Alan Judd - A Breed of Heroes

Colin’s office was on the first floor of the building above the entrance, overlooking the street. The police station had been built during the late 1950s and, like many of Ulster’s police stations, was halfway towards being a fortified barracks from its very inception. There were steel shutters on all the windows through which the defenders could fire, if necessary, by sliding little peep-holes to one side. The office floor, Charles was told, was eighteen inches of reinforced concrete and supposed to be blast-proof. Surprisingly, though, the entrance to the police reception area was unguarded — on orders from some civilian official, who was anxious that members of the public should not feel intimidated in coming to police stations. There was an Army guard inside, however. It did not take Charles long to settle in, if dumping his kit on a bed in the corner of a disused office could be called settling in. At least this time the bed was a real one, with blankets and sheets.

Charles was then sent down to the military hospital to be ‘put in the picture’ — a very common phrase — about his new duties by Philip Lamb. Philip was in a junior officers’ ward for not too serious cases, a quiet and lightly populated place. His right foot was bandaged and supported. He was propped up on pillows, reading David Stirling’s account of the formation of the Long Range Desert Patrol Group, later to become the Special Air Service. Philip was one of the few officers Charles had met who seemed to take a serious interest in war. His neat, precise face looked as worried and anxious as usual but he smiled when he saw Charles. ‘I’m so glad it’s you,’ he said. ‘Do sit down. The CO was going to appoint Chatsworth, of all people. Can you imagine? He’d kill somebody, he’s so tactless. I sent a message to him through Colin saying that you were the only officer in the battalion who could read English, let alone write it. He must have listened to me for once. Because, of course, it is a job that requires a certain amount of judgment, as you’ll have gathered, and you have to be able to see things from the point of view of a civilian. It’s ridiculous to suppose that most of our comrades-in-arms could ever do that. You were the obvious choice. Of course, your problem’s the other way round, if anything. You’ll have no problem about not being too military but you mustn’t let them forget that you are in the Army. Hope you don’t mind being pushed into it like this?’

‘It didn’t take much pushing. I was only too pleased to get out of the Factory.’

‘Of course, yes. Must’ve been rather grim there. I’m sorry to leave the job, to be honest. I didn’t want to. I could’ve come back when I’m better but the CO didn’t seem to want me. I think he’s rather angry about what I did, though it could have happened to anyone, as far as I can see. Just one of those things.’ He closed his book and changed his position carefully. ‘There are a few perks to the job, you know, apart from meeting the journalists, who are very nice. You can occasionally put on civilian clothes and visit their offices, and you don’t have to do watchkeeping.’

‘I do.’

‘Do you really?’ Philip looked puzzled. ‘I never did. Perhaps they didn’t trust me. Anyway, you’ll find all the necessary files in my office, as well as a kind of Who’s Who of the press in Northern Ireland. The PR desk at HQ are also very helpful. That’s another little swan you can arrange for yourself — visits to them. Not that they’re a waste of time, far from it. But it’s just very good to get out of battalion HQ now and again. Clears the cobwebs of the mind a little and even breathes hope of life into the soul. Perhaps that’s going a bit far, but you know what I mean. It’s good to get out.’

‘Thanks. What about the press themselves?’

‘Very charming on the whole. I think so, anyway. Of course, you have to protect them from the CO. He can be quite beastly and ruin in a minute all the good-will you’ve built up over a month. Actually, I think he’s terrified of them, though there are a couple you have to be careful with, I must admit. There’s one called Brian Beazely who’s the most awful incompetent, drunken bore, to be avoided because he’s a nuisance rather than malicious — has been known to misquote rather embarrassingly. And then no one ever believes your side of it. They all think you must have said whatever it was because it’s there in print. Such is the power of Master Caxton. And the other one to watch for is Colm McColm of the Gazette , the Southern Irish Gazette . He’s very anti, and the trouble with him is he’ll quote you exactly, which is almost as bad. Very pro-IRA. Probably in it, for all I know. He can hear a whisper from two streets away, so watch him. Always asks awkward questions in public.’

‘Where do you meet them?’

‘Oh, they’ll come to you. You’ll get to know them soon enough.’ He fidgeted a little with the bedclothes and Charles was about to ask him about his foot, which he would have done before had Philip not been so eager to talk about the job, when he continued morosely: ‘I suppose you’ll have my pistol. I’m sure there’s something wrong with it, you know. I wish they’d let me just have another look at it. I took it on the range four times and it misfired on three. Then it fires when it shouldn’t. The armourer examined it and said it was just me but I don’t think he was interested, so do be careful, Charles. As it was, I was rather lucky. Apparently, I’ll be all right, but I’ll have to learn to walk again, they tell me. It was the first time I’d ever hit anything with it.’

Charles tried to be cheerful. ‘Perhaps you’ll get compensation. Terrorists do, don’t they? So there’s no reason why you shouldn’t.’

‘If I did it might go some way towards paying the fine, but I don’t suppose I shall. I mean, they look at it differently if you do it yourself. I’ve found my insurance doesn’t cover it either. D’you know, the CO was going to charge me with self-inflicted injury, a court-martial offence, I think? I had to fill in no end of forms to prove it wasn’t deliberate, though how they prove anything, I don’t know.’

Philip was looking increasingly miserable. Charles made another effort. ‘What are the other people in here like?’

‘Oh, all right, I s’pose. Usual sorts, you know. Trouble is, they were all shot by someone else. It makes a difference. That I wasn’t and that I am the education officer has become something of a joke. The whole hospital knows about it and all the visitors. Some of them even come to see me and laugh. I think it’s all a little insensitive to be honest.’

Philip had been a joke in the battalion ever since joining it, and his manner of leaving delighted nearly everyone. However, he was soon forgotten about by all except Charles, who was really no more at home with a pistol than Philip had been and who feared daily to share his predecessor’s fate. Though less cumbersome and heavy than the rifle he had been used to, the disadvantage of the Browning was that it had to be carried at all times, with two full magazines of ammunition, on pain of a heavy fine. It was so odd to be taking a pistol to the bath, or tucking it under the pillow, that it was not difficult to remember it on these occasions. The difficulty was to remember it at the meal-table or at the desk. When indoors Charles generally wore it tied around his waist or in his pocket and when out he wore it in its holster in the cross-draw position, mainly because it was more comfortable to sit in the Land-Rover with it that way round. Either way, it was a mental as well as a physical burden, and he felt some rare sympathy for the gun-toting boys who were supposed to be trying to kill him. At least he did not have to hide it as well as remember it.