A Breed of Heroes (31 page)

‘Sir?’

‘Don’t answer questions with questions. Tell me what you’re doing.’

‘Nothing, sir.’

‘Well, you should be. It’s your job, not mine, to think of these things. It’s good publicity for us; we saved his life. Bad publicity for them because they left the bomb lying
around. What about getting some of your press friends to do a photograph and a story?’

It was, perhaps, one of Charles’s faults as a PRO that he had still not fully grasped the way that news is made rather than happens. The idea had occurred to him, vaguely, but some shreds
of an outmoded notion of fair play still clung to him and it seemed unfair to take advantage of the boy’s condition. Also, he had recently discovered in himself a reluctance to deal with
press matters that would not result in profit. He could see no way of working Beazely into this one and his policy in such cases was to keep what the Army loved to call a ‘low profile’.
He sought to narrow his life so that all unnecessary initiatives and responses were cut out. ‘Might he not be a bit of a mess, sir?’ he asked.

‘The messier the better. They made him like it, not us. Go and fix it. It’s unpleasant, I know, but we’re at war. Or some of us are.’

The issue presented no problems for Van Horne, who would happily have publicised piles of intestines. They contacted one of the tabloid newspapers which usually had good photographs and which,
like the other papers of its kind, excelled in the simple and effective presentation of human interest stories. They arranged to meet a reporter and photographer at the Royal Victoria Hospital.

‘You should give the lad a present,’ said the CO. ‘Go and buy something out of the community relations fund. How do we stand with that?’

‘It’s unused, sir.’

‘Good. Waste of public money otherwise.’

The expedition to buy a present was a major undertaking. It involved changing into civilian clothes and going into the centre of Belfast where a similarly-dressed soldier had been murdered the
week before. Being quite unused to mixing with normal people going about their normal business of shopping, Charles could not rid himself of the notion that he was the centre of attention and that
every coat concealed an Armalite. He spent a nervous twenty minutes in a bookshop, imagining bombs as well as bullets and paying more attention to cover positions, escape-routes, probable direction
of blast and of flying glass than to what he was supposed to be buying. The fact that the main shopping centre was ringed by barriers through which no cars could pass and at which everyone was
supposed to be searched did not reassure him. Two girls in front of him had not had their handbags searched and for his part the bulky shoulder-holster containing his Browning had not been
discovered. If it had he would have had to produce his ID card, thereby identifying himself as a soldier to everyone around him. He again wore it at the CO’s insistence and felt lopsided and
misshapen rather than deadly and confident. He eventually slunk out of the shop with an illustrated sporting encyclopaedia of a kind he remembered having as a child.

When he and Van Horne met the reporter and photographer they were questioned about the incident in detail. On hearing that Charles had put a shell dressing on the boy, the reporter said,
‘That’s great. We’ll have one of you sitting next to him on the bed – the soldier who saved his life. What’s your name and rank?’ Charles told him and he then
said, ‘Sorry, no good. It’s no good with an officer. Doesn’t work. Not the same impact. What about a soldier?’

Charles, relieved, did not hesitate to volunteer Van Horne. ‘He’s a lance-corporal.’

‘A private would be better.’

‘I could take my stripe off,’ said Van Horne.

There stirred within Charles a faint but developing instinct for where the Army line would lie in such matters. ‘No, he can’t do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Queen’s Regs. Regulations.’

‘All right. Did he put his shell dressing on the boy too?’

‘No.’

‘Was he there, in the vicinity?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’ll do, then.’

An officious, plump little nurse took them through a children’s ward, where Charles felt gigantic and self-conscious, and into a small room opening off it. There was a bed with what
appeared to be a mound of bandages in it. The nurse bent over the bed and said in a sing-song voice, ‘Hallo, Terry, how are we then, eh? Here’s some gentlemen come to see you. And
they’ve bought you a lovely present.’ The mound moved and they could see a hole in the bandages enough to show most of the boy’s face. His eyes moved and registered the
visitors.

‘Is that him?’ asked Charles.

‘Who else d’you think?’ said the nurse sharply. She did not seem to like the Army.

‘But his head was all right. Why is it bandaged up?’

‘His head was most certainly not all right. There were bits of metal in it, especially the back. Now do what you want to do and be quick about it. I don’t want to disturb him for
long.’ She bent over the boy again. ‘Lots and lots of nasty cuts soon be better, better, better, eh, Terry? Nasty men go away soon and we’ll be better, won’t we? Ever so
better.’

The photographer looked on gloomily. ‘Can’t do anything with this. Whatever angle I do it’s going to look a bit sick, isn’t it? I mean, handing a book to a lump of
bandage.’

Van Horne looked on impassively. ‘Where’s his hand?’ he asked the nurse.

She sssh’d him and whispered, ‘He’s lost it. He doesn’t really know yet.’

‘But where is it?’

‘What do you mean, where is it? It’s gone.’

‘You haven’t got it?’

‘Certainly not.’

Van Horne lost interest.

‘Is he going to be all right?’ asked Charles.

‘Yes. Anything else?’

They said goodbye awkwardly and left the uncomprehending child. The reporter said he might do a little piece on it anyway, just a paragraph. Charles realised he still had the book and so Van
Horne was sent back with it. When they got back the CO’s reaction was as surprising as had been his original suggestion. ‘Good. I don’t really like publicity for the sake of it.
It would have been distasteful even if the poor little blighter hadn’t had a mark on him. And our soldiers don’t like being photographed like that, you know. It’s not what they
joined for. Very sensible of you to call it off. Well done.’

A few days later they conducted another search in the new estate, this time of a Gaelic football ground. The search went in at about eleven in the morning without previous notice as the CO and
Nigel Beale had applied the need-to-know principle so rigidly that many of those who needed to know in order to take part were away doing other things. Several vehicles were away being serviced or
repaired and others were out on patrol. Charles was told by Van Horne about the search at six minutes to eleven and was just able to scramble aboard the last Land-Rover as it was leaving. He left
Van Horne behind to deal with any telephone enquiries.

It was a fine sunny morning with a fresh breeze. The green turf of the field was refreshing after the dirty bricks and concrete which was all they had seen for weeks on end. There were three
platoons plus search teams, about a hundred men all told, and no trouble was expected as no houses were to be searched. The platoons dug into the grass banks surrounding the pitch, directed by NCOs
trained in searching, but there was to be no excavation of the pitch on orders from Brigade, who did not want to inflame local feeling. There had already been complaints that the Army was seeking
to intimidate and terrorise the Catholic population. The sun, the grass and the fact that many of the men were stripped to the waist gave to the sports-ground a holiday atmosphere that enlivened
everyone. Even the sporadic stones lobbed over the banks by children from the surrounding streets did not detract from the previous euphoria.

Charles strode about the field with the CO and his gang, all in the hands-behind-the-backs position. The CO talked good humouredly about tanks. Because of the banks around the field the roofs of
the houses could not be seen and it was possible for a while to imagine that they were in England. Charles kept an eye on the entrance to see if any journalists turned up. He more than half
expected Van Horne to appear, having found some quite unanswerable reason for deserting his post. He was aware of Van Horne as an interesting man about whom he had no more curiosity than was
strictly necessary for them to perform their tasks together. Had Van Horne not been a soldier, or had they not been involved in their scheme with Beazely, he might have tried to get to know him
better. He sensed, and sensed that Van Horne sensed, that they had something in common but he was suspicious of what it might be and felt it was better left unexplored. It was perhaps a common
assumption of being an outsider, with possibly an added, secret something that was best summed up by the word ‘uncare’.

Whatever it was, it was better not to admit it. Sometimes he could fancy Van Horne as a kind of Mephistopheles or perhaps a Mosca, though he could never even at his most fanciful see himself as
Faust or Volpone. Yet at the same time Van Horne was like many other soldiers in that he shirked irksome duties whenever he could, lied glibly and was reluctant to accept any responsibility unless
he had someone over him who was more responsible.

But for a long time that morning no one came and Charles was able to enjoy the field and the sun. He was warmed, too, by the thought of his approaching freedom. It was something he could allow
himself to think about more and more as the money paid by Beazely mounted up. He was still not sure what he would do next, but there was a pleasant sense of possibility about the future, which
remained intact so long as nothing too explicit was demanded of it.

The first find was made within twenty minutes on the outer slope of the first bank. It consisted of an old Lee-Enfield .303 rifle, a newish Russian twelve-bore shotgun and two rusty Webley .38
revolvers, all carefully wrapped in polythene. ‘This is excellent,’ said the CO, ‘we’re on to them now. This entire stadium is an arsenal. I only wish we could plough up
that damn pitch. It’s probably a magazine. Everybody look for discolourations in the turf. Charles, fetch the press.’

‘They’re on their way, sir,’ Charles lied, hopefully.

‘Well done. Good timing. Make sure they see all this.’

Shortly afterwards a soldier on the north-east corner of the bank noticed a strip of old polythene protruding from the earth. He dug carefully round it and found that there was a dustbin in a
large polythene bag. He took the lid off the bin and found it was filled with decaying, unstable gelignite. The search team commander estimated that there was between fifty and seventy pounds of
explosive. It was so unstable that a child jumping on the ground nearby could have detonated it. It was too dangerous to move and the bomb disposal team was called to burn it off.

The effect of the find was to invigorate the searchers. Only the CO looked troubled. ‘You see what these people are,’ he said. ‘No concern for their own. Burying it here where
people stand to watch football and where children play all day. It could’ve killed dozens. It ought to be on film so that the world can see what bloody lunatics these people are. Charles,
where are those pressmen? They’re swarming over you like flies when you don’t want them and nowhere to be found when you do.’

‘They’re on their way, sir. Just coming.’

‘You said that twenty minutes ago. Where are they?’

‘I’ll go and get them, sir.’ Charles strode purposefully back towards the entrance. There was nothing whatever that he could do but the CO liked to see action in response to
his demands. He had expected that the press would have arrived by now since the jungle telegraph was so efficient that they often arrived almost simultaneously with the search parties. On occasions
like this the CO expected his PRO to be able to summon up squads of press as he himself would summon up a fresh platoon. This, however, was not the time when Charles had to disabuse him of this
error, for as he neared the gate he saw an ITV television crew arguing with the guard over the question of admittance. He saw that they were allowed in and behind them another crew from Spain.
Several other journalists arrived and so he was soon able to lead a flock across to the two finds. A knowledgeable colour sergeant was recorded giving an enthusiastic description of the state of
decay, composition and probable damage that could be caused by the explosive.

After this they dispersed over the ground. The TV teams filmed their interviewers giving accounts and asking questions of which they had already filmed the answers. Another journalist arrived, a
woman in her late twenties. She had dark hair straddled over her shoulders, a suede jacket with matching suede boots that just failed to conceal the size of her calves, a bag slung over one
shoulder and a king-sized cigarette in one hand. She was quite short and had a wide gash of a mouth which widened with easy confidence as she introduced herself as Moira Conn, one of the
Sunday
Truth
’s Hindsight team. ‘Some guy called John at your headquarters told me your name and said I’d find you down here. He said he worked with you.’

‘Ah yes, Van Horne, Lance-Corporal Van Horne.’

‘Pretty smooth guy. Are all your soldiers like that?’

‘No.’

‘Pity. I usually find I prefer soldiers to officers, though. They’re somehow more real. I mean, the officers are always a bit inauthentic. They’re trying to be something
they’re not but the soldiers just are. They just stand there and they are. You can feel it. Whereas the officers are always chasing some ideal of themselves that doesn’t exist and they
end up not being anything at all.’

It was clear that this was not one for the CO. The Sergeants’ Mess, perhaps, but more likely the Junior Ranks club. She had obviously been to an English public school and was trying to
lose it by lengthening some of her vowels and flattening them all to a mid-Atlantic monotone. ‘Would you like to see some explosives?’ asked Charles.

‘You found some? That’s great. I didn’t think you would. I’ve never seen explosives before. How’re the locals reacting?’