Gavin Lyall - The Conduct of Major Maxim

During the week – and weekends when he was the duty Private Secretary – George and his wife Annette lived in the family set of rooms in Albany, just a few quiet yards from the snarling traffic of Piccadilly. The porter was expecting them and let Maxim park in an awkward position on the forecourt pavement.

It was dark now, but warmer than when they had left the coast nearly two hours before, and the air tasted like something breathed through a hot towel. The weather was going to break, and noisily.

As they walked through the lamplight of the Ropewalk, Maxim noticed a small incised plaque to Lord Macaulay, who had lived there in the 1840s.

"That's the bastard who loused up my promotion chances. "

"What?" Agnes stopped and peered.

"He once wrote: 'Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.' "

She chuckled. "Did you run across that yourself?"

"Oh no. There've always been plenty of kindly brother officers to bring it to my attention. We're a very well-read Army these days. "

George's rooms were on the first floor; they had the traditional stolidity of a steak and kidney pie and were much the same colour. Annette had never dared touch the dark panelling that George's family had put in eighty years before, nor even most of the ponderous mahogany furniture and the lovingly detailed pictures of dead hares and partridges surrounded by dewy vegetables. She had counter-attacked with bright lampshades and curtains, but she hadn't won.

Agnes knew the room and went straight for the telephone. George was sitting at one end of a vast empty dining table, with a little oasis of bottles, coffee pot and cheeseboard at hiselbow.

"Ah," he greeted Maxim; "do I see you refreshed by two days of country air? Revived? Refulgent? More to the point, do I see yourepentant? Your lad's really done it this time. Port or brandy?"

"Just coffee, please. Who got shot?"

"The man in hospital hasn't been named, but he isn't your Corporal. It happened around seven o'clock, at a place called Neptune Court. Do you know it? No? I thought you knew Rotherhithe like your own back garden. "

"I don't have a back garden. "

"Neither does Neptune Court. It's a block of council flats, probably one of those redbrick Edwardian things, with a court in the middle and a service road down the back. Front doors • open onto long balconies with iron railings covered in damp washing and snotty little kids dribbling on your head through the bars."

Maxim grinned, surprised less by George's attitude than by his knowledge of such parts of London. They were certainly Rotherhithe blocks he was describing; Maxim had seen them.

"It happened in the service road. Five or six shots. Neighbours saw one man drive away and it looked as if he was hurt. Another one running in the opposite direction. "

"Running?"

"They said so, but from the blood marks the fuzz think he could be wounded. "

"What about the guns?"

"I do notknow about the guns, Harry. I can't be ringing up Rotherhithe nick asking for details. That would just establish the very connection I'm hoping-despite your assistance-to ' avoid. All I'm giving you is from the radio and the PA tape. But six shots and a man in intensive care, " he added, "makes it reasonably certain that some friend of yours was involved."

Agnes came over and George handed her a gin and tonic.

'Thanks. Our people have been in touch with the police, justchecking to see if there could be a terrorist element. Thatwould be quite normal. They've got the one in hospital down as Hans-Heinz Lemke, but they aren't entirely convinced. They're checking him out. He's about thirty-five, dark, five foot eleven, eleven and a half stone. Shoes made in Germany -West."

"Did they say anything about the guns?" Maxim asked. George gave a heavy sigh.

"There were two left at the scene." She glanced at a piece of paper."A Sauerof 7.65 millimetre calibre and a Walther of short 9 millimetre or.380. Is that right?"

Maxim nodded.

"The Sauerhad been fired, probably twice. The other one wasn't fired. And they've picked 3.38 Special out of Lemke's liver."

"That could be Blagg," Maxim said. "It was a.38 Special he had at Bad Schwarzendorn."

"Oh hooray," George said mournfully.

A vivid light flared outside, bright enough to penetrate the heavy curtains. Everybody waited, but when the tearing bang of thunder came it was still loud enough to make Agnes jump. She didn't like thunder; it was over-dramatic and showy, like tropical plants.

Maxim finished his coffee. "I'd better get going."

Agnes waited for George, but when he stayed quiet, she said: "Harry, Neptune Court and its purlieus will be absolutelycrawling with cops. This is the sortofthingthey really go to town on: an armed man, probably wounded, probably hiding out nearby. They'llsmother that place. "

"I know."

She was about to ask How do you know? and then remembered his tours in Northern Ireland. She looked at George, but he was just pouring himself another glass of port.

"Will you be here?" Maxim asked.

"For a while – if George doesn't mind. "

"Be my guest."

When Maxim had gone, Agnes said: "You didn't eventry to talk him out of it."

George nuzzled his nose into a glass of port. "You haven't been in the Army. "

"I'm glad you've noticed. "

"There's a wounded soldier out there, or he thinks there is. Icouldn't have stopped him with an anti-tank gun. It's the most common form of heroism, risking your life to rescue one of your men. The fact that he's only risking his career – and mine, and the government's – doesn't really make any difference. Not to him, anyway." He gulped his port.

Agnes looked disapprovingly at George's glass. "You're going to have to watch that stuff. We could be in for a long night."

"Why does everybody tell me I ought to watch my drinking when they're all so busy watching it for me? Somebody in Whitehall has to be looking at something else, and it might as well be me."

"Cheer up. Blagg may be dead."

"With our luck, he's probably shot a couple of coppers as well by now." He reached for the decanter. Beyond the curtains, the rain came down with a sudden clatter on the roof of the Ropewalk below.

The pain wasn't so bad, it was the breathlessness, using all his energy to suck another few seconds of life from a chest that seemed to be wrapped in rusty iron bands. He knew he had a hole in one lung, leaking air and blood that put pressure on the other lung. They had taught him that much in the Army. They had also taught him that the first thing to do with a wounded man was clear his breathing. But how did you do it yourself, and clear something deep in your chest? And by now he was far too weak to move, even to sit up. Unless somebody found him soon…

Until then, the only thing to do was endure. Endurance is a soldier's job. A few may turn out to be heroes as well, but a few is all you need; for the rest, what matters is biting down and holding on. The Army had taught him that, too, and the SASacceptance tests had rammed the lesson home by sending him out over the damp Brecon Beacons with a 55~lb Bergen rucksack knowing he had to cover a certain distance in a certain time but not knowing that when he had done it, there wouldn't be the trucks they had promised but a vague assurance of a cup of tea if he kept on marching a few more miles inthatdirection. That was the real test, what they called the 'sickener' factor.

"Fuckyou lot," Blagg had snarled at the officer in charge, and set out to march to the end of the world. Now, it seemed he was almost there.

His senses were fading as his whole existence concentrated on taking in the next breath. He had long since stopped noticing the foul smell inside the little concrete box, or the damp grittiness of the floor against his cheek, and he heard only distantly the rolling crash of thunder. But a few minutes later he heard the rattle of heavy rain on the loose corrugated iron sheet hiding the way in, felt the first trickle of water crawling down the floor, and then remembered how long this place took to drain.