by Andy McNab
"It's Nick, returning the page."
"Where are you?"
She knew exactly where I was. Every call to the Firm is logged on a digital display. They put as much effort into spying on each other as they do against the enemy. It was pointless tapping in 141 before the number, and saying, "I'm in Glasgow and can't get back," because whatever I did the display would still tell her I was at a pay phone in Southwark.
I said, "London."
"Please wait."
She pressed the cut-out button. Two minutes later she came back.
"You need to be at Gatwick at three thirty this afternoon."
My heart sank, but I already knew I was going to be there.
"How long for?" Not that it mattered much, I was already a couple of jumps ahead, thinking about how I was going to make excuses to a recently turned nine-year-old.
She said, "I don't have that information."
Once she'd finished with the details of the RV I put the phone down, expecting a refund of my unused coin, but I got nothing. The phone box in the pub was one of those private ones where you can charge whatever you want. For a pound I got all of sixty seconds.
I walked back, making my way around the crowd outside that had moved with the sun toward the ship. I was racking my brains thinking of what I was going to say. Not to Josh that wouldn't be a problem but to Kelly.
I saw Josh looking for me. It was only about twenty or thirty meters to the gangplank, and I was looking up at him and slowly shaking my head, getting some of the message across in advance. He knew exactly what was happening; he'd been there himself.
I went up the gangplank, pretty certain I would be in the shit, and no doubt starting to look suitably guilty. This was the first occasion Kelly and I had had any decent time together since she'd been in the U.K.; it was like a newlywed leaving his honeymoon to go back to the office.
As I got on deck she and a few other kids were helping to clear up the plates under the bosun's instructions. For a horrible second or two I had a flashback other in her house just before her family was killed, laying the table for her mother in the kitchen. It made me feel even more guilty, but I told myself we'd both get over it. She would be upset but I could make it up to her when I came back. Besides, she'd seen Josh and the kids, and we'd had a whale of a time. She'd understand. Plus, she could see her grandparents now.
Josh knew what was on the cards. He bent down to his kids.
"Yo!" He clapped his hands together as they waited for the instruction.
"OK, kids, let's get all these plates back to the bosun," and he dragged them away.
I said, "Kelly?"
"Mmm?" She didn't look up, just carried on being too busy picking up plates. She wasn't going to make it easy for me to give her the news.
"That was my boss on the phone. He wants me to go away."
She still didn't look me in the eye as she put the plates in a bin. She said, "Why?"
"They've got a job for me. I told them that I was going to be with you for the week and I didn't want to go in, but they said I must. There's nothing I can do."
I was kind of hoping she'd buy the line that they were to blame, not me.
She stopped what she was doing and spun around. Her face told me everything I didn't need to know.
"Nick, you promised."
"I know, I can't help it. I've just been bleeped " "No," she stopped me.
"It's beeped!" She was always giving me a bollocking for getting it wrong.
Her face had gone bright red. Tears were starting to well up in her eyes.
"Listen, Kelly, we can always do this again some other time. Just think, Josh and his children have to leave for home in a few days and won't have a chance to see all these places, but we can come back."
"But you said ... you promised me, Nick ... you said you wanted to have a holiday with me ..." The words tumbled out, punctuated by angry gasps for air.
"You said you'd make up for not seeing me on my birthday.
You promised me then, Nick ... you promised."
She didn't just have her hand on my heartstrings, she'd braided them into ropes for extra purchase and was pulling on them big time. I said, "I know I did, but that was last time. This time it will be different, I really mean it."
Her bottom lip was starting to go and her eyes were leaking down her face.
"But, Nick, you promised ..."
I stroked her hair.
"I'm sorry, I can't help it. I've got to go to work. Oh, come on, Kelly, cheer up."
What the fuck was I saying? I always hated this. I didn't know what to do or say, and to make things worse I reckoned I was starting to sound like my Auntie Pauline.
The cry had become heartrending sobs.
"But I don't want you to go ... I want to stay here and be a sailor ... I want you to stay here ... I don't want to sleep on this boat without you."
"Ah," I said, and the way I said it was sufficiently ominous to make her look up.
"You won't be sleeping on the ship. I'm going to take you to see Granny and Grandad. Listen, I promise, I really do promise, I'll make this up to you."
She stared at me long and hard, then slowly shook her head from side to side, deeply wounded. She'd been sold down the river, and she knew it.
I wondered if she'd ever trust me again.
There was nothing I could say, because actually she was right. Just to make sure I avoided the issue, I walked across to the bosun.
"We've got to go," I said.
"Family problem." He nodded; who gives a fuck, he just gets paid to wear the hat and growl.
Josh came back. His kids were halfway through a lesson on how to hoist the sails. I said, "We've got to go, mate."
I tried to pat Kelly's head, but she flinched away from my hand. I said, "Do you want to go downstairs and change? You can say good-bye in a minute. Go on, off you go."
As she disappeared I looked at Josh and shrugged.
"What can I say, I've got to go to work." And then, before he had the chance to come up with all sorts of different ways that he could help, I said, "I'm going to take her down to her grandmother's now, then I'm off. I'm really sorry about this, mate."
"Hey, chill, it doesn't matter. These things happen. It was just really good to see you."
He was right. It had been really good to see him, too.
"Same here. Have a good flight back. I'll give you a call as soon as I've finished this job, and we'll come to you next time."
"Like I told you, the beds are always made up. The coffee, white and flat, is always hot."
It took me a moment to understand the white and flat bit.
"Is that some kind of Airborne saying?"
"Kinda."
I said good-bye to his kids and they got back to pulling ropes and getting bollocked by the bosun. Then I went down below and changed.
We stopped at a pedestrian crossing to let a blue-haired New Age guy saunter across. I laughed.
"Kelly, look at that bloke there! Isn't he weird!" He had big lumps of metal sticking out of his nose, lips, eyebrows, all sorts. I said, "I bet he wouldn't dare walk past a magnet factory."
I laughed at my own joke. She didn't, possibly because it was so bad.
"You shouldn't make personal remarks like that," she said.
"Anyway, I bet he s been to the Bloody Tower." Her schoolwork might be suffering a bit but she was still as sharp as her old man.
I looked across at her in the passenger seat and felt yet another pang of guilt. She was reading about how wonderful London was from a flyer we had in our rental car; she was sulking away, probably wondering what could be so important in my life that instead of taking her to see the Crown Jewels, I was dumping her back with her dreary old grandparents whom she already saw enough of during the weekends out from her boarding school.
We drove through Docklands in the East End of London, past the outrageously tall office block on Canary Wharf; then, as we followed signs for the Blackwall Tunnel, the
Millennium Dome, still under construction, came into view across the Thames. Trying anything to lighten the mood, I said, "Hey, look, the world's biggest Burger King hat!"
At last I got a reaction: a slight movement of the lips, accompanied by a determined refusal to laugh.
Still heading toward the tunnel that took us under the Thames and so
south, we came to a gas station just past the Burger King dome. I needed to call her grandparents.
It seemed that fuel was a sideline for this garage; it sold everything from disposable barbecues to lottery tickets and firewood. I undid my seat belt and tried to sound happy with life.
"Do you want anything from the shop?"
She shook her head as I got out to use the pay phone on the wall. I'd get her something anyway. A nice bundle of kindling, maybe.
After pulling various bits of paper from my jacket pocket I found Carmen and Jimmy's phone number on a yellow Post-It note, its sticky bit covered with blue fluff from my jacket. Kelly was still sitting in the car, belted up and staring daggers at me, both for what I had done and what I was about to do.
I knew that they'd be in at this time of day. They always had lunch at home; in nearly fifty years of marriage they'd never eaten out. Carmen didn't like other people preparing her husband's food, and Jimmy had learned better than to argue. I also knew that Carmen would answer the phone; it seemed to be a house rule.
"Hello, Carmen, it's Nick. How are you both?"
"Oh, we're fine," she said, a little crisply.
"Quite tired, of course," she added, to introduce a tone of martyrdom at the first available opportunity.
I should have ignored it and got straight down to business.
"Tired?" I asked, and as I said it I suddenly remembered something.
"Oh, yes, we stayed up until well after News at Ten. You said Kelly would be calling us."
They hadn't heard from her since I'd taken her away for the trip, and I'd promised she would call. Mind you, Kelly hadn't exactly gone out of her way to remind me.
"I'm sorry, Carmen, she was so sleepy last night I didn't want to wake her."
She didn't go for that one and I didn't blame her. She was right; at ten o'clock last night we were both filling our faces with Double Whoppers and fries.
"Oh, well, I suppose we can talk to her now. Has she had her lunch?"
What the question actually meant was: Have you remembered to feed our granddaughter? My thoughts went out to Jimmy, married to her for half a century, and her son, Kev. No wonder he'd headed west just as soon as he could.
I tried to laugh it off; for Kelly's sake I didn't want to rise to this emotional blackmail.
"Carmen, look, something has come up. I have to go away tonight.
Would you be able to have her and take her back to school on Monday? I was going to take her out for the five days to 'do' London, but she might as well go back now."
There was excitement in the air, but she still had to carve off her pound of flesh.
"Of course. When will you be coming?"
"That's the problem, I haven't enough time to get her to you. Could you meet us at Gatwick?"
I knew they could. In fact, chances were that Jimmy was already being dispatched with an impatient motion of her hand to get his eleven-year-old mint-condition Rover out of the garage. The new door that had just been built gave direct access from the bungalow; he was very proud of that. I could picture him in there, wiping any stray finger marks off the paint work.
"Oh .. . can't you come here? It would mean we wouldn't get back until late."
They lived only an hour from the airport, but anything to fuck me about.
"I can't, I'm afraid. I'm a bit strapped for time."
"But where would we meet you?" There was an edge of panic in her voice at the thought of having to do something so challenging, mixed with annoyance that today's minute-by-minute routine was being disrupted. It must have been a riot growing up as Mr. and Mrs. Brown's little boy.
I'd sensed from the beginning that they or rather, she didn't really like me. Maybe she blamed me for their son's death; I certainly knew she resented the fact that I was the person he'd appointed as their granddaughter's guardian, even though she knew very well that they were too old to look after her themselves. But fuck it, they'd be dead soon. I would just feel sorry for Kelly when that day came; she needed other people to support her, even if they were as suffocating as the Browns.
When I got back to the car Kelly was pretending to be engrossed in another flyer, and without looking up she greeted me with a downright martyr's sigh. I'd have to sort her out soon, or she was going to turn out like her poisoned granny.
I kept it upbeat.
"They're really excited about you coming to stay today instead of next weekend, they can't wait to see you and hear all about your time on the ship with everyone."
"OK. That means that I go back to school when everybody else does?"
"Yes, but you'll have a great time with Granny and Grandad first."
She didn't share my optimism, but she was switched on enough to know that, even though they might be boring, they loved her dearly. It was the only reason I put up with them.
We got back onto the main drag and headed for the tunnel, me thinking about the RV details I'd been given. From Kelly there was nothing but brooding, oppressive silence and I didn't really know how to break it.
Eventually I said, "I'll phone you at school one lunchtime next week,
OK?"
She perked up.
"You will? You'll phone me?"
"Sure I will. I don't know when it will be, but I will."
She looked at me and raised an accusing eyebrow.
"Is that going to be another one of your promises?"
I smiled and nodded my head. I knew I was digging myself a very deep hole here, because every time I promised I seemed to fuck up; I didn't have a clue what I'd be doing, and I knew it was a short-term gain. I hated this part of my responsibilities, I hated letting her down the way I'd been let down.
I said, "Not just a promise a double promise. We'll talk about all the things we'll do on our next holiday. I'll make it up to you, you'll see."
She was studying my face, sizing me up. Having gained an inch, she was going to go for the full mile.
"Do I have to go to Granny and Grandad's?"
I could guess how she felt. She'd told me that when she was with them, she spent most of her time pulling her shirt back out of her jeans after Carmen had pulled them up to her armpits "to keep out the cold." I wouldn't want to be going there either, but I said, "It'll be fine, don't worry about it. You were going to stay with them next weekend after school anyway. Another weekend won't hurt. I'll have a little chat and see if they'll take you to the aquarium to see those sharks we were talking about."
She gave me a look to let me know the aquarium trip wouldn't happen.
I knew she was right and ploughed on.
"One thing's for sure, I don't want them to take you to the Bloody Tower; that's our special thing, OK?"
There was a slow acknowledgment, even though she probably knew there was more chance other grandmother metamorphosing into Zoe Ball overnight. I indicated to get off the M23 on the last stretch toward the airport.
Signs welcomed us to the North Terminal and I headed up to the shortterm parking. I kept up my goodness-me-I'm-so-excited voice.
"Right, let's go and see if Granny and Grandad are here yet, shall we? Tell you what, if they aren't, we'll go and have something to eat. Hungry yet?"
That should keep Granny happy.
She didn't say it, but the look she gave me as she got out of the car said, Cut the crap, dickhead, I've had it up to here. She'd been hung out with the washing; she knew it, and she wanted me to know that she knew it. I got hold of her hand and bag, because there was traffic all over the place, and followed the signs to the North Terminal.
I'd arranged to meet them in the Costa Coffee shop. It would be easy eno
ugh to find; even they could do it.
I looked at my G-Shock, the one I'd bought to replace the one I'd lost. It was a Baby-G this time--the new one--and when you pressed the backlight button, a little surfer came up on one of the displays. I quite enjoyed that, even though it was the same little man doing the same little surfing thing every single time. Sad but true.
It was just past one o'clock. They weren't there yet. Trying to ease my guilt I took Kelly on a sightseeing tour of the shops and she landed up with bars of chocolate, an airline teddy bear and an All Saints CD. It was the easy way out; I knew it wouldn't achieve anything, but it made me feel a bit better.
We went back to the Costa Coffee shop and sat on bar stools with a view of the terminal entrance. She had an orange soda, I had a flat white, if that was what they called it, and we both had a sandwich as we sat watching a packed airport get fed, catch planes and generally spend more money in one hour than they would in an entire day on holiday.
Kelly said, "Nick, do you know how long it takes before an elephant is born ?"
"Nope." I wasn't really listening; I was too busy bending over my coffee and looking out for Wallace and Gromit, resisting looking at my watch.
"Nearly two years."
"Oh, that's interesting," I said.
"OK, do you know how many people were in the world in I960?"
"Three years."
She'd sussed me out.
"Nick ... Three billion. But very soon the world will have a population of six billion."
I turned to look at her.
"You're very clever for a--" Then I saw what she was doing: reading facts off the back of sugar packets.
"That's cheating!"
At last I got a smile from her. It turned into an actress's smile when she said through gritted teeth, "Oh, look. Granny and Grandad."
"Well, off you go then and say hello!"
Muttering under her breath, she got off her stool and ran over to them.
Their faces showed a mixture of relief at finding us and self-congratulation at being brave enough to be out and about in such a big, busy place. Kelly gave them both a hug; she did love them, it was just that they weren't the sort of people you'd want to spend all day with, let alone a bonus weekend.