by Alan Judd
‘Glasgow’s the only other place I know that could end up like this,’ said Henry. ‘Peace on condition that you annihilate the other side. Unless we get race war in our other cities.’
‘Depressing prospect.’
‘The future always is. In our time, anyway. In the last century people looked forward to this one as a time when everything would be better. I suppose many things are. But we’re not so optimistic about the next century, are we? If anything, we think of it as a time of diminishing humanity.’
They strolled along the pavement with the escorting section spread out in tactical formation on either side of the road. Henry seemed completely relaxed but for Charles the demands of the present easily outweighed those of the future. He was constantly looking for sniping positions in windows, alleyways and blocked-up doorways. ‘Perhaps we’ll be as wrong about the next century as others were about ours,’ he said. He had noticed in himself before that states of nervous watchfulness encouraged opinions that were more reassuring than realistic. It was as though he was thereby staking a claim in a future he was not sure of reaching.
Henry, though, was apparently oblivious to his surroundings. ‘I don’t believe you’re that much of an optimist, Charles. Beneath that cool exterior a cold heart freezes. Things generally get worse, don’t you agree?’
‘It depends upon the things, which means I don’t agree. Some things get worse, some get better, some don’t change. Generalisations are difficult, if you’ll forgive that one.’
‘They’re also the only things worth saying. You could record your sordid particulars for the rest of your life but it’s all pointless if you’re not prepared to generalise on the basis of it.’
Charles smiled. ‘Some philosophers argue that the general comes first and that we fit the particulars into it.’
‘Some philosophers are arse over tit,’ said Henry. ‘I was being serious.’
‘What makes you think I wasn’t?’
‘You? You never are, you bugger. You’re always on the fence. Serve you right if you get piles.’
Henry found that all the sentry positions lacked everything except ventilation. ‘Makes me appreciate living in the hospital,’ he said as they clambered down from one sandbagged, corrugated tower. ‘It has its problems, of course – too many women – but it is comfortable. It’s a funny thing about the women. I’m becoming utterly depraved and heartless. I just keep on doing it with as many as possible to see how long it’s going to last. There must come a time when I shall reach the bottom and be able to sink no lower, but each time I think I’ve got there I find I can wriggle down a bit further. D’you know what I did the other evening?’ – he giggled – ‘but I won’t tell you, I’m still ashamed about it. I’d like to find out if Chatsworth’s ever done it, though. But the trouble is, after a while, you get so that you can’t think about anything else. It infects every part of your life. Don’t you find that?’
‘It’s the other way round with me. If I’m starved of women I’m more inclined to dwell on them.’
‘If I’m starved of them I just sort of forget. I become asexual until I’m with one again, and then I just want to jump on her, stoat-like, without a word, anonymously.’
They were on the Protestant side now, where the kerbstones were painted red, white and blue and the slogans were painted neatly on the roads and walls. Union Jacks hung from some of the windows, and were occasionally strung across the street from house to house. Two very small boys with very dirty faces ran up, proffering ragged bits of tartan. ‘Have ye killed any Fenians, mister?’ asked one. ‘We’ll help ye kill ’em. We’ll help ye kill the Fenians.’
They refused the tartan, meant as a symbol of identification, and Charles watched to see that the patrolling section did the same. The soldiers were strung out along both sides of the road at five-yard intervals. It was a sunny, breezy, cheerful day but there was no grass or any other greenery to be seen. At one house they were offered tea, a regular stop in that street, and they drank it on the pavement, joking with the women and playing with the children. Henry and Charles stood a little way off. For some reason it would have seemed unofficer-like to accept tea.
‘The trouble with being an officer,’ said Charles, ‘is that it’s not possible to be anything else. Everything you do is determined by what other people expect of you. You just can’t help it. You can’t even look like anything else.’
‘Unlike your soldiers, you don’t need food and drink and you have no sexual desire.’
‘Nor emotion, fear or envy.’
‘You are indifferent to heat and cold and to any other form of physical discomfort.’
‘Wherever you are is always the best of all possible worlds.’
The tea finished, they went on their way. Without wishing to identify with the Loyalist cause, they could not but feel safer in Loyalist areas. Except in times of very bad sectarian strife they were unlikely to be shot at, whereas in Republican areas they were quite likely to be. Although they were genuinely unbiased towards one side or the other, they were less relaxed, hence more tense and watchful, in Republican areas. It was more difficult for them to be friendly even if the people had been so inclined, which they were not. The Loyalist areas were more reassuring because of their insistence upon identification with the rest of Britain, but it was a fierce and un-British insistence which made it difficult to ignore the differences. Charles felt generally comfortable but essentially fraudulent in such places.
They crossed the Peace Line and approached the monastery that dominated the Republican area, on top of which there was an Army observation post. There were the same kind of houses and the same small streets here, but the flags hanging from the windows were Republican and the slogans, instead of being anti-Catholic, were anti-Army, anti-RUC and anti-Brit. They were not anti-Protestant, as the Protestant slogans were anti-Catholic, but the Republican flags were symbols of defiance. There were fewer people in these streets, no offers of tea, no well-scrubbed doorsteps. Instead, there was an atmosphere of silent and sullen hostility. The people were quiet on the whole but they had close, hard faces and they seemed to be able to make the very brickwork seem alien. At least in the new estate the hostility was open and vociferous, but here it was suppressed and bitter. The people lived in fear of their Protestant neighbours on the other side of the wire and they relied upon the Army for protection, for which they hated the Army.
‘I had a row with the CO this morning,’ said Henry. ‘About VD. He’s got very worried about it all of a sudden. P’raps there was an article in the Telegraph. He said he’ll bust any soldier who gets it and I said that if any soldier comes to me with it the fact shall go no further.’
‘I wonder he didn’t bust you.’
‘He can’t. Deadlock. Many more words but he can’t do anything. He’s absolutely furious. I have to tell him how many are ill, who they are and what diseases there are but not who has what. He has no right to know that. It’s one of the few limitations of his power – in practice, anyway – and I told him so. He was speechless. He left the room and bawled out Philip Lamb because he didn’t like his haircut. Said it made him look like Rudolph Valentino and told him to get it changed.’
‘I should think Philip was rather flattered.’
‘Either that or he’d be hurt because he thinks he’s dated.’
‘But how many have got VD?’
‘None that I know of. That’s the curious thing. They haven’t had a chance, poor sods.’
‘Perhaps the CO’s got it.’
‘Not possible. Officers don’t get it.’
They were in the shadow now of the monastery. The largest building in the area, larger even than the Factory, it was a massive, solid self-assertion in the midst of the mean streets. The monks, apart from one or two who sulked, maintained the appearance of a calm and reasoned neutrality which most people took at face value but which the CO instantly mistrusted. Naturally, they looked after only those of their own faith, but it was unreasona
ble to criticise them for not doing more since it was only their own that came to them. To reach the observation post in the monastery it was necessary to climb an exposed spiral staircase on the outside of the building, on which a sniper had killed a soldier the previous year, and then climb through a trapdoor into what looked like a disused cell. From here they went along a wide wooden corridor and then up another spiral staircase to the top of the tower. Though they rarely saw the monks, they were often warned to be quiet and not to spend any longer than they needed in the building. The observation post was valuable. From it they could see about half of Belfast when the haze permitted, and they had a detailed view of the Peace Line and its environs. Like the monastery, the houses were nineteenth-century, humped back-to-back, with little slate roofs, tiny backyards and common alleyways which looked homely and quaint viewed from the monastery during the day but which were dirty and sinister at night. During the night the sentries operated powerful searchlights which illuminated vulnerable sections of the Peace Line and also the houses of local IRA leaders. This latter was the CO’s idea: at least one light was constantly on the home of one man who was well known as an organiser of bombings and shootings but against whom it had proved impossible to get a conviction. His house was bathed in harsh light throughout the night, ensuring that no one could enter or leave without being identified. It must have seemed to the occupants as though they were in the curtained centre of a circular stage, surrounded by brilliant spotlights and a silent audience. The CO was gleeful about the idea, claiming that he was duty-bound to harass the man and his family as much as possible as long as they continued threatening to kill any who might be disposed to witness against them. He was also in the habit of knocking on the man’s door and chatting to him about nothing in particular – ‘Just to let him know we’re sitting on him. Doesn’t do any harm to remind him now and again.’ Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, the man and his family seemed to live a life of irreproachable ordinariness. One or two of them would even pass the time of day with soldiers if they felt in a good enough mood, or if the sun was shining.
‘This is the only OP that’s warm, dry and comfortable,’ said Henry. ‘And lonely.’
‘’Tis all right, sir,’ said one of the two soldiers manning it, a burly Mancunian. ‘Leastways, you get a bit of peace an’ quiet up here.’
‘McCart didn’t go out to collect his brew money this morning,’ said the other soldier, referring to the local leader. ‘You know, his dole money. It’s his day, Thursdays, signs on regular as clockwork. Must be ill or something. Or maybe they send it to him now so he don’t have to get out of bed unnecessarily, like.’
As they were walking back down the stairs, Henry said suddenly, ‘D’you not like sex, Charles?’
Charles was a little taken aback, never having asked himself the question before. ‘Er – yes. I mean, it depends who with, doesn’t it?’
Henry nodded. ‘You don’t, then. Or at least we’re not talking about quite the same thing.’
Charles tried to ask the question of himself, with regard to Janet. It seemed for some reason to be inapplicable. So much depended upon so much else. He couldn’t even say whether he would have enjoyed sex with her more if he had liked her more, or less. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The idea of it, which is what you like about it even when you’re not doing it, in my sense. It doesn’t depend so much upon who you’re doing it with because you’re trying not to let the personality enter into it. The more anonymous the better. You’re trying to reduce the other person and yourself to objects, not even feeling objects but objects who are attracted basically by an idea of their own objectivity. It’s a death-wish really, I think. Pornography is basically that. You should talk to Chatsworth about it.’ Henry spoke as though he were giving confidential medical advice, and was referring to a well-known specialist.
‘Chatsworth? Why? Is that what he thinks?’
‘No, but he would if he thought at all.’
‘Why are you asking me?’ Charles lowered his voice because they were walking along the corridor now.
‘It just struck me,’ whispered Henry. ‘You don’t talk much about it. I think you probably have a much healthier attitude but there might be scope for a little sickness. I haven’t given up hope.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Keep me informed. Frustration might corrupt you. It probably won’t, though, that’s the trouble.’
One of Charles’s duties, delegated by Edward, was to write the weekly Intelligence and Community Relations reports for the C company area. The former was comprised mainly of observations provided by the soldiers and a few generalisations of his own, which were either suggestively vague or unashamedly obvious. The soldiers on their patrols would talk to anyone who would talk to them, thus giving a fair indication of the mood of the area, and they would also record minor incidents. Charles would then compile a report out of McCart’s not having been seen on Monday or Tuesday and of a neighbour’s remark that he was resting after the weekend troubles, listing the number of stonings and arrests and adding his own comment on the mood of the area. He found it difficult to write without any clear idea of his audience and so tailored what he produced for Nigel Beale, who strove to see significance in everything. In one report he facetiously noted an increase in the number of children’s bicycles in the area, which Nigel immediately related to the use of bicycles as bombs in Vietnam, where their frames were filled with explosive. He heard later from Nigel that this part of the report had been included in the Brigade Intelligence report and that the enforced searching of bicycles was under consideration. Nigel was disappointed, and Charles relieved, when Brigade decided to await further evidence. None was forthcoming.
Similarly, Charles’s weekly Community Relations reports consisted in a little mild fantasising about the ‘CR climate in the area’ and deliberately lengthy accounts of minor good deeds done by soldiers on their rounds. There was relatively little CR work done by any part of the battalion, partly because Anthony Hamilton-Smith was supposed to be coordinating it but mainly because most attempts by the Army to establish friendly contacts in such a strongly Republican area were doomed to failure. Even those willing to risk it in the early days of the troubles had soon been intimidated out of it, and there never had been many. A number of schemes had been tried along the lines of the ‘hearts and minds’ operations which had worked well in other parts of the world, such as the building of community centres and the provision of sports equipment, but it was soon found that although the money for the projects was accepted with alacrity the work on them proceeded rather more slowly. The only completed community centre had been burned down within a week because it had received Army assistance. One of the very few successful projects was the boxing club started for the youth of the area by the C company sergeant major. Two nights a week some of the children who had previously thrown bricks into the Factory yard came into an old machine room and happily thumped each other under the sergeant major’s watchful eye. Within a few weeks they were taking their hands out of their pockets and greeting him as ‘Sergeant Major’ when they met him in the street.
One Sunday afternoon there was what was called a ‘confrontation’ on the Peace Line. It began with a Republican parade that passed close to one of the main barriers, a large metal and concrete structure which completely blocked what had been a main road. The parade was a procession of several hundred people led by the Seamus Murray Memorial Band, a smart affair of pipes and drums with young men and young women, as well as girls and boys, dressed in green and white costumes. The music was lively, simple and militant, and the stretch of the road by the Peace Line was lined three deep with spectators. It was an annual event, not sponsored by the IRA, but in a land where bands and parades were so loved they were also symbols of defiance or reminders of victory. Although before the recent troubles there had been some interchange of instruments, and even players, between the two communities, this was now impossible. The ban
d was viewed by both sides as a Republican gesture.
Tim’s platoon was manning the barrier and patrolling the immediate area in case of trouble. Chatsworth’s was doing guard duties and resting whilst Charles’s was on standby in the Factory at two minutes’ notice to move. Charles had persuaded Edward to allow him to go to the barrier with his wireless operator, partly because he was curious and partly because he preferred getting out of the Factory into even the meanest of streets for even the shortest of periods to staying in. In order to do this he had had to work carefully upon Edward for most of the morning since Edward’s usual reaction to any suggestion was ‘no’, unless he thought that the CO might think otherwise. Charles felt it was no small triumph to have got Edward to agree that he should be on the spot in case his platoon were called out so as already to have a firm tactical grasp of the situation.
It was a sunny afternoon and the sense of carnival, with the band’s gay colours and lively tunes, was a welcome change in the drab surroundings. For a time everyone watching – the Protestants on the far side of the Peace Line, the soldiers manning it and the Catholic crowd whose band it was – was caught up in the atmosphere and made a part of it. Differences were not forgotten but for a short time did not matter. The large crowd following the band was organised in the traditional Republican way, with men and youths at the front and women and children at the back. The latter straggled along in happy confusion but the men and youths attempted to march in the normal IRA fashion of files of four stamping their feet, so that the background to the band music was the sinister clump of boots. They carried no weapons and wore neither berets nor combat jackets. Their faces were serious and meant to be expressionless but the effort of concentration produced a pained look on some. The clumping was at its most eerily effective when the band was silent.