Alan Judd - A Breed of Heroes

‘Back room,’ said the man, in a matter-of-fact way.

‘He shares wid his brothers,’ added the woman quickly. ‘He’s no harm, they’re no harm, none of them.’ She pulled the girl closer to her. One of the soldiers came in with two boys, one in his teens and the other about nine or ten. They were tousled and frightened. The smaller one wore dirty underpants and the elder held a pair of jeans around himself. The soldier who shepherded them in looked embarrassed. ‘Found them upstairs, sir. No more.’ He went back up the stairs.

Sergeant Mole then left the room and the woman put her arm round the girl, as though to prevent her from being touched by anyone. The little boy sat on the tatty sofa and the elder one stood sullenly by the electric fire, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. The man said something which Charles had to ask him to repeat. He said it again but Charles’s ear was unaccustomed to the thick West Belfast accent. Finally, the man repeated the four words with sarcastic slowness. ‘Is-he-all-right?’

Charles was concentrating so much on understanding that he had to think for a moment who was meant. ‘Yes — yes, as far as I know,’ he said. ‘I think he’s all right. There was no trouble, I believe.’

‘Where is he?’

‘He’s in custody. I’m afraid I don’t know where. I wasn’t there.’ There was a silence. Charles felt sorry for the people and wanted to say so, but he knew that anything he said or did would be filtered through the medium of his boots, beret, flak jacket and rifle. There was no escaping his role. ‘I’ll try to find out for you,’ he said lamely in the end. Advertisements flickered soundlessly across the television screen. The man moved an ashtray from the arm of the sofa to the mantelpiece.

‘I’ll make tay,’ muttered the woman. She took her hand from her face and walked with tightly-folded arms out of the room. The girl ran after her.

‘I’ll see if I can find out where your son is,’ Charles said again, but the fat man turned his back and sat on the sofa without speaking. The two boys stared. Charles went upstairs and asked Sergeant Mole, who was turning out a cupboard in the front bedroom. ‘This hasn’t been turned out since the house was built,’ he said with genuine disgust. ‘You can smell it in the street, I reckon.’ By the time Charles got back down the woman had made the tea and was standing sipping it, holding the cup in both hands. ‘He’s in Hastings Street police station,’ he said.

The woman’s eyes, enlarged by her spectacles, looked directly at him for the first time. ‘He’s never in no trouble,’ she said. ‘He ain’t any of them. He don’t have no trouble wid him.’ Her lips trembled. ‘God strike me dead if I lie.’

Charles was called out of the room by a voice from upstairs. As he left the room he caught his rifle butt on the door-jamb. He looked back to apologise but said nothing.

His corporal was at the top of the stairs. ‘Found something, sir,’ he said in a low voice. ‘In the back room.’ The room was very small and there was hardly room to move around the double bed. It was where the three boys slept, and was filthy. The room stank. One of the policemen held up the top end of the mattress. On an old brown blanket beneath was a rusty revolver with a broken handle. It seemed a pitiful gesture. Sergeant Mole picked it up in a piece of cloth. ‘Old Webley,’ he said. ‘Very old. Loaded, too. Silly young fool. It’ll have his paw-marks all over, I don’t doubt. What a place to hide it, eh?’

Nothing more was found in the rest of the house. Sergeant Mole showed the revolver to the family in the living room. They gazed sullenly at it. The woman blinked tearfully. ‘He’s had no trouble before,’ she said. ‘He niver told us he had that. It’s no hisn, it can’t be. Someone else has put it there.’ She pressed a tightly-screwed handkerchief to her thin nose. ‘It’s never his, it can’t be his. He never told us about it. Dear God, it can’t be hisn. He would’ve said. He’s not with them. He’s not a part of it.’

Sergeant Mole wrapped the revolver preciously in a piece of cloth. The man stared at the threadbare carpet. No one looked up at them when they left.

Only one of the other houses searched yielded anything, in this case a worthwhile find. There was an old British Army.303 Lee-Enfield rifle, two hundred rounds of 7.62 ammunition, twenty pounds of home-made explosive and, under the floor of a shed, a home-made mortar. The CO was delighted and stayed in the area of the search longer than was necessary in the hope of provoking a riot which he could quell, but none came. It was likely that the trouble, if there were any, would be a planned demonstration some days later, although even this was not that likely since trouble usually followed fruitless rather than successful searches.

Back in the Factory the CO had drinks in the ops room and ordered everyone to join him. Drink and his own boisterous good humour accentuated all his normal characteristics, and he gave a lecture on the Lee-Enfield, using the captured one as a demonstration model. When he had finished, his eyes lighted upon Charles. ‘Ah, Charles, I want to speak to you.’ Still holding the rifle, he grabbed Charles by the arm and propelled him into a corner where he spoke in low, earnest, conspiratorial terms, apparently imagining that no one else was listening. ‘You’ve done well, you’ve done bloody well, but it’s not on, I’m afraid. Politicians won’t allow it. Too much of a hot potato. Sorry to disappoint you.’

‘Right, sir.’ Charles was not certain that he knew what the CO was talking about, but it was a response that worked its usual magic.

‘Good man. Knew you’d take it like that.’ He squeezed Charles’s arm hard, his dark eyes brimming with sincerity and alcohol. ‘It’s infuriating, I know. We know they’re there but we can’t touch them. Had it right from the top. They must have a source. Keep it under your hat. And to think they could be used on my soldiers, that’s what makes me want to scream blue murder. I’d raze the place to the ground if I had my way. Rid these poor people of their priests, their politicians and their paramilitary thugs — and us, mind you, and us — and give them a chance to get on with their lives in peace. The day will come, I hope. For the time being no joy, though. But you did well, Charles. Let’s have more of it.’

The CO grinned and punched Charles playfully in the stomach. His face was so close that Charles could see the back of his tongue. ‘Good man. Have another drink. Don’t argue. We’ll knock this university stuff out of you yet.’

Charles made his escape unnoticed after the CO had finished with him. He lay down in his partition but could hear the drinking going on for another couple of hours. Months later it fell to the company officers to pay for the drinks.

The company’s spirits remained relatively high for some days after the arms finds. The shooting of Chatsworth also contributed to good morale. Everyone was amused because it was Chatsworth, and the story was put about, to his annoyance, that he really had been shot by a monk. Soldiers made jests to him about what clerical gentlemen carried beneath their vestments, and how the real meaning of Holy Orders was ‘Aim — steady — fire’. Spirits were lifted by the mere fact of a shooting, since something happening was always more exciting than nothing.

The worst times for everyone were periods of inactivity during which the boredom and the drudgery of military life wore on remorselessly. Like everyone else, Charles was short on sleep and temper and was, indeed, more tired than during active periods because then the excitement was stimulating and the tiredness healthy. Living conditions in the all-male military community were cheerless and sordid; patrolling, guarding, cleaning and watchkeeping formed a grinding and unending routine.