The Perfect Soldier

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘Is that strictly relevant?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  The Director was still plucking at the elastic band. Eventually he returned it to the mug where he kept his pens.

  ‘He’s just come up with a proposal.’ He gestured at the telephone. ‘I find it extremely attractive, given the odd …’ he smiled for the first time, ‘… tweak.’

  It was nearly dusk by the time Molly Jordan got to the marina. The last of the sunshine was spilling over the marshlands to the west and in the windless chill the lines of moored yachts rode easily alongside the sturdy wooden pontoons. According to Patrick, Giles had given work a miss. Rather than face more post-mortems at Lloyd’s, he’d decided to take the day off. When Patrick had first told her, she’d stared at him in disbelief. Their son dead. Their lives ruined. And Giles had gone for a sail. Yet the more she thought about it, and the more she listened to Patrick, the more sense it made. Life had backed Giles into a corner. Just now, the yacht was probably his only real escape.

  Molly parked the car beside her husband’s Rover in the empty members’ compound and sat behind the wheel for a moment, still uncertain whether driving across was such a good idea. The yacht had always been Giles’s territory, the equivalent – she supposed – to the new-found freedom of her morning run. In the summer, it was true, she occasionally joined him for weekend cruises up the coast towards Aldeburgh and Southwold, and much earlier, when James had still been living at home, they’d all made the crossing to Belgium. But even then there’d been an unspoken understanding that this was Giles’s invitation, Giles’s space. Molly Jay, it was plain, had always been precious to him. God knows how he’d manage to cope without it.

  Molly left the car, pulling her coat around her and mounting the steps to the wooden boardwalk that ran the length of the marina. Giles had been one of the earliest owners to sign up, securing himself a berth on the long seaward pontoon. She could see the yacht already, tucked in amongst a line of other craft. It was a Nicholson 35, low, graceful lines, GRP and teak construction, beautifully maintained. It hadn’t been cheap, and Giles had agonised for weeks about spending the money, but the late eighties had marked the floodtide of the Thatcher boom and it had been at Molly’s insistence that he’d finally taken the plunge. He worked jolly hard. He owed himself a pat on the back, a little present for weekends. He was getting just a touch old for dinghy racing. Why not invest in the real thing?

  Closer now, Molly shaded her eyes against the livid sunset, beginning to wonder whether Giles had, after all, been to sea. The mainsail on the yacht was lashed down and the decks were bare of the clutter that normally signalled a recent outing. She paused a moment, looking down at the green skirt of algae on the waterline, struck by another thought. For the first time ever, Giles hadn’t bothered about defouling Molly Jay’s hull. At the end of every season, without fail, the yacht was always lifted onto dry land and chocked in a wooden cradle. Removing the summer’s growth of underwater weed took the best part of a month, Giles disappearing at weekends with his bucket of chemicals and his scrubbing brush. This ritual had become a family joke, Giles obsessed by the state of Molly’s bottom, but this year – for whatever reason – the boat was still in the water. Maybe he’s just deferred it, Molly thought. Or maybe there’s some other reason.

  She stepped aboard, feeling the yacht moving beneath her. Clambering down into the well of the cockpit, she called Giles’s name. The hatch to the cabin was open and she could see a light on inside. She heard a movement, then Giles’s face appeared at the open hatch. To her relief, he was smiling. His hair was everywhere and he was wearing a shapeless old guernsey she’d given him years back. He looked almost normal.

  ‘Darling …’ he reached up and kissed her, ‘just in time for tea.’

  Molly climbed down into the cabin. Giles had the little heater on. With the curtains pulled and the kettle singing on the calor gas stove, the boat felt warm and snug. No wonder he’d preferred this, she thought, to another day of humiliation at the office. Molly found a perch on the cluttered banquette behind the table, undoing the buttons on her coat while Giles rummaged through a cupboard, looking for tea-bags.

  ‘Patrick OK?’ he said.

  ‘He was fine. He took me to lunch.’

  ‘Anywhere nice?’

  Molly named a hotel on Frinton’s seafront. Giles whistled.

  ‘Lucky thing.’

  He found the tea-bags at last and scalded the battered metal teapot with boiling water. Molly watched him, curious now at this latest transformation. The stranger she’d spent the night with seemed to have become yet a third person: relaxed, benign, even light-hearted. She felt herself losing track again, a sense of bewilderment spiced with a certain irritation.

  ‘We talked about what’s happened, the money and everything,’ she said quietly. ‘I’d no idea it was so bad.’

  Giles looked round, the steaming teapot wrapped in a towel. For the first time Molly noticed the oil on his hands.

  ‘It’s terrible …’ he was saying, ‘I’m afraid it couldn’t be worse.’

  ‘But why didn’t you tell me? Am I allowed to ask?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Giles put the teapot to one side and then turned towards her again, leaning back against the tiny sink. He was a tall man and the cabin roof made him stoop.

  ‘Well?’

  Molly tried to warm the question with a smile. The last thing she wanted was another scene, more tears. Better this Giles than the chilly, thin-lipped wreck she’d run home to only a day ago. Giles was looking at his shoes.

  ‘I couldn’t,’ he said simply. ‘I just couldn’t tell you. I tried, believe me. Several times, I almost did it. I used to sit on the train, trying to work out ways of saying it. But somehow …’ he shrugged, ‘it never happened.’

  ‘Until James died.’

  ‘Yes, of course, James …’ he frowned, ‘that really put it in perspective.’

  She looked at him a moment, astonished at his tone of voice. It was as if James had been dead a month, a fact of life, just one of those things, already discounted.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  ‘Well.…’ he glanced up at her for the first time, ‘something like that happens, God almighty, you don’t start worrying about the mortgage.’

  Molly looked away, pulling her coat around her, anger this time, not simply irritation.

  ‘So it helped, really,’ she said at last. ‘Got you off the hook.’

  ‘I’m not with you.’

  ‘James dying. Made you realise what really matters.’

  They looked at each other for a moment then Giles busied himself with the teapot, decanting UHT milk into tupperware mugs. Without thinking, Molly began to clear a space on the table. The table was covered by a nautical chart. The corners of the chart were weighed down with pots of jam and honey and there was a pile of wooden shavings where Giles had been sharpening a pencil. Molly tidied the shavings into an ashtray, glancing at the chart as she did so. It showed the area around the Cherbourg peninsula, a thin pencilled line dog-legging down towards the Channel Islands. Molly began to roll up the map. As Giles put the mugs on the empty table she noticed that his hands were shaking.

  ‘You’ll miss all this,’ she said, securing the map with an elastic band.

  ‘Miss all what?’

  ‘The boat.’ She looked him in the eye as he settled behind the table. ‘Being able to get away at weekends.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I will.’ He nodded matter-of-factly. ‘My fault though. No one else’s.’

  Molly reached for the tea. The mug was scalding hot.

  ‘Patrick says it’s curtains. He says we’ll have to sell everything. More or less.’

  ‘Except the house.’

  ‘Yes. He mentioned that. Apparently we’re allowed to stay. Until we die.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then it goes to Lloyd’s.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Along with everything e
lse.’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  Molly fell silent for a moment, her hands around the mug. Giles was gazing across at the brass barometer, fixed to the bulkhead. The arrow was pointing to ‘Unsettled’.

  ‘Just as well then …’ she said after a while.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Just as well. I was thinking about James. It would have been nice to have left him something, you know, like most parents do. No point now though, eh?’

  Molly broke off, not wanting to push the thought any further, ashamed at how easily she’d let the bitterness overcome her. Yesterday, in church, she’d vowed to stay strong, to be the one who held it all together. Yet here she was, barely twenty-four hours later, letting it get the better of her. Maybe the psychologists were right. Women really were the weaker sex. She offered Giles a bright smile.

  ‘I came across to find out how you are,’ she said, ‘how you’re coping. I was worried.’

  ‘Yes, of course …’ He nodded at once. ‘I’m sorry to have been so … you know … yesterday … I’m not sure exactly what happened. To tell you the truth, I can barely remember any of it.’

  ‘You were very upset, my love.’ She reached for his hand. ‘There’s no need to apologise.’

  ‘Yes, but …’ he ducked his head, shamefaced, ‘I wasn’t much use, was I?’

  ‘No, but neither of us were very brave.’ She smiled at him. ‘Patrick’s right. We just have to get on with it. There’s nothing else we can do.’

  He nodded, listening to her, letting the conversation die. Driving across, she’d vowed to try and establish some kind of timetable, what they’d have to do and when, but already she knew it wouldn’t be easy. It was as if Giles had shuffled out of the room they called their life. He was as unreachable now as he’d been yesterday, walling himself off behind a series of polite evasions.

  ‘More tea?’

  ‘No thanks.’ She covered the mug with her hand. ‘I was hoping we might talk. About what happens next. How long do we have? Before they send in the bailiffs?’

  ‘It won’t come to that.’

  ‘It won’t?’

  ‘No,’ he shook his head, ‘not if we’re sensible.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well …’ he was frowning now, ‘we have to draw up some kind of schedule. Assets. Things we own. They formpart of the estate. Once they’re realised, the money goes to—’

  ‘Realised?’

  ‘Sold. Then there’s another list. Things we’re allowed to keep. There are rules about this, procedures. It’s pretty straightforward. We’re not the first people to go bankrupt. Not by any means.’

  ‘I see.’ Molly nodded, looking at the neat row of charts, carefully stacked away, each of them labelled. Southern North Sea. Eastern Channel. Western Channel. ‘So do you think it was worth it?’ she asked. ‘In the end?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lloyd’s. Investing. Gambling. Whatever it is we did.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Giles shrugged. ‘I suppose it served its purpose. James got educated—’ He broke off, turning away, and Molly realised after all how frail this recovery of his had been, how a single word could wreck it all. James. Gone. She got up, manoeuvring clumsily around the table. Boats were all the same. Awkward angles everywhere. She put her arms around him, letting him bury his head in the folds of her coat. The soft cashmere muffled his voice but she caught the gist of it.

  ‘I’m sorry …’ he seemed to be saying, ‘… I’m truly sorry.’

  *

  The second night in the bunker was worse than the first.

  McFaul lay on the sleeping-bag, trying to keep track of the rise and fall of the bombardment. During the day, the mortars had been largely silent and from time to time there’d come the shattering roar of government MiG-23 fighter-bombers flying ground-attack missions from Catumbela, an air force base on the coast. The jets flew in pairs, silver fish that swooped low over the bush to drop their bombs and then thundered away in near-vertical climbs, the favoured tactic against the rumoured Stinger missiles. McFaul had plenty of doubts about the military effectiveness of the MiGs but the noise alone was a comfort, evidence that someone out there cared. After dark, though, the initiative returned to the rebels, and from somewhere they seemed to have laid hands on more kit. As well as the crump of the big 120-mm mortars, McFaul recognised the sharper, flatter bark of smaller pieces, 81 mm and 60 mm. They’re getting closer, he thought, shrinking the range, pulling the noose ever tighter around the battered city. Last time anyone tried to count, there’d been upwards of 60,000 deslocados, displaced people, in Muengo. Add the original population, at least the same again, and you’re looking at a lot of blood.

  McFaul got to his feet, easing the stiffness in his limbs. The concrete on the floor had been laid in a hurry and the thin down sleeping-bag did little to mattress the surface ridges. At night, like now, the bunker was full, a dozen or so people, all European. Most of them were trying to sleep, long shapes in the gloom barely penetrated by the single overhead light bulb. Power in the bunker came from a generator upstairs. The Swiss engineers had wisely installed a brand new Honda and they’d evidently left the Red Cross people with a couple of months’ supply of fuel. McFaul could hear the generator now, a low purring overhead. Since he’d been in the bunker, it had never faltered.

  At the far side of the bunker, beside a flight of wooden steps that disappeared into the house, was the communications set-up: a big HF radio on a steel desk and a couple of Motorolas for local use. All day, one of the Red Cross people had been monitoring conversations between the UN representative in Muengo and the UNITA commander out in the bush. The latter called himself Colonel Katilo. Katilo was Ovimbundu for ‘will not run’, one of the favoured noms de guerre. With Katilo, the UN rep had been trying to broker a ceasefire long enough to organise the safe evacuation of the aid community. In all, according to the Red Cross, there were twenty-eight aid workers in Muengo, most of whom were under orders from their parent organisations to leave. Leaving, though, was difficult. Beyond UNITA lines, mines had made the roads impassable in every direction and without a ceasefire no pilot would dream of taking his aircraft within fifty miles of the city’s crumbling airstrip.

  McFaul limped between the bodies on the floor and paused beside the radio. The duty Red Cross official was a greying Swiss called François who’d once worked in a Geneva bank. He and McFaul shared the same sense of humour, a wry assumption that making plans in Africa was an act of the purest optimism, and that if anything could go wrong then it surely would. The Swiss glanced up, stifling a yawn. Then he gestured at the HF set, thin far-away voices crackling through the ether, part of someone else’s conversation.

  ‘Luanda,’ he said simply. ‘They wanted an update earlier.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘I told them it was like last night. Except worse.’

  ‘And what did they say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  McFaul nodded. The civil war was like a bush fire, smouldering for months on end then suddenly erupting at local flashpoints, stirred by unfathomable political currents. Wherever the rebels or the government troops sensed an advantage, then the fighting would begin again. The slaughter would go on for weeks and weeks until both sides were either bored or exhausted, and the last item on any commander’s list was the welfare of the local people. They’d long since ceased to matter, helpless victims of a catastrophe they neither wanted nor understood.

  A call sign came through on one of the Motorolas and McFaul recognised the rich bass voice of the local UN rep, Fernando, a middle-aged white from Mozambique. Evidently he was still trying to sell a ceasefire to Colonel Katilo, though negotiations appeared to have stalled.

  McFaul reached across, dipping a Styrofoam cup into the big 40-gallon drum of tepid water that would supply the bunker until further notice. The water was already rationed, seven cups per day per person, and McFaul knew the ration would be reduced the
longer the siege went on. It was hot underground, a stuffy, airless atmosphere that smelled of damp earth and unwashed bodies. From time to time, people would leave to use one of the two lavatories upstairs, but the nearest of these was already blocked and the stench seeped in as soon as the door was opened at the top of the stairs.

  François, the Swiss, was still bent to the desk, scribbling on a pad. McFaul watched him, unable to keep up with the stream of Portuguese from the Motorola. Eventually, François leaned back, laying down his pen. McFaul offered him the Styrofoam cup.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  The Swiss sipped at the cup, ever thoughtful. Finally, he shrugged.

  ‘Usual problem,’ he said. ‘Both sides want to handle the evacuation, take the credit.’

  ‘Play the white man?’

  ‘Tout à fait.’ He glanced up, acknowledging the dig with a tired smile. ‘Which means, I guess, another couple of days.’

  ‘Minimum.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And Geneva? New York?’ McFaul gestured at the big HF set. ‘You talk to them at all?’

  ‘Only once. To Geneva. They say they’re getting everything they need through Luanda.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he looked up again, a grin this time, ‘they told me the weather’s awful. Rain. Snow. Big falls in the mountains.’

  Another conversation crackled into life on the Motorola and McFaul turned away. He had a small Sony radio of his own and he’d been listening to the BBC World Service, curious to know whether this latest outbreak of insanity in Muengo would feature on the news from Bush House. Inevitably it didn’t, though a couple of bulletins had mentioned the death of a young British aid worker. On neither occasion was James Jordan named, though it was plain that it couldn’t have been anyone else. McFaul returned to his space by the steps to the garden, musing on the irony. Out in the darkness, hundreds of local people were probably dying yet they didn’t rate even a mention. To a world hungry for bigger, starker, simpler tragedies, Angola remained a mystery, an unlanced boil on the face of Africa. The politics were complex. No one seemed to speak English. The world’s press had better things to do.