Country

by Michael Hughes

  She phoned up Laura’s da. There was nobody else. She said she was feeling very bad about the whole thing. It wasn’t right.

  ‘It’s only natural to feel that. You did a hard thing, but it was a sensible thing. All part of growing up. There’s more people round here than you’d believe who’ve done the same, Protestants and RCs both. Soldiers get themselves in bother sometimes, and it’s always best to manage things on the QT. And every one of those people that I know of has fine children now, in a happy home and a happy marriage.’

  ‘I don’t mean that. I mean the other thing.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well, I mean, look. A debt is a debt, I’m afraid. There’s no backing out at this stage. You scratch my back, and all that. But we’re not asking you to do anything bad. And it might be something very good. It genuinely might save a life. I know you feel bad about the wee baby, so look at it this way. If you can save another life to balance it out, well and good.’

  18

  He said they’d make it a kind of routine. Every Wednesday after the drama group, she’d go back to their house for her tea, and then he’d leave her home, and they’d have a wee chat.

  The first time she told him nothing. Just shite. Such-and-such was seen going into a well-known republican bar, when the dogs in the street knew the same boy was a diehard republican. She thought that would get her off the hook. But no. He said he could use his own two eyes. The men they were after would never be seen near a republican bar. He needed a bit more.

  That put the wind up her. Big time. What the fuck was she playing at? This was serious shite she was getting mixed up in. She said she’d changed her mind. She would pay the money, whatever it was she owed, but she wasn’t going to meet him again.

  He told her he understood, but he was being transferred on to other duties, and so she would have to sort it out with his superior. He said to call in the station, tell people it was about getting her driving licence, and she could have a wee chat then.

  The superior wasn’t so nice. He shook his head, slow and steady, like a sarky teacher telling you you were getting detention.

  ‘Changing your mind isn’t on the cards, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Can we not just forget about it? I won’t say nothing, I swear to God.’

  ‘What I propose is, we start paying you. Say, twenty quid a week? And I’ll take over as your handler. Any time you have something for me, there’s a few quid more. And if I get something I can actually use, then it’s serious spondulicks.’

  ‘I can’t. It’s not right.’

  ‘That’s a matter of perspective. But we’re all sinners, aren’t we? There’s none of us has a stainless soul.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I’ve had a look in your file, and I was quite taken aback at what I found. Pictures of you at the base in Lisburn that time. Copies of the form you signed, for the tablets. It’s all there, chapter and verse. Oh, I’ll not say anything, don’t you worry. But word can get out different ways. It’s just what you might call a wee insurance policy. You play ball, and so will we. Dead simple. Everybody’s happy.’

  19

  She came up with a few bits and pieces. And they started giving her cash, far more than she expected. Sometimes fifty or a hundred pound. She got used to it very quick.

  She always had what nobody else had. Clothes. Make-up. Hair. She was more beautiful all the time, they all said it. She could be a model. And she knew it was true. She wasn’t interested in that kind of thing, but she was smart enough to know that if you looked a certain way, you had a head start in anything you wanted to do.

  It wasn’t vanity. It was good sense. There were few enough ways out of that place, and if an accident of birth had give her a wee leg up in one of them, she wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. She’d take whatever she could get.

  So she kept up her reports. And the cash kept coming in. This was her ticket out. Just a wee bit longer. Just another couple of hundred in the bank.

  When the ceasefire was called, she thought that would scupper the whole thing. But her handler said quite the contrary. It was vital they knew what was going on inside the movement. It could break down at any time, and they needed some idea what was coming.

  She got to hanging out with Brian’s crowd again. Not ones really involved, just young lads doing the odd message. But she thought it was safe enough now. She asked a few innocent questions, and she soon got a good idea who was who these days. It could change very fast.

  She never saw Brian. People said he was over in England. Nobody ever said doing what. And damn sure nobody ever asked.

  They started asking her to run the odd message herself. Her family was sound enough, but nothing to draw attention. She was a clean skin. She might come in handy herself some time. She okayed it with her handler, and that was that.

  Before long she found herself drinking with some of the top men. They were never seen together in pubs, so it was always at somebody’s house. She was let sit in the odd time. She could sing too, that helped. They liked having her around.

  The peelers started dropping hints that she might try and click with one of them. Nothing mad, just the odd drink, maybe a wee snog and a fumble out the back of wherever. String him along, see what she could find out. She always said no, acted shocked, but they dangled big money in front of her. Hundreds, maybe thousands if they could secure a conviction.

  Sometimes there’d be English fellas there when she met her handler. She could tell they weren’t very popular with the RUC, always getting dirty looks. She got the feeling she was big news. Like the peelers and the army were fighting over her. She didn’t mind that one bit.

  Just another few months. Another five hundred quid. Soon she’d be set. Any day now.

  20

  Then Brian showed up.

  She was working behind the bar in the pub right on the border where most of them drank. It was really called the Spanish Armada, but everybody called it the Ships, because of all the old pictures there were hanging on the walls. It had a few rooms upstairs so they could have a hotel licence, and keep the bar open as late as they liked. Some nights she would stay herself, to save waking them at home when she came in.

  The job was her own idea. You heard everything, plus it gave her a cover story for the money. She was earning more every week from the peelers than she was in a month at the bar, but at home she used to say she got very good tips. Which was sometimes true. She knew how to. And it all added up. She gave a bit of money to her ma and da every month, and they never asked a thing. Her da had just been laid off again, and there was four younger than her at home. Money was money.

  When she saw Brian that night, she got this plan in her head. It was just there. She could see it all laid out, like she was on top of a hill and it was the fields down below. She knew it was mad, but she also knew it was fucking brilliant. She’d tell him she was moving away, and it would only be a wee fling. If she could get something good out of him, and one big payout, that would be the truth.

  No time like the present. And he was still a fucking ride.

  Him and a couple more had been there for a while, watching the band, but now the place was shut and it was only them left. The other two were in the corner, full, singing rebel songs, and it was just Brian at the bar smoking fag after fag.

  She joined him. They didn’t look at each other, but she knew he knew she was there. She said it had been a while and he said it had indeed. She said he never used to smoke, not fags anyway, and he said aye well times have changed.

  She asked him for one and he said to work away. She told him her hands were wet from wiping up and asked would he light it for her. She couldn’t help it, she was feeling awful cheeky. She leaned in her head and he put it between her lips. She could taste just the slightest wee taste of him on the filter. The heart was thumping away in her chest.

  He asked where the bogs were. She knew he knew rightly. She said the lights had gone in the toilets in the hall
but there was an en suite room up above, and he could use the one in there. But he’d never find it on his own, the place was a rabbit warren, so she would have to show him. ‘That’s highly convenient,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it just,’ she said. And then she knew they were going to screw.

  She was hot with excitement when she was undoing her bra. The face was flying off her, she could feel it. Doing the sums in her head while he started pawing at her. She’d worked out she needed five grand to get to England and get started, but every time she got anywhere near it, she dipped in. It was too hard not to get the bus up to Belfast and call in to Top Shop and get a few wee things. One big payout would put her over the top. This is it, she kept thinking. This is it.

  They clicked again in that wee room. Just like old times. He clung onto her after like a limpet. Like one of them bears she used to have when she was wee. And he wouldn’t let go.

  He said they were getting married, and she said she was in no rush. He said he was, and just so she knew that’s what was happening. She said nothing. It was the usual shite.

  Except it wasn’t. The next day down the town, everybody was coming up and congratulating her. He’d put it about the town that he came home to propose, and she’d said yes. Fuck. That wasn’t the plan at all.

  Her head was spinning. She had to nod and smile, and before she knew it, it was getting too late to say anything. Fuck fuck fuck.

  There was no way out of it, not without a major scandal. And her ma and da were delighted. They needed a bit of good news. So she told herself it would be all right. Maybe it wasn’t even the worst idea. Things were looking a bit different with the ceasefire. Sooner or later he’d be on the straight and narrow. Get him away from that whole crowd and making good clean money. Start working on him to move over to England.

  So she went along with it. Because, what else do you do?

  21

  Nellie used to wonder did she love Brian. She wasn’t too sure how she was supposed to know. Which meant the answer was probably no. He never said it in so many words, so she didn’t either.

  But she had the feeling he was the sappier of the pair of them. He was the one who would get all lovey-dovey when he had drink taken. You’re everything to me. I would die if you left me. I would kill any man who laid a finger on you. I would track him down, and I would take off the side of his house with a JCB, and I would nail him to the fucking wall.

  She could tell he thought this kind of shite was romantic, but she also knew he kind of meant it. Men were such dicks. Some days she used to hate that you had to bother with them at all. There weren’t three decent ones in the whole place.

  She told her handler they were together, and that meant she was finished. He got het up, and said there might need to be changes. She was asked to come into the barracks one day, a different barracks, and one of the old hands asked her how she’d feel about working for the army instead of the police. It would be bigger money but they would need a better class of information. She said no fucking way. She was done. He said these were very special circumstances, and she could name her price. She told him she appreciated the offer, but she was hanging up her spurs. It wasn’t worth it.

  He didn’t like that. He said they might have to turn her in to the Ra. Or do some graffiti saying she was sucking off peelers. Or get her wee brother kneecapped. The thing was, she was to stay put. That was all there was to it. She was an agent. She didn’t get to pick and choose. She had a duty. They wouldn’t leave her high and dry, but they wouldn’t let her dictate terms either. She didn’t have a choice in the matter.

  22

  It all happened very fucking fast. She was only just eighteen. But everybody was dead excited, and she was too. She couldn’t help it.

  It was nothing over the top, but he did it right. Everybody said it was a lovely day.

  The shine went off it very fast, but. He took her for a week in Donegal after, by way of a honeymoon. Most of it she spent sitting on her hole staring out at the rain while he went and caught up with various old friends in the area, and came stumbling back in at three in the morning. She knew rightly what he was up to, but he said nothing. Neither did she. But she was already starting to wonder if she’d made the worst fucking mistake of her life.

  23

  When she got back, she was assigned a new handler, an army fella. She was to meet him every week in a different base, a good way away. She told Brian she was doing a hairdressing course. She knew he couldn’t give a fuck.

  The handler said his name was Alex. Proper stuck-up English accent. Except he wasn’t at all. He was good crack, in his own way.

  She heard one of the other soldiers slagging him, calling him Paris. She asked him why. He said it was because when he first started, he overdid the amusing anecdotes about his time at the British Embassy over there. They said every time he opened his mouth, it was ‘When I was in Paris’. He thought they were exaggerating, but once something sticks in the army, that’s it. They were always leaving berets and strings of onions on his desk.

  And he was a ride and a half. Oh my God. She could have jumped his bones right there and then. She watched his eyes watching her, and she knew he felt the same.

  He was hers. There was no way he wasn’t.

  All the lights went on inside her head. She was up on the top of that hill again, but the landscape was a different one now. The only question was, did she have the nerve?

  Fucking right she did. Double or quits.

  24

  She did nothing for a couple of months. It was all fairly quiet anyway, and there was nothing much to tell them. Then she started acting worried, and asking Alex what happened if Brian got on to her.

  He explained about giving her a new identity. That would only happen if she was compromised, he said, and if he recommended they take that particular course of action. He said it was extremely unlikely they would agree even so, and so really not worth thinking about. She said she knew that, but it would settle her head just to know how it would all work in theory.

  He explained she would be set up with a house or a flat in England, with rent paid for six months, and a job, and a new name. After six months, she’d have to fend for herself financially, but they would keep an eye on her, and if she thought she was in real trouble there were ways they could help. At home, it would be as if she just disappeared. If they had to, they could fake her death, but usually it was pretty obvious to people what had happened. She would just have to live with that. She’d have to wipe the slate clean, start a completely new life as a completely new person.

  That was what she was waiting to hear.

  She let things run along another wee while. She started playing it up, to put him off the scent. Saying all the time how certain she was she was doing the right thing, how she was so happy to have this opportunity to help bring the violence to an end once and for all.

  Then she started saying she thought Brian was getting suspicious. That he kept telling her they had an idea there was a tout in the unit, and dropping big hints. That a couple of times he’d got drunk and beaten her up. She showed him bruises. They weren’t real. She did them herself with make-up. Well, most of them. Some of them were from screwing.

  None of it was true. Brian never laid a finger on her. She hardly saw him at all these days, except when he turned up half-cut and wanted his hole. Then it started. She was on a pedestal to him. There was nothing she could do that he would stop loving her. Even if she was screwing another man, he would cut his balls off but he would still love her. He actually said one time that even if she was a tout, he would forgive her. He loved her that much.

  She told Alex she’d heard Brian on the phone saying he was sure there was an informer very close to him personally, and they had a pretty good idea who it was, and they would be sorting that individual out the next week or two.

  Alex didn’t seem bothered at all. He told her they would monitor the situation. She could tell he knew rightly it was bullshit. She needed to get things mo
ving, before that story was the truth.

  Plan C.

  25

  She’d seen it on the TV, in Grange Hill. She wrote up a kind of a diary. Her and Alex. What she’d want it to be like, if they got together. Teenage stuff, she knew it, but it was good crack to write. She left it behind one day, accidentally-on-purpose, so she was sure he had read it. He never said when he handed it back, but she could tell he was different after that.

  He came in one day and said he’d found a flat for her in Birmingham. It wasn’t lovely, he said. She could move now, or wait for the next one to be free, but that might be months or even years. She said she was up for it. He told her to pack a bag, and make up a cover story that she was away for a couple of weeks.

  She’d had the bag packed for ages. She told Brian she was away to visit her cousin in Liverpool who was splitting up from her husband but couldn’t tell anybody at home, and she got the bus to Belfast. She wondered if he would even miss her.

  About halfway up the M1 she suddenly realised she would probably never see him again. She couldn’t keep the smile off her face.

  26

  Alex met her at the bus station. He drove her to the ferry, and they crossed over to Scotland. He said it would be a hell of a run, but they couldn’t risk flying, and they couldn’t risk crossing the border to go by Wales. She snoozed in the car and he drove all day. It was about one in the morning when they got to the flat.

  It was a one-bed basement shithole. It stank. There were mice, and God knows what else. It wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind. He said it was just until they could sort out something more suitable. She said it better be.