Pull yourself together, man.
Charlie runs the Outward Bound stuff for his pupils, doesn’t he? Yes! Well, it’s credible that he might buy some camping gear and take it in to school, isn’t it?
Credible, but …
33
Unlikely.
As is this weak attempt to convince himself he’s in the clear.
Joseph retreats to the spot where he slept and sits back down in the discarded puddle of his sleeping bag. If they’re following him there’s not much he can do about it right now, is there?
No.
Later, though.
What?
He shunts himself back into the bag, shuts his eyes and has a go at thinking up a Plan B. Escape and evasion and, what’s the word? Subterfuge. He thinks this way and that as the morning turns into the afternoon. Pleasant temperature, he notes. What is he, a weatherman? Look, it’s just a nice, late-spring day, with a pine needle and leaf mulch accompaniment. Yes, but he’s lying amongst weeds! Nothing wrong with plant life. Joseph picks and chews the sweet shaft of a grass stalk to prove it. But eventually, Plan B, such as it is, heaves back into view.
Ugh.
Might be enough to throw them off the scent, tho—
Then again, might not.
And it’s risky, whichever way you cut it.
Very!
Deep breath.
Minutes tick by. Imagine treacle stretching off a spoon. Actually, don’t. Eat the Tracker bars instead. And remember waiting in the barracks, wondering which of the two raindrops would make it down the big window first? That one’s stopped. Let’s try these two. Ten races later, we may as well assemble the lads and ask them to do something equally pointless.
Platoon Commander sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?
Twenty-seven men under his command!
But actually?
Well, no: they would have been, if not for Platoon Sergeant Connelly.
He was two years older than Joseph, but he had eight years more army experience, including stints in Operation Banner and in the Gulf. Also: he had a kink in his nose and a corner knocked off one front tooth, which made him look a bit am-dram piratical. Nothing unprofessional about his soldiering, though. He never implied Joseph was green or that his orders were daft. ‘Sorted, sir.’ ‘We’re on it.’ Or: ‘Of course, we’ve done that already.’ And he always had! The lads were one step ahead, thanks to Connelly, which should have made Joseph grateful, but didn’t, because it left him with the square root of bugger all to do.
Those first six months.
Jesus!
Apart from five days chasing night-vision versions of the men around the Black Mountains, and a long weekend sodden in Thetford Forest, he spent most of his time heading off twenty-seven other kinds of boredom. Referred men to the STD clinic, wrote more than one character reference for the local magistrates’ court, and explained that no, it wouldn’t be possible to stand a man five months’ pay to cover poker debts.
That was whatshisname? Calvin. Ran up the whole debt in one drunken afternoon, and seemed to think that Joseph, as his commanding officer, would be able to sort him out. As in, would have the money to hand and feel obliged to lend it to him. Possibly he was still pissed, or just so monumentally hung-over he couldn’t think straight; either which way, as he left the room to tell whoever he owed that he couldn’t pay, he made the mistake of calling Joseph a ‘stuck-up prick’.
Joseph let it go.
He was almost out of earshot anyway.
Not so fellow Platoon Commander Lancaster.
He was on his way to see Joseph and must have heard the insult round a bend in the corridor.
Kaboom!
Right from the start, possibly because he was about as young as a newly commissioned officer could be, Lancaster rose up to own the rank. Take nothing away from Joseph: he did a pretty good job of acting the part of an officer himself, but Lancaster, well, he just was one. Being better than everybody else at everything didn’t hurt, plus the ability to be everywhere, early, ready, and calm. Joseph never heard him raise his voice. Never, that is, apart from the day Lancaster overheard Calvin insult a fellow officer. He didn’t like that. So he put a Calvin-shaped dent in the side of the drinks machine and roared at the poor bloke for a full minute. Calvin wouldn’t be playing cards for a while, not given the list of shitty jobs he now faced for insulting his commanding officer. Joseph didn’t find it necessary to join Calvin and Lancaster in the corridor, but possibly he should have: when Lancaster finished and entered Joseph’s office his ‘no bother’ was half-hearted; it seemed he suspected Joseph had heard the insult and he couldn’t hide his distaste at the fact he’d let the man walk away.
Ah, well.
Goes around, comes around.
As surely as night follows day.
Which it does.
Eventually.
34
Right then, Plan B.
Although the night is warmer than the one before, it’s also darker. There’s cloud in the way of whatever moon has risen and no ambient town-light to speak of. Suits Joseph. He wants to cut across country, unseen, swiftish. Better ditch the pack for now, then. Come back for it later, after executing said plan, which will be successful, because it has to be. The shed-or-whatnot is as good a place as any to hide his stuff for the time being. Yes, under these, bricks, stones and so forth. Joseph breaks a sweat digging a hole in the rubble-mound. He transfers what he needs – plastic bags, water bottle, plus passport (don’t forget that!) – to his satchel. Then he waterproofs the backpack by sticking it inside a couple of bin liners, lowers it into the new hole, shores the thing up with bits of broken whatever, and tosses some deadish foliage over the lot. It’s properly dark now, therefore hard to see the excellence of the cover-up job, but it feels pretty good to him.
The old confidence. Can’t keep a good man—
Don’t tempt fate.
Instead, what next?
Beat a stealthy retreat around the ruin, then head back across the field and down to the road. Which leads? Well, to the village, or hamlet, call it what you will: somewhere he can find a tap and refill his bottle, sorting out the desert storm-sized problem of wanting – no, needing – something to drink now. By God, thirst. We’re all animals, after all.
Joseph picks up the pace when he hits the lane. Best not be seen on it if possible. Make haste! His knee hurts. Tough! Back in the day, shredded feet and all: that was him once, and this is him again now. Tabbing, it’s called, army-wise. Whichever. He jogs on. Enduring!
Settles into a rhythm.
How does it go again?
What?
The chant thing.
There are lots of them.
Here’s one, for example. From basic training.
‘Left, left, left right left. Left, left, left right left. Left, left, I had a good job and I left. I left because the pay wasn’t right so I left, right, left.’
Ha.
Sort of appropriate.
There’s a light up ahead. And a sign. What does it say? ‘Peaslake’. Really? Yes! Okay, so that’s good, isn’t it? Because he knows where Peaslake is. Of course he does. He’s driven through it a thousand times. It’s not so far from school. Plus he looked at a house here once, with Naomi.
He hadn’t realised he was this close. It’s a little embarrassing. Not to mention annoying! To have come this far and yet to have to dog-leg away.
Damn, Charlie. With your breadcrumbs.
Or just maybe it’s about not quite wanting to be here, this near, yet.
If only Naomi had written a note too. Even if it had just spelled out the old I can’t help you until you get some help ultimatum. Yes, even that would have been something. Still, it’s a long game, this. Don’t give up, not yet.
Yet? Ever.
After all, they haven’t always been on the same page; they had their share of ups and downs from the beginning. The difficulty she had with Joseph’s army career, right at the start of things, f
or example, in the bar in Kuala Lumpur, where they met. Holiday romance. It was very noisy. When he told her he was on leave from the army she cocked her head to one side and shouted, ‘Farming?’
‘No, army, you know, soldiering.’
Now her head drew back. ‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘But … why?’
The fact that she was so obviously and genuinely baffled, combined with the way she was unafraid to show it, made him simply shrug his shoulders and offer to buy her another drink. He got away with it, then, the thumping music a kind of excuse. But later, after they’d met up back in England and started dating for real, he never really explained himself either, just let her work out for herself that he wasn’t bloodthirsty or institutionalised. The army was something he did. Since it pre-dated their getting together she couldn’t really object. And outwardly, at least, she didn’t. But Naomi’s own job, working in publicity for Save the Children, made the point for her.
He loved that Naomi was a good person.
Good, and secure.
The rolling way she walked, ever so slightly cowboy-legged.
So comfortable in her own skin!
Damn it, loved? He still loves—
Just stop.
Which house to scope for a tap, anyway?
This one, set back behind the laurel hedge. Joseph skulks up the grass to one side of a gravel drive. Black stripes on a pale background up ahead: this house is Tudor-style, quite possibly original. He remembers something about a visit to the vet with Lara when Gordon, the dog, broke his jaw. Tore it just about off on a sprinkler at night, running with his nose to the ground and his mouth apparently open. Stupid dog. God, it looked painful. The stoicism of animals, though: he whimpered a bit, then shut down. Did the vet live somewhere like this? Joseph can’t remember. There are no lights on in the house. Everybody’s in bed, or out. Is that a speedboat on a trailer, next to not one but two SUVs? Big pile of bricks they’re parked in front of, that’s for sure. Possibly he was mistaken about the vet: we’re in oligarch territory after all. Even oligarchs need outdoor taps, though: how else do the staff keep all those tinted car windows clean? Let’s just sidestep quietly down between this wing of the house and that wall. Could be a garage, or annexe. And what’s that? Is it? Yes, it looks like some sort of spigot sticking out of the brickwork at knee height, up ahead.
Click!
The side of the building jumps with brightness and Joseph, frozen, has two sudden shadows.
Security lights.
Crap!
Forward or reverse?
Just … go the way you know!
Joseph ducks and lurches and jinks into the darkness. Mistake: night-blind, he runs straight into a low bush, falls over it even, whacks down in a flowerbed. Mercifully, it’s a soft one. Still, he’s winded. Lies stone still struggling to keep the gasp, when it comes, quiet. The security light clicks off again, plunging everything into a darkness way thicker than it was before. Which feels, come to think of it, sort of safe. At least the bush offers a bit of cover. Lie here. Wait it out.
There’s no sound of a door, or footsteps, just black silence.
That tap.
Christ almighty, he’s thirsty. Lying here on his back in the softness, his throat feels as if someone’s tipped a load of sawdust down it. The longer he waits, the worse the need to drink becomes. What he’d give for a glass of water. And actually, let’s face it, the longer he waits without anyone coming out of the house, the more it seems nobody noticed or cared about the security light, making it less likely anyone will care if he trips it again.
Nice thinking!
It’ll take him what, thirty seconds to fill his bottle?
Joseph collects himself behind the bush. Odd phrase that: collects himself from where? Thirst-land. A sudden image comes to mind: four mugs of tea on a tray. He fishes out his water bottle and loosens the top in readiness, thinking: swoon.
Swoon?
As in not yet, just to be on the safe side …
Soon.
35
Remember Northern Ireland?
The regiment deployed there for Joseph’s first real tour. Peacekeeping duties. Out in Rwanda, as Naomi pointed out at the time, they were killing one another by the hundreds of thousands, but in Northern Ireland, then, not so much. This was just before the peace process grew smiling teeth. Duties were schizophrenic. Joseph and his men spent half their time conducting highly visible patrols through the streets of North Belfast, more as a symbolic gesture than for any real deterrent purposes, emphatically ‘we’re still here, for now, with guns and boots, after your hearts and minds, for all to see!’ And the rest of the time they did the exact opposite. They skulked about in the lush countryside near the border, trying in vain to keep tabs on IRA players, holing themselves up in ditches for days on end, their stomachs hollow-full of rations, focusing and refocusing their binoculars in the hope that they’d unearth an arms cache in time to get home for a proper feed. During one particularly long, humid July stint, the focus of the stakeout marched across the farmyard carrying a tray. He had trouble negotiating the rusty gate with it, tiptoed across the cattle grid, skirted a couple of puddles, and advanced straight up to the ditch. The tray had four mugs of tea on it.
‘Now piss off,’ he said, setting them down on the grass.
If this was modern soldiering, hanging about in Thetford and Newbury had prepared Joseph well for it. Hurry up and … wait. But the frustration of never once firing his weapon was nothing compared to how much he missed Naomi back then. It was a physical longing, not unlike the homesickness he’d put up with aged eight.
Ah, Naomi.
His mum loved her when they met. Of course she did: Save the Children! Mum sat rapt as Naomi explained what she did.
‘I met Joseph’s father on a kibbutz,’ she said in reply.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, we sunk a well.’
(So thirsty!)
‘Wow.’
‘It’s true. They’d mostly dug the borehole already, but we were there when the first water came up. I helped Arthur connect the pump. In the end we had to use a winch. It was more reliable.’
‘You don’t want to leave a problem that undoes your hard work after you’ve gone.’
‘No. Although that was only a test well, just for the kibbutz, and they had these big storage tanks anyway, but even so, the thing is, it’s all about doing something together, isn’t it?’
For Naomi Save the Children was pretty much all about saving children, but she nodded anyway.
Mum wasn’t about to let it lie. She fingered her turquoise necklace nervously before going on.
‘I suppose it might be nice for the two of you to have something like that, you know, an activity or task, something to achieve, pulling in the same direction.’
Was she talking about grandchildren? ‘Anyone want pudding?’ Joseph said.
Poor Mum.
Dad’s illness pretty much snuffed her out youth-wise. That peculiar sixties have-it-all mentality which yoked cause-politics to a free spirit, or tried to: gone. It’s as hard to be carefree as it is waving a Solidarity flag when the plastic chair you’re sitting on is bolted to the lino floor of a hospital waiting room. After his death, with the help of Sally and Fiona, two divorced friends with whom Mum had visited northern Thailand on a batik-printing course, she began to rekindle the spirit of her original self. The old ethnic throws spread themselves out all over the backs of the sofas again. Would that they could have stayed that way. But she’d also started seeing a man called Tristan who talked a lot about antique restoration but made his living developing golf courses in Spain. Tristan wore pastel-coloured shirts and called Joseph ‘Sport’. Within a year she’d sold up and gone to live with him outside Alicante. Hot there. Dry. (So thirsty!) Excellent climate in which to drink sangria in the afternoon and later wear flip-flops whilst riding pillion on a scooter driven too quickly round a corner by said Tristan. The truck they hit was
carrying watermelons, cherries, nectarines and so forth, and though the driver was blameless, the company he worked for insisted on sending industrial quantities of fruit for the after-party – wake, whatever – on the sweltering day of the joint funeral.
So thirsty.
Soon, as in now?
Why not.
Very slowly, Joseph stands up.
36
Whack!
The blow is as sudden and blinding as the security light, bright white pain exploding from every direction. But it’s not real light, because he’s instantly flailing on his side in the dark, an immense ringing in his ears and a figure looming over him, black against the deeper night.
‘Got you!’
The outline grows an arm, raises it high to hit Joseph again. There’s something in the man’s hand. A cosh, or stick. Joseph shrinks sideways as the blow comes, so that it glances off his shoulder instead of connecting with his head. Still, the shock of the first blow has him swimming underwater. He’s doubtful he can dodge another.
He hears himself groan.
‘What’s that?’
The man is fumbling with something attached to his belt. A gun? Jesus, no … Joseph heaves himself up into a sitting position. There’s a sweet smell coming from something he’s crushed in the flowerbed, clashing with the taste of blood in his mouth. No, not a gun. The thing jerks crazily as the man pulls it free. It’s a roll of duct tape. He drops to one knee and grabs Joseph’s forearm.
‘Neighbourhood fucking Watch,’ he says.
Joseph pulls weakly but he can’t sit up: he’s an anchor fallen in the mud. But he’s trying!
‘No you don’t,’ says the man.
He has one end of the tape wrapped around Joseph’s wrist. Joseph feels himself yanked forward and to one side: the man is rolling him to reach for his other hand.
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