Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

A pick-up came to the gate. Gaz watched from a window.

She’d have come on one of the crabbers that worked between Westray and the Papa Westray islands. It would have been a wretched crossing, but she never showed fear of the sea, was careful of it but did not cringe. She was good with the men who had lived their lives out here, and always had something to say to them, and her place amongst them was respected. Aggie fitted… slotted in better than Gaz did. At the gate she looked for him and saw him as he lurked at the window and she waved cheerfully. She wore bright orange heavy-duty outer clothing, and her hair tailed out behind her. He was blessed, knew it. Gaz could not have said why that woman had crossed a turbulent sea channel and come to see him… and she tripped on the man. The light was poor and his coat was grey on the grey gravel and against the grey rendered wall, and with grey skies over a grey roof. The man’s arm came up and took her hand, steadied her. And she was apologising, fussing, and helping him to his feet.

She was startled, seemed to stammer a charge of questions: who was he, why was he there, what was his business, when had he come, why was he sitting in the rain? She was given an explanation, clear above the wind, and he believed he was supposed to hear it.

“I came to see Gaz – he’s really Gary Baldwin, but from way back and to us, his friends, he’s Gaz. It’s about where he was before and what he did. We’ve done our work, my dear. Know you as Aggie, know enough to trust you…”

He still held her hand. Gaz recognised it as a master-class. Words spoken calmly, as if nothing was extraordinary and where they met was commonplace, and sodden clothing only a minor inconvenience.

“He’s a very brave man, one I am proud to know. That bravery, Aggie – I hope I may call you that – was demonstrated where he served, what he witnessed. It’s not a conversation piece and he may have withheld that part of his life history from you. He witnessed an atrocity, saw it stage by stage and could not intervene to prevent its outcome. He was deeply damaged by the experience. I am showing my trust and would be seriously embarrassed, Aggie, if that trust were rubbished…”

The worst of the storm was moving away but blustery winds left rain water running off his coat and from the brim of his hat, and Aggie’s clothing dripped. Knacker’s eyes were on hers, holding them as a stoat would have locked on a rabbit’s, and still with her hand in his. Gaz remembered him… unemotional, brisk, and to the point, directing him along and not permitting him to slide away into graphic detail but seeming more interested in rank badges and unit insignia, and disappointed at the absence of photographs, and all done fast: not forgotten and a part of the nightmare of the black dog days.

“There was a particular officer present through that day and Gaz watched as he carried out acts of violence that can only be described as evil. We have a partial identification of the offender, Russian military, but we would require – before we can take more appropriate action – a specific identification. We want to put Gaz into the city of Murmansk – quite close to a friendly frontier – have him take a good sighting of our suspect and then slip away… We’ll have a face and a name, and then we’ll do the necessary. That’s later and does not involve him. Getting him in and getting him out, we do covertly, and I would want to assure you, Aggie, that we have a reputation for competence in such areas, not easily gained but deserved. That’s what we’re talking about and Gaz is quite naturally wary of an old world he hoped was behind him… If there was another way then I would not have come banging on the door, but there is not. I want to see a brutal and sadistic roughneck face the consequences of his actions, and I need Gaz’s help. He’d be away only a week… My own opinion is that carrying out this task would be a help to the convalescence he needs. Not walking away but going forward when he has to. A girl witnessed what he saw. She’s stepped up to the plate, and Gaz wouldn’t want to turn his back on her. Not often a man has a chance to ‘make a difference’, strong ambition but rarely an opportunity. This is it, an opportunity… To tell you the truth, I’d be more than grateful for a cup of tea.”

They turned together, in unison, and came towards the door.

He unfastened the chain, opened the door. Knacker stood back. Gave them space and Gaz hated him for it because that was acceptance of victory. Aggie took him in her arms and hugged him, squirming close. She had come through a storm to be with him and not many from Westray or the adjacent island would have hitched a lift in that pitching swell, had done it to be with him. The loneliness clawed at him. She broke away, went to the kitchen and he heard her begin to rifle in his cupboards for mugs and milk and tea bags.

Beside him, Knacker had started to strip. Water lapped on the linoleum. Raincoat dropped and shoes shed, and suit trousers and suit jacket and shirt and socks and tie, and a vest and underpants that seemed to Gaz to be from a different age, heavier than anything other than what Betty bought for Bobby Riley…

A week after Gaz had done his school-leaving exams, Bobby had slipped in cattle shit in the yard and had fractured his pelvis. A month later, while Gaz and Betty managed the milking, the hobbling Bobby had entertained men in suits who came to consider buying the farm. Gaz had shown one of them around the acreage and talked of the wildlife and pointed to a den and a sett. He was an army officer, on leave and doing the driving for his brother, the moneybags. A decent guy, and interested in the terrain and giving Gaz time to explain. The sale went through fast, and Bobby and Betty had gone to a bungalow in Criccieth on the Lleyn peninsula and the parting shot had been that “You’ll be all right, lad, never in doubt you’ll be fine, and us – never want to see a field or a cow’s arse again as long as we both draw breath.” Now, more than ten years later Gaz didn’t know whether they were alive or dead, didn’t know that old-style underpants like Bobby’s were still worn. The Stoke-on-Trent recruiters had put him into the Logistics Corps and told him to be ‘patient’.

Aggie had scooped up all Knacker’s discarded clothes and put them into the drier, and gave him Gaz’s dressing-gown, and passed him a mug of tea. Neither of them had flinched, looked away, registered a reaction while Knacker had been naked: Gaz had noticed. He was good at noticing, always had been.

She said, “You’ll do that – you will, won’t you?”

Gaz nodded.

Aggie kissed him and he saw the fleeting, half-hearted smile of Knacker, like taking kids’ sweets was nothing to be proud of, and was kissed again. He went into the bedroom to fill a grip, and the drier churned in the kitchen, and he heard his Aggie and his tormentor talking history: she was on Orkney’s old monuments and he was gently explaining his love of the Roman artefacts that the archaeologists dug up near Hadrian’s Wall. He could not have refused, wouldn’t have known how, and remembered the officer – what the officer had done.

Doubt from her, fleeting, “You’ll be all right, won’t you? Just ‘in and out’. Yes?”

And remembered how it had been and how the illness had scourged him and felt Debbie’s chin against his fist, and the pain of the handcuffs on his wrists, and the shaking and shame of standing in the dock of a magistrate’s court, and coming to the island and the hope that the past was buried deep and could not resurface.

“I expect so…”

Gaz walked down the path to the gate, over the gravel where Knacker had sat through the night, and Aggie trailed after him. The island’s taxi waited for them and Knacker was by the open rear door, and his clothes – after a fashion – had dried in the machine and were almost wearable.