Gerald Seymour - A Line in the Sand

Frank was outside with Davies and Paget. She could not see them. She was down on the floor and clinging to Stephen, holding his head against her and pressing her palms over his ears. He would be on the step, shielded by the bodies of Davies and Paget, protected by their guns and their gas against his friends, her friends.

He had to shout. To be heard across their low front fence and the grass, heard into the deep shadow, Frank had to shout.

"It's all right, you fuckers, you can go home. You can go home and be satisfied that you've won as much as you're going to win. I promised Meryl… Do you all remember Meryl? You should remember Meryl she did enough for you lot. I promised her that nothing more would happen. I was wrong. I had forgotten you, all of you. I can't see you now, any of you, in the dark, but, please, stay and listen. Don't creep away on your stomachs. Don't pretend it didn't happen. You will remember tonight, what you did, for the rest of your lives. If you're still there, if you're listening, then you should know that you have won a little victory. You have broken my promise to Meryl. She'll be going in the morning, and taking Stephen with her. She'll be trying to find somewhere to stay. She'll have to ring round, people she hardly knows, or check into a hotel she's never been to. Everyone she reckoned was her friend is here, soit won't be easy for her to find somewhere. Not me, though, not me… The tears streamed on her cheeks and fell on the hair of her child's head.

"You're stuck with me. Before tonight, I might just have gone with her, but not now. Your victory is that you've driven out a wonderful, caring woman, and her child. You don't win with me. I'm a proper bastard, your worst fucking nightmare, an obstinate sod. What I did, why there's the threat, I provided the information that killed a busful of men. I was prepared~ to betray a busful of men so, what happens to you is low down on any relevance scale to me. I don't care what happens to you, and I'm staying. Got that? Can you hear me? When you next go to church, put money in charity boxes, when you next volunteer for good works and good causes, think of what you did tonight to Meryl. But, the cruelty doesn't work with me…"

She could not hold back the tears.

"You see, you don't frighten me. I'm not frightened of yobs with stones. Where I was, for what I did, if I'd been caught there, I'd have been hanged until dead. That's not a trap under the gallows, and quick, but a rope from an industrial crane, and it's being hoisted up, and it's kicking and strangling and slow. There's not a few drunks watching, not a few cowards, there's twenty thousand people. You understand? Being hanged from a crane frightens me, not you… She lay on the floor beside the door of the airing-cupboard, clutched her boy and squeezed her hands over his ears.

"I bought some time. I'm told I delayed a programme for the development of Weapons of Mass Destruction. The warheads would have carried chemicals or microbiological agents, might have been nerve gases and might have been something like anthrax. You, of course, wouldn't have known the people targeted by those warheads. They would have been Saudis or Kuwaitis or the Gulf people. They might have been Israeli Jews. When you're so selfish, when you live complacently in an island of your own making, you wouldn't think of the millions of other souls who exist around you. Are you happy?"

She heard the hoarseness of his voice.

"There is a man who has been sent to kill me. He is somewhere, out there, in the darkness. I know very little of him but I know about his society, his culture. He is a Muslim, a child of the Islamic faith… He would not understand you. From his faith and his culture, he would believe that my community has closed ranks around me, not isolated me. I can find more love for him, the man sent to kill me, than for you, my so-called friends."

She heard his last shout into the night.

"Are you there? Are you listening?"

The door slammed behind him. The key was turned, the bolt rammed home.

He felt puny, insignificant and unimportant.

Geoff Markham walked beside the stream that wound ahead of him between the sea and the Southmarsh. Behind him it skirted the village before drifting inconsequentially into Northmarsh. The wind was up and had blown away the rain.

He was unimportant because he had not been telephoned the night before. He had been killing time at a piano recital twelve miles away, in another town; he had sat in ignorance at the back of a half-empty, draughty Baptist hall. His mobile telephone, of course, had been on, but the call had not come. A trifle of life would have been injected into the performance if his telephone had bleeped, but it had not… Davies had told him, an hour earlier that morning, of the night's events. He had seen the scorched grass where the milk bottle had ignited and seen the smoked slivers. Near to the new tree was the small patch of burned ground where the gas canister had detonated. Only an unimportant junior liaison officer would not have been telephoned. Davies had told him what was going to happen that day not asked~l him for his opinion, but told him. He had stormed away.

He was unimportant, he realized, because he did not carry a gun. The guns were what counted now. He was drawn towards

Southmarsh. The guns ringed the marshland, just as they were around and inside the house. It hurt him to feel the minimality of his importance. And no communication, either, from the little stinking bastard with the dogs. Markham didn't know where he was, what he did, what he'd seen and couldn't call him for fear of compromising his position.

There were two letters in his pocket. They were not typed up, or remotely ready for sending, but they were drafted in his handwriting. He thought, later, he would go to the police station and find a typewriter and envelopes. He had drafted the letters after the recital, back at his guest-house accommodation. Fenton had said, down the phone, fifty minutes earlier, "We're not a marriage-guidance operation, Geoff. If she wants to go, then I'm not going to lose sleep over it. But he stays, whatever. If you have to chain him to the floor, he stays." He walked towards where the little verminous bastard was, not that he would see him, but where he would breathe the same air.

The two drafted letters were in his pocket.

Dear Mr. Cox, I write to inform you of my resignation from the Service. I am taking up a position with a merchant bank in the City. I would like to express to you, to Mr. Fenton, to colleagues, my appreciation of the many kindnesses that have been shown me. My future employers wish me to start with them at the earliest possible date and I look for your co-operation in that matter.

Sincerely, and

Dear Sirs, I have received your letter setting out my terms of employment and find them most satisfactory. Accordingly, I have resigned from my current employers by the same post, and have requested the earliest possible date of release. I much look forward to joining your team and will advise you, soonest, of when that will be.

Sincerely,

Once they were typed up they could go in the afternoon post, and then Geoff Markham would no longer be unimportant. He walked on the path, turned a corner and could see, past a wild clump of bramble, the mass of the reed-banks, the dark water channels, and a ruined windmill that had no sails. The bright light played on the dead reed-tips, and the birds flew above the muddy banks.

"I wouldn't go any further. If you don't want a bollocking from a police thug, I'd stop right there."

He spun. To the right, a few yards from him, the man sat on a weathered bench. Markham recognized him, but couldn't place him. A dapper little man, thinning hair and a nervous smile, with binoculars hanging from his neck.