Gerald Seymour - The Unknown Soldier

'Never trust them, Eddie, never ever.'

'The greatest sin for an American is to lose – don't forget that, Eddie, don't. Make certain you're on a different planet if they're losing, don't be up close.'

' A chap once said: "America is a big happy dog in a small room, and each time it wags its tail it breaks something." They don't even notice, Eddie, the damage they do. Be your own man, not their poodle.'

He had thought Juan Gonsalves was his friend… He reached his vehicle, zapped his lock, then the shadow was across him. He opened the back door, to dump the bags.

Is that Mr Wroughton, Mr Eddie Wroughton?' the voice, English language and foreign accent, whined.

He turned. The man came from the shadows, tall and wiry, middle aged, with a sharpness in his eyes.

He said curtly, 'Yes, that's me.'

Is that the bastard who fucks my wife?'

Nowhere to back off to. His vehicle was behind him. The man was in front of him. From the high lights, he saw the clenched fists and the stone-bruised, sand-scraped boots, and the loathing at the mouth.

Wroughton stiffened, felt the deadness in his legs and arms, couldn't have run. Could have shouted out, could have yelled for Security at the main doors, but his throat had tightened: nothing would have come from it. He saw the right boot swing back. The kick came into his shin, against the bone and the pain ran rivers. He crumpled. His head went down and the clenched fist hit him on the side of the jaw, the edge of his cheek. More kicks, some on the thigh and the target was his groin. More fist blows and his head was a punchball. He was down. Men from the Royal Military Police came to the fort on the south coast – outside Portsmouth – and taught self-defence. Last time he'd been on the course was seven years back, before the posting to Riga. He tried to protect his head – could not protect head and testicles. One or the other. It was done cold. Iced venom. Not frantic or flailing. It was the attack of a street-fighter. Where had a bloody Belgian agronomist learned the tactics of a street-fighter? Nothing said, not a word. The man did not even pant. Wroughton felt the blood in his mouth. He was not going to die, he knew that. The man was too calm to kill him, intended only to humiliate. The tinted spectacles had gone and he heard the crunch of the boot on them, then a hand snatched at his tie, grasped the silk and pulled up his head with it. Twice, as he choked on the tightened knot, the fist hit his face, once the lower lip, once the bridge of his nose. The man spat in his face.

The tie was let go. Wroughton fell back. The shadow moved away from him. The blood was on his chin and in his mouth. It washed round his teeth and ran in his throat. As the clatter of the boots left him, he managed in a supreme effort to lift himself on one elbow.

Through a spew of blood, Wroughton shouted, 'Pity you couldn't satisfy her – she said you were a lousy screw.'

The boots went away, the stride never breaking.

He pulled himself up, using the door-handle, and sagged into the seat, then drove out of the car park.

Wroughton knew enough of personal medicine to realize that if any of his ribs had been broken, or his wrist or his jaw, the pain would have been too great for him to drive. What was hurt was his pride. He went through deserted streets. What was kicked and punched, blown away, was his prized self-esteem. He reached the compound and held up his ID for the guard to see, his face turned away.

Inside, he stripped off his clothes, moaning at the struggle to loosen the belt, the zip and the buttons. His linen suit was torn at the knees and elbows and smeared with the car park's dirt; his shirt was blood-stained. When he had binned the suit, shirt, socks, shoes and underclothes, he crawled across the floor, dragged out the telephone plug, then switched off his mobile. Eddie Wroughton could not face the world. Naked, he sat in his chair and let the darkened room close around him.

She lay on the stone patio. She thought of love.

Far in the distance, below the bungalow, she heard the high-pitched roar of a powered engine.

For Bethany Jenkins, love was alive.

Infatuation, no. Lust, no. Love, yes – damnit. It consumed her. Love was the skin, could be pinched, scratched, scraped, but could not be shed – the hard skin on her legs and arms, the soft skin below the hair on her thighs, the tanned skin on her face. She could not forget him.

Her mother had said to her once, on a third gin and Italian, that she'd seen her father across a crowded box at Newbury races – before they'd met, before they'd spoken – and known, when their eyes had met, through the shoulders and between the heads, that he was the man with whom she would live her life.

Love was not, as Beth reckoned it, the product of introductions made by grandmothers, aunts and best friends. Wasn't about bloody suitability. Love was not sensible. Love happened, and fuck the consequences.

Love was the chance meeting on the upper deck of a late-night London bus, in a carriage on a train out of King's Cross going north

… Love was not about earning prospects in the City, nor about decent families and fat inheritances.

It was beyond control. Did not have an agenda. A rifle was raised, a knife was grasped, and a man held her life in his hand. She didn't know him, he didn't know her. He had put aside the rifle, had shielded her from the knife – had protected her. She had not believed him. She'd said: 'Are you going to try to rape me… are you going to kill me?' She'd held the little opened penknife with the two-inch blade. He'd said: 'No… I am going to dig you out.' He had. And she had loved him.

'Well, I can't bloody help it,' she said to the moths. 'It's not my fault, blame the bloody hormones.'

The beams came up the track towards her bungalow.

Beth would have said that she remembered him with more clarity now, on the patio, than an hour after he had disappeared over the crest of the dune… Would her mother understand? It would take more than three gin and Italians – if Beth ever met him again – for her mother to take her daughter into her arms and gush, 'Oh, that's wonderful, darling, I'm so happy for you.' Love came out of a sky that was clear blue…

The big vehicle stopped on the track in front of her small green watered garden and more moths danced in its headlights. A window lowered.

A voice called to her, 'Is this the residence of Miss Bethany? Are you Miss Bethany, ma'am?'

'It is. I am.'

The door nearest her opened. She saw the bundle lifted with big hands over the passenger's body, like it had been over the gear lever, then it was dropped down. She saw the boy.

Blood was caked on his robe.

'You'll forgive the intrusion, ma'am. We found him out in the Sands. His camel was finished and he was damned near gone. We filled him up with water. He gave us your name. Where he's come from, I don't know. I don't have time to play with, ma'am, we've a plane to catch. He's not hurt. Nothing wrong with him, 'cept his tongue. All I know is, he gave your name. So, I can take him back to Security at the gate and dump him, or I can leave him here – and we're running late for our plane. Ma'am, it's your decision.'

'Leave him here,' she said.

The boy was part of him. She remembered the boy's whistle, sharp, through the fingers at the small mouth, telling him it was time to leave her. She saw the dark bloodstain on his robe, and the lighter spatter that surrounded it. She felt so bloody weak.

The boy came from him, she knew it, and she knew the dark bloodstain was his.

'Don't you ever listen, Mum? Don't you ever care about what I'm saying, what I want? What's it to you?'

He did not hear his own voice, its anger.

'It's only money. I want the money for the fare and the money for spending. Is that such a big deal? I want money, got it? I want money to get out of this shit-hole. It's crap here, crap. It's the end of the bloody world here. All my life, do you want me here? Bloody wonderful life living here – oh, yes, oh, yes. Top of the bloody world, isn't it? What's the boundaries of the world? Ettingshall and Coseley, Woodcross and Bradley? Rookery Road and bloody Daisy Street? Is that as far as the world goes? Don't go over the railway line, best not to cross the canal bridge – might bloody fall off the end of the world.