Alan Judd - A Breed of Heroes

‘No, sir,’ said the driver with complete confidence and without looking in the mirror.

‘How do you know?’

The driver grinned. ‘His driver’s in the back with us. That’s what comes of all the hurry.’

The search lasted all day and covered several grid squares on the one-inch map. The land was very flat with many ditches and marshes and few trees. The weather was crisp and clear and it was a pleasant day’s walk for those who had slept. No one really knew what they were looking for nor where to look. At about mid-morning they came across some tinkers with their horses and caravans. They were small, sullen, frightened-looking people from across the border who resisted any attempt to get to know them by speaking only Gaelic, and little enough of that.

There was a lunchtime rendezvous with one of the lorries, from which they were served pints of hot Army tea and sandwiches. Charles said to Nigel Beale, ‘Why didn’t you tell us last night that we were going to do this?’

‘Need to know.’ Nigel munched briskly. ‘The only ones who knew were those without whom it couldn’t be done.’

‘What about those who are doing it?’

‘No need to know.’

‘Do you really expect to find anything?’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘What are we looking for?’

‘Arms and explosives.’

‘Yes, but any particular sort?’

‘Need to know.’

During the afternoon the CO hovered overhead in a helicopter, causing everyone to poke more purposefully into the ditches and derelict barns. By last light the only thing found was a rusty shotgun in one of the latter.

When Charles got back, feeling very flat and tired, he had to see that his platoon cleaned their kit and their weapons properly as Sergeant Wheeler had once again disappeared. It turned out that he had been delayed returning from the search area as the provisions lorry, in which he should not have been, had become stuck in a bog and had to be towed out. By the time Charles got back to his own quarters all the baths were occupied and by the time he got into one the hot water was cold. However, the cold bath refreshed him sufficiently to turn his flatness into decisiveness for a while and, knowing he would soon be too tired again to bother, he sat down and quickly wrote a letter to the Retirements Board. He said that he was considering resigning, giving no reasons, and asked under what conditions his resignation might be accepted. He had been thinking about doing this for some time but had hesitated to take such a decisive and eventually public step. He knew that his resignation would have to be submitted through the CO, but he did not yet want the CO to know that he wished to leave. He would feel more sure of his ground when he knew whether or not it was possible to leave. He told no one what he was doing.

That done, he went over to the Mess but it was too early for dinner and, as chance would have it, he found himself alone with the CO, who was warming his backside against the fire. ‘Have a whisky,’ said the CO. It was not an invitation that could be refused. The CO looked tired and drawn and Charles, feeling guilty for what he had just done, as though he had betrayed the CO in some personal way, made a show of enthusiasm. ‘Pity about today,’ continued the CO. ‘Would have done the battalion a power of good to have found something. Good for morale. Nothing worse than trudging round fields all day and not finding anything. I know, I’ve done it myself. And of course if one person finds something it makes everyone else look that much harder. Still, there you are, can’t be helped. Stuff had probably been moved before we got there.’

‘What was it, sir?’

‘Four hundred pounds of home-made explosives in animal feed sacks. I think we were fairly thorough, don’t you? Don’t think we could’ve missed it.’

‘I think we were as thorough as possible under the circumstances.’

‘Yes, that’s what I thought. You can’t really tell when you’re hovering up in the air like a bloody kestrel. Easy to get the wrong impression.’

Charles sat next to Chatsworth during dinner and heard how his contribution to the search had been to shoot a rat in a ditch with his rifle. This probably accounted for the shot that had been reported by the RUC. Whilst looking for what was left of the rat — he wanted to see what the bullet had done — Chatsworth had sunk up to his knees in slime and, judging by the stench of his trousers, socks and boots afterwards, had concluded that the ditch was formed by the overflow from a cesspit. He had attempted to exchange trousers, socks and boots for new pairs by claiming that there were no cleaning facilities that could cope with the contamination, but had been rudely rebuffed by the misanthropic quartermaster.

‘They’re all the same, QMs,’ Chatsworth complained in a low, bitter voice. ‘They all see their job as to prevent you from getting kit rather than to provide you with it. You’d think they had to pay for the stuff themselves. I reckon if our QM ever had to issue the whole battalion with new boots he’d go into a decline and not eat for a week. Except that, knowing him, he’d eat even more and dock it from our rations. I’ll get the stuff clean eventually but it means our room’s going to stink for a bit.’

‘Can’t you keep it outside?’ asked Charles.

‘Not without someone pinching it.’

‘Who’d want it in that state?’

‘The QM for one. He’d take anything if he could get it without exchanging. People would pinch it out of spite.’

‘And what about the bullet?’

‘What bullet?’

‘The one you shot the rat with. You’ll have to account for it. You’ll be one round short.’

‘That’ll be all right. We’re bound to get through a few dozen rounds in Belfast. At least, I hope we are. I hope it’s not going to be as dull as this place. Anyway, I’ve got some of my own from home. I always carry a few with me.’

After dinner the Mess cleared unusually rapidly. Tramping around all day seemed to have tired people. Charles had reached that stage of sleeplessness when he was prepared to delay going to bed, the better to savour the prospect of sleeping soundly no matter what noise was made by A company going up and down the tunnel outside their room, and no matter what stench Chatsworth had introduced within it. He lingered over a whisky.

Chatsworth sat back in his armchair and languidly crossed his legs, as though he were about to conduct a tutorial. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever killed anyone?’ he asked offhandedly.

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Do you want to?’

‘Not particularly, though I don’t object to the idea. It depends on who and why.’ It struck Charles that the conversation was beginning to sound very like conversations with Henry Sandy about sex. His replies were disturbingly similar. At the back of his mind there was a suspicion that he might quite like to kill someone just to see what it felt like, though it would never do to admit that to Chatsworth. ‘Why, have you killed anyone?’ he asked.

Chatsworth looked shifty. ‘Well, not really. Sort of but not properly.’

‘D’you mean they recovered?’

‘No, no. No question of that. It’s just that it wasn’t deliberate.’

Chatsworth looked embarrassed, as though he regretted having raised the subject. However, discomfiture of Chatsworth was too rare an experience for Charles to be able to resist exploring it. ‘Come on, what do you mean? What happened? Was it today?’

‘No, no. No. It was — you won’t tell anyone, will you? I won’t like it to get out, you see. It was an old woman in Bogota. I ran her over at night. Pure accident. Didn’t matter very much because they just leave the bodies on the streets out there. I don’t know who she was. But as I didn’t mean it I can’t really claim it as a kill.’