Noose

by Bill James

  A reception in a side room followed the ceremony. Double mirrored doors caught the light from chandeliers and gave the notion of extra spaciousness where there was already bags of space. Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set. Waitresses in black and white costume moved about among the crowd offering drinks and small nibbles. Bain’s parents, the Stantons and Ian grouped around the wheelchair. Bain did the introductions.

  Stanton said: ‘You seemed to get on nicely with Her Majesty, Ray.’

  ‘She’s remarkably well up on the fighting out there, sir,’ Bain said. ‘In fact, most Palace people seem to be. Before the ceremony, one of her aides asked me if I’d been anywhere near the Scottish Black Watch contingent of the Commonwealth Brigade. I said yes, they weren’t far away. He follows up with did I know the area called the Hook, a ridge in very inhospitable, hilly country? I said I’d heard of the Hook, but because my job was airfield protection I worked mainly on the flat, such as there was of it. He had a little giggle about that.’

  Oh, God, the pleasant, informed conversation around this warrior’s indispensable chariot.

  Emily announced, ‘Previously, a DSO was reserved for officers in the higher ranks. Obviously the top brass consider your achievements knock a hole in that snobbish tradition, Ray. Good. Very good indeed. And I’d say, judging by the enthusiastic way she behaved, the Queen approves, too.’ She spoke with what seemed to Ian a lively mixture of warmth and authority. She had taken over the occasion. First there’d been the Queen, then Emily. Yes, both had obviously decided to ignore the injuries and concentrate on the positives. Leaders did concentrate on the positives – that’s how they got to be leaders. They led. It was as though Emily recognized and knew well the customs of the military game and would normally excel at applying them, but also acknowledged there would come times when these customs should be set aside, and if necessary flung aside. Ray Bain’s gallantry flung them aside. He’d been only a Flying Officer – equivalent of an army lieutenant – but had earned the DSO. Emily approved, and seemed to feel her endorsement important.

  Ian recalled that description, or half-description, she gave of her career after the sea rescue. She had soared in what she called ‘Government Service’. The Air Ministry officer had described her job in the same way, and hadn’t been able to specify what kind of work. Ian thought he’d asked her which section, because, as a term, ‘Government Service’ covered big and undefined areas. Yes, ‘covered’ might be the apt word in Emily’s case. He couldn’t remember getting any answer to that, though. Hadn’t she skipped off to another topic – to inquiries about Ian’s father? So, why skirt a reply? Why the secrecy? ‘You must be very proud of Ray,’ she said to the parents.

  ‘Proud?’ Bain’s mother said. She paused for at least ten seconds, gazing down at Ray in the buggy. She seemed to struggle to bring together two utterly different aspects of her son’s life. Then she replied, ‘Yes.’ That word, ‘proud’, had seemed to bamboozle her, shock her. She spoke as though holding it up in front of herself for inspection, and also as though it had never occurred to her before this to be proud. In the matter of her son, she had other feelings to cope with. She was above average height, as Ray Bain had been, and wore a mauve silk suit over a white blouse, with a thin gold necklace. Also like Ray, she spoke with a slight Birmingham accent. ‘We have him at home with us now. That’s something,’ Mrs Bain said.

  ‘For a while Ray was in a mobile army surgical hospital out there,’ Mr Bain said. ‘It seemed such a long way off, not a place we could visit.’ He was the same height as his wife, heavily built, in a burgundy-coloured cord jacket and navy flannels, fair hair thinning, a look of constant puzzlement on his face, as if he couldn’t believe Ray was as he was, and couldn’t believe Ray was as he was in Buckingham Palace talking about Korea to the Queen. They had a son who’d never intended joining the armed forces, but who’d been directed into the RAF for a limited interlude before resuming his preferred way of life. And that limited interlude had produced events which would permanently condition his preferred way of life, quite possibly make it impossible. This was a bucketful for his mother and father to swallow.

  ‘Yes, a MASH unit,’ Ray Bain said. ‘That’s what they call the hospitals. It was run by crazy American doctors – crazy but brilliant at snuffing out pain.’

  ‘Ray always speaks well of them,’ Mrs Bain said.

  Ian could tell that Emily didn’t like the way this conversation had turned. Wounds had started to dominate. Wounds were negative. Pain, even snuffed-out pain, wouldn’t do. She said: ‘This might not look like a war of immediate concern to us here in GB, but it is a United Nations matter, and we must be part of that.’

  ‘We can’t allow the whole peninsula to fall,’ Frank Stanton said. The four rings nicely stacked on the arms of his tunic shone very fetchingly under the chandeliers. ‘Where else in that region would be lost next?’

  ‘And you were a friend of Ray’s at the officer training unit, were you, Ian?’ Mrs Bain said. ‘He used to mention you.’

  ‘A friend and an enemy,’ Bain replied. ‘He was defence, I was attack, in an imitation battle one night out on the airfield. Waterloo wouldn’t come anywhere near it for intensity.’

  ‘The various courses competed – sort of war games,’ Emily said. Keep it general, keep it matter-of-fact, keep it playful.

  ‘I was White, Ray was Green,’ Ian said.

  ‘And you stayed at the OCTU afterwards, I gather,’ Mrs Bain said.

  ‘Yes, that’s the convention,’ Frank Stanton said. ‘I think it’s quite a valuable practice. Ian can help by passing on to new intakes what he has learned, and what he has excelled in.’

  ‘Ray could have done that, if he’d stayed, could he?’ Mrs Bain said.

  ‘Certainly,’ Stanton said.

  ‘He could probably teach them something else now,’ Mrs Bain replied.

  ‘The luck of the draw, I suppose,’ Mr Bain said.

  ‘Not exactly that,’ Stanton said.

  ‘No, as I understand it from Ray, it’s a kind of reward, a kind of distinction,’ Mrs Bain said.

  ‘One could describe it so, yes,’ Stanton said. ‘But also a very practical business. We – the Service – benefit.’

  ‘Ian overtook me quite late on in the merit table,’ Ray Bain said. ‘He was the Sword of Honour.’

  ‘By a very narrow squeak,’ Ian said.

  ‘Quite often narrow squeaks are what shape our days, aren’t they?’ Mr Bain said.

  ‘Ian will have to move on to a new posting eventually – so as to make way for future Sword of Honour officers,’ Stanton said.

  ‘Move on to where?’ Mrs Bain asked.

  ‘That will only be decided at the time,’ Stanton said. ‘Where the need is. Needs change.’

  ‘Airfields here, there or anywhere,’ Mr Bain said.

  ‘Yes,’ Stanton replied.

  ‘Certainly,’ Emily said, as if she would have some influence in the choice.

  ‘When you say “a very narrow squeak”, Ian, what does that mean? What counted towards the squeak, I wonder?’ Mrs Bain said.

  ‘All quite complex,’ Stanton said.

  ‘Always at the end of these courses it’s a problem sorting out the top people in order,’ Emily replied. ‘Many are excellent but one of them has to emerge as supremely excellent. Obviously, I know this only from the strain and worry I detect in Frank at these times. I’m not consulted. No backseat driving. It’s a Service matter.’

  ‘But it must be very stressful for you,’ Mrs Bain said.

  As Ian saw it, a kind of egomaniacal, very belated gratitude drove Emily. She’d been saved from the sea by his father and come to believe she had failed to show proper thankfulness towards him, by piling most of her farcical praise on dead Corbitty that day at the memorial service, and perhaps generally elsewhere. So, as one way of compensating, transfer the thankfulness, direct it to the rescuer’s son. Help get him a cushy, unendangered posting where he might oversee m
ock engagements on the airfield, but dodge being part of a real, bone-smashing, potentially slaughterous engagement on another airfield on foreign soil. She’d try to skip the fact that someone had to go out to that other airfield and take the hurt. It would taint her generous policy of recompense. Ian was her generous policy of recompense. His legs proved it.

  He hated the role, felt subjugated by it, wanted to resist it; loathed the notion of getting selected, elected, as stand-in for his father. He saw himself as caught in the noose of her gratitude. Emily didn’t owe him – Ian – anything. He’d prefer it like that. She’d had a goofy, girl-like adoration for a ship’s captain who’d died for her. OK, understandable. Now, she’d matured into somebody else, and saw that the man who saved her might be just as entitled to hefty thanks. In fact, she’d matured altogether, as her important, deeply unspecified job seemed to prove. She didn’t have to go on making it up to Ian because she’d slighted his diving dad for a while. She was continually looking for means to reward those she’d injured. He recalled words in her letter about Ray Bain’s medal. ‘Isn’t that wonderful news in so many ways?’ The ‘in so many ways’ meant, did it, the DSO might help make more tolerable the wrecking of his body? Could she really believe that? Final whistle on his prop forward games.

  If I should get half my legs blown off,

  Think only this of me: that there’s some corner,

  Of a foreign field where I needn’t have been,

  But for dirty work behind the scenes at OCTU.

  ‘Of course, we’ll move on from this posting ourselves at some point,’ Stanton said. ‘Different type of stresses then, I expect.’

  ‘When Ray used to come home on a break from the OCTU he’d sometimes refer to what are termed, I think, “officer qualities”,’ Mrs Bain said. ‘OQs, as he called them. He told us nobody could quite define them, but crucial to have plenty. I wondered if it was because of officer qualities that Ian did best. Rather vague matters, hard to pin down, still important, though.’

  ‘But Ray has shown he has those qualities in abundance,’ Emily replied. ‘Nobody gets a DSO without them.’

  ‘Well, yes, that’s what I might have been getting at, I think,’ Mrs Bain said. ‘Who decides who has the most OQs? Is it a committee or one person? Do the candidates have it explained to them how exactly they scored and how exactly they fell short? But can it be done exactly, if the OQs are so hard to define? And perhaps there are other subtle, undisclosed factors – undisclosable factors? He didn’t ask us to the passing-out because he wasn’t the winner. Typical! He has to be Number One or he thinks himself a failure. He might have been ashamed of his low OQ count.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Emily said. ‘In fact very high.’

  ‘But not high enough,’ Mrs Bain said. ‘He used to joke about it sometimes, didn’t you, Ray? He’d tell us that the main test of someone’s OQs was if he could go into a crowded bar and get served at once.’

  ‘That’s it,’ Ray said.

  ‘But, anyway, here we are now, in Buckingham Palace,’ Mr Bain said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Emily said.

  Ian had done another censorship job as far as his own parents were concerned. He hadn’t let them know that they and his brother could have attended the passing out. He’d feared this might lead to difficulties. It would probably have involved a meeting at the after-parade party between his mother and Emily. Mrs Charteris wouldn’t want that. His father might have been embarrassed by the occasion, too, and this could turn him ratty. Ian had to serve at least some more of his National Service at the OCTU, and he’d rather his father didn’t sour things here for him. In any case, his father didn’t like occasions where someone else got made a fuss of for an achievement, even one of his sons – or perhaps especially one of his sons. Mr Charteris admired the family as an institution, as long as in the case of his family the members realized he was the one who brought its excellence and distinction. Swords of Honour could be shoved up somewhere dishonourable.

  Ian felt a little relieved that because of her new job Lucy wasn’t able to come to the Palace. She wouldn’t have put up with the evasions and blank-offs in the talk. She’d have said something awkward and bleakly truthful. He reckoned she’d have to get out of that way of thinking if she intended to survive in journalism; though at that time in his life he knew nothing about journalism at first hand, of course.

  NINE

  And then there came a temptation that could have taken him away from journalism altogether and into something … into something potentially murkier but with, possibly, more status, though secret status. During the last months of his National Service, Ian Charteris had a couple of visitors, a man and a woman in good civilian clothes, who carried very high-grade Defence Ministry identification. One or other of them had overdone the scent. Ian didn’t know much about scent but he thought this one smelled quite decent, not the kind of stuff you could win at a fairground. ‘In some respects we are making a routine call,’ the man said. ‘It’s standard in our work for people to function in pairs. Oh, let me present Lorna-Jane Underhill. I’m Charles Fisher. We operate as a unit in this kind of procedure. Very much so. A harmonious unit, I might say.’

  ‘Which kind?’ Ian said.

  ‘A very reasonable question! We like to talk to people who are about to be demobbed,’ Fisher said. He had a big voice that came across as not too far off rage, or possibly hysteria. He somehow made ‘reasonable’ sound as if it meant offensive or insulting or footling. It was sort of ‘Don’t fucking quiz me, matey ’cos I’m the fucking one who does the fucking quizzing. Well I and she.’

  ‘We talk to some people,’ Underhill said.

  Fisher growl-laughed. ‘Yes, not all people who are about to be demobbed. That would be a huge list. A certain selectiveness does operate. A quite considerable selectiveness, in fact.’

  ‘Rigorous,’ she said.

  ‘Which people?’ Ian said.

  ‘I think that will become plain during the course of things,’ Fisher explained, or not.

  ‘This is a very secure establishment, isn’t it?’ Underhill said. ‘One can’t just drift in. Or, for that matter, two can’t!’

  ‘Fairly secure,’ Ian said. ‘We and the RAF police do our best. But you didn’t have bother drifting in, did you – not with those papers?’

  ‘Of course, we’d heard of this station before we learned you were here in an operational role,’ Underhill said. ‘As you’d expect, such places float into our purview to some degree.’

  ‘No, I’m not sure I’d have expected that,’ Ian said. ‘What is your purview?’

  ‘There’d almost certainly have been some guidance about your posting to this category of station after the OCTU staff,’ Underhill said. ‘This wouldn’t be chance.’

  ‘Hardly,’ Fisher said. ‘Anything but. The very reverse of chance.’ He did a thoughtful lip purse. ‘Now, I wonder what would be the reverse of chance, the very reverse.’

  ‘Planned?’ Underhill said. ‘Designated?’

  Ian wondered how often they’d performed this bit of chit-chat for an interviewee, harmoniously together.

  ‘A kind of unobvious but nonetheless powerful influence would have put you on such a particular type of station,’ Fisher said.

  ‘Certain philosophers and clerics argue there’s no such thing as pure chance, anyway. They maintain there is always some scheme, some meaning, however much concealed,’ Underhill said. ‘A variant on “God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform”. Those wonders may seem simply that, random wonders, but the theologian would argue that the “mysterious way” is, in fact, a coherent, purposeful way, if only we could discern it. But our brains are not attuned to this pattern, are not adequately perceptive. This is what these scholars would say.’

  ‘Some guidance about my posting from whom?’ Ian said. ‘Not God, I take it.’

  Fisher had a fractional laugh, the kind of laugh that said he’d heard this sally fifty times previously, and hadn’t thoug
ht it funny even the first time. ‘This connection with service matters of a confidential, secret category will be as relevant to your CV as the Sword of Honour – on the winning of which very post-event congrats, by the way,’ Fisher said. ‘I’d love to have seen that passing-out show.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said.

  ‘All that gallimaufry put into brilliant order,’ Fisher said. ‘Some people in our business abhor all uniforms and display. For them, brass bands are anathema, swinging arms a farce. That’s understandable, I suppose, though narrow, negative. Our objective has to be achieved – if it can be achieved at all – and too often it can’t! It has to be achieved in shadowy, even subfusc style. But, for myself, I love a good parade and the brilliant concerted subordination in that “Eyes right!” to some gold-leaf chieftain. People having to look one way and march another! This is flair. This is potential shambles. This is induced skill. Would there have been a band, too? Did you have to shout commands above its rotund din while flashing your indisputably earned Sword? Resplendent! Cohesion! Cohesion is the sine qua non in such displays. I believe in cohesion, but rarely see it.’

  They would both be in their late twenties, Fisher’s accent educated Midlands, Underhill’s very educated cockney. He had on a suede jacket, made-to-measure Ian would say, tan trousers, brown lace-up shoes, white shirt, beige and green striped tie; she was in a navy skirt, navy hip-length jacket over a light-blue silk blouse, moderately high-heeled glossy black shoes. When Fisher spoke about the parade and the band his face became suddenly animated and slightly flushed, as though the pleasure he took in imagining it might be depraved. Part of that harmoniousness between them must come from a shared, illicit pleasure in military ceremonial. He was dark-haired, small-featured, square-built, thick-necked. He’d be another front-row prop forward if he played rugby, with possibly a nasty side to his game, perhaps eye-gouging and/or ear-biting. Ian thought Ray Bain would not have gone in for those, except retaliating, of course.