A Breed of Heroes (11 page)

Charles felt his heart pounding. He looked at the excited faces in front of him, ugly with hatred, and still only a couple of yards away. Neither he nor his soldiers would have any choice but to
shoot if they were rushed: if they had time for that. He pulled and cocked his pistol. If they were rushed after firing the rubber bullet he would do less damage shooting them with that than if he
ordered the soldiers to use their rifles, which would go through three or four at that range. He would aim for the legs. As vividly as he saw the mob before him, he heard again some remark made in
Killagh to the effect that a bullet from the nine-millimetre Browning would simply bounce off their bra straps. At such close range, though, it would be another matter. He imagined the carnage with
disturbing clarity.

Charles was spared the decision by the arrival of the CO with his two long-wheel-base Land-Rovers and his oversize escort. He was not at first aware that help had arrived, only of a sudden
commotion and sounds of pain and distress from the back of the crowd. Then he saw the CO’s tall figure, his face set hard and his beret firmly down on his forehead. The CO, accompanied by the
RSM and his escort, walked as though there was no one between himself and Charles, and very soon there wasn’t. The escort drove a wedge two yards wide while the snatch squad, whose sole job
was to make arrests, remained by the CO’s Land-Rover, fingering their batons. One of the women who swore was grabbed by the RSM and marched briskly back to the vehicle. A shrill chorus of
protest by the rest of her tribe was drowned by the CO’s shouting through a loud-hailer: ‘Right, you’ve had your fun, now you’re going home. Anyone still in this street
thirty seconds from now will be arrested and charged with riotous assembly. Good night!’

The snatch squad began to move with slow purpose into the mob, which drained away into the night quickly and quietly. Soon there was only Army left in the street. The adrenalin coursing through
Charles’s body did not drain away so rapidly. He was too relieved to feel elated. He told the CO what had happened with what sounded even to himself like schoolboy-ish urgency. He had never
thought he would be glad to see the CO.

Having heard him out, the CO stared disconcertingly at him for several seconds before saying, ‘I shall fine you twenty pounds, Charles. The alternative is to send you home in disgrace, but
you’re young, inexperienced and this is your first mistake. And your last. Two reasons: A, bad reporting – you gave us no idea of the gravity of the situation and your voice procedure
was appalling; B, you jeopardised the lives of your soldiers and MOD property – not to mention your own life, which I shan’t – by not taking a firm line before the situation got a
chance to develop. You should’ve got a grip early on. You should’ve fired a rubber bullet the moment they started to come at you, after warning them, of course, but even without if you
thought it was necessary. You need not have feared the consequences. I would have backed you up to the hilt. Minimum force is all very well as a political policy but in tactical situations I will
not have the lives of my soldiers needlessly put at risk. A rubber bullet would have been minimum force but you used less than that. In fact you didn’t use any force at all. In future, act
firmly in the early stages and nip it in the bud. Got that? Good. Time you got rid of this airy-fairy university stuff and realised you’re commanding the best soldiers in the British
Army.’ He looked at the Cortina, which was resting against the crumpled invalid carriage. ‘Well, there can’t be a bomb in it, anyway. How did that happen?’

‘The mob pushed it there, sir.’

‘Where were you?’

‘I was inside it trying to stop it catching alight.’

‘They should never have got that close. Go and find the owner of the invalid carriage, explain how it happened and write me a full report. Someone’s bound to claim that you did
it.’

Charles and his crew drove back to the Factory in the companionable silence of shared fear. The only remark came from the driver, who said, ‘I was a bit worried there, sir.’

‘It was a bit nasty, wasn’t it?’

Back at the Factory Chatsworth confessed his jealousy. ‘It was quite funny, though. You made the most awful cock-up on the radio. You sounded so vague and academic that everyone sort of
lost interest, till your wireless operator came on. He sounded panic-stricken. Not very coherent. Rather let you down. Pity you didn’t shoot any of them. I’d like to see what an SLR
would do to a face at close range. And if you could’ve screwed one of the women at the same time the fine would probably have been forty quid. Would’ve made a great headline –
“Assault Commando officer rapes and kills women. Many dead.” Daresay they’d be queuing at the gates.’

Tim remarked that the whole thing sounded rather unprofessional but Edward said, ‘Twenty quid, what a coincidence. Funny the way the CO’s mind works. If you’d knocked off one
of the women he’d probably have made it forty. Nasty situation, though. Nasty women, too. Rather you than me, old son.’

Charles’s meeting with Janet took place only three days after the incident with the mob. The arrangements were made – mostly at the top of his voice – over
the coin-box telephone installed in the part of the Factory used as the soldiers’ canteen. As he had expected, he was not allowed to have a night off – Edward was not prepared even to
put that to the CO – but he was permitted to take two hours off in order to have tea in the centre of Belfast. Because of the way the battalion worked, and expected to work, this did not seem
to him ungenerous. He had to wear civilian clothes and to carry a Browning in a shoulder-holster. Janet spent the night of the wedding in Dublin and was given a lift to Belfast the following day by
some people who lived in nearby Holywood.

They met outside a cinema showing a war film, one of the most popular forms of escapism in Belfast. They kissed briefly and self-consciously. Janet seemed prettier and more elegant than he
remembered, an impression perhaps strengthened by contrast with the natives of Belfast who were, on the whole, squat and ill-favoured. She was tall and slim, with curly hair that was darker than it
had been. She still had about her the brittle sheen of London social life, but there was a new promptness and decisiveness, an obvious confidence, that made him wonder whether she had a new man, or
whether it was simply that life was treating her well. It was not a question that he cared to go into then. It was better left until after Ireland, if there was to be such a time.

‘What’s that?’ she said after she had pressed against him. ‘You’re not carrying a gun, are you?’

‘Yes, I have to. Only a pistol.’

‘Oh my God, Charles, whatever’s happening to you? Only a pistol, for God’s sake. What a thing to say.’

He did not want to stand in the street talking about it. He felt conspicuous and awkward in civilian clothes in any case and felt as though the Browning might make him walk lopsided or with one
shoulder held higher than the other. They went to the nearest café where a very young waitress served them tea at a dirty table, slopping it into their saucers. Charles would have preferred
to go to the Europa Hotel but was unsure of his ability to explain away the Browning to the searchers at the entrance without drawing attention to himself. Janet talked about the Dublin wedding,
which had been a very social affair. The people who had given her a lift had lent her their car for the afternoon and were to give her a lift to the airport that night if Charles could not.

‘I’ve only got two hours,’ he said. ‘One and three-quarters now.’

‘That’s ridiculous. Why can’t they let you have longer?’

‘Because they won’t.’

‘But why not?’

‘They just won’t. I was lucky to get this. We don’t have time off. Everyone else is working. We’re supposed to be fighting a war.’

‘It’s your own stupid fault for joining.’

The conversation was becoming familiar, and he had neither the desire nor the time to rework old ground. He wanted to go to bed with her and had hoped she might have somewhere to stay where they
could have done it. ‘I could’ve booked a room in an hotel but I didn’t know how long I was going to have, nor how long you were going to have,’ he said.

She shrugged. ‘Well, it wouldn’t be worth it for two hours, would it?’

He smiled. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Unless you just want a quick screw and then back to barracks. That’s what soldiers do when they’re fighting a war, isn’t it?’

‘It wasn’t just that.’ He had to acknowledge, but had not time to ponder upon, the eternal duplicity of the male. He asked her about her work among the deprived families of
Wandsworth, questioning her in a detail that extended far beyond his real interest. She spoke enthusiastically about it and soon became more relaxed and friendly.

‘It’s such a pity you’ve only got two hours,’ she said, taking his hand upon the table. ‘I do miss you.’

‘I miss you,’ he said, and again postponed thought.

They walked around the centre of Belfast, holding hands and dawdling in the drizzle. He felt less conspicuous as part of a couple. ‘It all looks so ordinary,’ she said. ‘Just
as though it’s had a few fires, that’s all. It’s difficult to believe what you hear about it.’

He found that introducing the city to a newcomer was a wholly unexpected pleasure. ‘The difficulty is that the extraordinary happens in the context of the ordinary. If it were a foreign
city with foreign road signs and everything it would all be much easier to cope with and probably less of a strain. But the fact that it’s so ordinarily and shabbily British makes it that
much more difficult and sinister. And the people who live in it love it. It’s got real heart for them. If they leave it they nearly aways come back.’

‘I can understand all that, but I can’t believe it’s really necessary for you to walk around with a gun under your jacket like some sort of amateur James Bond.’

‘But that’s just what I’m saying. It’s because it seems ordinary that you don’t believe it’s necessary. You need to see the other side of the city before you
can understand that.’

‘Are you sure you’re not deluding yourselves and creating the very thing you claim to be opposing?’

‘As sure as I can be.’ He looked at her calmly confident gaze as they passed through the crowds, and despaired of being able to convey the horrible unease which the apparent
ordinariness of it all gave him. The week before, a policeman in plain clothes had been shot dead in his car in the Crumlin Road as he waited at the traffic lights. His fiancée was seriously
injured. Charles despaired, too, of ever being able adequately to describe to her what had happened in the cul-de-sac the other evening. ‘We live in different worlds,’ he added
uselessly.

She took her hand away from his. ‘You didn’t have to choose this one.’

Her car was in one of the city centre car parks and he accepted her offer of a lift back to the Factory because time was pressing. He didn’t want her to drive into any of the dangerous
areas but since she had said she would anyway – to see how people lived – he thought it better to let her drop him off and then drive back than to go wandering off alone in some such
place as the new estate where strange cars driven by unknown English women were likely to attract hostile attention.

They took the borrowed Mini along the Falls Road and he pointed out well-known trouble spots. Signs of recent rioting were gratifyingly visible. She was impressed, though still would not admit
the need for him to carry a pistol. ‘I mean, it’s like carrying a pistol in Dublin,’ she said. ‘It would be absurd.’

‘Dublin is not like Belfast.’

‘You’ve never been there.’

‘That makes no difference.’

‘Of course it does.’

He pointed to a corner shop. ‘A man was murdered in there four weeks ago.’

‘What happened?’

‘Some Protestant extremists walked in and shot him.’

‘What did you do about it?’

‘We weren’t here then.’

They were waiting to turn right into one of the narrow streets that led eventually to the Factory, but their way was blocked by a group of women standing talking in the entrance to the street.
Charles was so struck by their likeness to the harridans in the cul-de-sac that for some moments he relived his experiences of that evening, caught and frozen in a flash-back. He did not notice
Janet’s growing impatience until she hooted indignantly. The women turned and looked down on them. A couple began swearing at them and very quickly several more people, including two men,
came out of the corner shop to see what the trouble was. The next few seconds were a maze of vivid impressions for Charles in which the past was indistinguishable from the present. The ugly,
hateful, contorted faces, the raised voices and harsh accents, the suddenness of it all and the ten-fold leap in tension brought him as near to blind panic as he had ever been. He did not know what
was happening nor even whether he was doing anything about it. He sat in a kind of heavy, cold numbness, unable to respond. He was distantly aware of Janet shouting something through her open
window and then the car jerked forward, the women parted and the narrow street was clear before them.

Janet accelerated angrily. ‘Really,’ she said, sounding, Charles thought afterwards, very like her mother, ‘anyone would think they owned the road, carrying on like that. Who
on earth do they think they are? Stupid old bags. And one of them was holding a baby, did you see? She called me an English bitch. I told her she wasn’t fit to be a mother, standing in the
middle of the road like that with a baby in her arms. If it hadn’t been for the baby I’d have run her over, the old cow. That’s just what she reminded me of, you know, a great,
bellowing, stupid, ugly old cow.’

Charles said nothing at first. Very slowly, so that she would not notice, he took his hand away from the butt of his pistol, which he had grasped under his jacket. He did not remember gripping
it. His mouth was dry, his throat tight and the palm of his hand tingling hot. He swallowed with some difficulty. ‘They are pretty awful, some of these people,’ he said.