at the pictures Sarah had pasted on the walls, and an outline of a face gazed down at him. It had no eyes, nose or mouth and was an enemy… He couldn’t imagine where they were, Foxy and Badger, or how they were.
She was in front of him, inside the bakery, waiting to be served. He and Beryl were next in the queue, and he must have banged her elbow with the sleeve that held the two parts of the pole that carried the standard of his Royal British Legion branch. She turned, and he recognised her. She smiled, and he sensed that Beryl didn’t understand.
‘Hello,’ Doug Bentley said. ‘So, you’re back again.’
‘I come to quite a few,’ she answered, and gave a little shrug. ‘Afterwards I get some bread here.’
It had been a big turn-out that day. He and Beryl had done their usual thing. One bus from their own village into Swindon, then the 12 from Swindon to Wootton Bassett. They had met friends – the new colleagues they had come to know from their journeys to the town… too many of those journeys.
He did not think it impertinent to ask: ‘Are you often here, in the town?’
She said, ‘Only when they’re bringing the heroes through. It’s so moving, so emotional. I come when I can. I always see you.’
He had his position, with his standard, in the line and opposite the war memorial. He was well placed each time and faced the relatives who had brought flowers, usually roses from the florist behind the library. ‘I wouldn’t miss it,’ Doug Bentley said. ‘It’s a responsibility I’ve been given by our branch to be here. The way I see it, I’d be letting them down, those coming through, if I wasn’t here, if I just reckoned to be too busy. It’s a responsibility and a privilege.’
‘You’re right.’
The customer at the counter had paid, picked up the paper bag with chocolate caramel slices and now eased out of her way. She asked for a loaf and he took a step forward. Beryl was fidgeting in her purse for coins. It had been a big turn-out because of the work the serviceman had done in Afghanistan. Ammunition technical officer – explosive ordnance disposal – down on hands and knees, defusing roadside bombs. Many photographs of him, young, a sergeant, had been held up by relatives, and posters with messages of love and admiration. So many of those who came through Wootton Bassett had been cut down by the bombs, and this man had lost his life in trying to make the wretched things safe. In his own military service – Pay Corps, National Service, never out of the UK – Doug Bentley had never come across any officer or NCO who would have attracted the level of support that the bomb men had when the bell tolled in the High Street, the hearse came up the incline and the funeral director walked with his top hat off and his staff in his hand. When the relatives had had their chance to put the flowers on the roof and touch the shiny black bodywork, that day, there had been rivulets of rain running down through the flowers, and tears cascading down faces. Doug Bentley had had his head lowered in respect and his eye had been on the black ribbon at the top of the pole above his standard. He did not know why good men, so loved and held in such regard, needed to chance their lives in defusing dangerous devices out in the middle of deserts, and in ditches beside fields.
She paid. She faced him and smiled. ‘I’ve changed my hair. Fancy you recognising me.’
He’d known her because of the chain round her neck and the name in gold letters hanging above her blouse, resting on the skin where the cleavage started.
He lied, with a grin: ‘I’m good with faces – and good with names, Ellie.’ He didn’t say he recognised her because the buttons of her blouse, worn under an open winter coat, were out of order, as if they had been fastened in a hurry.
She was gone, and the shop’s doorbell rang as she closed the door behind her. He asked for a loaf, a cob.
His wife’s voice grated in his ear: ‘She’s been shagging again, hasn’t she? It’s that tart you spoke to in the summer. A woman can always tell. She’s wearing a wedding ring, so it’s a boyfriend she’s been shagging, and she’ll have a husband who’s being two-timed and is too pathetic to know it.’
‘Can you not, Foxy – for fuck’s sake – stop your hand moving?’
‘I’m trying.’
‘Can’t you try harder?’
Rare for Badger to criticise, and rare for him to be with an oppo he hadn’t chosen, doing continuous stags with only faint chances of a doze, not proper sleep. Last time it had been like a holiday-camp talent contest, except that Ged hadn’t been stripped down to a bikini. He had chosen his oppo after going to the line manager and complaining they’d shown out because George had coughed in a bush and they’d had to bloody run: George was dumped; feet didn’t touch the ground. He would have preferred a rookie with him now, someone who had no knowledge of the tradecraft of covert rural work, who would take orders and do as he was instructed, and who had been there only to listen for Farsi talk. Badger had good hearing, and the shake of the hand beside him was an increasing irritation, like a dripping tap. They’d had the confession about the language.
‘I can’t stop it.’
‘You’re tired, I’m tired. You’re hungry and thirsty, so am I. You’re stressed, I’m stressed. You’re shaking, I’m not.’
‘I’m doing my best.’
‘Not good enough. Try biting it.’
The confession had been the final issue. He could almost take the shake of Foxy’s hand, with the rustle of the dead fronds. It was what he had said to Badger that had made a tipping point. He’d hidden it, and now he’d trotted it out.
A car, with a military escort riding inside the cab, had pulled up at the front of the house. A man had climbed out, then gone to the back and opened a rear door. He had extracted a bouquet of flowers, massive and colourful, then gone towards the officer, Mansoor. They had spoken, the man had been taken to the door and the wife had come out. She had accepted the flowers, and the car had driven away. Badger had seen in the glasses that she had had to fight to control her tears.
‘What happened?’ he’d asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Isn’t it working? Is the gear down?’
‘Gear’s great.’
‘Why don’t you know?’
‘It’s the language.’
The children were out again, and the officer had gone back to fishing, no bites, and smoking. Badger could see the flowers inside, through the open window. Hadn’t anyone known? Not the Boss, the American, the Israeli, or fucking Foulkes himself? Had they known and kept quiet? In the confession the star word had been dialect. There were dialects in Farsi. Tribes had dialects, regions had dialects, the north and south had dialects, as did the east and west. There was the vernacular and there was the classical. Foxy had classical, but the vernacular was what the troops spoke and the officer spoke. In the confession it was stated that half of what came through the earphones was ‘rough translation’ and half was accurate. How had Foulkes managed with the interrogation team? He hadn’t enough of the language to grasp the nuances that betrayed a man’s lie. The diplomats he had tracked out of London, who had talked with young militants in students’ unions, were educated and spoke classical. What could he not understand? He hadn’t understood what the officer said to the man who brought the flowers, or most of what the Engineer had said to his wife, but he had been fine on the meeting she’d taken because that had been formal.
The hands shook.
They were together, hip against hip, shoulder against shoulder, two plastic bags by their knees and four bottles of urine. They might not even understand the mention of a destination, if they were lucky enough to hear one.
Badger said, ‘You’re useless, full of shit.’
‘You’re arrogant, full of conceit and piss. You – you wouldn’t even have scraped through in my day.’
‘I passed out well.’
‘My day it was a proper test. Your day, Health and fucking Safety killed the hard bits. You wouldn’t have come through.’
He was drawn in – shouldn’t have been. ‘I was top rated in marks.’
‘Did you do the claustrophobia one, buried in a box with a pencil-wide air vent, in darkness, silence, and last
