Jonathan Lee - High Dive

Schoolkids sprinting along the beach in plimsolls. Thoughts of Physical Education, the old concrete playground at his school, wearing his gutties, running around in circles in the cold, the warming smell of vulcanised rubber — a shadow of the scent you caught in class when you erased an answer from a page. When a breeze rolled in from the Channel the gulls paused to rearrange their wings. A better future. A fairer one. ‘Stand up and be counted,’ Mick liked to say. ‘Then sit down and get cunted.’

You had to remember you were at war. Catholics burned out of their homes like heretics. Occupied territory. Legislative power held back. Impose a dictatorship and call it democracy. If the average Englishman knew all that was happening in Belfast they’d cheer him on, they would, they would …

‘Before I watch you go in,’ Dawson said. ‘Before I do my dis-appearing act. Before all that, I want to make clear that we’re clear.’

‘We’re clear.’

‘Are we, though?’

‘We’re clear.’

‘One more.’

Dan sighed. These team talks were depressing. ‘We’re clear.’

A shabby man in a red jacket walked along the shore, crazy hair, chattering to himself, happy.

‘I ask for three nights. I pay cash up front. The hotel has space for me to extend my stay. They tell me my room number. I place it in the mental floor plan. I ask for another if necessary.’

‘Chess.’

‘Snooker. I’ve got no time for chess.’

‘One move and the move after that, Danny. Something unbeatable about the sound of two balls crashing together. The first good thing, don’t you think, that British Army officers invented?’

Worlds disappearing into pockets. The excitement of travel. Clean geometry, safe ballistics, each ball suspended and directed. Touch and withdraw with a thin polished cue. Resettle and aim. Dan blinked.

‘I tell the receptionist —’

‘In your nice rehearsed English accent.’

‘I tell her I’ll pay cash up front.’

‘You run an electrical business. You’ve a job at the Metropole. You didn’t want to stay there because you don’t like to mix business and pleasure. You’ve added on a weekend to breathe some fine sea air, and your father always said this hotel was the-oh-most-wonderful-place.’

‘Don’t bring him into it.’

‘You need stories in reserve, Daniel. Don’t volunteer them. Sure. But you need them there.’

‘And if for some reason I’ve been watched. If Special Branch come down the stairs.’

‘Or out of the back office. Or up from the basement. Or out of the sweet eyes of a nearby old lady.’

‘I ask what’s going on.’

‘You show them your surprise.’

‘I give them the story, and if after a certain number of hours they seem to have something on me, then I say —’

‘What do you say?’

I refuse to cooperate but this does not mean I’m guilty. I would like this noted on the record. I wish to be represented by Madden & Finuncane.

‘Even if they’ve dragged you back to Castlereagh,’ Dawson said. ‘Even if the walls are white and the door is white and the floor tiles are white and the blanket is white. You’ll sit there, naked, refusing to wear their wee white pocketless clothes, won’t you? And what will be in your private world?’

‘My what?’

‘Come on, get it on.’

‘I’ll start to write in my head a book about glass.’

‘Glass!’

It was a thing. He’d read a chapter in a library book, made some notes. The way its mass production came to change the world, showing up muck and clarifying perspectives. Mirrors, monocles, windows. Light entering rooms, touching floors, illuminating enclosed spaces and framing a view. Think about that and conjugate his verbs. Yo escapo, tu escapas. Something about the Spanish language made him want to laugh. The laughs were few these days.

‘Glass,’ Dawson said again, seeming to find something disturbing in the word. He tossed a stone towards a seagull. ‘Your gift for self-deceit, Dan. What a beauty of a gift it is. Pushing through panels to get at the plumbing behind, braiding wires between your fingers, wrapping secret little things in cellophane … I knew from the start that you were a distance man.’

‘I go to the downstairs lavatories.’

Dawson leaned forward and scratched at his ankle. ‘Woof. Dead on. You watch out for the cat that seems to like to bite the shite out of everybody.’

‘Four cubicles there’ll be and I’ll check. If they’re all vacant I go into one and flush.’

‘You make yourself a nice soft blanket of sound.’

‘Stop interrupting.’

‘The old sounds of the hotel’s plumbing overhead.’

‘I unzip the bag that holds the bedlinen and towels. I smooth Vaseline through my eyelashes, my eyebrows. I use bog paper to dab away the excess gloop. I get my tub of hair gel —’

‘Jimmy’s Wet Look, I hope. Supporting Bobby.’

‘And I run some through my hair. Keep the hairs from falling out. If I need to take a crap I take a crap there, downstairs.’

‘Everything’s evidence,’ Dawson said. ‘Remember that, eh?’ He put on a David Attenborough voice. He liked to do that these days, a reference to Ancient Jones and his screaming TV. ‘“Unlike the grey wolf, the spotted hyena relies more on sight than smell —”’

‘Very good, Dawson. You should have your own show.’

‘Already have, more or less. You don’t think this is reality , do you? Now. When you’re back we burn it, Danny. The bedlinen, the clothes, even those nice new shoes. Burn it and forget and do your gardening. They’ll call you an animal, but forget it all. This is more serious than other jobs you’ve done. This is a big wee deal for you. I want everything back, to burn. I want you back, Pinkie, for the hero’s welcome.’

‘Pinkie?’

Dawson hurled a stone. Toddler wandering nearby. Mother shot a disapproving glance. Dawson dipped his head and said, in a low voice, ashamed for maybe the first time in his life, ‘Carry on then, carry on.’

‘I put the gloves back on and I go upstairs.’

‘The lift, I suppose?’

‘Stairs. Put my sheets over their sheets, on the bed. Change the pillowcases.’

‘And you stay the night, wait for Patrick. And when Patrick’s there …’

‘Finalise plans. Fire exits. Intelligence.’

‘And the last day of your stay.’

‘We do the job.’

The 555 timer.

The 470K ohm resistor.

The 5m ohm resistor.

The PNP transistor.

A poetry even to the grimmest of things. Everything given its beautiful due.

He would unwrap the slab of Semtex from its wax paper. He would pop the bath panel. He would set the timer, bury the bomb, and they’d get themselves back home.

‘No.’

‘ No? ’

‘When Patrick arrives your thoughts stop. You do whatever he tells you to do.’

Stones protesting under Dawson’s arse. Looking at Dan with new energy now. Speaking in a rich warm voice, a kind of incantation. ‘The Lord Chancellor,’ he said. ‘The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The Lord Privy Seal, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. The Chief Whip, the git, the slimy perv. The Minister without Portfolio. The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Fuckery. The Secretaries of State for the Home Department, for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, for Defence, for Education and Science, for Employment, for Energy.’ He coughed. ‘For Environment.’ He coughed again. ‘For Health . Trade and Industry. Transport. The Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister. The Secretaries of State for Scotland and for Wales and for good old Northern Ireland .’