Protection (16 page)

“Wish I could join the Army,” Paulie announced. Since losing his eye he’d become as mournful as a street corner drunk, bemoaning all the wrongs he’d suffered. He hated Gabriel, hated him so much he could barely look at him, but oddly bore Joey no ill will. Paulie seemed to feel his near-rape of Joey was completely unrelated to the nail to the eye that followed.

“I heard a rumor smart cons like you might be eligible, Cooper,” Paulie continued. “Wouldn’t you’d like to fight the Nazis?”

“Of course. The minute they turn up at Wentworth.” Joey, who always carried a book with him, was sitting beneath one of the dangling klieg lights and trying to read.

“The Army only takes men,” Fitch, one of the newer inmates, announced. Big and strong, nearly as wide as he was tall, Fitch was still finding his place at Wentworth. Already he’d been sentenced to the lash, yet seemed unaffected by the experience. He’d taken no girl, sometimes deriding effeminate males like Lonnie, sometimes openly lusting after them. And he was far too interested in Joey. Fitch’s fascination had started with stares, whispers, brushing up against Joey in the showers. Tonight it seemed Fitch was progressing to direct remarks. That meant Gabriel would have to put a stop to it soon, as forcefully as possible.

Joey, turning a page, didn’t seem to hear Fitch’s opinion. Every muscle tensed, Gabriel watched Fitch’s small eyes beneath that Cro-Magnon brow, waiting.

“Cooper! Settle a bet for me,” Fitch called. “You a boy or a girl?”

“Never mind what’s between my legs. You’ll be having none of it,” Joey said, eyes still on his book.

Gabriel chuckled, loud enough for Fitch to hear. The big man turned.

“Laughing at me, mate?”

“That I am.”

“Steady on.” Buckland raised a hand. “We’re all friends here. Let’s leave off the taunts and enjoy our break.”

Fitch’s small eyes flicked from Gabriel to Joey and back again. “I hear you girls are married.”

Gabriel sucked hard on his cigarette and pitched it aside. “Come closer and say that.”

“Oh, for Chrissake, I can’t have this,” Buckland complained, rubbing his eyes and stifling a yawn. “I don’t want to put anyone on the list for birching, but I will if I must! I can, you know! I certainly can!”

“You’re too skinny for me, MacKenna,” Fitch said. “Rather have a go at your bit of stuff.”

Advancing on Joey, Fitch smacked the book out of his hand with something metallic. Gabriel barely had time to realize it was an S-hook before Fitch had the hook’s sharp end pressed against Joey’s throat.

“Cock or pussy, pretty girl? Give me a feel.” Fitch’s hand closed over Joey’s crotch. “Cock!”

“Fuck you,” Joey cried, shoving away the hook with both hands.

“No!” Buckland wailed, fumbling with the baton at his belt.

Gabriel saw it unfold perfectly, like a maestro separating a symphony’s unified sound into smaller component parts. Joey gobsmacked Fitch with his right fist while hammering the big man’s gut with his left. But Fitch still had the S-hook. It was coming around, coming around fast—

Gabriel was already there. His instincts told him to stop the S-hook with his right hand, catch Fitch’s throat with his left and flatten Fitch’s bollocks with his knee for good measure. Fitch wasn’t faster than Gabriel and he sure as hell wasn’t smarter. This bit of defiance would be his last.

But how long can this go on?
Gabriel wondered suddenly. Joey was as beautiful now as he’d been almost four years ago. How many times would Gabriel fight this battle? And for what? To keep Joey comfortable at Wentworth, happy, unwilling to leave, content to—

“Oh, God,” Gabriel gasped as crushing pain started in his belly and dragged its way up. Fitch grinned happily in Gabriel’s face like a schoolboy winning a ribbon. Then another hand seized the S-hook from Fitch—

—Gabriel cried out, the pain blinding as the implement was dislodged from his body—

—and then the S-hook was driven into Fitch’s throat. A geyser of crimson erupted.

“Go to hell! You go to hell!” Lonnie was screaming, spattered in red from head to toe.

“Gabe! No!” Joey cried. But Gabriel sank to his knees, watching the weakening jets of blood pump out of Fitch’s jugular with dreamlike detachment.

“Gabe.” Joey was beside him, weeping. The realization snapped Gabriel back to reality, a place where every voice was too loud, every light too bright. Even his side hurt, as if his rotten appendix had grown back.

“What is it?” Gabriel swiped at Joey’s tears. “Are you hurt?”

“You need to lie back.” Even as Joey spoke, he was easing Gabriel onto the ground. Looking at his torso, Gabriel took in what happened – the extent of Fitch’s strength, the damage he’d wrought with one sharpened tool. The wound started in Gabriel’s belly, a handful of ropy white guts protruding, then arced crookedly up his chest toward his heart. At the midpoint, blood leaked from the wound in thin, quick spurts, already starting to pool beside him.

“Lonnie pulled out the hook. Killed Fitch with it,” Gabriel said.

Still weeping, Joey nodded, eyes wide.

“Good on him. Be sure I get the credit. I don’t want him hanging on my account. And if they charge you with murder, you’ll lose the right to work for the War Office.”

Joey made a shocked noise, closing his eyes and shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe Gabriel could possibly mention such a thing. But Gabriel felt quite lucid.

“It doesn’t hurt much. How long will it take?”

“I think your aorta is nicked. That’s the spot that’s bleeding so fast. If I’m right … it won’t take long.”

“Two men dead,” Buckland was moaning, pacing between Gabriel and Fitch and squeezing his head in his hands like a broken man. “Dear God, I won’t just get the sack. I’ll be up on charges for criminal negligence.”

Gabriel never saw Paulie charge the guard, but he recognized Paulie’s voice.

“Hard luck, screw. Let me do you a kindness.” There was a wet smack and a thud as Buckland’s body hit the ground.

“We’re doing a runner!” Paulie cried. “Cooper! MacKenna’s a dead man! Come on!”

“The search teams will drag them back. They’ll all get the lash, plus another two years. Best to stay,” Gabriel whispered. But he knew from the look on Joey’s face that the other man wouldn’t leave him, not even if an airplane waited just outside.

“Joey. Push my guts in. I can’t look at them.” Gabriel closed his eyes and waited. But the action hardly hurt at all. Gabriel felt cold and weak, but the pain was nothing next to his bout of appendicitis. When Gabriel dared look at himself again, the wound was no longer grotesque. Just a deep gash and some blood. Distantly, an alarm clanged. Soon floodlights would snap on and obliterate the night sky.

“Joey, I’m afraid,” Gabriel said, not because he wanted to, but because he couldn’t help himself. “Of dying. Of going to hell.”

“There is no hell.” Joey lay down against Gabriel’s uninjured side as he had after the appendectomy. “There’s only Christ.”

“I’ve not been confessed or absolved. He won’t have me.”

“He will,” Joey said with a perfect assuredness Gabriel couldn’t disbelieve.

“I’ll confess to you, then.” Gabriel named his sins simply, with a minimum of words, but Joey, no Catholic, lacked the ritual language to receive them. So after each declaration he kissed Gabriel’s lips, whispering the same response, “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

Gabriel wanted to make Joey promise to enlist, to survive the war and live his life thereafter, but his vision was fading; it was too much effort to speak. He wanted to say the things Joey had said just before he was taken to St. George’s, the words that had meant so much:
I’ve gone with you as far as I can. I’ll be waiting for you.
But “I love you” was all Gabriel heard, all he felt, all he was.

* * *

J
oey studied himself in the lavatory mirror. He had to admit, he looked sharp in uniform. He wished Gabriel could see him.

He hadn’t been allowed to attend Gabriel’s funeral, a combined service that included words for Buckland and Fitch. Buckland had been buried; Gabriel and Fitch, as penniless wards of the state, had been cremated. So on his first holiday after basic training Joey had come here, to a grotty little stone memorial outside Wentworth, inscribed with the names of those who’d died inside.

Yet even visiting Gabriel, so to speak, was difficult. Joey lingered in the lavatory until he was sure he wouldn’t weep. He didn’t want to attract attention, didn’t want some stranger asking why he was sad.

He located the names easily. The last three: Bertram Fitch, Paul Johnson and Gabriel MacKenna. Fitch’s cut throat had been blamed on Gabriel, just as he’d wanted, sparing Lonnie the gallows. The inmates, however, knew the truth – Lonnie Parker, the most unexpected of killers, had put down Fitch. Joey hoped Lonnie’s new reputation would protect him, at least for a while. Paulie, who’d enjoyed his freedom for less than a day, had been fatally mauled by a watchdog while trying to steal trousers off an East London clothesline. And Gabriel had bled to death as Joey held him.

Joey accepted the War Office’s appointment not to get himself killed, as his friends inside feared, but to reclaim his life. He wanted to survive whatever assignments the SOE gave him, regain a bit of respectability, even rebuild his relationship with Julia, if any shred of their childhood affection remained. And if it all came to nothing, if his number came up during the war, Joey wanted his death to be instant. But if it wasn’t, if he lingered, he hoped he endured the spiral as bravely as Gabriel. Joey had felt the other man’s pulse gradually flutter and stop, looking into his face as he died. And it had been like gazing on the face of a stranger, someone Joey had never known. Everything that had been Gabriel had fled all at once. Which to Joey meant perhaps Gabriel MacKenna was still intact somewhere. At peace. Or waiting …

Putting two fingers to his lips, Joey kissed them, pressing them against Gabriel’s name. He never knew how long he remained there. Only that some time passed before he turned away, squaring his shoulders and reentering his old life.

THE END

Note before
CODA

After writing PROTECTION, I found I wasn’t quite done with Dr. Joey Cooper. For me, his story wasn’t finished. So I wrote this piece, CODA, for myself alone. I felt it was too emotional, and perhaps too sentimental, for the world to see.

Over time, and after conversations with wonderful readers like Julie Small, I decided to add CODA to the book, but as an altogether separate piece instead of an epilogue. If you prefer, consider PROTECTION finished as originally published. Or, like me, you may choose to believe Joey’s story only paused, and CODA reveals the true ending.

CODA

By S. A. Reid

H
e’d been walking a long time, most of it over familiar terrain, yet in the way of dreams he wasn’t tired. Nor did he question the rise and fall of the landscape, as a symphony might swell one moment and spiral to soft notes the next. So much about his home village he’d forgotten. Born in 1911, Dr. Joseph Cooper had seen tremendous changes overtake Britain in his fifty-seven years. The Great War of his childhood and the Second War in which he’d fought; Britain’s replacement as the dominant western power by the U.S.; the sexual revolution and the counterculture. By 1968, London was nothing like the city he’d known in his youth. But the rural villages had changed, too. He’d kept meaning to go back, to have a look, but life always got in the way. Lovely to pass through once more, no one paying him the slightest attention, and soak it all in.

Next he’d revisited Oxford, briefly. It hadn’t changed. The towers were still ivory, the professors of Science just as pompous, the medical students just as desperate to excel and be praised. He’d never guessed how crippling the need for approval could be until he lost all hope of it, or thought he had.