-naturedly.
‘’Course you do. That’s why you’re out tonight. That’s why we’re all out, including the hooligans who set light to that bus. I’ll tell you what we’re
going to do about that. It’s protecting their tanker, isn’t it? That’s obvious. They’ve got it tucked away in a courtyard behind there and they want to keep us out till
they’ve finished with it. They’ll be syphoning off the petrol and then maybe wiring it up as a booby-trap. But they’re not bloody going to. We’re going to take it before
they start throwing bombs and getting really nasty. And we’re going to do it with a good old-fashioned cavalry charge on shanks’s pony, straight at ’em between the bus and the
walls. We’ll jump right down their throats. You and me, Thoroughgood. Chance of a lifetime for you.’ After another affectionate shake he released Charles and shouted across the road at
the RSM, who had crossed to the other corner with his party by doubling back round over the Falls, out of sight and out of range of the bricks. The RSM shouted that he was ready and the CO turned
to his own party, which now included Charles. ‘Okay?’ he asked. Then, with a boyish grin, ‘Go!’

There was no time for Charles to consider running away, or not moving, which was his most natural inclination. It was clearly a lunatic escapade but he felt himself in the grip of a collective
madness. The CO had already started to run and Charles could not afford to be seen by the others to hesitate. He sprinted along the rubble-strewn pavement towards the conflagration, keeping as
close to the wall as possible. It was a hectic, unthinking dash, though at one point when he realised that he was ahead of the others he had the presence of mind to slow down. He kept stumbling on
the rubble and several times lurched against the wall, once grazing his cheek. Very soon he was upon the burning bus and the heat hit his face like a prolonged slap. He had no idea what he would do
when he got there. The flames had blackened the wall at each side and, though they were not constantly on it, they were continually licking it as though the fire at the centre of the bus were
breathing rapidly. Charles hesitated and was pushed roughly aside by the CO who bellowed ‘Charge!’ and ran into the flames by the wall. He disappeared and Charles followed blindly.
There was a moment of intense heat and then he was through. Facing him was a narrow crossroads and a lot of people, who began to run away as soon as they saw the CO. The CO, still yelling, ran
after them. Charles followed and even heard himself yelling something incoherent. At the same time a small part of himself felt sufficiently detached to consider the spectacle of the rest of
himself following an apparently demented, bellowing middle-aged man after a crowd of people along an Irish street. Fortunately, the CO stopped on the far side of the junction to grapple with a
struggling youth, whom he held by the hair. After a couple of seconds he pushed him into Charles, shouting, ‘Arrest him!’ and ran on. Charles and the youth looked at each other, both
panting, before the youth ran off.

For a while there was confusion, with people running in all directions across the junction. There was a lot of shouting. Two youths had been arrested by the RSM’s group and were being
frogmarched back towards the burning bus. Very soon there were more soldiers than civilians visible, and the mob retreated down the side roads, leaving the junction to the Army. It took Charles
some minutes to realise that they were being stoned from somewhere in the darkness, and he ran, ducking, to a large gate in the wall where there were several other soldiers. Inside was a large yard
and parked in it was the petrol tanker. Beside it were a lot of milk bottles, some empty and some half filled with petrol and with rags hanging out of them. The CO and his Rover Group were
examining them.

‘Caught ’em at it,’ the CO was saying. ‘They were still filling the things when I got here. Got away over the wall, the little buggers. At least they haven’t made a
bomb out of the lorry yet.’

The burning bus was perilously close and the heat could be felt in the yard, so it was decided that moving the bus was the first priority. Charles was trying to hear how this was to be done when
he was accosted by the RSM, who was flustered and breathless. ‘Journalists in the Falls. Will you get up and deal with them?’

His tone could hardly have been more urgent if he had been announcing the presence of Russian tanks, nor less respectful if he were talking to a newly-joined private. Charles looked at him
before replying, as though to see if there was something he had misunderstood. ‘Thank you, Mr Bone.’

‘Can you get up there right away? They could be dangerous.’

‘Don’t worry about them, Mr Bone. They’ll be all right.’ The RSM looked at Charles as though he thought him mad, then turned away without a word. Charles delayed his
departure from the yard for a while, and then sauntered out with careful nonchalance. He then ran across the junction towards the bus, which was no longer burning as fiercely. He had almost reached
it when there was the sound of breaking glass behind him, followed by a sudden whoosh and a scorching heat up the side of his right leg. He crouched against the nearest wall, clutching his leg,
which he found not to be burnt, and looked round to see a pool of fire flaring in the middle of the junction. The flames quickly died, revealing more broken glass, and he realised it had been a
petrol bomb. A couple of yards from him a soldier pointed his rubber-bullet gun down one of the side streets and fired. For a moment the flash and the bang were even more alarming than the petrol
bomb. Charles could not see what he had fired at, nor whether there was any result. ‘Did you hit him?’ he asked.

The soldier shook his head. ‘Just making sure they keep their distance,’ he said.

It was now possible to get between the bus and the wall without danger. On the other side the sense of urgency and danger diminished sharply. Two of A company’s Land-Rovers were parked on
the pavement and several soldiers stood leaning against them, talking and gazing reflectively at the almost-gutted bus. An armoured water-cannon – a great lumbering vehicle that Charles had
heard about but not seen – began dowsing the flames. Up on the Falls there were more soldiers, including two of B company’s platoons, but little activity. One of the A company Pigs had
taken prisoners back to battalion HG and three more prisoners were being loaded into another one. Beside it, a fourth figure was spread-eagled against the wall and was being searched by two
soldiers. Charles was about to pass by when he recognised the figure as Beazely’s. For a brief moment he considered passing by none the less but something got the better of him. ‘What
have you done?’ he asked.

Beazely turned his head cautiously, just enough to see over his shoulder. ‘Thank Christ it’s you. Tell them who I am.’

‘Haven’t you?’

‘Yes, but I’ve lost my bloody card. My press card. My lifeline. I know I had it on me when I came out. They won’t believe me.’

‘We found him in the alley,’ said one of the soldiers. ‘It looked like he was hiding. He was behaving suspiciously. We thought he might be a petrol bomber.’

‘I was hiding,’ said Beazely, without a trace of petulance. ‘I was hiding from the petrol bombs.’

‘There weren’t any up here.’

‘Well, how was I to know that?’

‘What made you think there were?’

‘I heard an explosion.’

‘Rubber-bullet gun.’

Charles was enjoying himself but felt he shouldn’t be. Beazely was still spread-eagled against the wall, his head bowed. ‘Is he all right then, sir?’ asked one of the soldiers.
‘Can we leave him with you?’

Charles continued to look thoughtfully at Beazely.

‘We did search him, sir. He was clean.’

‘All right. Leave him with me.’ The two soldiers left. ‘You can move now if you like,’ added Charles, after a while.

Beazely straightened himself, though not without looking cautiously around, and rubbed his hands slowly. He looked towards Albert Street, from which bangs and shouts were becoming more frequent.
‘I thought I’d had it when they got me. I thought that was it. Up against a wall and shot as a spy. What’s going on down there?’

‘Just a riot.’

‘Oh Christ.’ Beazely’s fat red face wrinkled in distress and he took off his glasses and wiped them. ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ he murmured, sounding near to
tears. ‘What the hell is anyone doing here? Why don’t they all go home so we could just do local boy stories and council meetings? What’s all this fighting going to do for
anyone?’

He replaced his glasses awkwardly and they both stared at a sudden increase of activity on the Falls. A huge digger, or lifter or crusher – it was not clear what it was – was making
for the bus in Albert Street. It was a famous and much-loved vehicle known throughout the Army in West Belfast as Scoopy-do. It had vast wheels, jaws at each end and made an impressive noise. It
was driven by a diminutive, pale-faced Sapper armed with a Sterling, looking for all the world like a chirpy sparrow on the back of a dinosaur. Charles and Beazely followed it to the top of Albert
Street. The burning bus had been extinguished. Its charred and twisted skeleton smoked and hissed. The nearby walls were thoroughly blackened and the roads were very wet. With a great revving in
its belly and a lowering of one set of jaws, Scoopy-do charged the bus. It hit it at one end and pushed it round in the street with a maddening screech and scream of protesting metal until there
was a large enough gap for a waiting Pig to pass through. But the Pig continued to wait, respectfully it seemed, until Scoopy-do had disengaged from its victim and then itself proceeded through the
gap. On the other side of the junction below the bus figures could be seen moving against the light of petrol bombs. A bevy of photographers, cameramen and reporters was following the Pig and
Scoopy-do down the street. ‘I’d better go down there,’ Charles said.

Beazely was aghast. ‘What about me?’

‘You can come if you like.’

Beazely’s face was screwed up in anguish. ‘I can’t go down there. You know I can’t.’

There were renewed bangs and shouting. ‘Up to you,’ said Charles with a nonchalance he was far from feeling. A prisoner, yelling and kicking, was dragged past the bus by two soldiers
and bundled into the back of a Pig. The incident was avidly filmed by the waiting cameramen.

Beazely grabbed Charles’s arm. ‘Look, we’ll do a deal. I’ll wait here and you go there – which you’ve got to do anyway – only you can take my camera,
take a few action snaps, and come back and tell me what happened. Firsthand account, you know. You’d do it much better than me anyway because you know what everything’s called. And
I’ll pay. I’ll pay well.’

Having Beazely out of the way was a chance not to be missed. Charles quickly overcame his instinct to refuse. ‘Okay, but no photos. I can’t do that. No money either. It’s not
allowed.’

‘Why not?’

‘Regulations.’

‘No, all right, but why no photos? It’s too easy. It’s got a built-in flash, look. You just click it and bob’s-your-uncle.’

‘Not allowed. Regulations.’ Military law was bound to be beyond the comprehension of a mere civilian, requiring, as it did, no obvious reason or justification. Beazely was in no
state to argue. He slunk thankfully back round the corner and lit a cigarette. Charles headed down past the bus, surreptitiously fingering for the umpteenth time the butt of his pistol to check
that he had remembered to load it. His boots crunched glass as he passed the blackened and water-soaked area of the bus. There were more soldiers at the junction than when he had left it but no
journalists. A Pig stood in the middle of the crossroads pointing down a dark side street from which came noise and missiles enough to indicate a sizeable crowd. The Pig acted as a focus of
attention, and stones, bricks, bits of drain and guttering rained steadily upon it. The soldiers were crouched at the sides of the roads, some carrying shields but none wearing helmets.

Charles discovered the entire press corps in the yard with the tanker. The CO and his party were still there, and all were watching Scoopy-do as it sniffed around the tanker. Its headlights were
on, as were those of the tanker, and this made it look even more like some prehistoric creature sizing up its prey as it lurched from spot to spot. The tanker was still almost full and the brakes
were seized on. Eventually, after an energetic altercation between the Sapper driver and some soldiers, a wire was connected to the front of the tanker and, with a great growling but no more
apparent effort, Scoopy-do began dragging it out of the yard. Its jammed tyres left a lot of rubber on the ground. After considerable shunting and manoeuvring, including renewed altercations, it
was got out of the yard and into Albert Street, up which it was dragged like a great yellow carcass towards the Falls. Photographers and cameramen followed it all the way, holding lights for
filming as they ran along.

The CO was pleased. ‘Press all right? Not giving you any trouble?’

‘No, sir.’ Charles was conscious of not having spoken to them yet but they seemed happily occupied.

‘Good. Fascinating business, isn’t it? Now back to the war, I suppose. Make sure all the press stay together if you can. Don’t want them getting in the way of anything or
getting hurt. Enough to worry about as it is. There’s going to be a fair bit of stuff flying about down there before we sort this lot out.’

Charles caught up with the press and introduced himself. There were about twenty of them and he was surprised at how pleased they seemed to see him. He soon discovered, though, it was not his
own charm or personality; after some minutes of questions about times, street-names, numbers, units and incidents he realised that he was their only source of even remotely reliable information.
Nevertheless, it was a little perturbing to see his own hazy estimates noted so assiduously, and later to see them quoted as official calculation or even as commonly acknowledged fact. The
journalists said they wanted to be nearer the scene of what they obviously thought was going to be a battle worth recording, and so Charles led them back down towards the Pig at the junction. He
had no authority to direct or stop any journalist anywhere but he had been told several times by Philip Lamb that the more help he gave them as an organised group under his own direction the less
likely they were to be a hindrance to others or a danger to themselves. ‘It’s the art of the possible,’ Philip had said, with the grand manner of one who is asked to comment on a
life’s work. ‘Grant as many of their desires as are compatible without crawling up the CO’s backside. And keep him on your side at all costs. It doesn’t matter what anyone
else thinks.’