The Fighting Man (1993) (52 page)

‘What would you have me do? Would you care to give me a pair of your knickers? Shall I send them recorded delivery to RAF, Belize City? Should they tie them to the radio aerial of a Lynx filled with desperadoes from the Special Air Service? Should we invade Guatemalan sovereign airspace and commence the War of Cathy’s Knickers? . . . We will do what he asked us to do, and that, young lady, is a hell of a way over the top.’

He hailed a taxi.

Was the cabbie a complete fool? Didn’t every cabbie in London know the new north London address of Cuba’s delegation, moved from Belgravia back in the last year over the rotten matter of shortage of funds? He thought her a quite lovely young woman. He reckoned that if she had been in Belize, with or without her knickers, she’d have hijacked a bloody Lynx and God protect the sentry who tried to stop her. Quite lovely, and rather loving . . . He knew what they called him on the fifth floor, he had heard it through the door, the little creeps from their redbrick colleges called him That Pompous Shit . . . He would not be pompous with Cathy Parker who was quite lovely, not be a shit with Cathy Parker who was rather loving. He felt a little younger, as young as he had been when he had presented a marksman’s rifle to the former Prime Minister, and talked through the sniping of a Palestinian in the fastness of the Beqa’a valley of east Lebanon. And he would feel younger, too, when the word seeped down the antiseptic and plastic-coated corridors of Vauxhall Bridge Road that Percy Martins had tweaked the Yankee nose, prised open a Guatemalan gin trap, snatched back a rather useful young man.

He turned to her. Direct. ‘Would I like him?’

She tried to smile. ‘He’s not easy.’

‘What would I talk to him about?’

‘He doesn’t have small talk.’

‘Him and me, train carriage, King’s Cross to Edinburgh?’

‘You’d need a good book, or a sack of newspapers. Wouldn’t open his mouth.’

Trying harder. ‘Could I take him fishing, take him to Twickenham?’

‘If he went fishing it would be on his own. He reckons team sports are for inadequate people.’

‘Hobbies . . . ? Is he a covert French polisher? Is he a dab hand oboist?’

It was a truer smile, but sad. ‘Actually, there’s nothing.’

‘Forgive me, my dear, but what the hell was the basis of your relationship, if that’s not overly impertinent?’

‘Danger. The common bond was risk to life, limb, all that rubbish. I always felt so safe when he was watching for me. What did we talk about? Not a lot. Well, we talked technical, the job, personal security.’ Her fingers pummelled a small linen handkerchief. ‘He’s not very good at talking, not very good at impressing strangers nor very interested.’

‘So, when the danger ran out and he seemed rather boring, you ditched . . .’

‘Something like that. I suppose he was useful when it suited me, useless when it didn’t.’

‘I think, my dear, old Rudyard captured it . . .

‘I went into a public-’ouse to get a pint o’ beer, The publican ’e up an’ sez “We serve no redcoats here.”

The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,

I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:

Oh, it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”; But it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins,” when the band begins to play—

The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,

Oh, it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins,” when the band begins to play.’

‘. . . Most would say that I have absolutely no understanding of the human race, but that prejudice is not entirely accurate. Well, let’s not look only at the dark side.’

They stopped. It was an unlovely street. Peeling facade, not enough paint on the windows’ woodwork, and the brass identification plaque needed polish and elbow effort. No, it had not been his intention, but she seemed to be faster to her purse than he was to his wallet.

She paid off the taxi.

He gave her a name.

‘That’s the man you want. Hidden away in the Military Attaché’s office, lowly title, but he’s the intelligence guru . . . No, no, I don’t come in, no. Sorry, but it’s up to you.’ He had his hand across his face. It went with the job, knowing which window, above the Italian restaurant down the far side of the street, housed the remote Five camera that surveyed the Cubans’ doorstep. He walked away from the camera. No bit of a woman had ever made waves to save Percy Martins’ neck, and no bloody woman ever would. Better to let her have her head, but he could not imagine that even the Cubans would be so stupid as to fly into a roused hornet’s nest in Guatemala. No, not even the dumb Cubans . . . But kinder to let her have her head.

The coming engine drone, she heard the approach of the helicopter.

She heard it and they all heard it. The helicopter was homing in on them from behind.

She was at the back and they had all stopped and they had all turned. All of their faces turned to her, shock and anger and despair, looking past her towards the sound of the helicopter . . . Bloody men, useless . . . They had just crossed a river. When it had been raining they would not have been able to make the crossing, but the water had gone down. They were all soaked to their waists and steaming in the day heat. She had crossed the river with Gord, helped him to get the cart across, and then gone back to help the Street Boy with the wheelbarrow. After the battle he was quiet, after the Canadian had gone it was as if the spirit had gone from Gord. He seemed, now, to sag in despair.

Bloody men. He had said he could not think. He had said he was too tired to think. Idiot bloody men.

She saw it on the faces of all of them, shock and anger and despair, as the helicopter quartered the airspace above them, closed in on them. Stupid bloody men . . .

She elbowed her way past them. She stood in front of them. The dog sat at her leg.

Alex snapped, ‘Look.’

She took off her quilted coat. She took off her sweater and dropped it beside the quilted coat. She took off the once white T-shirt and it fell onto her sweater and the quilted coat.

‘Idiots, look.’

She unlaced her boots and kicked them off. She bent and unpeeled her socks and threw them down. She unfastened the belt of her jeans and dragged down the zip and pulled the jeans off her thighs and shins. She looked them hard in the eyes. They were rooted. She pushed down her pants and wriggled them from her ankles.

‘Fools, look . . .’

She stood naked in front of them.

‘. . . And I am clean, and one of you is not.’

Only the sound of the approach of the helicopter.

She pointed to Gord. It was the order. The machine gun off his shoulder, the belt ammunition off his chest, the camouflage tunic off his body, and the shirt and the vest. The boots off him and the trousers and the socks, and the pants. She saw the pale of his body and the sores of the insect bites and the scars of the thorn scratches and the bare flatness of his stomach.

‘Clean . . .’ She pointed to Jorge. ‘You, strip . . .’ She fixed on the Street Boy. ‘You, get on with it . . .’ To the Indians. ‘You and you and you. Best you can, help each other . . .’

And the one that Gord called Zeppo, and the one that Gord called Harpo. She looked into the face of the one that Gord called Groucho. She saw the pleading. All of them doing as they were told, bloody men. The clothes piling, the weapons heaped. The helicopter banked over them. She had the strength and she knew what she would find. She walked amongst them and some blushed and some turned away. Bloody Gord understood, and about bloody time that he understood . . .

The man that Gord called Groucho was the last.

Trembling hands at his coat buttons. Flickering fingers at his trousers.

The men had moved around him. They stood naked in a circle around Groucho. There was no escape for him. The shape protruded on his belly underneath his vest. She willed herself to watch. She felt the blow of the light wind on her breasts and the warmth of the sun on her stomach. The tears ran on Groucho’s face. His trousers fell to his knees. The helicopter hovered over them. He pulled the vest so slowly up to his armpits. It was exposed. The thin strap, lying across an old appendix scar, had made a cruel weal against his skin. The strap held a small black painted box that was the size of a packet of cigarettes.

There was the cluster of naked bodies bent over Groucho. She turned away from the heave of the buttocks over Groucho, away from the pummelling fists.

Gord, savage and quiet, dressed.

Alex vomited.

19

On a string, like a grinder’s monkey, they took Groucho with them. The string was to his bound wrists and there was a further length of string tied to each of his ankles that was enough to let Groucho take fast short steps, like a chained circus bear. They had been gone ahead for a half of the hour before the rest halt when Gord caught the group. Alex pushed the cart and the Street Boy had the wheelbarrow. Ahead of Alex and the Street Boy were Zeppo and Harpo and Groucho, and Harpo held the string. Eff and Vee and Zed kept the pace, and they would not last a great distance further, and struggled to help each other. Jorge, leading set the speed of the march. Gord caught them and he took the cart.

They would not do it without him.

When he rejoined them, when he took the cart handles from Alex, Groucho had turned. Gord had seen the face of Groucho. He had seen the split lip and the tooth gap and the closing puffed eye, and then Groucho had been jerked forward by the string. They, all of them, knew what would be done, and they would not do it without Gord.

Groucho had been one with them, he had shared with them and fought with them, and he belonged to them . . . Gord knew, they all knew, that sharing and fighting and belonging did not add to mercy . . . Groucho had been told the date and the time and the place, he could not be turned loose. They went forward. Gord checked his watch and saw the minutes that remained to the next rest halt . . . Groucho had whimpered it, while the vengeance beating of Harpo and Zeppo had split his lip and broken his tooth and closed his eye, the reason. For a daughter that he had not seen for eleven years, for a young woman hanging by the ankle from a ceiling beam, he had broken the march, destroyed the dream. Gord had no thought of mercy.

The trees were thinner. The obstacles to speed were fewer.

Once he had shot a man in Ireland.

They had to cut round cleared fields where the land was bare and ploughed and waiting for the first sprout of the maize crop. They cut round the fields and they skirted the village. Dogs in the village barked and Alex had shifted the weight of the machine gun she carried so that she could rest her hand, soothing, on the nape of the neck of her dog. The trees were thinner because it was part of the forest where the people of the village would have come to gather wood, and where their pigs had routed out the undergrowth in the food search.

Once Gord had shot a man in Ireland. At the arms cache. In the dead of the night, after forty-two hours of waiting for him to come. The flare bursting light over the man bent over the excavated earth of the fox den where the RPG-7 was stored. A man frozen in shock as the flare had glowed above him. It had been the instinct of the man, for preservation, to throw down the pistol from his belt. Gord had seen him throw down the pistol. Gord had killed him, three aimed shots, three aimed hits. He had told the army investigators, and his corporal had backed him, and told the police detectives, that the pistol had spiralled away from the man’s hand as the first bullet had hit him. What he had told the detectives and the investigators had gone onto the statement they had prepared for him, that he had signed. He had felt nothing, and taken a mug of sugared tea after the statement was signed, and gone back to his billet in the Lisburn barracks and slept well.

He could shoot a man, if it was expected of him, and feel nothing. Gord called the halt.

They sat amongst the thinned trees. He could shoot a man who had shared and fought and belonged, and who had destroyed the dream.

Jorge would not look at Groucho who had been the friend of his father. Jorge sat with his back to Groucho, and Harpo had let go the string and put himself with Jorge and Zeppo. The Indians went into the trees and made their own group, and led the Street Boy with them.

Gord squatted on one side of Groucho, and Alex was on the other side of the man condemned. There would be three minutes for the rest halt.

Groucho talked.

‘A rotten life, wasted. I don’t know which was the greater waste, the life before Ramírez or the life with Ramírez in the triangle or the life of exile or the life of believing that we could win against them. You see, Gord, it was a terrible arrogance that made the life a waste. It was the arrogance of believing that a small and elderly man, a frightened man, could make his mark upon the world. I leave no mark, I leave no trace of my existence. At the ultimate moment, when I was challenged, I was just the small and elderly and frightened man, and I broke, and the delusion of importance that I had harboured was cracked. I was, as I had always been, nothing . . .’

The second hand of his watch raced, the minute hand jerked.

Gord had his arm around Groucho’s shoulder and he gripped the sharp bone.