Gerald Seymour - The Contract

'It's wonderful, I think it's the happiest thing that's ever happened to me.' 'And now you want to tell Willi?'

'He'll want to know. I'm a bit ashamed really… I sort of railroaded him.'

She was quieter now, calmer, the flood tide running steadily. 'I don't know whether he ever specially wanted to marry me. Willi ought to know, oughtn't he? It'll make everything different…'

The Consul winced, pain clear on his face, and he held up his hand for her to stop.

'Pray, how does this make everything different?' He looked into her clear, azure eyes and watched the light run against them and heard her certainty and sureness.

'We don't have to get married, well not in a hurry anyway.'

He put his hands to his chin, rubbed at the skin. 'There was no more compelling reason for Willi Guttmann's defec- tion than that you had told him you were pregnant and that he must stand by you?'

'About right, yes.'

'And now that you are no longer pregnant, what do you think should happen?'

'Well, he's free, isn't he?'

'Free to do what?'

'He can go home, if he wants to,' she blurted. 'He's under no obligation to me.'

'He's defected. For your sake he has made himself a traitor.' The Consul paused, sighed. 'There is no second chance, there is no change of mind.

He came across and that's that. He is somebody that we are interested in, that his own side cares about… Willi Guttmann no longer has a home.

'It was as much his fault as mine.'

'Do you still want to marry Willi Guttmann, make the rest of your life with him?'

'I don't know.' The certainty was gone, the radiance had dripped away.

Just a secretary, one of a hundred, and the prettiness trodden out of her.

'The relevant authorities will inform Guttmann of what you've told me.'

'It's not just me that's to blame…'

'Get out, Miss Forsyth. Get out of this office and never come near it again.'

She didn't understand, he knew that, and his anger was wasted on her.

She hadn't the smallest comprehension of the squalid mess she had left behind her. He tried to recall the face of the boy under his wet and sleeked-down hair, and could remember only the way that he had stood beside the girl and held her hand and looked with love at her and trembled from the cold of the lake.

He walked to the door and opened it and then went across the hallway and unlocked the front door. She hurried past him and when she was gone he heard only the sharp clatter of her heels on the steps.

They stayed up late in the sitting room.

The terms of reference for the evening had been set by Mawby. No shop talk, no gossip about the Service. This was a night off for all concerned, the last they would have, Mawby had said, this was the team familiarising with its selection, learning the mannerisms and habits and pecu- liarities. There was a bottle of whisky on the table and crystal glasses and the level of the drink slipped as the tongues loosened and the laughter echoed from the walls. Mawby played host, his back to the fire, orchestrating the enter- tainment, involving the players, and did it skilfully.

Henry Carter talked of a strike-bound family hotel on the Costa del Sol with guests cooking and washing and making their beds, and a suspicion of cholera up the coast. Adrian Pierce recounted his Cambridge days and the homosexual don who took tutorials in a satin dressing gown and the chase around the table and the flight back to his room. Harry Smithson, a leer at his face and a grin at his mouth, told of the 19-year-old second lieutenant that was himself and the posting to occupation forces in Germany and the favours that could be gained for a pair of soft stockings and a bar of milk chocolate.

Happy, friendly, nonsense talk, and Mawby allowed Johnny to remain on the fringe, to enjoy but not to contri- bute. Sizing them up, weighing them, and he could bide his time over the development of the relationships. No fool, Charles Augustus Mawby. Nobody's fool.

Johnny basked in quiet pleasure because this was how it had been sometimes in the mess, and he was the moth drawn to an old flame.

Johnny had laughed and chuckled at the private faces of the men in the room. Carter for whom nothing worked and the tale was of chaos and failure. Pierce, whose sarcasm was vital and cutting. Smithson the cynic, believing in nothing, trust- ing nobody.

Content to be in charge, giving them their heads and for a purpose, Mawby dispensed the whisky.

And it was good to be part of something again. The noise of the room highlighted the narrowness of the escape bolt that Johnny had chosen for himself in Cherry Road. Run away, hadn't he? Sprinted for cover after the awfulness of the trial. Shunned contact with the great outside and leaned on his frail mother for support. Not healthy, but inevitable. What would any of these men have done if they had sat in the wide dock of the Crown Court in Crumlin Road? Would thay have bounced back and erased the memory of the mili- tary escort across the city each morning and afternoon, and the stern-lipped warders with the keys and chains and trun- cheons? The whisky helped the memories to run, and with the clock chimes Johnny's attention to the jokes and anecdotes became weaker, was replaced. What did these men know of trial for murder?

Nothing, Johnny, but that's not their fault. And they were doing their best to make him forget. But they knew… of course they bloody knew.

The court of the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. A high and red-painted ceiling, ornate moulding, hanging lights, a garish wallpaper, layers of scrubbed duck green paint over the dock and the benches for the lawyers and the journalists and the public. The Lord Chief Justice, without hostility or kindness, asking and probing, writing his answers with a creaking pen. Counsel for the prosecution, the disbelief at his raised eyebrows and the voice that carried the quiet, incisive questions. The father of the girl and her brothers, all in a line, all hunched and staring at Johnny, their eyes never leaving him, all loathing him for the irreplaceable loss that he had brought to their home. Carter and Pierce and Smithson knew of it. Mawby would have read the file, read of the accusation and the defence before he sent his minions to bring Johnny to London. To bring the poor fool who would do what he was told so that he might regain his stature as a free man.

Pathetic and snivelling they seemed to him now, his court- room explanations.

'It's different when you're sitting here, things don't happen the way you've put it, not when you're on the ground…'

' It happened very quickly. It's not like being sat in a cinema and watching it on a screen…'

'Yes I did think at the time that the person I fired on was holding a gun.

I thought that my life was endangered, my life and those of the men who were with me…'

' I was confronting an armed terrorist, that's all I thought…'

And the deathly hush of disbelief. Always the unforgiving silence in the court and the wait for the Lord Chief Justice to look up from his ledger and for Counsel to frame his next question. A desperate quiet focused on the man who sat in the low witness box in a clean shirt and plain tie and a sports jacket.

Counsel turning the screw, driving it deeper. 'The suggestion I put to you, Captain Donoghue, is that you believed your military rank and the special nature of your duties put you above the law. I suggest that you wilfully ignored the standard procedure of issuing a challenge before opening fire. I suggest that you were prepared to shoot dead any person, terrorist or civilian who approached the cache.'

'It wasn't like that…'

What was it like, Johnny? Johnny still and damp in the bracken and under the bramble of the hedge, and the figure bending at the fox hole, the flicker of the plastic fertiliser sack as it was drawn clear, the bag pushed back into the hole. The figure rising short and lightweight onto the feet and then the gun presented to him… not a gun, Johnny, a col-lapsible umbrella. One shot from the Armalite, half a scream and a tumbling shape. Got the fucking pig, the corporal behind him said. Radio for Quick Reaction Force. Land- Rover in the lane within ten minutes, and a voice calling from a farm house in the hill, calling a girl's name in panic and desperate fear.