Gerald Seymour - Heart of Danger

…" "And…?" '… I told him they were extortionate." "And… ?" "He said that was his rate." "And…?" "He said that if I didn't like it, I could shove it up my…" "And…?" "He was pretty damn lucky to catch me happy. He won." Charles Braddock grinned, sourly. "He said that he would be leaving for Zagreb in the morning. But don't think you'll be getting anything more than a load of paper… He was pretty damn lucky." She kissed her husband's cheek. "Thank you. I rather liked him. What I liked about him was that he told me to mind my own business. Doesn't grovel too much, not to you, not to me…" "Come on." They were going to the lift. The commissionaire had the doors open for them, wore his medals proudly, and ducked his head in respect to them. Penn had told her husband that if he didn't like the terms he could shove the assignment, and he had told her to mind her own business… quite amusing. The lift doors closed. Mary said, "My guess is he's been badly used. He's rather sweet but so naive…" "If we could, please, just enjoy a normal evening…" It was the usual type of gathering for which Mary Braddock hiked to London, her husband's senior colleagues and the design team and the clients. She thought that her Mister Penn would not have stood a cat in hell's chance, would have been kicked away down the lift shaft if it hadn't been that the clients had put ink on the contracts that very day. She wafted through the salon, she meandered into and out of conversations. Her mind was away, away with the man who would be travelling to Zagreb, away with her daughter who was dead, buried, gone… A thin little weed of a man approached, her husband's financial controller, and he had caught her. "Sincerest condolences, dear Mary, such a dreadful time for you…" Sincerity, he wouldn't know what the word meant. "Heartfelt apologies, Mary, that I couldn't make the funeral, just not enough hours in the day…" No, he wouldn't have taken time off for a funeral from the small type of a contract. "Still, she was so difficult, wasn't she? We have to hope, at last, that she lies in peace. Your Dorothy, she was such a trial to you." She did it expertly, and fast. She tipped her Cointreau and ice against the left side of his pale-grey suit jacket. She thought it would be a lasting stain, hoped it would defeat the dry cleaner. The amber ran on the grey. "Dorrie, she was mine, damn you, she was mine…" She was sitting in the chair by the door and watching him. She didn't help him to pack. "How long are you going to be there?" His suitcase was on the bed. His clothes were stacked close to the case and he tried to make a mental note of what he would need. "Where are you going to be staying?" She had the baby, Tom, on her shoulder and she gripped him tight. Her statements came like machine-gun bullets, hurting him, wounding. "What's the point of it all?" His shoes went into the bottom of the case with his bag for washing kit and toothpaste and razors, and a guidebook of former Yugoslavia, and around their bulk went his socks and his underclothes. Penn told his wife, quiet voice, that he thought he would be away for a minimum of a week and he told her the name of the hotel where he was booked and he told her about Mary Braddock. On top of his socks and underclothes he laid two pairs of slacks, charcoal-grey. "So, I'm just supposed to sit here and wait for you to show up again?" All his shirts were white. It was like a uniform to him, that he wore charcoal-grey trousers and white shirts and quiet ties. He had always worn the uniform when he had gone to work at Gower Street. The jeans and the sweaters and the casual shirts that were right for Section 4 of A Branch had been kept in a locker. "If you hadn't made such a fool of yourself then you wouldn't be running round with that deadbeat outfit, would you?" Their home, two bedrooms, one floor, had cost 82,750. Their mortgage was 60,000. They could not have bought the house and furnished it without the help of her father, digging into his building society savings. They were not quite 'negative equity', but damn near. They could not sell the house without slashing into what her father had loaned them, or what the building society had advanced them. They were trapped in the bloody place. And it was not a home any more, but a little brightly painted prison. He thought there was enough in the case for a week, and something to spare. "What you do now, it's grubby, isn't it? It's prying into people's lives. How do you hold your head up?" Well, he held his head up because there was a cheque coming into the bank each month, and that should have been a good enough reason to hold his bloody head up. He would wear his blazer on the aircraft, not fold it away in the case. He did not take Jane home any more to his parents and the tied cottage, and they had not yet seen their grandson, Tom. Nothing said, but understood amongst them all, that he did not take Jane home. If his mother rang and Jane answered the telephone then his mother just rang off. The maisonette was a brightly painted prison and the marriage was a locked cell door, but he hadn't the time to be thinking about solicitors and he hadn't the money to be thinking about new rent to go with the old mortgage. He closed the case and fastened the lock, and put the case on the floor at the end of the bed. "And what's the point of you going there, what's anyone to gain from it?" It was the way of her, to goad him. He looked into the frightened small eyes of her face, and they were reddened from crying from before he had come home. She was looking at his lip, which was better now, but still ugly. Penn said softly, "I am not going into a war zone, the war zone is Bosnia. I am going to Croatia, the war finished in Croatia more than a year ago, the war's gone on by to Bosnia… I am going to trawl round the embassy, I am going to see the ministries there, I am going to interview and get transcripts from a few refugees, I am going to write a report. That's what they're going to get, a nice little typed-up report. I am going to get a good fee from it, and they're going to get a good typed-up report…" The tears had come again. "You'll be sucked in." "No chance." He couldn't talk it through with her. Never had been able to, but it was worse now. It was his habit with her, to hide behind the denials. He could have talked it through with Dougal, his best mate in the Transit team, but Dougal Gray was in Belfast, had extended his tour, and the postcards with the dry tourists' messages didn't come any more. It was only with Dougal that he had ever talked through work problems and Jane problems… and had a few laughs… and once substituted white paint thinner for milk in the silver tops of an old misery's house… and once… the best times in the Transit were with Dougal, and then Dougal hadn't been around to talk through his being dumped by the Service. And Dougal had been long gone when he had spent the worst, foul, hour of his life, going home on the train, walking from the station to the front door, preparing to tell Jane that the job was finished. "You'll be sucked in, because you always want to belong." "No way." "Won't you? You'll be stupid Penn knelt beside the chair. He had so little to say to her. He did not have to offer a checklist of their social arrangements that he would not now be able to meet, because they had no social life. Men from PO Box 500 were not a part of any outside community, and the pariah status remained for a reject. There was no amateur dramatics society to be told he would miss a rehearsal. There was no pub skittles team to be told that he was missing the next league outing. There was no evening education class because he could never guarantee his attendance. There was no dinner party or meal out with friends, because Five men, ex-Five men, avoided the great unwashed. He would be gone for a week and no one in their block of maisonettes, in their street, would know or notice. Might just be the story of his goddamn life… He put his hands on her arms and she flinched from him, and was holding tight to their baby. Wouldn't she just understand, couldn't she try to understand, that he might just want to go…? "I promise that I won't be stupid. It's just a report, Jane, it's not Rambo nonsense. It's just a report that will put some poor woman's torment to rest. It's nothing special." "Don't think, if you play the hero, they'll have you back." "If you'd met her