glass set into concrete.
‘What’s she said?’
‘She hasn’t said anything. I haven’t asked her anything.’
‘Asked her anything, “Major”…’
‘I haven’t asked her anything, Major.’
A thin mattress was on the bed. The bed was a slab block of concrete. A blanket of serge grey was folded on the mattress. He felt raw anger towards her. She had destroyed him.
‘Well, Barnes, what the hell is this about?’
She sat on the mattress. Her arms were around her knees, which were pulled up against her chest.
‘Waiting, Barnes. Why, in God’s name, did you do that?’
She was pale, except for the red welt at the side of her neck where the chop of the minder’s hand had caught her.
‘Don’t play the bloody madam. You’re in a pit of trouble. Bugger me about and you’ll be sorry. Why did you do it?’
She gazed back at him. Just once she breathed deeply, grimaced, and he remembered the kick she had taken in the ribs. Her body shook, her shoulders and her knees, but her face was expressionless. No insolence, no defiance, no fear.
‘Assault, actual bodily harm, grievous bodily harm, could even be Official Secrets Act. Barnes, understand me, you’re for the jump, so don’t fuck with me.’
Ben Christie glanced at him, contempt. ‘Tracy, you know us and we know you, you work with us and you trust us. Please, Tracy..
She said nothing. She gazed at them, through them. She seemed so small, hunched on the mattress, so vulnerable.
‘We’ll squeeze it out of you, damn sure we will. Last time, what was it about?’
Ben Christie said gently, like he was talking with that damn dog, ‘All we want to do is help, Tracy, but we have to know why.’
There was the shake in her shoulders and knees. It could have been the shock, but he’d have sworn that she was quite in control, so calm. The silence hung around them. The way she sat, the way she held her knees, he could see up her thighs. He turned away. The blood was in the veins of his cheeks.
‘Don’t damn well come back to me tomorrow, next week, with your story and expect sympathy from me. Made your own bed, Barnes, and you can bloody well lie on it.’
Captain Christie reached out his hand to her, as if to touch her. ‘Please, Tracy, I meant it. I meant it absolutely when I said we wanted to help you…’
She flinched away. She rejected him, said nothing. Johnson looked at his watch. The Colonel had given him two hours and he’d eaten into that time. He turned on his heel and the Captain, no bloody spine, followed him out into the corridor. He called the sergeant and told him to secure the cell, no access, no visitors, without his express permission. Out again into the night… Maybe he should have belted her… He led. No small-talk between them, Captain Christie stayed a pace behind.
They were on a gravel path, and Walsh came past them. He was carrying the big cardboard box that held his leaving present, flanked by his chums from Irish postings. He’d heard they were going on to dinner in Ashford. The clique stepped off the gravel, made way for him and Christie, stood silent like an honour guard. They walked on and heard belly laughs behind them. Into G/3. Past the small rooms where the warrant officers and the sergeants worked, doors all closed and locked, no light from underneath. They’d all know by now, in their mess, in their canteen, in their quarters, and damn good fun they’d be having with their knowledge. They’d all know that, in public, he’d been whipped like a clumsy recruit was whipped on the parade-ground by a drill instructor… So bloody unfair.
There was a scraping sound, and a whimpering. He unlocked the door. Christie’s bloody dog bounded at him and he raised his knee to ward it off. Christie was muttering that he’d better take the dog to the grass. He flapped his hand, past caring where the dog peed. He went inside. He was alone. He thought the rooms of G/3/29 were like his mother’s house, after she’d died. She’d used frail strength to clean her house the day before she had gone to the hospital. His room, Christie’s, and the area between them were as ordered as his mother’s house had been. He rocked. On her desk were the neat piles of paper – his typed speech for the Infantry Training School, his expenses- claim form with the stapled receipts of his Catterick trip, her note in copperplate handwriting of the time, date of his dentist appointment, what time in the morning his car would be collected for valeting. Beside his pile was Christie’s – the revised appraisal of the 49th Mechanized Infantry Division at Voronezh, the petrol vouchers held together with a paper clip… The dog came from behind him, settled under her desk.
He said, grimly, ‘Search her area, your desk drawers, I’ll do mine…’
‘What are we looking for, Perry?’
He exploded, ‘How the hell do I know? How should I know why the best corporal in this whole bloody camp makes an unprovoked attack? I don’t know, except that it’s about the past.’
‘He leaves when I say so. Don’t care who he is, when he’s in my care he leaves when I’m satisfied that he’s fit to go.’
The sick bay was the territory of Mavis Fogarty. It was many years since she had left the farm near Balinrobe and enlisted as a nurse in the British Army. She seldom went home because it would embarrass her family, but she retained the big hands suited to work on the Co. Mayo bog fields. She had his trousers off him and his underpants at his knees, and with surprising gentleness examined the bruised testicles of Dieter Krause. She’d done time in the military hospitals at Dortmund and Soest, spoke passable German, and told him there was no lasting damage. She didn’t ask how it was, during a social drink in the officers’ mess, that he’d managed to get so thoroughly battered – she’d learn later, in the canteen. She pulled up his pants, covered him. She started with sterile hot water and cotton wool to clean the raked nail slashes on his face. He wore a wedding ring. If her husband ever came home with scratches like that on his face then he’d be put to sleep in the garage. She’d earmarked a salve for the grazes at the back of his head where the bruising showed through his hair. The minders, sullen and watching her every move, were across the room from her. One nursed his ankle as if he’d kicked something heavy, and the other rubbed the heel of his hand as if he’d hit something solid. She wiped the scratch wounds and established her absolute authority over them.
‘Funny thing, shock. Soldiers here get into Saturday-night fights, get back to camp and think they’re fine, then collapse. He stays here, right here, till I’m ready to let him go.’
The accommodation block for junior ranks (female) knew, each last one of them, that Corporal Barnes was locked in a guardhouse cell. They also knew that she had done heavy damage in the officers’ mess and had put a German guest into Sick Bay for repairs. Her major and the captain with wife trouble were in the block and searching her room. The traffic down the first-floor corridor was brisk, but the fourth door on the right was closed and there was a provost sergeant outside. Those who did pass could only feed to the rumour factory that the room was being ripped apart.
They ransacked the privacy of the sleeping area, but Ben Christie backed off when it came to the chest of drawers, left it to the Major. Perry Johnson, frantic, didn’t hesitate, dragged the drawers clear, shook and examined each item of underwear, knickers, bras, tights and slips – all so neatly folded away before Perry’s hands were on them.. . and Trish just dumped her smalls into a drawer, out of sight and out of mind… So neat, so small, what she wore against her skin. Christie caught the Major’s eye, hadn’t intended to, but Perry had flushed red. The clothes were out of the drawers, the drawers were out of the chest and on the bed. The bed was already stripped. The sheets and blankets, with her pyjamas, were heaped on the floor. The curtains were off the window. The rug was rolled away… He had taken each coat, skirt and blouse, civilian and uniform, from the wardrobe, checked the pockets, felt the collars and the waists where the material was double thickness, and hung them on the door. He would take the wardrobe to pieces because there was a double ceiling in it and a double floor. Out in the corridor a telephone was ringing. For Christ’s sake, the bloody man Johnson was holding up a bra against the light. What was she bloody well going to hide in there? In summer she didn’t wear a tie, or a tunic or a pullover, and she’d the top buttons of the blouse unfastened, and she’d have called him over to check her work on the screen before she printed it up, teasing, and he’d see the bra and what the bra held… There was a photograph of a cat, and of an elderly woman, taken from their frames, checked. There was a book, woman’s saga, shaken and then the spine pulled off. Johnson looked at him, and Ben shook his head. Johnson knelt, grunted, and began to rip back the vinyl
