Gerald Seymour - The Journeyman Tailor

"If I were to go downstairs, ring the police..,"

"You've no cause to be afraid of me, missus I'd not touch a hair on your head."

"Why should a schoolboy have had cause to be afraid?’’

"Because… because… how long's a piece of string, missus? Where does it start? It's like when you walk in a bog field. It sucks at you.

First it's the ankles, then the knees, then the thighs, then your waist. It takes you down."

She kneeled on the floor beside him. His head was against his shoulder. The tears ran from his eyes and onto her blouse.

His voice choked, he asked her would she make him a cup of tea.

He finished the wiping of the room.

The kettle was whistling on her stove as he let himself out through the front door. He walked down the pavement with his grip and his suitcase and his tool bag, not looking back.

The Secretary of State blustered, "But you gave me your word."

The Prime Minister flushed, "I gave you, a preliminary opinion."

"You swore to me that you'd toast them’’

I've learned of a new world that you cared not to inform me of."

"You've reneged on your…"

"Before you put yourself irrevocably on the road to resignation, you will be so patient as to allow Mr Wilkins to give you the benefit of some recent intelligence, some other aspects of the whole picture. Mr Wilkins."

So Ernest Wilkins had his turn.

'There were a few brush strokes of embellishment. Started with Jon Jo Donnelly. All justified by the capture of Jon Jo Donnelly, or if capture were not possible… a dropped voice, a matter not necessary to be explained. The story of a young woman. Oh yes, women had a role to play. A young woman who had been through all all of the endurance courses on the Brecon mountain range, pushed to the same limits as any male A young woman who had been subjected to the same tests of marksmanship at Aldershot and close-quarters unarmed combat as any man. A young woman who had been trained to the highest levels of surveillance and counter-surveillance procedures. A young woman who had nurtured the most valuable player in the Source Programme

… He explained, going slowly as if talking to fools, that a young woman could move in areas where it would be suicidal for a man to attempt to follow. He listed the Service pedigree of a young woman.

Recruitment, proven experience, bravery that would not and should not ever be acknowledged. A young woman who would within the next two hours be released from hospital. He listed wounds, injuries, abrasions. He spoke of the rumour that the vine carried, a bitten hand and a broken wrist and a battered windpipe, and a crowd that had been held back by a single young woman, half kicked to death, who weighed 8 stone 3 pounds and measured 5 foot 4 inches in height.

Ernest Wilkins, hands held in diffidence, said, "It's your decision, gentlemen. Do you want Jon Jo Donnelly, or do you not?"

The Secretary of State, doubt in his voice, said, "I have warned you. .."

The Prime Minister said, "Unleash the pack on him. Run him to ground."

Ernest Wilkins hurried back to Curzon Street to send the necessary signals in confirmation of a programme now authorised.

Called back. Ordered home.

The tang of the mountain in his nose. The touch of his wife against his body. The feel of the hand of his boy.

Jon Jo took the train west, to Plymouth, for the early sailing of the ferry to the Spanish port of Santander.

A gun dumped, a parcel of explosive ditched, a carton of wires and timers and detonators and papers discarded, called home. Ordered back.

The trail of his trade was behind him, scattered when he ha d replaced the telephone at the station call box. Joy enough for him to have shouted… Going back to Altmore…

She sat primly at the edge of her seat. She was shown the photograph, as she had been shown it by the constable when he had called. She confirmed that the photograph and her lodger were the same. It was easier than she had thought it would be. She wore a close-knit woollen cardigan and she had buttoned it to her throat so that there would be no sign to the detectives who questioned her of the damp stain of the tears that had been wept against her shoulder. She repeated what he had told her, that he would go to London, fly to Holland or Germany, look for work. They told her his name, and they told her what he had done. He had been a fine man to her, and he could have killed her, and she tried to sweep from her mind the image of a smiling schoolboy as photographed in the first edition of the afternoon newspaper… It was like it had been yesterday, the clear and recent memory to her, but it had been five weeks before, and he had been in the bathroom and she had come to the room to bring clean bedding and the photographs had been on the table beside the bed. A handsome woman and a small boy.

The boy in the photograph Was younger than the boy in the newspaper, and there was the stretch of a mountainscape behind the woman and the boy. She kept her question until the end, until the detectives were about to leave.

"Such a good and decent man, so helpful to me, and so cheerful How could he hate so much?"

And no answer given her.

‘’She should go home," Bren said.

Gerald Seymour

The Journeyman Tailor

‘’That’s out of the question."

‘’She’s exhausted. She was exhausted before this happened. She made a mistake."

‘’There’s a job to finish," Hobbes said.

"She's not in a fit state. She was damn near killed."

‘’Brennard, when I need your advice running my department I'll seek it out. And it might help you to know that London's latest has Jon Jo on the move."

"There's a whole bloody army here, it doesn't have to be her.. ."

The flare of anger from Hobbes. "You don't understand anything, do you? We did the work – not the army, not the Branch, not E4 – and we'll finish it. Have you got me?"

Bren played the prime card. "She has to go home, she's compromised."

Hobbes put his hand on Bren's shoulder, like a father. He said calmly, "It's me that has to decide who's compromised. It's my decision as to when the risk becomes intolerable. I can't change the jockey in mid-race. Just be thankful the big decisions aren't yours."

They were in the corridor and away from the door to her room. They were beyond earshot. She came out of the door, past the Military Police guard. There were two nurses with her and the doctor. Bren saw it: the nurse touched her elbow as if to support her and the help was shrugged off. Vintage Parker. She was in the same clothes they had found her in on the road under Altmore mountain. She walked stiffly. Hobbes went to her, Bren hung back. Hobbes kissed her lightly on the cheek, as if he were a distant relation. She didn't say goodbye to the doctor, she didn't offer her thanks to the nurses. Hobbes led, Bren followed. She slumped awkwardly between them towards the front door of the building. She was paler than usual and the colouring round her eve was brightening.

He saw the mud on her jeans and the dirt on her T-shirt and the rips in her anorak. They walked outside. In the late afternoon light they stood in the car park and she asked about her car and was told it had been recovered during the night, that the radio had been destroyed by the fire, no problem. Hobbes told her that London believed that Donnelly was on his way back. Bren didn’t see any pleasure on her face, only the tiredness and the pallor and the colour ol the bruising. Hobbes told Bren to drive Cathy home and went his way.

He took her back to her flat,

He stood at the open door.

She walked across her living room to her bedroom.

He wondered if she had known, while she slept through the night and the morning, that he had held her hand. He could feel still the gentleness of her sleeping hand.