Gerald Seymour - The Waiting Time

There was a scraping sound, and a whimpering. He unlocked the door. Christie’s bloody dog bounded at him and he raised his knee to ward it off. Christie was muttering that he’d better take the dog to the grass. He flapped his hand, past caring where the dog peed. He went inside. He was alone. He thought the rooms of G/3/29 were like his mother’s house, after she’d died. She’d used frail strength to clean her house the day before she had gone to the hospital. His room, Christie’s, and the area between them were as ordered as his mother’s house had been. He rocked. On her desk were the neat piles of paper – his typed speech for the Infantry Training School, his expenses-claim form with the stapled receipts of his Catterick trip, her note in copperplate handwriting of the time, date of his dentist appointment, what time in the morning his car would be collected for valeting. Beside his pile was Christie’s – the revised appraisal of the 49th Mechanized Infantry Division at Voronezh, the petrol vouchers held together with a paper clip… The dog came from behind him, settled under her desk.

He said, grimly, ‘Search her area, your desk drawers, I’ll do mine…’

‘What are we looking for, Perry?’

He exploded, ‘How the hell do I know? How should I know why the best corporal in this whole bloody camp makes an unprovoked attack? I don’t know, except that it’s about the past.’

‘He leaves when I say so. Don’t care who he is, when he’s in my care he leaves when I’m satisfied that he’s fit to go.’

The sick bay was the territory of Mavis Fogarty. It was many years since she had left the farm near Balinrobe and enlisted as a nurse in the British Army. She seldom went home because it would embarrass her family, but she retained the big hands suited to work on the Co. Mayo bog fields. She had his trousers off him and his underpants at his knees, and with surprising gentleness examined the bruised testicles of Dieter Krause. She’d done time in the military hospitals at Dortmund and Soest, spoke passable German, and told him there was no lasting damage. She didn’t ask how it was, during a social drink in the officers’ mess, that he’d managed to get so thoroughly battered – she’d learn later, in the canteen. She pulled up his pants, covered him. She started with sterile hot water and cotton wool to clean the raked nail slashes on his face. He wore a wedding ring. If her husband ever came home with scratches like that on his face then he’d be put to sleep in the garage. She’d earmarked a salve for the grazes at the back of his head where the bruising showed through his hair. The minders, sullen and watching her every move, were across the room from her. One nursed his ankle as if he’d kicked something heavy, and the other rubbed the heel of his hand as if he’d hit something solid. She wiped the scratch wounds and established her absolute authority over them.

‘Funny thing, shock. Soldiers here get into Saturday-night fights, get back to camp and think they’re fine, then collapse. He stays here, right here, till I’m ready to let him go.’

The accommodation block for junior ranks (female) knew, each last one of them, that Corporal Barnes was locked in a guardhouse cell. They also knew that she had done heavy damage in the officers’ mess and had put a German guest into Sick Bay for repairs. Her major and the captain with wife trouble were in the block and searching her room. The traffic down the first-floor corridor was brisk, but the fourth door on the right was closed and there was a provost sergeant outside. Those who did pass could only feed to the rumour factory that the room was being ripped apart.

They ransacked the privacy of the sleeping area, but Ben Christie backed off when it came to the chest of drawers, left it to the Major. Perry Johnson, frantic, didn’t hesitate, dragged the drawers clear, shook and examined each item of underwear, knickers, bras, tights and slips – all so neatly folded away before Perry’s hands were on them.. . and Trish just dumped her smalls into a drawer, out of sight and out of mind… So neat, so small, what she wore against her skin. Christie caught the Major’s eye, hadn’t intended to, but Perry had flushed red. The clothes were out of the drawers, the drawers were out of the chest and on the bed. The bed was already stripped. The sheets and blankets, with her pyjamas, were heaped on the floor. The curtains were off the window. The rug was rolled away… He had taken each coat, skirt and blouse, civilian and uniform, from the wardrobe, checked the pockets, felt the collars and the waists where the material was double thickness, and hung them on the door. He would take the wardrobe to pieces because there was a double ceiling in it and a double floor. Out in the corridor a telephone was ringing. For Christ’s sake, the bloody man Johnson was holding up a bra against the light. What was she bloody well going to hide in there? In summer she didn’t wear a tie, or a tunic or a pullover, and she’d the top buttons of the blouse unfastened, and she’d have called him over to check her work on the screen before she printed it up, teasing, and he’d see the bra and what the bra held… There was a photograph of a cat, and of an elderly woman, taken from their frames, checked. There was a book, woman’s saga, shaken and then the spine pulled off. Johnson looked at him, and Ben shook his head. Johnson knelt, grunted, and began to rip back the vinyl flooring. A knock.

‘Please, sir, what do I do. It’s Tracy’s – Corporal Barnes’s – mum on the phone for her.’

Ben opened the door. ‘I’ll take it.’

‘She always rings this night, this time, clockwork.’

The girl, lance-corporal, Karen something, fat ankles, pointed down the corridor to the pay phone. The receiver was dangling. Just what he bloody needed… He went over and picked it up. He waved the hovering lance-corporal away.

‘Hello, Captain Christie here. Good evening… I’m sorry, Mrs Barnes, very sorry, but she’s not available… What? Could you speak up?… No, I can’t say why. I can only say that Corporal Barnes is unable to come to the telephone… Afraid I don’t know when she’ll be available. Goodnight, Mrs Barnes…‘ At every door on the corridor a face was watching him. He said, loudly, that if there were more calls from Corporal Barnes’s mother, she was to be given the camp number and extension number of the Adjutant’s office, manned through the night… The lie hurt him, hurt him as deeply as seeing bloody Johnson handling the underwear she wore against her skin.

Christie smiled, spoke gently. ‘It’s Karen, isn’t it? Come here, please. I’m not going to bite you. Actually, I need a bit of help.’

The girl soldier with the fat ankles came, hesitating, forward.

‘Corporal Barnes is in, I have to say it, a packet of trouble. Yes, you’ve heard, everybody’s heard. I want to help her, but for me to help her then you have to help me. Please… did something happen this morning, anything, anything unusual? I need your help.’

The blurted answer. ‘Nothing was different, it was all just usual. There was all the din in here at get-up time… You know how it is. Downes was bawling she was late with her period, Geraghty was giving out she’d got no clean knickers, Smythe’s got a new CD player that’s a right blaster. All bloody noise in the corridor. I went to her room, lost my tie. She gave me her spare. She was just sitting on the floor, hadn’t got her skirt on, quiet as a mouse, in front of the fire. She was humming that bloody song, so old, what she always sings. She was all gruff, about the tie, but it’s only an act. She comes over all heavy, but that’s not real. She lent me the tie, she didn’t give out that I was late on paying her what I owe her, what I borrowed last week. Under the gruff she’s all soft. I owe her, half the girls in the block owe her, but she doesn’t chase it. But for all that she won’t be friends with us. I asked her to come with us to the pub tonight, no chance. Just sits in her room. She’s done nothing in that room to make it her own like the rest of us have. No mess, no muck in there, everything tidied. She’s older than the rest of us, right? Keeps herself to herself. We don’t know nothing about her. Just her work, all she seems to live for, no boys, no fun. She pushes you away, but you get underneath and she’s really kind… I brought her over a message from Admin this afternoon, for you. She was down on the floor with your dog, she was feeding him the biscuits she keeps in the safe. She was singing to the dog, same song… Some old Irish thing… She’s sort of sad, really. She makes out she doesn’t need us, doesn’t need anyone. That’s sad, isn’t it? I can’t help you, Captain, honest. Your question, there was nothing different about her… I’m sorry.’